{"id":5900,"date":"2011-12-06T15:26:28","date_gmt":"2011-12-06T23:26:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=5900"},"modified":"2011-12-06T15:26:28","modified_gmt":"2011-12-06T23:26:28","slug":"obamas-kansas-speech-owes-a-debt-to-occupy-wall-street","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=5900","title":{"rendered":"Obama’s Kansas Speech Owes A Debt To #Occupy Wall Street"},"content":{"rendered":"

President Obama traveled to the site of Teddy Roosevelt’s “New Nationalism”<\/em> speech in order to deliver an address on the economy. The most striking thing about the President’s remarks was the extent to which they appear to have been influenced by the Occupy movement. Obama segued from one assertion of economic inequality to another as he insisted that “in America, we are greater together – when everyone engages in fair play, everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share.”<\/em><\/p>\n

That is the call of the Occupiers in a nutshell. It is a campaign to restore fairness and justice and to take back control of the government from the wealthy special interests it has come to serve. If you missed the speech, I’ll save you twenty minutes by posting the one paragraph that summarizes the core of the message:<\/p>\n

“Now, in the midst of this debate, there are some who seem to be suffering from a kind of collective amnesia. After all that’s happened, after the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, they want to return to the same practices that got us into this mess. In fact, they want to go back to the same policies that have stacked the deck against middle-class Americans for too many years. Their philosophy is simple: we are better off when everyone is left to fend for themselves and play by their own rules.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Indeed, the Collective Amnesia Ward is overflowing with patients who not only are suffering from the malady, they want to infect every American with the disease. In fact, the only way that they can prevail next November is to spread the amnesiac virus beyond the community of conservative Republicans who are most susceptible to it. And if that one message is effectively communicated by the Obama reelection committee, the President will serve a second term.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, the paragraph following the one above reiterated one of Obama’s most severe flaws. He still believes that there is a commonality of interest between his principles of inclusion and the Republican obsession with power. He believes that that by embracing a universal American togetherness the GOP will cease to demonize him and join the effort to rebuild the nation. It starts off well enough, but crashes and burns at the end.<\/p>\n

“I’m here to reaffirm my deep conviction that we are greater together than we are on our own. I believe that this country succeeds when everyone gets a fair shot, when everyone does their fair share, and when everyone plays by the same rules. Those aren’t Democratic or Republican values; 1% values or 99% values. They’re American values, and we have to reclaim them.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

To argue that the 1% and the 99% share common American values is evidence of a dangerous blind spot. What Obama is missing here, and what he has missed for the past three years, is that there is a massive chasm between Democratic and Republican values. Whereas Democrats aspire (at least rhetorically) to empower the middle-class, the Republicans freely admit that their top objective is destroy Obama. That simple truth ought to be enough to convince the President that he is not going to recruit any allies in the fight for fairness and economic renewal from the ranks of the establishment GOP.<\/p>\n

To illustrate the determination of the right-wing to throw every available obstacle into Obama’s path, Fox News cut away from the speech about half way through. Apparently they wanted to protect their fragile viewers from this subversive philosophy. By tonight Fox will be castigating the speech as a paean to socialism owing to its praise for working together. And the pressing news that demanded the interruption of the President was that Megyn Kelly had an interview with Michele Bachmann, who has about as much chance of becoming the Republican nominee as Miss Piggy.<\/p>\n

On the whole the speech was another validation of the Occupy movement. This speech would not have been written a year ago. The public debate has been utterly transformed in the two and a half months since an unruly rabble encamped in a park in Lower Manhattan. Today the Republicans are “frightened to death”<\/a> of the prospect of average Americans ascending to the top of the political food chain. And the President of the United States of America gave a speech honoring the notion that “We still have a stake in each other’s success.”<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

President Obama traveled to the site of Teddy Roosevelt’s “New Nationalism” speech in order to deliver an address on the economy. The most striking thing about the President’s remarks was the extent to which they appear to have been influenced by the Occupy movement. Obama segued from one assertion of economic inequality to another as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[219,152,1],"tags":[183,934],"class_list":["post-5900","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy","category-election","category-general","tag-barack-obama","tag-occupy-wall-street"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4Ijg-1xa","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":5686,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=5686","url_meta":{"origin":5900,"position":0},"title":"Fox News Fiasco: Pollsters Forget To Lie","author":"Mark NC","date":"10\/30\/2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Heads Are Gonna Roll. When Roger Ailes gets a hold of the polls just published by Fox News you can expect to see blood in the hallways of the Fox executive suites. There will be outrage at the pollsters who permitted the results to be released without first twisting them\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Election"","block_context":{"text":"Election","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=152"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5815,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=5815","url_meta":{"origin":5900,"position":1},"title":"Fox Nation vs. Reality: On The Occupy Wall Street Assassin","author":"Mark NC","date":"11\/17\/2011","format":false,"excerpt":"More dishonesty from Fox Nation. This time the Fox Nationalists posted an item with the provocative headline, \"Man Linked to 'Occupy' Protest Charged With Attempted Assassination of Obama\" Fox News ran a story with the same deceptive theme. They hosted Michelle Malkin to engage in a discussion that was deliberately\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5818,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=5818","url_meta":{"origin":5900,"position":2},"title":"Banksters Plotting A Propaganda Offensive Against Occupy Wall Street","author":"Mark NC","date":"11\/19\/2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Chris Hayes has acquired a memo from a well-connected group of Washington lobbyists to the American Bankers Association. The memo proposes launching a comprehensive campaign against the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement with an $850,000 budget and an intent to \"undermine their credibility.\" Hayes begins his expose saying that... \"Speaker\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6176,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=6176","url_meta":{"origin":5900,"position":3},"title":"Occupy Reality: Americans Concern About Income Inequality Surges","author":"Mark NC","date":"1\/12\/2012","format":false,"excerpt":"The Pew Research Center has conducted an inquiry into the degree of divisions within American society and found that conflicts between rich and poor now outpace other sources of group tension. That result can only be interpreted as a success for the 99% and those who participated in the nationwide\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Economy"","block_context":{"text":"Economy","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=219"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5493,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=5493","url_meta":{"origin":5900,"position":4},"title":"Rush Limbaugh Says That Obama Is Setting Up Riots","author":"Mark NC","date":"10\/6\/2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Now that Sarah Palin is officially out of the race for the GOP nomination for president, and is going to remain a full time wingnut pundit, Rush Limbaugh is feeling the pressure to amp up the stupid. Toward that end he had this to say on his radio program today:\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5730,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=5730","url_meta":{"origin":5900,"position":5},"title":"HEY FOX NEWS: We Didn’t Start The Class War Fire","author":"Mark NC","date":"11\/3\/2011","format":false,"excerpt":"The top headline today on Fox Nation is a conspicuously slanderous lie (as opposed to their conventional slanderous lies): Oakland on Fire: Obama Gets Class War He Asked For. 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