Barack Hussein Obama and the American Dream
By
Jesús Arboleya Cervera Read Spanish Version
This
time, the popular jubilation was not ignored by the international
press, as commonly happens in other countries, and the president was
not criticized of populism for exploiting to the max his charisma and
ability to communicate with the masses. On the contrary, the
spectacle was presented to us as a confirmation that the realization
of the "American Dream" is possible and that Barack Obama
is the divine incarnation of that fact.
Having
said this, even Obama likes to identify with the concept, but the
American Dream is not what the president himself tells us. Identified
with an individualism that considers inequality a part of the natural
order, venerates personal success at all costs, and rejects
everything that supposedly alters the way of life of the white middle
class in the United States, the true "American Dream" is
closer to Bush than to Obama.
There
is little in common between Obama’s call for humility, for public
commitment instead of selfish interests, for respect for differences
and for equality of opportunities and the ideological premises that
sustain the life project embodied by this dream. In truth, Obama’s
summons to a change "to rebuild the United States" is a
negation of the traditional values of U.S. society, and that is why
he was elected.
In
fact, the statement that the people do not trust their leaders,
Obama’s criticism of the "worn-out dogmas" of the existing
political discourse, of the role of the neoliberal government and the
unregulated market, as well as his summons to a "war on violence
and hatred" (as opposed to the narrow and selective view of the
"war on terrorism") would have been — in any other context
— a scandalous attack on the system, not a "reaffirmation of
its values," as we are told.
Beyond
race, Obama does not fit the pattern of the human qualities that
historically have characterized American presidents. Although
brilliant men like Jefferson, Lincoln and Roosevelt, even Kennedy,
also occupied that post, the rule has been the Bushes, not the
Obamas, which should help us understand the nature of the system.
Bush
has not been the only ignorant President of the United States —
although he ranks among the top — nor has he been the first
religious fundamentalist, the first warmonger or the first liar. He
has not even been the first one with problems of alcoholism or other
vices. Before Bush, many arrived in government with no merits, other
than economic standing and political ties inherited from their
families. And more than one president led the country down the road
of injustice, social segregation and violence. Iraq is not the first
war launched with false excuses and condemned by public opinion
inside and outside the United States, although such wars almost
always tend to be forgotten and the alleged heroes of the past bad
wars are venerated.
For
that reason, as important as Obama’s victory (or more important than
it) has been the defeat of what Bush represented in the past eight
years. While he was the standard-bearer of a current of thought that
is deeply rooted in important sectors of U.S. society, his values of
superiority, intolerance and imposition through the indiscriminate
use of force are not as foreign to the rhetoric of American "freedom
and democracy" as some people think. They even constituted
organic ingredients of his economic and political system.
In
that sense, George W. Bush’s presidency was not a historical
aberration but the confirmation of a natural trend that put power in
the hands of the extreme right in the United States, when it seemed
that no earthly force could stop it, placing us all on an absurd road
that seemed to effectively lead us "to the end of history."
An
end to all this is something we owe the American people, and also
Obama, who is the catalyst for a social movement that has generated
illusions throughout the world. How willing — and how capable — he
will be to do this will depend on many factors, among them the
expectation that he won’t be assassinated. But we also have a chance
to "dream" of a United States that is different from the
one they’ve offered us in the past, a country that — we’re now told
— "is not the same but similar."
Jesus
Arboleya is a writer and a professor at the University of Havana.
