Monday, July 30, 2018

Leo Panitch on Obama and Globalization

From the Real News Network:


This Real News segment with Professor Leo Panitch is worth watching for those that miss Obama (perhaps should be seen together with the reading of this piece on Mike Pence, for those that think that he would be much better than the orange one). At any rate, besides the fact that Obama was not even for more than a very moderate reform of the system, and that he still justifies globalization in neoliberal terms, it seems to me that Panitch (and Paul Jay) miss the main reference for Obama's speech (at least concerning the reduction in violence) which seems to be the work of Steven Pinker (his famous book on that was The Better Angels of Our Nature), and probably his new work, Enlightenment Now. And that says a lot about Obama intellectually.

It seems that Obama now embodies the famous phrase by Upton Sinclair according to which: "it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." Or his paid Wall Street gigs and fancy vacations with the global jet set.

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