Why protesting Obama after Trump's victory makes so much sense
“Trump
is the logical culmination of a culture: the narrator of a democratic apparatus
that has come to conceal itself behind the mother of all TV shows: the US
Presidency.”
President Barack Obama and Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras at Maximos Mansion in Athens, Tuesday, Nov. 15, 2016. Pablo Martinez Monsivais/Press Association. All rights reserved.Yesterday, as I began to write these lines,
Air Force One was descending on Athens’ airport, bringing the US President to
our city: not the delirious orange-haired one, but the One Still There Even
Though Most Of US Have Forgotten He Is Actually Still In Charge. Obama, the
liberal darling of so many inside and beyond the US border, is the president
under whose watch 2.5 million people were deported - more than
any other US president in history and directly comparable to the “2-3 million” pledged by Trump.
Under Obama, the US has continued and
excelled in its business-as-usual war, carnage and destruction the world over.
But admittedly, under his watch this hell was now delivered with some
impeccable puns, flawless speeches, making us feel warm inside and a sense of
humility we can all relate to. Right?
A superstar, a great showman of a
President? Check. But Trump is also those exact same things - perhaps in many
ways more skilful than the Great Man himself: Trump read into the anguish of millions
and tapped into it before the liberal elite had time to utter “let us respect
and uphold the values of the US constitution”, or some gibberish of that kind.
Trump is the logical culmination of a
culture that commenced with Obama: a complete and utter reliance upon the
single showman (and yes, it will be a man) as the narrator of a democratic
apparatus that has come to conceal itself behind the mother of all TV shows:
the US Presidency.
Obama in Athens, opening his final foreign trip as president with reassuring words about the US commitment to NATO. Yorgos Karahalis/Press Association. All rights reserved. A narrator that now so easily obstructs,
behind the cleverest of jokes or the most infuriating of bigoted statements,
what is a plain and simple truth: that sovereignty and all regimes, democratic
or otherwise, do not hang in the balance as well-humoured or addictively
infuriating men in suits come and go. The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled
was convincing the world he didn't exist. And the
greatest trick the Democratic Apparatus ever pulled was convincing the world
that it is to be replaced at the People’s Will: convincing the world that an
electoral swing may somehow shut down Guantanamo Bay, that it may drop the
numbers of the world’s largest prison population, that it may bring less war or
carnage. And just before anyone has had the time to call on the con artist, the
next one has already jumped on stage: sombre or delirious, the show must go on.
Oh, and the show does go on. Despite and
against our effort to live our lives, it tramples over our sisters and our
brothers in Guantanamo Bay, in the homeless camps, in the skid rows of inner US
cities, inside prisons and beyond their thick walls, at the razor wire of the
border and beyond it, at the refugee camps that have been popping up around the
world faster than you can say “The new president is an affront to our liberal
democratic values”. These values now matter less than a well-delivered pun.
There is some impeccably delivered irony
in the fact that Obama’s last international stop before handing to Trump is
Athens. It is as if he is paying homage to the Syriza debacle, a symbolic
affirmation that no matter what the intentions, any attempt to soothe – let
alone transform – power “from within” is doomed to a sitcom-like spectacle of
representation. A spectacle that would be hilarious if it was not deadly; a
spectacle that can only be fought by supporting life in the struggle against
its representation.
The Obama visit to Athens. Closed off streets. dromografos. Some rights reserved.
The Obama visit to Athens. Closed off streets. dromografos. Some rights reserved.
The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill creates new stop-and-search powers, allows the police to put more conditions on protests, and threatens Gypsy and Traveller rights to roam.
It's been met with mass protests from Bristol to Belfast. Is this bill a threat to our human rights – and is there any stopping it now?
Join us for this free live discussion at 5pm UK time, Thursday 22 April
Hear from:
Gracie Bradley Director of Liberty Moya Lothian-Mclean Politics editor at gal-dem Luke Smith Founder of GRT [Gypsy, Roma and Traveller] Socialists Zarah Sultana Labour MP Chair: Nandini Archer Global commissioning editor, openDemocracy
Share this
URL copied to clipboard
Get weekly updates on EuropeA thoughtful weekly email of economic, political, social and cultural developments from the storm-tossed continent.Join the conversation: get our weekly email
Comments
We encourage anyone to comment, please consult the oD commenting guidelines if you have any questions.