Chris Floyd

I understand there's a big party going on in Washington this week, where hundreds of thousands of people are gathering to celebrate Bob Gates' retention as Pentagon chief. I mean, that is what this shindig is all about, isn't it? Hope and.... continuity? [See Arthur Silber for more.]

We've got Bush's man still driving the war machine, we've got Bush's generals still waging the "War on Terror" all over the world. We've got a president who is eager to spend his "political capital" on slashing "entitlements," because everyone must sacrifice, everybody's "going to have to have some skin in this game" -- everyone, that is, except for the president's Wall Street backers, who are about to receive yet another tranche of billions of taxpayer dollars in what they are now calling openly -- and rightly -- "opportunity funding." We've got a president honoring homophobic right-wing preachers who urge their followers to imitate the mindless zeal of Nazis and Bolsheviks in doing "whatever it takes" to establish Christianist dominion. We've got a president whose education chief believes in turning over the teaching of America's children to corporations -- and the military. We've even got a president who follows Dick Cheney's "good advice" on interrogating Terror War captives.

It seems like the only place you can find "change" in Washington these days is in the cup of a street beggar, left homeless and jobless in the great bankrupting of the nation by Wall Street and the war machine.

(Both of which, by the way, gave more money to Obama than to John McCain. Meanwhile, McCain himself has become an honored, closely consulted advisor for Obama, whose appointees must scurry to allay any concerns McCain might have about them, as the New York Times reports. Oh, did you vote for Obama to keep McCain's cockamamie notions out of the White House? Too bad.)

So when those hundreds of thousands of people gather on Tuesday to watch Barack Obama sworn in on the very site of the famous civil rights rally led by Martin Luther King Jr. -- who was assassinated after he began denouncing the American war machine (see this, via Silber) -- the revelers can take great comfort in the knowledge that this same war machine is still in the hands of the same militarist faction that has served us so well for so long. What's more, Obama is going to enlarge the war machine (via antiwar.com) and expand its noble mission of honeycombing the globe with bristling bases and secret prisons, promising to use force "unilaterally if necessary" not only against attacks but also against undefined "imminent threats." (Like Saddam's nuclear-armed, intercontinental robot drones, perhaps.)

Sounds great, doesn't it? Hey, maybe Bruce Springsteen -- one of the many progressive paladins who have come over all verklempt about Obama -- can write a song about it:

Every day we live it up on the wings of a trillion-dollar killing machine
Where bombers swoop and the natives droop when their children start to scream
Sprung from bays that overflow with death
The Willy Pete scalds 'em till their last, harsh, anguished breath
Baby this town gives you big contracts
It's a golden goose, you don't pay no tax
And Barry, he's so cool
Oh, champs like us, baby, we were born to rule...

¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

Source: http://www.chris-floyd.com/component/content/article/3/1684-big-party-small-change-baby-we-were-born-to-runthe-empire.html