From what i've heard, the relationship of some black leftists to Obama can be ... complicated. Some try to square the circle and view him simultaneously as a complete political disappointment for his actions and as an aspirational figure for his presentation. A lot of black people have a hard time operating in a white supremacist society, they feel a pressure to whitewash themselves and always come off as humble, polite and maximally non-threatening (like using the "white voice" in Sorry to Bother You). And according to this view of him, he completely avoided that "thank you for allowing me to be here" energy, found a way to be proudly black and completely unashamed about it and hyper-professional at the same time. These leftists agree to all of our criticisms of Obama as a neolib war criminal, but they find it incredibly important that a black man could pull off getting elected twice with a public presentation like that. They also seem to be fully aware that this was an act, that, for example, he used to call himself Barry to avoid othering himself with his foreign first name when he was younger and had to cultivate this self-assured personality, they also know that he could only get away with it because he fully served the interests of capital, but they still see him as a role model when it comes to being black in public.
That's the dangers of socially left neoliberalism; The way it embraces all of us regardless of our gender, our skin color, our sexual orientation... as it wraps its chains around our throat and squeezes the rebellion out of us.
Thomas Frank did a good piece for his book Listen, Liberal: Or Whatever Happened the the Party of the People? back in 2015 about neoliberalism, feminism, and Clinton. It's a good read. Here's the excerpt. Nor a Lender Be: Hillary Clinton, liberal virtue, and the cult of the microloan
It was so freaking good. We really should be memeing it into popularity as agitprop.
Just added it to my watch list, we need more shows showing the history of American labor and strikebreaking.
Add Black Sails on there too, if you haven't seen it. Season 1 is super horny, but once you get through that, Season 2 and beyond gets revolutionary.
I'll need to take a look then, I always hated Starz content for being an even hornier version of HBO
You'll get some good info out of it. It's a pretty quick read. And since you're already here, it doesn't need to convince you of anything.
I have a 2 week tour coming up with my band and have 4 books to bring. Should I make this a fifth?
If you're not familiar with the history of the Democratic Party, absolutely. It was written just before 2016, so it's largely framed around Hillary Clinton vs Bernie, but it really gets into how the Democratic Party was hijacked by Third Way neoliberals with the Clintons largely at the forefront. I like to recommend it along with Jane Mayer's - Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right because it ties into how moneyed interests backed a lot of the changes. Dark Money gives libs a pass, for the most part, but the Kochs were on the board of the Democratic Leadership Council that fueled Bill Clinton's rise. For the Trifecta, I also recommend Democracy in Chains- The Deep History of the Radical Right because it gets into the history of neoliberalism all the way up to when the father of neoliberalism connects with the Koch Brothers.
Library Genesis: Thomas Frank - Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People?
a pressure to whitewash themselves and always come off as humble, polite and maximally non-threatening (like using the “white voice” in Sorry to Bother You).
A minor side note.
Reading that brought up some painful memories because in my life I've felt that I'm not "black enough" because when I speak, I sound white and I have gotten shit from black and white people because I didn't fit their notion of black. My voice is a byproduct of growing up in the mostly white (early 80s to 1990s) San Fernando Valley, a decision my parents made. But I struggle sometimes with the thought of "should I, outside of work, put on a black speaking voice when I know that isn't me?" Like, would putting on a more black speaking voice lend me more legitimacy socially, or would I be perpetrating a fraud but in reverse?
Sorry for unloading.
EDIT: edited for clarity.
Thanks for sharing that, actually. If we couldn't unload among our comrades, they'd have to learn to be better comrades. Not wanting to do the typical mayo thing here and make everything about me, but as a trans woman i find a lot of that really relatable. Presentation and authenticity is already such a cursed subject in a society like ours were everything is performance, everyone is on display and everybody is expected to be a brand. And when our true selves are something that's been buried under layers upon layers of ideology and oppression, when the world was made for people unlike you, people unlike me, these contradictions you mention make it that much harder to move beyond all the masquerade and spectacle. It becomes such a long march to learn who we really are and how we want to relate to our fellow human beings.
This is the magic squared circle of neocolonial oppression. Forget Obama, Clarence Thomas is on the Supreme Court, a wholly unelected body with effectively unlimitable power, and is writing opinions the consequences of which would nullify his own marriage if taken to their logical conclusion. That's the same as Ellen DeGeneres being friends with George Bush. Legal marriage equality, no amount of legal rights actually matter to you materially when you're in the club that almost no one is in.
In short, more people need to at least skim the first few chapters of Night Vision
Yeah…. No. No black person under 50 gives a fuck about Obama. Don’t know where you “heard” that.
They love him so much that he can’t get them to vote for his candidates? And black voter participation has significantly decreased every election cycle? I’ll go with real data over workroom hearsay.
I was thinking to myself that maybe MM is actually super based and then I saw that and just
:agony-soviet:
Note that the picture of Obama is framed, as if it has been there for a long time. Whereas the poster of Huey may have just been slapped on the wall. He may be a disappointed Obama lib who is radicalizing rapidly. It would make perfect sense for him.
idk, he's been wearing black panther type shirts throughout the entire series. I mean, regardless of how "left" it's been, the writers are still pretty lib, I think.
Even if they aren't, a shift into full liberalism in the final season seems inevitable for an Amazon series. This is gonna be the next The Expanse. Just saying that it would make a lot of sense for the divorce dad character to still have that framed picture from the before times and then the posters from after his wife and him have broken up and he's stopped caring about putting things in frames.
Yeah season 3 showed Hughie and Butcher going through a phase of more radical action after Hughie found out he was working for controlled opposition lady who is definitely not AOC, and this was depicted as a self-destructive and not worthwhile endeavor. They've kind of already primed things for some 3rd way bullshit but we'll see.
I mean they already sidestepped the part about Hughie by
spoiler
Making Totally-not-AOC Lady an evil supe, who used to do the bidding of the big Evil Corp, and then double crossed the CEO to work with Homelander, and now Homelander got the presidential candidate who chose her as VP murdered, so it's very likely she'll be president in the next season, and one of the big bads to beat, like Soldier Boy in S3.
The takeaway from all this is that the only reason why the governmental agency meant to stop supes from doing evil shit failed, was because the wrong person was leading it. Nevermind the fact that Vought was, is, and will be in league with the US Government's atrocities, and that their sheer economic, cultural and (literal) super-manpower makes any government subservient to its interests.
It's all super-powered, Liberal Great Man Theory. At least that plot thread is libby af, not to mention trodden a thousand times already.
Part of me thinks this is supposed to be ironic and making fun of libs. But then I remembered that Seth Rogen produces the show so it’s probably earnest
Obama poster is for his young daughter for now.
Newton is for when she starts to question the system.
