Paul J. Balles views how Barack Obama’s administration is fast falling into the mould of its predecessors in domestic policy, where the focus is on appeasing the rich, to foreign policy, where Israel is firmly at the helm.
One of the themes in Charles Dickens' novel Bleak House is that of undeserved suffering created by the High Court of Chancery, in particular, and by venal, self-serving lawyers.
Superimpose that from the 19th century to the image of the 21st century's undeserved suffering. Created by the last US administration and by Wall Street's venal bankers, the people in Barack Obama's administration as well as in his opposition are nothing but self-serving.
The tax breaks incorporated into the recently passed “stimulus package” for the economy were nothing more than an attempt by the Obama crew to bribe the Republicans into acting non-partisan. The Republicans remained partisan and voted against the bill. In the face of the worst economic situation since the Great Depression, partisan politics held the reins.
As Joe Brewer noted “... ’tax relief’ and ‘tax cuts’ are just code words for destroying the capacity of government to serve the public". President Obama, anxious to take a centrist position, seems too willing to appease the opposition.
Obama amassed his following on the promise of change, but the changes coming out of our bleak house have been little more than cosmetic. The members of his cabinet and staff are left over from the same old chancery court (translate: Washington insiders), and they're not changing anything of significance in foreign policy.
Hillary Clinton, right out of the back room of her husband’s administration, is simply aiming her penchant for war mongering toward another potential battlefield in North Korea by threatening that independent nation against testing a long range missile.
In Dickens's novel, the chancery is the dead hand of the past that continues to kill in the present. It's not everything about the past that Dickens hated. What he despised and rejected in Bleak House were the dregs of the past, the institutionalized selfishness and coldness that survive within the tradition.
In Washington, politics rears its two-headed hydra of foreign policy as usual. Surrounded by staff members who put Israel first before America, Obama let the US-financed massacres in Gaza go on without a word of criticism. Congress follows suit and the media complies.
We are racists and narcissists. We are racists and narcissists because only the fate of American children is important to us. The fate of Palestinian children is not. We love our own bodies, but hold others’ in disdain. Our egocentrism makes it impossible for us to be humanitarian beyond our own tribal identity.
The media has dedicated much time with multiple news broadcasts to little Haleigh Cummings, a five-year-old girl who went missing in Florida; but they haven't had a minute for the phosphorous burnt and broken bodies of once pretty little Palestinian girls whose bloodstained faces lie in the streets and bombed out buildings in Gaza.
We're narcissists, having been brainwashed by beliefs reported in the New York Times (28 February 1994) from the worst of bigots, Rabbi Yaacov Perrin. He and others like him have convinced a multitude of Americans that "One million Arabs are not worth a Jewish fingernail." As Gilad Atzmon observed, “The Israelis simply love themselves almost as much as they hate their neighbours."
Any talk about humanitarian concerns involving the ship of Israel is a farce. One of the most advanced militaries in the world and a major nuclear power is still controlling the US and threatening to bomb Iran. The "yes we can" chanters remain silent.
Mary Robinson, retired United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, had the foresight to identify the dangers of media bias when she said, "Today's human rights violations are the causes of tomorrow's conflicts."
Paul J. Balles is a retired American university professor and freelance writer who has lived in the Middle East for many years. For more information, see http://www.pballes.com.
