Second of two parts

NEW YORK

IN PART ONE, I proposed that Barack Obama, under orders from the machine politicos who underwrite him, has done things to deliberately throw the primary to Hillary Clinton, such as his part in the drama of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. I will now go into the historical reasoning behind my speculation, which I hope will suggest that if Obama is not acting under orders, he would be the first major presidential candidate in modern history to come so far without party backing and control.

Barack Obama, like Hillary Clinton and John McCain, is a creature of his party; he would be nowhere without the vast patronage machine. And the parties are both, Republicrat as much as Demublican, in thrall to the American Ruling Class. It’s not so much that there’s “no difference” between Republicrats and Demublicans; it’s that they are both at the highest levels under the control of an oligarchy of elites from various overlapping worlds: military, financial, corporate, etc.

Sometimes the hardest thing for this bunch to pull off, as the political historian Walter Karp once wrote, is to lose an election. John Kerry managed it in 2004, against all odds, against a fellow Bonesman acting out another caricature, the “misunderestimated idiot.” How do you lose to that?

John Kerry nicely scuttled his own swiftboat for the sake of four more years of Bush. Howard Dean had handed it to Kerry early on, after having acted as that season’s candidate from hope.

On orders, one imagines, from the Democratic National Committee and God knows who else, he obligingly had a spaz attack in full view of a nationwide television audience.

Now he’s chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

Back in 2000, Al Gore worked hardest of all to lose. He had to actually preside, as president of the Senate, over the certification of an election that was stolen from him in full public view! He seemed to smile as he gaveled away the entreaties of the small group of honest congressmen and women who were fighting for him, a candidate who strangely didn’t seem to want to win! (But of course, the 2000 election was really just Ralph Nader’s fault. Another case where vanity would appear to explain it all.)

The myth that lets these charades continue is among the most enduring in our political life, namely, that the point of running for office is always and everywhere to win. In Indispensable Enemies: The Politics of Misrule in America (1993), the late great Karp made all this understandable to the ordinary citizen. He showed that, again and again, “behind the hoopla of partisanship, the two parties worked together in collusive harmony.” Putting up candidates who blatantly lack appeal, openly supporting the other party’s man, putting up no one at all, spewing constituent-insulting “gaffes” . . . these and many other tactics of the party leadership are described extensively in Karp’s book, and can be readily seen all around us if we only look.

Like Satan, who thought it better to rule in Hell than serve in Heaven, the losing party apparatus in a given state, municipality, or indeed nation, would rather keep on top of the scraps, and be consulted on every decision, than opt out of the game entirely by running an honest race, perhaps even losing control to a real insurgent candidate. When that does rarely occur, the party oligarchs gang up on the insurgent in the legislatures to make sure he or she can’t reform a thing.

Yes, the two major parties regularly throw each other seats. And you can bet that the overall tally of “red” and “blue” is closely regulated by the party oligarchs, both at the state and national level, to keep them in relative stasis. For the idea is to play Punch against Judy, with the ultimate goal that nothing gets done.

Nothing, that is, for the health and well being of ordinary citizens. Why? Because if people actually caught wind of their own power and acquired even the slightest degree of meaningful control over the process they would become so energized with their ability to make things happen that they would eventually shake off the oligarchy like so many flies from the backside of a donkey.

This is the ruling class’s greatest fear and it leads it to commit astonishing acts of mendacity and, indeed, treason. And like all demagogues past, Barack H. Obama is the ruling class’s guy. With help from the kept press, it placed him on the mountaintop. After eight years in the darkness, the ruling class gave us Hope, as it periodically appears to do (think Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton). Yes, it’s of a nebulous variety, and when you scratch the surface the tiniest bit, not only is there no difference between Obillary and Hibama’s stated positions, they also don’t really sound so different from Bush’s and McCain’s.

The whole lot of them, for instance, are committed to the War on Terror. Mr. Obama even openly admired Bush I for his conduct of Iraq War I (the one where they incinerated 100,000 fleeing Iraqis and urged thousands of others to rise up against Saddam only to leave them high and dry, subject to imprisonment and execution).

So how will they break our hearts this time, and eradicate all this built-up hope?

Here’s a likely script: after a few more hair-raising twists and turns, the nominating “fight” goes to the floor of the convention. The Revered Wright and other engineered issues of electability will be made to come around in the service of Hillary, as they are already. Here’s another one, from the May 12 New York Times: according to Shar’ia and Edward Luttwak, Obama is an Islamic apostate!

The superdelegates, to whom we were conspicuously re-introduced in this campaign, will make the final, anti-democratic determination. (It’s like the movies: If you want to figure out what will figure prominently in a future scene, note the close-ups and cutaways early on.)

Disappointment and Demoralization, Part One, for so many: She, another Clinton, will emerge the candidate. And the consolation prize, delivered to all those newly energized political animals? He’ll get the number two slot. A crushing blow to some, but — sigh — something.

After more twists and turns, they’ll beat old man McCain, as arranged. And then the real fun will begin, as they busy themselves “obliterating Iran,” after that old-reliable Indispensable Enemy attacks Israel, or “sponsors” an attack on an American city.

Demoralization, Stage Two. I sure hope I’m wrong, but some version of this evil drama is most likely in store for us, for as the crisis of world capital comes to a head, the wars must continue. And so where’s the Hope? I mean the real hope, the change we can really “believe in”?

Here’s a hint: It’s never to be found among the party hacks, no matter how nicely they deliver their speeches. Give up? Don’t. It’s in you.

John Kirby is director of the movie The American Ruling Class (theamericanrulingclass.org and bullfrogmedia.com).