Obaminess rules!

And so, predictably, amid hails of adulation from the suckered masses, Obama has become 44th US president. The usual display of American-bred hysteria was on view, some believing Obama to be to be the saviour, others the panacea to all of America’s current woes.

In some ways I can understand the euphoria and it only underlines a collective grief among Americans over White House policy and the wholly dysfunctional state of the country right now.

In a much more moderated way, I watched Tony Blair’s entrance to number 10 with hope and relief after years of Thatcherism. In Gordon Brown’s, appearance on Desert Island Discs, just before the election of New Labour, he imparted a message of justice and fairness, one which even had me posting a cheque of support to Labour Party HQ! How times change and how naievety falsely colours one’s understandings of the world. I have moved on since then, and what an eye-opener it has been. Since Blair’s inauguration, what had gone before under Thatcher seems tame in retrospect. Within the span of his premiership, great swathes of our freedoms were plunged into jeopardy, a fledgling police state established and an illegal war engaged upon, not to mention all of the lies, spin and deceit.

Similar hopes among the American electorate will soon evaporate too, as Obama’s policies (or more accurately, those policies demanded of him by those above) will appear as nothing more than a continuum of the Bush legacy. Paul Watson of infowars.com lists those policies which Obama has already publicly aired, but which seemingly missed the radar of his idolators:

- The creation of a “civilian national security force” that is “just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded” as the U.S. military to enforce his carbon tax scheme and the total regulation and control of the American middle class.

- Intent to bomb Pakistan under the guise of pursuing terrorists, continuing a Bush administration policy of violating the sovereignty of foreign nations.

- The guarantee to “bankrupt” coal power plants, costing millions of American jobs and skyrocketing energy prices.

- Unbridled implementation and expansion of the banker bailout that is hated by the majority of American citizens yet was vigorously promoted by both Obama and McCain. Doling out taxpayer’s money to Wall Street, causing rampant inflation, a lowering in living standards and the destruction of the dollar.

- A rhetorical support of the second amendment of an individual’s right to bear arms has been contradicted through his support of local gun ban laws, including his endorsement of a state ban on the sale and possession of handguns in Illinois.

- Grandstanding on the notion that he supports environmentalism with his climate change rhetoric, but his intention to extend biofuel subsidies will only accelerate price food costs that have already risen 75 per cent since 2002, causing economic distress and rioting in such countries as Haiti, Egypt, and Somalia, as well as deforestation on a massive scale.

How many times must we go through this repetitive scenario of unfulfilled promises from the new incumbents and their ongoing continuance of the already established policy of a preceding ‘opposition’, before we realise that election manifestos are pure bull, staged to capture our attention and swing our votes to endorse the already chosen party giving the appearance that ‘democracy’ is alive and well. It doesn’t exist. America’s future has already been formulated by think-tanks and secret committees and all possible resulting scenarios run through powerful super-computers while the most desirous outcome to those in control has already been chosen, for their understanding of the collective human psyche has become a fine art.

Both here and in the US, the two party system has become a sham. It is two sides of the same coin - identical. As long as we continue to elect the wrong horse every time and make no attempt to understand the real game play at work and disenfranchise both sides of that same coin, we will continue to be led down the road that the movers and shakers what us follow into a brief twilight and then eventual oblivion, for their plans for our future - which can easily be verified from their very own policy documents - are in sharp contrast to those we would hope for.