Chump Change

Barack Obama's famous campaign slogan was "change". At the same time, the most important issue to his supporters and cultish followers was the Iraqi War. Today, President-elect Obama announced the re-appointment of Robert Gates, President Bush's Defense Secretary. Secretary Gates has overseen recent Iraqi War policy, including the surge. Thus, his reappointment is a refreshing surprise, because it suggests a victory of practicality over ideology. But the reappointment does not represent change. It represents continuity.

President-elect Obama has played his cards smartly. But his followers and supporters are chumps. They are suckers. Marks. The suckers include both his hordes of brown shirt-like young followers and the propagandists formerly known as the mainstream media.

I have suggested over many months that Obama's young supporters have been chumps. This younger cohort is a generation that does not read books and that considers Bill Maher to be an information source. Their teachers have not read John Locke. They have never heard of him.

One of my students, a gay activist, became upset with me a few weeks ago when I mentioned during a social occasion (I occasionally have a drink with my MBA students after class) that I thought that George Bush and Barack Obama represented the same interests. His anger was palpable. When I questioned this student, a product of elite universities, whether he had read anything about the Iraqi War; the dispute between Shias and Sunnis; or anything else about the Iraqi War, his answer was "no". When I suggested a couple of books to read, he was not interested. However, he became enraged when I suggested that there would be little difference.

America's failed democracy naturally flows from its failed educational system. Like the ignorant hordes that have supported socialism, fascism and communism, Obama's supporters emphasized slogan over substance, and viewed asking questions as to Obama's vital information and true intentions with venomous hostility. One of his supporters, who calls himself "Diogenes", has seen it so important to suppress any questions that he has come onto this blog repeatedly, hurling curse words and insipid invective such as "tin foil hat" any time that I have raised questions about Mr. Obama. He recently used several insults and curse words when I suggested that Americans need to read John Locke.

In early September I argued that Barack Obama would be a George W. Bush clone and in June, I had suggested that:

"Mr. Obama claims to favor change, yet he is allied with specific economic interests, specifically Wall Street. In 2008, Goldman Sachs so far has given $2.7 million to Democrats and less than $1 million to Republicans. Goldman Sachs's contributions to Democrats has exceeded those to Republicans every year since 1990. To assuage public concern about excessive Wall Street influence on Obama, America's off-the-charts-insipid media provide testimonies from 'principled' Wall Street tycoons like George Soros and Warren Buffett that Obama is for 'change'. Of course, Messrs. Soros and Buffett do not discuss how Obama's 'change' will influence their own economic interests."

It remains to be seen how far Mr. Obama's blithe, sociopathic lying goes and whether he carries it into realms that are potentially harmful to the United States. However, for now he seems to have made clear that change with respect to the Iraqi War is not a top priority for him. In this, he has played his millions of young supporters, including the MBA student, for chumps.