I remember the discussion in the nineties of what to name the coming decade. In a previous century yrs 1900-09 were aught years, but “the aughts” is an archaic term. Aught means: no thing; not anything: nil, nothing, null, zero, nix, zilch.
In bookkeeping terms, as with data processing, an aught with its diagonal slash helps the accountant differentiate a zero from an O.
I’m amused obviously, that O stands for Obama, optimism and Oprah; and figuratively it represents a zero. With a slash, we can make the distinction, and association, more pointed.
Admittedly, the 00 decade was defined by George W. Bush, and zero fits, doesn’t it, to describe his gas gauge, if not obviously his mileage? In 2008 Barack Obama promised a return from the brink of meaninglessness, this decade, not later, but how far has he got? His followers hold still plenty of hope, things being complicated in Washington and what not, but Obama is looking more like Bush’s fall guy than his arresting officer.
With his legislative majority, George Bush proved you can take a world to war, dismantle regulatory protections, rape the environment, eliminate rights, screw every last living earthly being, and raid the treasury for the bankers, each act performed faster than a Sotomayor confirmation.
With majorities everywhere, even with public opinion on his side, Obama can’t reform health care. And he didn’t have a stolen election behind him.
We’re fast approaching the anniversary of September 11, an impressive benchmark if you will, for George Bush’s first term. I’d be surprised if Obama could put a Cessna into the Hudson by then.
Of course I recognize that Obama is up against more than the Republicans. He faces the powers that be, the corporations, financiers and oligarchs, the “deciders” whose deciding Bush pretended to do by himself. But if the President of the United States is not the Leader of the Free World, is not the most powerful figure on Earth, as his office is held to be, what is he? Are we prepared to accept that our democratic election accounts for naught?
Obama was elected in aught-eight. Judging by the job he’s doing, the superlatives flying from the corporate media about how he’s turned world public opinion, brought change, ended racism, and pretends to be drawing down bad things, Obama will be a shoe-in incumbent. Come next election, we’ll still need someone to offer us hope for mini-versal health care. So from ’08 we have eight years of aught.
Obama is not up against anything other than the people themselves, since it is he himself that we are up against. He is BIG Business. He is the business of Big Business’s government. He rules with the Republicans at his side and is no opposition to them in the least. He never will be either.
Blaming it all on the Bush years is infantile. Nothing at all started with Dubya since he was nothing more than a continuation of Slick Willy who was a continuation of Daddy Bush who was a continuation of Jimmy Jesus Christ Carter who was a continuation of Gerald Ford who was a continuation of Nixon who was a coninuation of all that was before him and so on!
Rank-and-file Republicans and Democrats alike playing their childish games of slinging mud at each others’ leaders even as their leaders cooperate on a daily basis, is a nauseating spectacle. It is a backward spectacle of all that is wrong with a country stalled in its own slop. If you are into voting for the Democrats and thinking that you are all superior to the rest of your Republican neighbors for doing that, YOU ARE THE PROBLEM and not the solution to it. YOU are what’s holding things back, and not just the Bible Belt crowd you disdain so self-righteously.