Steve Sailer has distorted the picture of Obama, presenting him as a professional black-activist. But the mystery is deeper, he is a neighborhood organizer a la Alinsky but without a political party or a political ideology. While Alinsky was organizing for a a political movement with a clear ideology, the Communist Party I presume, I still cannot get Obama's political background. He got into this trade through a thoroughly a-political channel, just by answering a newspaper advertisement. The ad was paid by Gerald Kellman, who hired and trained Obama, and inserted him in his organization. What organization?
Gerald Kellman ("Marty Kaufman" in Obama's semi-autobiographical "Dreams From my Father"), a practitioner of Saul Alinsky-style community organizing, was Obama's first mentor in Chicago. He worked for Developing Communities Project (DCP), the largest church-based community-organizing agency on Chicago's far south side, that began in 1984 as a branch of the Calumet Community Religious Conference (CCRC).
DCP functions as an organized entity through which social justice missions of the church and its members is integrated with the technical skills and methods required to promote change via the public arena. The operational methodology is focused upon leadership development, research and analysis of issues, and the creation of public forums or events for direct action on issues that are deemed important through a collective decision making process.
Who finances DCP? The Government (such as an Illinois Department of Human Services, whatever it is) and private fundations:
Catholic Campaign For Human Development
Chicago Capacity Building Initiative
Chicago Community Trust
Chicago Foundation for Women
Girl's Best Friend Foundation
Illinois Department of Human Services
Mayer & Morris Kaplan Family Foundation
Polk Bros. Foundation
Tribune Charities
Wieboldt Foundation
Woods Fund of Chicago
US Bank
US Bank? What is that? U.S. Bancorp (NYSE: USB), with $242 billion in assets, is the parent company of U.S. Bank, the 6th largest commercial bank in the United States. The company operates 2,522 banking offices and 4,844 ATMs, and provides a comprehensive line of banking, brokerage, insurance, investment, mortgage, trust and payment services products to consumers, businesses and institutions. Their website proudly announces:
We made more than $21 billion in loans and investments during 2006 to help support the creation of affordable housing, economic revitalization, and organizations providing critically needed services to low- and moderate-income individuals and areas.A large bank. DCP is certainly not a Communist front, but what is its ideological background? Maybe I am from another era and another world, when there were ideological movements aimed at taking the power to change society, which being necessarily clandestine, operated mostly through fronts and fellow-travellers. But this thing seems to have worked without a political agenda, its ideology being social improvement, like the World Bank. World Bank ideology is capitalism, frequently presented as some kind of vague socialism. The purpose of the World Bank social and community organizing activity is to pre-empt and occupy the space of real "biting" ideological (Communist) movements.
Within this context, which I dont know if it is true, Obama is the candidate of US capitalism, sent to provide the appearance of socialism, of equality, of caring, of change, of hope, while defending the stability of the capitalist system. I am not Marxist, but Obama seems to fit nicely into that framework. With Obama in the area, no Communist organizer had a chance. With Obama in power, no real social - economic - political change is possible in the United States.
I am too old to care, and I will not be alive when Obama's presidency will be historically judgable. But cannot avoid thinking, specially when I have so much work and I am desperately trying to avoid working. Now, work.
5 comments:
1. The "Department of Human Services" or DHS is the most recent euphemism for the "Department of Welfare" (and Welfare is itself a euphemism for alms or assistance to the poor). The history in the US is that all disfavored groups or institutions have to keep changing their names as their names develop the same negative associations as their former names (crippled becomes disabled becomes handicapped becomes "differently abled".)
2.You can look at Obama two ways - your approach, or alternatively, that what we have in Obama is a "stealth" communist - all the substance of socialism without any telltale red paint to prevent him from being electable.
As for why supposedly capitalist organizations such as banks are supporting quasi-socialist "community organizing" groups, there are several explanations. First of all, a large bank is not really a capitalist organization - it is a bureaucracy. It also operates under government pressure to "put back" money into the communities in which it operates. In other words, the bank buys political protection by paying off "Community Organizing" groups that operate as protection rackets. One might as well also ask why Jews and other prosperous groups (Wall St. bankers) support the Democrat party, which vows to raise their taxes and regulate them more. I think it relates to people's desire to think of themselves as "good people" - this is a wish that ranks above even the need for $. Also, as a practical matter, the most clever rich institutions can manipulate systems of government regulation and turn them against their less agile competitors.
But we are in for a rough time if Obama is president - his background exclusively in the world of government and "community organizing" is all about wealth redistribution - taking wealth from one group and giving it to another. As to how wealth is actually CREATED, he does not have the slightest clue - he will be like the President of the Cargo Cult.
Community organization or community development is the remedy the World Bank has invented against political - revolutionary - movements. I have seen them in operation in Latin America, where they create small marketing unions, small irrigation canals, female artesanal workshops, village water wells, etc. This communal improvement is always local and has no political containt. I didnt know that the same ideas were being applied in black urban neighborhoods in America, but it makes sense. This communal development thing never solved any problem but it provides an illusion of progress. Third world government tolerate these community development because they are inoffensive from the political point of view. It is interesting to note that Obama's mother spent her life in this third world community development environment, studying Indonesian artesanal blacksmiths (totally obsolete already in her time) and how to revitalize their trade. I cannot imagine Obama leading United States high tech industry in its life-and-death war against Asian competitors. He is totally unaware of how Korean and Chinese high-tech crazy engineers are thinking and working day and night to delete the rest of American industrial capabilities. Community development will not save General Motors nor IBM.
Obama is a very nice person, but his community development background, focused in small scale artesanal action, is not what America needs in these times. His rival at least is technically familiar with hi tech airplanes, and has a good education (re-education in fact) in politics and economy (in Marxist ideology, I mean).
The high point of Obama's career as a "community organizer" was a crusade he organized (which almost spun out of control into a riot) against the Chicago public housing authority alleging that a certain public housing project (the ironically named "Altgeld Gardens"(ironic because it was no garden and there was no money to be found their either old or new) contained asbestos. Everyone knows that the major problem for ghetto dwellers in Chicago is not guns or drugs or alcohol or diabetes or AIDS, it is that their pipes are covered with asbestos insulation. Maybe you are right that community organizing, like religion is another opiate of the masses to distract them from true revolution. But, still it is one thing to be a clown and another to be in charge of the whole circus.
Community organizing in America was founded by (the Jew, needless to say) Saul Alinsky:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saul_Alinsky
who was a mentor not only to Omaba's mentor (Obama is himself too young) but also to Hillary Clinton.
Yes, Obama comes from a background that takes a "romantic" view of work as something best done by artisans - village blacksmiths, farmers who make cheese and sausage, handmade pottery, etc. I'll bet Obama's house is filled with that kind of junk. Too bad the world economy hasn't really operated like this since the 19th century. If this is your framework for analyzing business, then there is no hope of getting the right answers to the economic challenges facing the US.
Yes, Obama has lived his formative years in the Third World, and has absorbed Third World economic and political ideas. I wonder what is Obama´s attitude towards Hugo Chavez, Venezuela´s President. And viceversa, what is Chavez´s attitude toward a black tercermundista American President. He certainly cannot call Obama the Satan, like he did call Bush in the United Nations Assembly.
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