🇺🇸 “Nothing is ever our fault!” 🇺🇸
Blue nationalism, US empire, and the absurd new Obama-produced Netflix movie "Leave the World Behind"
It’s never America’s fault, is it folks? We’re number one! We’re the best - our leaders are giving it their all, our corporations are doing serious innovation, capitalism is working magic; but at the same time it’s also somehow very scary and bad here as well. According to Donald Trump, to “Make America Great Again” it’s as simple as getting rid of all of the unAmerican people: immigrants to Muslims to Marxists to Biden supporters (for the uninitiated, those last two are not even remotely the same, by the way). If you’re one of the millions not susceptible to that sort of nationalism, you might ask how the hell we ended up with such an unhinged, ignorant disaster in the White House from 2016 to 2020 (and maybe again in 2024)?
The answer - since we all agree America good - is Russians of course. It’s not the self-inflicted wounds such as the massive amounts of private money influencing elections to create a corporate duopoly, the archaic electoral college that affords the loser by millions of votes to win, or a Wall Street-owned mass media apparatus that would rather keep citizens clicking on ads than teach you anything. It’s not people looking around at the litany of problems in the world today and correctly realizing both parties are in it for the rich and not the people (albeit both sides going on to misplace trust in a self-centered billionaires or Wall Street-owned politicians). It’s not how the people keep getting the news about our environment desecrated, “forever chemicals” in our drinking water, unpronounceable nonsense in our “food”, a housing crisis, an opiate crisis, a poverty crisis. It’s not the hollowing out of the public sector and allowing private capital to run amok, leaving citizens helpless, disenfranchised, and rightfully pissed off; no, it’s the Russians making memes to expose our divisions on Facebook - and everyone on the “blue” side said so, from Hillary Clinton to MSNBC to Jimmy Carter to CNN!
And of course, to preserve the story that it’s the foreign baddie’s fault and not our own, let’s not interrogate Facebook’ role, why we have such divisions in the first place, or any in-depth analysis of the aforementioned problems - ease your mind and blame The Other… just… like… MAGA crowd does…
When I first saw the cast and the trailer for Leave the World Behind I thought it seemed like a solid way to spend an evening. When the opening credits flashed “Produced by Michelle and Barack Obama” it only furthered intrigue - not because I was curious to hear what Obama had to say - I knew he would do his thing and not really have the guts to say much of anything - but what he was either unwilling or incapable of saying.
In many ways, particularly economically and foreign policy-wise, Barack Obama is ultimately just a classier version of Trump. A hollow, self-interested dipshit who, despite having been in an incredibly powerful position to bring about much-needed meaningful reform and “change” in this country, has always been more concerned with commenting on movies, fashion, sports, etc. than doing the work he had signed up for. He has never wanted to make good on his 2008 promises, he has wanted to get rich, be a celebrity, and blame everyone and everything else. For the more polished professional, his demeanor, oration style, and vaguely more-inclusive rhetoric is more appealing than Trump’s bombastic approach, but at the end of the day they’re far more similar than most dare to observe and admit.
The new movie he produced is a total dumpster fire, merely a different brand of xenophobia and nationalism. Two hours about how the world’s problems - even our own problems domestically - are somehow the fault of an unknown, unnamed foreign adversary. And for apparently no reason no less! The former-most powerful world leader alive, who failed to right this ship in 8 years in office, now at least has the opportunity to answer big questions via movies about his own role, capitalism’s role, a hollowed-out public sector’s role in the messes we all see - his answer? A 🤷 emoji, followed by pointing the finger at the scary Other. A cowardly, bullshit, ahistorical, at-odds-with-reality cop-out that could only come from someone who is either as apparently self-centered, out of touch, or just plain ignorant as Barack Obama.
The point of the movie was seemingly that we’re due for some sort of attack because “we’ve made a lot of enemies”. Obama of course produced a movie that doesn’t even attempt to answer questions like why they hate us or why we’re be divided to begin with, just sort of nudges the viewer into thinking that it’s probably some hateful Other country and it’s apparently for no discernible reason - they’re just crazy, good-for-nothing bad guys trying to ruin our otherwise perfect country, our wondrous “democracy”. If this brings to mind the Bush justification for the “War on Terror”, that’s because it’s the same strategy. If you’re unsure why the strategy is always to engage in Otherism and the warfare that inevitably ensues out of fear of The Other, look at when the US gained power (entering World War II and manufacturing weapons) and how it maintains power (selling weapons we produce all over the world, and stoking conflict everywhere to ensure this cash cow keeps on producing that milk.) Miss America can ask for world peace all she wants, but until profit is no longer the focus (as it is under capitalism), war isn’t going anywhere.
But who could expect anything real and deep from someone so hollow? Here’s Obama recalling why he pretended to read widely in college: "Looking back, it's embarrassing to recognize the degree to which my intellectual curiosity those first two years of college paralleled the interests of various women I was attempting to get to know: Marx and Marcuse so I had something to say to the long-legged socialist who lived in my dorm." How has anything changed, Obama? Or how about the time he, President Drone Assassin, joked about killing the Jonas Brothers (at the time aged 17, 20, 22) via predator drone (as he did indiscriminately to various countries around the world) for “getting ideas” about hitting on his daughters (at the time aged 9 and 12 - such a weird, sick joke all the way around)? How about how he removed himself from political spotlight, retreating to his lavish mansion, to continue giving his carefully-curated favorite album lists, March Madness brackets, starting his movie company, only to return to the political spotlight to call Mayo Pete and Amy Klobuchar to tell them drop out of the 2020 primary and endorse the decrepit animated corpse of Genocide Joe Biden?
If we look beyond the asinine “it’s The Other’s fault” story crafted by powerful and influential conservative and liberal “thought” leaders, it doesn’t even make sense to fear any country more than the militarized, violent might of America. After all, it is America who manufactures the most weapons. America who has 800 military bases (by far the most) around the world. America who spends by far the most on its military. America who is complicit under international law in the genocide and ethnic cleansing of Gaza (over 20,000 civilians half of which are children massacred, essentially the entire population displaced - more civilian casualties in a matter of weeks than the 2 year span of the Russia/Ukraine conflict). It’s America who does nothing about corporate influence in our so-called “democracy”, our corporatized social media, our propagandizing legacy media, our environmental destruction, poverty, addiction, obesity, violence, or a host of other issues in many ways unique to this country. It’s America (and Israel) who in world polling are seen as the greatest threats to world peace.
And finally, it is America who convinces a populace, in one form or another, that despite the objective Death Drive our so-called “leaders” are engaged in all so a handful of people can turn a profit, that we are The Best and any other way of doing things is Bad or unrealistic. According to this fairytale, American “leadership” is doing the best it can: politicians are working for the people but the other party (or The Other) just won’t allow anything good to come to pass, just be patient while the CEOs do incredible “innovation” to solve or issues, our “free press” is somehow keeping us informed by reading corporate and state department press releases from an air conditioned studio in New York City, and our corporations are working every day to not do such horrible things just to turn a profit for shareholders. Don’t like it? Just imagine if They, The Other, ran the world instead! Can you imagine? As shitty as this is, it’s “the Lesser of Two Evils™”! Every other country is straight out of 1984, this is as good as it gets folks. As a very propagandized Obama-fanboy liberal friend of mine always says, “unite the country against enemies like Russia and China! It’s the only way to unite America!”
“Uniting” the country against The Other is simply a different form of nationalism, a Death Drive. When we consider how things are objectively going, the nuclear firepower the world powers possess, and the gigantic issues that require collective cooperation in addressing (the climate being the biggest example of course), it is very clear this xenophobic, nationalist strategy peddled by these lunatics does not and will not lead to a better world. The real reason we suffer is because of systems, not people (excluding possibly the handful of architects who prop up and maintain such systems). The reason we’re susceptible to lies - conjured up right here domestically, not in some Russian Meme Laboratory - is because our media is bought by the rich and more concerned with profit than informing people. The reason we “pissed off other countries” is because of capitalism - the endless imperative to expand and only look out for ourselves rather than the greater good has resulted in a brand of imperialism that causes the world to hate America, to become distrustful of America, leaving us in a position where we’re sooner pointing the finger at The Other than being the excellent world leader we pretend to be. The reality is our rich are not saving the day with their wealth and “innovation”, but rather buying social media platforms, stealing our surplus, stealing our data, building themselves underground bunkers, personal space stations, and other selfish nonsense as our politicians financially support and place wildly undeserving trust in these dipshits by enabling them to hoard yet more wealth and continue this same failed and ignorant strategy.
Obama presided over these issues. Instead of delivering “change” while in office, he punted and decided to make shitty movies to tell himself he did all he could, it’s just too complicated as president to do anything beyond hand the keys over to private capital. Or maybe making a xenophobic shitshow of a movie (or watching the finale of Friends when the world is supposedly ending, as the girl does in Leave the World Behind) is about all anybody can do; Realizing that a man who presided over the most powerful country in human history thinks so exposes both his own indifference and cowardice, as well as the sheer power of a system that desperately needs overthrowing.