The Audacity of Obama's Opacity

Longtime readers of this blog might remember my semi-regular series deconstructing Barack Obama's weekly White House addresses. His tones were so dulcet, his words were so anodyne that it was easy to be lulled into a state of complacency, if not rank stupefaction. Only when you gave the transcripts a close read were you able to suss out the occult message. Many if not most of these addresses were dog whistles to Wall Street and the Military Industrial Complex.

A common theme throughout his reign of Endless Austerity and Permawar was Support the Troops. The gaslighting propaganda got especially heavy during the winter holiday season, when year after year after year, Obama actually compared the sacrifices and hardships of endlessly deployed troops to Jesus Christ being born just to suffer and die for our sins in order to save us.

For me, one of the saddest things about Trump and then Biden succeeding Obama to the presidency was that the weekly presidential speeches went bye-bye. Deconstructing Trump's tweets became the fulltime job of #Resistance, Inc., a/k/a the establishment media, who endlessly debated the real meaning of Covfefe. And what can you possibly deconstruct about Biden, who wears his sociopathy on his sleeve and whose definition of a major press conference is sitting for a softball interview on MSNBC?

So when I heard that Obama had recorded an address last week to the Columbia University School of Journalism to mark the 30th anniversary of the U,N.'s Global Press Freedom extravaganza, I wondered how he'd square his remarks with all the scathing criticism he'd gotten from the Columbia Journalism Review, among other publications.. The CJR called his administration the most opaque, secretive and anti-free press in modern history.

Just back from Spain, where he'd traveled on his pal Steven Spielberg's private jet to catch a concert by their mutual pal Bruce Springsteen, Obama's  remarks, ostensibly geared  to journalism students, were really directed at his squeamish pals in the Military-Industrial complex (MIC), of which Wall Street and establishment media are such integral parts.

But it was a dog whistle in a higher key this time. Thanks  to reporting by The Intercept's Ken Klippenstein, we find out that the MIC acronym has been enhanced into FMIC. I am sad to say that it does not stand for  F-k the Military Industrial Complex. It stands for the  Foreign Malign Influence Center, a shadowy new-ish government agency which oversees propaganda efforts by the Pentagon, the State Department, the intelligence agencies, and the law enforcement agencies. It's a one-stop shop for countering "foreign disinformation." with acceptable domestic government propaganda:

The FMIC is authorized to counter foreign disinformation targeting not just U.S. elections, but also “the public opinion within the United States.

This hiding-in-plain sight government agency is the direct offshoot of the State Department's Global Engagement Center, which Obama himself established by executive order during his last year in office.  The GEC essentially made it perfectly legal for the government to propagandize US citizens. As Klppenstein reveals, the FMIC both centralizes the propaganda efforts and it expands them from State through the full panoply of US surveillance and police agencies, whose previous efforts at propaganda were deemed too disjointed to be effective.

Klipenstein writes,

That foreign governments such as Russia spread lies as part of propaganda to advance their own interests is not in dispute. But the efforts to counter disinformation have now become a cottage industry that critics suggest has grown far out of proportion to the threat.

Therefore, with the scattershot government response to the Janaury 6th capitol riot as the excuse for the latest "state of exception," the new and improved government propaganda shop will  not only counter "foreign" disinformation, it will counter it with a unified proactive Narrative of its own. As long as they can cast all manner of homegrown ills as the product of a foreign bad actor, they can fight Disinformation Over Here so they don't have to fight it Over There. 

And this is where Obama comes in, to lecture the future elite journalistic partners of the EMIC -  students who now pay (or will owe)  about $75,000 a year in Columbia tuition in order to to  become credentialed enough to Disseminate the Discourse in the ever-dwindling collection of news outlets.

Some salient snippets from the Obama video:

"We have to look at ourselves critically and make reforms that allow us not only to survive but thrive."

Obama carefully doesn't specify who the "we" are or what kind of "reforms" he has in mind. Whenever a politician uses the word reform, it usually means something that's good for the rich, and bad for everyone else. They never talk about cutting Social Security and other programs, but only about reforming them. In other words, deforming them. So when Obama talks about reforming journalism, I'm afraid that he's talking about censorship.

"It feels like we're at an inflection point - rising inequality, deepening polarization, and widespread disinformation. (and technical trends like AI). We need to face these trends head-om on, and we need you (his emphasis)to do it."

Because politicians like Obama have failed to face these long-standing, capitalism-engendered problems - which in his world are only trends - the rest of the world is going to shit. You don't need no stinking jobs. All you need is information approved from on high. Only propaganda will set you free.

"That's why it's so important to find creative ways to reinvigorate quality journalism."

If it's quality journalism already, then what's to reinvigorate? He seems to be suggesting new adjectives to make misery look like more fun, or at least entertaining enough to keep the proles glued to the screen in order prevent them from taking to the streets.

"I plan on shining a light on the biggest challenges. That includes revitalizing our political institutions, and coming up with more inclusive and sustainable models of capitalism and creating a stronger democratic (Democratic?) culture. And it also means creating an information environment that reinforces rather than erodes our democracy."

Here we go again with the neoliberal interchangeability between capitalism and democracy. The neoliberal project is fraying around the edges, coming apart at the seams and developing unsightly stains. So the purpose of Reform Journalism is to mend capitalism, add some frills, take it to the dry-cleaners, add some fabric softener,  co-opt the latest outgroup to model it and appear in commercials, expand the identity politics marketplace, and set the acceptable culture narrative.

"One in which we're able to tell a common (emphasis his) story and not just a bunch of separate stories.... These are areas where we have to do better so our democracy stays strong."

Just what we need... one approved story, condensed and toned down to prevent any unseemly outbreaks of independent thought.

"It seems that the only way to get attention is to engage in the kind of opinion journalism that gets people angry, riled up or revengeful. or just creates controversy and gets attention."

 The Columbia School of Journalism offers a course in opinion writing, so somebody had better alert Obama. It simply will not do for any latter-day Ida Tarbells, Lincoln Steffens or Molly Ivenses to get people riled up and mad about dirty politics and racial and social injustice. Everybody just relax. Controversy and dissent in the lower orders are anathema to the tsunami of capitalism which we only imagine is tossing us about before drowning us. Thrill instead to Obama's honeyed tones. Lay back as the golden beneficent drops of government propaganda trickle down upon you. 

The Selling of American Inhumanity

How can you tell when the New York Times is about to feed you a gigantic dose of bullshit? Whenever they use the passive voice in a headline, that's when the warning bells should start clanging in your brain: "Caution: Propaganda Hazard Ahead."

Today's dose, slugged "Many Obstacles Are Seen to U.S. Taking in Large Number of Syrian Refugees," seems designed to convince you that it would be a horrible idea for the United States to accept Syrian refugees on our precious shores.

A shadowy group of leaders and politicians and defense industry think-tankers, feeling the urge to push back against the mass sympathy and outrage engendered by the iconic photo of a dead three-year-old, has dictated to obliging Times reporter David M. Herszenhorn the myriad reasons why the European refugee crisis should not be an American problem.

Beware the Terroristic Hordes

Shielding the anonymous purveyors of official cowardice and personal unaccountability, Herszenhorn immediately quotes unnamed "critics" as calling the 14 Democratic senators urging President Obama to give asylum to more Syrian refugees "the Jihadi caucus."

Then he immediately pivots to defending a caring -- but helpless and hand-wringing -- Obama administration against these terrible straw men critics who shall not be named:

The criticism, which Obama administration officials say is baseless because of screening procedures asylum seekers undergo, was a powerful measure of the lack of political will and the practical obstacles that have hampered the United States’ ability to intervene more directly in what has become a full-blown migrant crisis in Europe.

Such obstacles, including an American public weary of overseas initiatives after more than a decade of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, remain formidable, even as heart-wrenching photographs of dead children this week focused the American conscience on the Syrian crisis as never before and prompted renewed calls for more aid.

Anonymous administration officials cravenly foist the blame for their own paranoia and psychopathy onto a hard-hearted public "weary of overseas initiatives" -- as though feeding and clothing and sheltering people is equivalent to bombing them to death.

 Pleas for more aggressive American-led rescue measures seem all the more futile given the failures to reach a consensus on the country’s own immigration problems, made vivid in the simmering debate over policing the border with Mexico and calls by a leading Republican presidential candidate to deport 11 million undocumented immigrants.

President Obama is not even going to try to do the right thing because he is afraid of what Donald Trump might think. Trump might call Obama a loser if he starts acting all mushy and sentimental. And that will never do during the president's last 500 days when he is trying mightily to burnish his legacy as the Drone President of Warpeace.

 “Even if there were a green light from the Russians and the Chinese, the appetite for yet another military adventure in Syria is very, very limited among the American public,” said Stewart Patrick, a senior fellow and expert on international institutions at the Council on Foreign Relations. “I think in this case, the administration is correct, the situation is so incredibly complex among the combatants, there’s very little evidence that United States or Western intervention would make anything better.

Again, humanitarian aid and the granting of asylum to suffering people is cast as a "military adventure" by one of the Times article's few named sources. (the only quoted government official is a Republican congressman) Stewart Patrick represents the shadow government hiding within an elite ruling class think tank funded and staffed, in large part, by the defense and oil industries. So the Obama administration is going to throw in the towel on asylum, even as it continues to bomb the hell out of Syria and other Middle Eastern locales and continues to spend $68,000 an hour operating the war planes targeting ISIS.

Choosing to help people instead of bombing them and starving them right out of their countries has "moral consequences," Patrick gravely dictates, adding that these choices and consequences should be Europe's problem and not that of the American ruling class and war machine. (quaintly called "the public" for purposes of propaganda and bloody hand-washing.) Besides, the US already throws a few dollars at hungry people, so please just leave them alone already.)

Each year, the United States grants residency permits to as many as 70,000 refugees from around the world, most referred by the United Nations refugee agency, which helps administer asylum requests. Only a small fraction of those have been Syrians, in part because the process typically takes up to two years, and the numbers of Syrians referred to the United States only began to increase after the start of the war four years ago.

While the State Department has said it plans to increase the number, to perhaps 1,800 by next year, it would be of little more than symbolic value given the more than four million Syrians in need of shelter.

 Taking in 65,000 Syrians, as the 14 senators had urged, is virtually impossible under the existing asylum process, which requires lengthy background checks. The small number has opened up the United States to charges of hypocrisy as it has implored European allies to accept more.

Blame it on the snails of the bureaucracy, not on the politicians. Besides, since the refugees are probably going to die anyway, why even bother? 

But Representative Charlie Dent, Republican of Pennsylvania, who just returned from a trip to Europe, said he found America’s allies there unable so far to coordinate an effective response.

“It is incumbent on the United States to be of greater assistance, yes, but the Europeans also have a responsibility here,” Mr. Dent said. “Our European partners have a much harder time exercising leadership. They don’t want the refugees. They don’t want the migrants. At the same time, I don’t know what they are prepared to do to bring about greater stability in the countries where there are problems.”

So, a member of the Party of No has engaged in a fact-free finding mission and found the Europeans not up to his moral expectations. What else is new? If you want to act like a heartless bastard, the best tactic is to point out that the other bastards are even more heartless and inept than you are. Even though they are not: European countries, particularly Germany and even austerity-ravaged Greece, have been welcoming the migrants with open arms.

  To give it the obligatory balanced veneer, the article concludes with two former government officials gratuitously allowing that maybe the United States could do a bit more, like sending the Navy to rescue people in its ships so as to avoid any more drownings. But it would be so, so hard to coordinate landing points and such. (even though all they really need is a compass and a phone and maybe Google Mapquest.)

As I wrote in my published comment to the Herszenhorn article, "Their excuses proliferate as wildly as their obscene military budgets and their weapons of mass destruction. Vetting the applicants would take too long and cost too much money, they say. We have our own immigration problems, they whine. (Never mind that DHS is running privatized concentration camps for Central American mothers and children, hideously euphemized as "family detention centers.")

I concluded with a link to the International Rescue Committee -- where people who are not as jaded and unfeeling as our leaders and their propagandists would like us to be can go to get more information on how to help the refugees.

The IRC, which has so far gathered more than 13,000 signatures from American citizens on a petition demanding that the US Government do more to help the relief effort, notes that this country has only accepted 1,413 Syrian refugees since the civil war began five years ago. Germany, meanwhile, is willing to accept 800,000 this year alone.

President Obama, for his part, did find the precious time Friday to sign a new billion dollar arms deal with the beheading-happy Saudi king, the better to efficiently kill even more hundreds of innocent Yemenis. Because killing is easy, lives are cheap, and Obama has a legacy to burnish and a foundation to fund.

Ka-Ching Goes the Beat of My Cold, Cold Heart