In Barack Hoover Obama: the Best and Brightest Blow it Again,

by Kevin Baker, published in the July 2009 issue of Harper’s Magazine,

Baker asserts that Obama’s great failure is that he fails to seize the

radical moment at hand, and instead, succumbs to the political pitfall

of pragmatism.

It seems to me, that Obama’s failing is that he talks radical, but

acts practical; and I propose, that he would be better suited, and better

capable to accomplish his campaign goals, if he talked practical and

acted radical.

The American people don’t always know what’s good for them,

and given the current economic recession, people are afraid. The

average American is not a political science expert, an expert in

sociology, or even an adequate historian. They have only vague and

superficial notions and leanings when it comes to politics. They just

know what they are told by their various news sources; and, since so

many of the sources people use for information are highly suspect,

most people don’t really have valid, coherent, or fully formed political

opinions. And the opinions they do have are usually specious ones

they’ve borrowed from Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, CNN, or MSNBC.

I agree with Baker that we are in crisis, and that not enough

people seem to realize just how serious and deep this crisis is; but, I do

not think it is practical or possible to try to explain the nature and

extent of the crises, in detail, and accounting for all complexity.

 The problem, is that when you try tell people what’s wrong, they

get scared. If your scaring people, they’re not going to like you – it’s

one of those weird things about human nature. If you try to explain

the complexity of issues to people, they feel stupid, or they think

you’retrying to make them feel stupid. And if people think you’re

trying to make them feel stupid – or that you think your smarter than

them – they will hate you.

After all, we don’t all wear top-hats and monocles and read

Harper’s Magazine.

The problem with our country isn’t that we don’t have a

president who is willing to seize the radical moment, but that we live in

a society composed of people who are so easily frightened, misled,

misinformed, placated, and pandered to that something like seizing the

radical moment isn’t even possible. Right wing media will distort,

people will be misled, his own party will turn on him once conflict

presents and they split about how to handle it (all radical movements

divide before long), and then he will lose the next election, and we will

hurry in someone to undo everything.

So perhaps Obama is just easing us in gently, trying to get us

slowly accustomed to the idea of change; getting himself re-elected so

that he can try the really radical stuff in his second term. But even if

he succeeds inthat, won’t their just be a counter reaction to whatever

he does in the equal and opposite direction. If we go radically to the

left won’t that mean we’ll have to swing back radically to the right –

and I don’t know if I want to be around for that.

The solution, what we need, is Augustus and the Principate. We

need to fake democracy. We need Obama to act radically behind the

scenes, but tell us that he’s not. When the republicans say he’s being

radical, or assuming powers that are not his, he should just call them

liars (it works for Republicans when Democrats point out their

transgressions). Pretend that complicated things are simple and just

do whatever isnecessary. The American people don’t know what’s best

for them. So give us what we need, and find a way of spinning it to us

so that we’ll be able to accept it. Never underestimate the stupidity of

the American people, or overestimate their ability to be informed.

Radically restructure society, just don’t tell anyone about it.