Is Obama America's Gorbachev?

The Soviet collapse in the early 1990s can be traced directly to that pivotal episode of imperial war to subjugate Afghanistan. Because the Soviet economy was straining and cracking under the onerous burden of that Occupation, the ruling Politbureau had to choose a charismatic leader who hoped to "remake" a new beginning for the repressive and moribund Regime. Mikhail Gorbachev fit that bill perfectly--he was young, articulate, ready to launch a program of 'perestroika'(restructuring) of the broken Soviet economy and even began a limited political liberalization of the repressive Soviet state's highly secretive security apparatus. Most critically, Gorbachev was politically naive, especially when it came to the actual workings of a bourgeois democracy(such as the one found in the USA up to the 1980s)! He thought, quite unwittingly, that under bourgeois democracy, the people had the final say in deciding affairs of the state. Nowhere in his writings did Gorbachev reveal any understanding that the Capitalist elite--military-industrial complex in popular parlance--actually manipulated the thin veneer of representative democracy in order to use corporate-military Iron Fist to rule the USA bourgeois state and thusly to dominate the World.

Now fast forward to the state of the USA 'empire' in 2009. The Capitalist elite(Wall Street's own politbureau if you will)--having realized belatedly that the Bushed NeoCONs around Cheney & Chief Chickenhawk objectively took a wrecking ball to the rapidly-declining global influence of the 'lone Superpower'--looked to the Obama team in order to salvage the repressive but fast-receding and moribund USA empire. So they selected a young politician who was young, articulate, brash enough to believe that he could "remake" a renewed 'American leadership' in the world, and--most critically for the ruling elite--was quite naive about the actual workings and history of the USA empire! One glaring example of this political ignorance is that while Obama himself was born in the occupied territory of Hawai'i, he has expressed zero understanding that the 1893 military overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom was a watershed event that propelled the budding American Empire into the upcoming "Superpower" that was to rule the Planet for the next(20th) century. Even more ideal is the fact that Obama--a "hapa" child of mixed African-Anglo blood--is considered a Black President, a truly desirable trait in view of the increasing minority demographics in the USA in the coming years. So, what we have is a confluence of the ruling elite's unwavering commitment to the continuation of the Empire, combined with the excellent prospect of a largely popular young politician whose own ambition is to become the top dog within the framework of "American leadership" of global affairs. How better for the Wall Street robber barons to use the Obama "change" in order to "fool most of the people...most of the time"?

In the end, of course, the hallucinatory fantasy of the now-defunct CPSU ruling elite to "remake" a moribund and ill-performing Soviet economy came to naught, and in fact the forces of 'collateral damage' unleashed by Gorbachev's half-baked "perestroika" actually speeded up the collapse of the "Evil Empire." The current Trillion-dollar question is, will History "remake" the Obama regime's prospect for the new evil empire the same way as the outcome of the last Imperial Empire in Moscow?