What is Obama going to do about the Fascist Administration that has just left the White House?

by CWO3 Tom Barnes, USCG (Ret.)

Without putting all of you through intense anxiety waiting for me to make the point, let me answer the question right up front.  Obama is going to do very little.  He might even do next to nothing.  Why?  Why would he leave this fascists and war criminals alone?  The answer is political expediency.  He has too much work to get done to worry about settling scores with American neoconservative nutcakes.

I am a retired Coast Guard warrant officer with over twenty four years service.  I grew up in a family that was heavily involved in Republican politics in Philadelphia, PA for generations.  I am a left wing radical Democrat involved in politics in Alexandria, Virginia.  I am not a liberal.  I am a radical on most issues.  So why would I say something like this?  Why would I advocate leaving the Bushies alone and out of the courtroom once Obama takes over?  Why?  Because I have spent decades watching politics happen all around me and the truth is that vengeance does not help a political party attain its goals.  We have plenty of examples of this in American history.

The Nativist Party of the 19th Century was anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant.  At one time it had enormous power with members of the party in governors’ offices and in the House and Senate in the national capital.  They were the neocons of the 19th Century and they held tremendous sway.  More or less, the Civil War ended their appeal.  Larger issues overcame them.  That is what is happening now to the GOP.  Larger and more important issues are overcoming the neoconservative appeal.  The GOP as we have known it since the Reagan Administration is dead.  That does not mean American Conservatism is dead.  We are basically a conservative people and American Conservatism is essentially impossible to kill. 

The Whig Party died because it was irrelevant. Abraham Lincoln was originally a Whig.  The Old Democratic Party is dead.  Although the Democratic Party in the United States is the oldest continually existing political party on the planet it has changed its ethos and character at least two or three times since the days of Jefferson and Jackson. You should attend a Democratic Party political meeting sometime.  It truly is the umbrella party of the American Left.  You have never seen so many different and differing interest groups in one room in your life.  It is hard to believe that these people are in the same political party.  It is an incredible sight to behold.  It is a miracle of God that anything actually gets done with this group of people.   It is organized bedlam.  It is like watching a wedding reception where the two families are Greek and Japanese.  It is impossible to describe.

You have really must observe this for yourself.  You will be left breathless with amazement.  How in the hell anything positive ever comes out of all the shouting, the emergency caucuses and the constant jockeying for position among  the regional groups, the age groups, the racial groups, the religious groups, the anti-religious groups and the Yale and Harvard educated liberals is beyond my ken.  Then you have to deal with the settling of old scores that go back to the days when the ‘old ones’ were in their twenties. They are usually now in their seventies and eighties. It is all beyond my capacity to understand. 

You have Blue Dog Democrats that are essentially Republicans with a social conscious. You have California-style tree huggers. You have Northwest Coast style whale watchers. You have Midwestern Union types that are struggling to make unions relevant again.  (I belonged to three unions in my life…please take a hint if you are reading this and you want the answer to that dilemma.   The answer is New Unionism.  Google it.).   Then you have the New England type of Democrat who passionately believes in damn near about anything if it is anti-government in the leftist sense of that concept.  The problem is that he is generally so much on fire with the rights of the individual over the rights of the oppressive group that we would have to have a thousand state governments to satisfy his vision of government.  Every Democratic Party on the local level in the entire nation has these groups and more in its membership.  Yes, even the Democratic Party of Gillette, Wyoming or Dana, Indiana or Fargo, North Dakota or Boise, Oklahoma has all of these types in its Democratic Committee to one degree or other.

What I am trying to say here is this:  the Democrats are in control now.  As a Democrat myself I can only say that the only worse thing than the Democrats being out of control is when Democrats are actually in control again.  What you have is rule by committee which is run by another committee which in turn answers to another more senior committee which has to gets its agenda cleared with another even more senior committee which meets once a month to make sure that all the committees are in line with national Democratic Party policy.  You think you are confused?  You ought to be a part of this on the local level.  It takes your breath away.

And this is why Obama will do essentially nothing when it comes to chastising the Bushies for their fascist ways.  The Democrats on the local level in the Bush areas of the country will not want to put up with the heat from the Bible Slammers and the Gingoists and the hidden racists and the fiscal super-conservatives and the right wing nut jobs.  Why?  Because most of these so-called ‘neocon’ people are in their families and in their neighborhoods. They  are on the job with them.  They are even married to some of them.  To state this simply, the Democratic Party can either puts its energy into moving ahead with its agenda or it can chastise the Bushies for the next few years.  There is not enough political capital to do both.  And Obama is too smart to waste one ounce of political capital on revenge.  There is no percentage in it.

So, in the end, it is about the Democratic Party spending its political capital on moving ahead and not wasting any on revenge.  Have the Bushies earned jail sentences, war crime trials and IRS audits?  In my opinion, yes.  Will it happen?  In my opinion, no.  Professional politics is all about moving your agenda forward.  Revenge is for amateurs.  All politicians know that.  Obama will do essentially nothing relative to punishing the Bushies for being fascists. 

That is just how American politics works.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Tom Barnes is a retired Coast Guard warrant officer, CWO3 USCG (Ret.)B.A. B.S. M.Ed. M.A. M.A.,  a retired employee development specialist from the Smithsonian Institution and he spent a little time teaching public high school business courses in Northern Virginia after he left the Service.  He is a totally disabled veteran. Author of the book "The McGurk".  Tom can be reached via email at: [email protected]