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Gorbachev, Obama & U.S. Imperial legacy

by DLi (dlimay7 [at] aol.com)
U.S. media exploitation of Mikhail Gorbachev began right after the Soviet Union imploded in December of 1991. But the latest torrent of "crocodile tears" eulogies after his recent passing simply serve to reinforce the NeoLiberal narrative that the Western Capitalist "rules-based" world order is here to stay, until the "end of History." Really? Is there an alternative, perhaps more apropos, analysis of the checkered Gorbachev legacy?
Here's an excerpted chapter in "Selected Sardonic Satires of Chairman Li,' published back in October of 2014:

Obama, "Punahou Barry" as Wall Street-Pentagon Huckster-in-Chief"

Is Obama America's Gorbachev?
(written on January, 2009)

Pundits in the 1990s used to say that Afghanistan was the Soviet Union's Vietnam, meaning that the U.S.-funded and -created Islamic Fundamentalist revolt in Afghanistan dragged the Soviet into an unwinnable quagmire and ultimately financially drained the USSR treasury to an economic collapse. Apparently, this is what's happening to the USA empire in 2009(except that the USA itself created and funded its own political, military and financial graveyard in Kabul!}

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 already 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)! 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 the 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 and 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 the repressive but fast-recding and moribund USA empire. So they selected a politician who was young, articulate, and brash enough to believe 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 then Hawai'ian Kingdom was a watershed event that propelled the budding Americvan 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 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 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?



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