As Wall Street goes bust, Obama harks back to his would-be Avatar, bemoans Gamal Nkrumah "The current flows fast and furious. It issues in a spate of words from the loudspeakers and the politicians. Everyday they tell us that we are a free people fighting to defend freedom... it is our business to puncture gas bags and discover the seeds of truth" -- Virginia Woolf Thought on Peace in an Air Raid, 1940 When the wildest dog on the block begs to be put on the leash, it is time to pay attention to his peculiar bark. "Look at the faces here around you, and you see an America that is more fair and more free and more just than the one [Martin Luther] King addressed that day," United States President Barack Obama declared in National Mall, Washington DC. Obama was inaugurating a memorial statue of the celebrated civil rights leader, the first non-white and non- presidential personality to be thus honoured. President Obama is no bulldog -- rather he is something of a hunting hound. A sight hound perhaps, cleverly coursing his prey, perhaps a Whippet. Or he is a scent hound, so to speak. Maybe a Coonhound with a deep booming bark. Whatever he is, he is no Dachshund. For he stands tall. There is a good thing, undoubtedly, to be said about Obama and that is that he is exceptionally articulate. Fudges may have worked for other American presidents in the past three decades or so, but Obama understands that they will not this time for him. He cannot afford to avoid telling American voters the dire state of American economic and financial affairs. Worse, his detractors will let him fall if he does not do his part of the job. Thus, the unveiling of Dr King's Memorial statue has exposed the holes in Obama's political grandstanding. Wall Street funded his election campaign, and he now works closely in tandem with the bigwigs betting against taxing the billionaires -- along with cutting the military budget, is the only way out of America's morass. One part of his constituency which he has downplayed propounds a populist perspective. And, the US president is keen to capitalise on King's populism. Obama was speaking before a crowd of thousands who gathered in Washington to honour Dr Martin Luther King's memorial dedication. But the crowd that assembled in Washington on Sunday was more concerned with job creation and poverty eradication than with racial segregation. Popular anger is on the rise. The president's fabled articulate punches may have to now come into play. The Democrats and the Republicans are in cloud-cuckooland with Congress divided on details of economic reform. Yet, across the extra-parliamentary American political spectrum, pressure is building for a fairer distribution of income. The ground swell of support for the radical reformation of the global financial system and the reduction of gross income inequalities is taking America by storm as demonstrated by the Occupy Wall Street movement. So while the stage for economic and financial reform is being set, America was honouring one of its most celebrated sons. Officiating over the ceremony, which was delayed because of Hurricane Irene in August, was America's first president of colour. Yet the question of race has become less visible a factor, if no less significant, in American politics and the pertinent issue of social justice more pressing. Inducing the wealthiest segment of American society to pay a bigger share of the revenue pie has become an increasingly compelling issue. Race and economic well-being were always inextricably intertwined in the American national psyche. Indeed, King was conscious of the close correlation between race and economic and social justice. His last cause was an honest inquest into the roots of poverty. "It is much easier to integrate a bus than to eradicate slums ... It is much easier to integrate a public park than it is to create jobs," King was quoted as saying on NPR News in one of his last public interviews. He battled very hard against poverty, for to him it was the very byproduct of racism. President Obama picked up on the theme, reminding his audience of the importance of learning the lessons of the past. Obama openly conceded that "King's work is not yet complete." Yet, his words did not wash with some of his listeners. "I believe Dr King would be ashamed of Barack Obama and Eric Holder's move for so- called 'social justice.' I believe Dr King would be ashamed of a president allowing an Attorney General to dismiss voter intimidation, maybe voter fraud," warned the insightful blogger maggiesnotebook.com. Obama was reduced to vague words that carefully avoided any reference to his wars and his Wall Street backers. "Progress did not come from words alone. Progress was hard. Progress was purchased through enduring the smack of billy clubs and the blast of fire hoses. It was bought with days in jail cells and nights of bomb threats. For every victory during the height of the civil rights movement, there were setbacks and there were defeats," Obama countered. That, too, did not go down well. Obama cannot enter easily into King's orbit. However, the Wall Street presidential candidate front-runner -- we'll see Obama in action next year, no doubt -- will desperately try to decode King's message in a manner that works to his own advantage. Forget the hypocritical hyperbole, Obama is a man of war. "Obama claims that his only choices are war or nothing. But the reason people know the names Gandhi, who was never given a Nobel Prize, and King -- who was in 1964, is that they suggested other options and proved that those approaches could work," noted David Swanson, author of War is a Lie, in his provocative article "He's Done it Before: Will Obama Denounce MLK at Memorial?" "That sounds like a crazy question, doesn't it? Why would President Obama denounce MLK? Well the reason is that he's done it before." "Well, the time he did it before was in a Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech," extrapolates Swanson, when Obama shocked the audience by insisting that "instruments of war do have a role to play in preserving peace." Obama searches for solutions to America's predicament in all the wrong directions. His prescriptions are more those of a trickster or a charlatan than those of seasoned physician. You can see where they are coming from -- not from the people, but from Wall Street. The battle for the hearts and minds of the US markets has intensified under Obama. His is no easy or enviable task. "Our work is not done. And so on this day, in which we celebrate a man and a movement that did so much for this country, let us draw strength from those earlier struggles. First and foremost, let us remember that change has never been quick. Change has never been simple, or without controversy. Change depends on persistence. Change requires determination," Obama blurted out perhaps tongue-in-cheek. Have we learnt anything at all from Dr King? Has Obama? The American president must be put under the gun, just like Dr King was. "Obama speaks of the excesses of Wall Street, while being deeply entrenched with the plethora of Wall Street Democrat donors, and has no shame," wonders Maggie, the perspicacious blogger. But that dilemma goes with the job. Obama cannot spell out the steps his administration must take -- dramatically higher taxation on the rich, an end to casino capitalism and offshore banking -- to remedy market dysfunction. At the same time, he cannot afford to drain the American public patience further. Pulling the plug on capitalism is something that Obama cannot contemplate. No US president in his right mind would. The perennial problem is that in seeking to compromise with his capitalist benefactors, Obama may end up urging Congress and the Senate to promulgate deeply flawed pieces of legislation. Yet he cannot be seen to be abandoning financial reform. "Another fact is hard to ignore: it is the economically harassed white people who have turned repeatedly in anger against blacks... My father was a slum-dwelling immigrant, and prejudiced against Negroes. I had an aunt who kept warning us kids not to go under the El, where blacks lived in even more run-down tenements than ours," confessed Howard Zinn in his celebrated essay When Will the Long Feud End? The "long feud" is far from reaching the end of its tether. Much has been made of the flaws of the past, and a steadier pace of social reform is widely deemed by the mainstream media, mouthing Wall Street hacks, as inappropriate at this historical juncture. "The 1964 Civil Rights Act might contain a fair-employment provision, but not one government contract was terminated with a company that discriminated against blacks," Zinn pointed out. America is unraveling because it cannot agree on how to handle Dr King's legacy. Historically in America, freedom and diversity have never been mutually reinforcing. The one precludes the other. People whose ideas were perceived to be unorthodox were systematically ostracised and politically peripheralised. Dr King was a man of peace who was assassinated precisely because he took up the cause of the anti-Vietnam war movement. Obama, in sharp contrast, insists that upholding the traditional American "moral standards" of "liberty" when waging wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya are prerequisite and "justified". In short, King was an eloquent peacemaker. Obama, regretfully, is a silver-tongued warmonger.
