The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte

The opening lines of this 1852 essay by Karl Marx return to me often: "Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce."

The high water-mark of American political idealism was the 1972 Presidential bid of George McGovern. McGovern's landslide loss to Richard Nixon, aided and abetted by the Democratic Party establishment itself, was truly a tragedy, not only for this country but for the rest of the world--as the Empire's subsequent acts bear out daily.

All of us who pitched in for Obama's "hope" and "change" movement participated in the second act of this great world-historic fact. Every day, a new farce.

Obama steps up on behalf of the First Amendment in the "Ground Zero Mosque" controversy, and then quickly distances himself in subsequent remarks. So Clintonesque.

And, like the Clintons, the Obamas can be expected to be well-rewarded for "public" services rendered.

Like they say, it takes a village to raise a child and marry her off to an investment banker.

On the one hand, our cherished ideals; on the other, Goldman Sachs.

"Money doesn't talk, it swears," sang Dylan back in 1965. On the road to the high water mark of American political idealism, that line meant something. Now all is celebrity and toxic consumerist commodification.

How can you tell when a politician is lying? His lips are moving. It is truly disgusting when even words like "hope" and "change" are reduced to hollow slogans, coins of the present realm.

Marx saw it coming. And we must live it through. Is there a third act? Marx didn't say. Unless it is the revolution of the proletariat.

Good luck with that.