The Audacity of Hype

Dissent in the Age of Obama

By Justin Raimondo

"The Obama bandwagon is moving fast and furious, rolling over the few remaining pockets of dissent even as it prepares to take power. The mainstream media, particularly on television, has lost all sense of objectivity and proportion, and their reporting of the president-elect's doings has taken on a distinctly Soviet air. "Our Glorious Leader Picks the White House Dog" is the emblematic headline of a servile fourth estate. The political atmosphere is positively eerie: amid calls for "unity" and attacks on "toxic" language that is "divisive," there is an odd uniformity of thought similar to the virtual unanimity that gripped the nation in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Groupthink is all the rage, and the media has joined in the fun. Due to this love-fest, they're oblivious to the warning signs that worry us few and scattered skeptics. They somehow missed the Dear Leader's call for a civilian "national security force," for example, one that is "just as well-funded" and "just as powerful" as the U.S. military........

Prepare yourself. From now on we'll be hearing the Obama-ites hailing the "surge" on the Afghan front, amid renewed vows to catch the long-gone Osama bin Laden and support the precarious authority of Afghan President Hamid Karzai – the best dressed and least powerful ruler in the region. Popularly known as the mayor of Kabul, since his domain seems not to extend beyond the boundaries of his capital city, Karzai is a pathetic and tragic figure, whose task of keeping order in a country that has never known it is positively Sisyphean. He has been gaining some political traction and even a degree of credibility lately by openly imploring Obama to cut out the NATO bombing that is "mistakenly" slaughtering scores of civilians on what seems like a daily basis. Obama's promise to escalate the war on that front is likely to ratchet up tensions within NATO as well as with our Afghan ally........"