English articles - full listing

Oligarchic Paternalism: 
Why your vote won’t bring Peace in the Middle East 

1/9/2016

Dan on PressTV - transcript below;
click on image for audio.

[Daniel Patrick Welch interview on the news item that lunatic Republicans are planning to do something even more lunatic-y with respect to the Iran deal. In my analysis I stress that, while we have a duty to expose the GOP’s lunaticity, we have no less a duty to point out that this is more show than showdown, and that neither wing of the war party is interested in peace. Period.

I also coin a brand new term for "democratic" government under empire. When Oligarchic Paternalism goes viral, I want you all to remember who started it, and pay royalties accordingly Please share. ]

"Well first of all, before I say anything else, I have to take the Republicans head on. It is a criminal, treasonous turn of events, and the Republicans are the particularly crazy wing of the US imperial War Party. They would try to do by other means what they couldn’t do last month, which is to scuttle the Iran deal. And so now they are trying to undermine it any way they can. And they also—we saw this item about Tom Cotton taking this bribe from Israel of a million dollars to help scuttle that deal. That is likely a violation of the Espionage Act and is likely openly treasonous. But nothing like that will ever be prosecuted, and it is outrageous that a foreign power is allowed to step in and try to scuttle international deals like this. I mean, the only other government that does it more is the United States.

"But all that said, I see it as more of a show than a showdown. There is this rope-a-dope tag team effect that the US political parties engage in, and it serves several functions. One is that it serves the fiction that there really is a robust debate going on about US geopolitical strategy. And it implies that the US regime would be any less of a rogue terrorist state under a Democrat cabal than it would be under a Republican cabal. Somehow the Democrats want to position themselves as the party of peace, especially in an election year where they try to magnify these miniscule differences.

In particular, Obama personally wants to salvage his legacy. This is his lame duck year, and he wants to bookend his presidency with two fallacies: One is the Peace Prize, which was such a travesty of justice and affront to human decency, when he came in; and the Iran Deal on his way out, which was never a thing. There was never any reason for the US ever to meddle with Iran’s pursuit of peaceful nuclear power. And for that matter, a nuclear weapon. I mean everyone is talking about how North Korea is being paranoid. But all these other countries went up in smoke. If you think the US really wants peace in the region, ask Afghanistan."

"What did Obama do? He escalated the war in Afghanistan. He rejuvenated the war in Iraq; overthrew a government in Honduras; is funding death squads in Syria; absolutely leveled—destroyed the entire state of Libya; interfered in the elections in Venezuela. It is a horrific record by any metric. And to suggest that there is some sort of difference worth noting is a particularly stupid offshoot of the US election cycle political psyche.

"You don’t have a choice. What you have is what I call Oligarchic Paternalism, which is a sort of governmental version or a mimicry of parenting: Like a good parent, a well-meaning parent giving safe and limited choices to toddlers. Except that with adults of course it is to limit and eliminate any real choice. The oligarchs choose who it will be safe for us to vote for, and then we get to choose between them.

"The difference is that with children it’s a good child rearing strategy because you’re trying to train children into making choices and living with the consequences, whereas the goal with adults is exactly the opposite: it’s to give the *illusion* of choice, and to eliminate any possibility of real change. And it’s amazing how well it works. "So this rope-a-dope continues. Of course the Republicans are wrong. But Obama is no prize—and certainly no Peace Prize."

 ^  Top  ^

(c) 2015 Daniel Patrick Welch. Reprint permission granted with credit and link to danielpwelch.com. Political analyst, writer, linguist and activist Daniel Patrick Welch lives and writes in Salem, Massachusetts, with his wife, Julia Nambalirwa-Lugudde. Together they run The Greenhouse School. Welch has also appeared in numerous television and radio interviews, and can be available for comment and analysis as his day job permits. 

Translations of articles are available in in up to 30 languages. Links to the website are appreciated.