Disillusionment, weariness and anger

By David Brooks
From the Mexican daily La Jornada

“This is change?” asks a box of mints with the image of Barack Obama. They are called “dissappoint-mints” and are made by the Unemployed Philosophers Guild, a cooperative that once put out another box of mints that praised Obama’s election.

They are not the only ones questioning the motto and promise of the Obama campaign: “Change we can believe in.” In fact, this week a national survey showed that, as The New York Times headlined, “The mood of the nation at its lowest point in two years.” Seventy percent of the respondents opine that the country is moving in the wrong direction. The survey by The Times / CBS News indicated that Americans are more pessimistic about economic prospects and the country’s direction than at any other time since the beginning of the Obama presidency.

With these opinions, it is not surprising that more and more negative feelings are expressed toward the political leadership. Seventy-five percent disapprove of the performance of Congress and 57 percent of how Obama handles economic policy. His overall approval rate is only 46 percent, against 45 percent who disapprove.

All this illustrates a growing disillusionment, weariness and anger in this country over the high unemployment, the millions of people who are losing their homes, the increases in fuel and food prices, the millions who suffer from hunger, the two wars without end, plus other recent military interventions in countries like Libya and Syria, the anti-immigrant wave – while the government says it wants a reform in this area (Obama said it again this week) it deports more illegal immigrants than its predecessor – and a drug war that continues the same failed policies of the past 40 years. Not even in the field of civil rights have improved things under the first African-American president.

“More African-American men in prison, on probation or parole than those who were enslaved in 1850, before the onset of the Civil War,” said Michelle Alexander, a law professor at Ohio State University, at a presentation of her best-selling book on the phenomenon of mass incarceration in the country, especially of African-Americans and Latinos, reported The L.A. Progressive. “Most of that increase is because of the war on drugs, a war conducted almost exclusively in poor communities of color.”

At the same time, none of those responsible for the most severe economic crisis since the Great Depression, which led to massive unemployment, loss of homes and cuts in welfare programs, are in jail. On the contrary, they celebrate their prosperity. Worse yet, they do so by contributing less and less to the public funds, which are in trouble, thus, causing the layoffs of teachers, nurses and other public sector workers.

The largest company in the United States, General Electric, made a profit of $14.2 billion in its worldwide operations, $5.1 billion in this country, last year. What did it pay in taxes here? Zero, thanks to its huge accounting team, which knows how to do such things legally.

A few days ago, the AP news agency reported that General Electric agreed to pay $3.2 billion for a tax rebate that the government received from the U.S. Treasury, but within hours the agency had to “retract” its story when the company said the press release was a hoax by an advocacy group. But for many it all feels like a big hoax.

Meanwhile, the American multinational companies like General Electric, which employs one fifth of the nation’s workforce, have been hiring more workers abroad while reducing their payrolls in the U.S., reported The Wall Street Journal. During the first decade of this century, they reduced their payrolls here by 2.9 million jobs, while hiring 2.4 million abroad, according to Commerce Department figures.

So who did Obama appoint to his advisory team on economic recovery and job creation? The chief executive of General Electric, Jeffrey Immelt.

The feeling is that little is changing. The hope of progressives, young people, immigrants, environmentalists and civil rights advocates that Obama brought the possibility of a change is fading. On the conservative side, there is more and more hysteria (“We’re losing our country”), which continues to nourish all types of paranoia and conspiracy theories to explain the coming end of this nation.

It has reached such a level that even “serious” conservatives are trying to curb myths, including the one claiming that Obama is a foreigner (25 percent continue to believe so, according to a CBS News poll).

And every week there are reminders of the dangerous combination of right-wing hysteria and the weapons easily and legally accessible to anyone – such as the attempted murder of a federal representative in Arizona a few months ago – with the fact that since then thousands more have died by gunfire, or that this week in a Houston kindergarten a 6-year-old child brought a gun to class, dropped it during lunch and he and two other students were wounded, reported The Associated Press.

Facing such a situation, the people who supported Obama ask, along with the unemployed philosophers, where is the change? At the St. Regis Hotel in San Francisco this week, about 10 donors who supported the president came to a fundraising event for his re-election campaign. There, they asked if they could sing a song, The Washington Post reported.

The song was a protest about the treatment given in prison to soldier Bradley Manning, who stands accused of leaking classified military and diplomatic documents to Wikileaks. One of the verses was: “We paid our dues. Where is our change?”