Performance for lords lets down “liberals”

BREAKDOWN
Editing by Carolyn Bennett

Today on Democracy Now, journalist Chris Hedges links the Obama performance to his latest book and roundly condemns the performance.

The death of the liberal class, Hedges said, is “the collapse of the primary pillars of the liberal establishment, those liberal institutions—the press, labor, public education and, in particular institutions of higher education and culture … that have been under assault.”

The performance of the current president is “a disaster,” he said, “a poster child for the bankruptcy of the liberal class.”

Like [William Jefferson] Clinton, “[Barack Obama] is somebody who is a self-identified liberal who speaks in the traditional language of liberalism; but who has waged war on the core values of liberalism. This is a concern for those people outside the narrow power elite. The tragedy — if tragedy is the right word — is that Obama, who made this Faustian bargain [grabbing immediate gain, disregarding future costs] with corporate interests in order to gain power, has now been crumpled up and thrown away by these interests.”

He functioned as a brand after the disastrous eight years of George Bush. Now, they do not need him.

“What we are watching is a craven attempt on the part of the White House to cater to forces that are literally destroying the United States; have reconfigured — are reconfiguring — this country into a kind of [medieval] feudalism.

“All of the traditional, the pillars of the liberal establishment, that once provided some kind of protection; and, more importantly, a kind of safety valve, a mechanism by which legitimate grievances and injustices in this country can be addressed — have shut tight. They no longer work.

“We are getting these terrifying, proto-fascist movements that are leaping up around the fringes of American society. Their anger is not only a rage against government, but a rage also — not misplaced — against liberals.”

Source
Democracy Now: “Chris Hedges: Obama is a ‘Poster Child for the Death of the Liberal Class’ — The compromise tax-cut deal that President Obama signed into law on Friday has angered many of his supporters. In his new book, Death of the Liberal Class, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author Chris Hedges argues that the failure of President Obama to represent the interests of his supporters is just another example of a quickly dying liberal class. In the book, Hedges explains how the five pillars of the liberal class—the press, universities, unions, liberal churches and the Democratic Party—have become corrupt,” December 20, 2010, http://www.democracynow.org/2010/12/20/chris_hedges_obama_is_a_poster
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