Chinese Democrazy

I can't think of anything I've waited for quite like I've waited for the latest Guns N Roses release Chinese Democracy.

Let me set the scene. It's 1994. About two years ago I stopped caring that I occupied the lowest rung of the social ladder because I became comfortable with myself, because I had friends, because I became aware of things outside the sphere of my New England mill town existence, because the four chords of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" blew the fucking lid off of everything that I thought was possible to do with my life. Of course, like a lot of young people irritated with their lives and finding a balm via subculture I went too far in the other direction and lost appreciation for the simpler pleasures of life. A lot of stuff that I previously liked was now verboten under my new found self-imposed orthodoxy.

One thing never became uncool. Guns. And. Fucking. Roses.

What the Sex Pistols were for Generation X, Guns N Roses were for me. Sure, Nirvana appealed to my inner non-comformist. But Guns N Roses were always way more dangerous. Nirvana didn't sing songs about the day to day life of heroin addiction. Nirvana didn't look like they'd cut my mother's throat for a fix. Nirvana didn't have lyrics like "You get nuthin for nuthin if that's what you do / Turn around bitch I got a use for you / Besides you ain't got nuthin' better to do / And I'm bored." Christ, GnR's idea of a love song is fucking "My Michelle," a disturbing tale of heroin and cocaine addiction, suitcase pimps, and unconquerable desire. Despite epitomizing every reason why grunge had to happen and being some sort of strange equal opposite quantity of Nirvana, Guns N Roses never stopped rocking my socks.

But back to 1994. First of all, I feel like, if for no other reason than the almighty lulz I should share with you what I looked like when the last Guns N Roses release The Spaghetti Incident? (a collection of punk and hard rock covers and the only album to include 80s LA glam rock mainstay Gilby Clarke on rhythm guitar) hit the streets. Like a naked baby photo it's semi-embarrassing, but cute as fuck.



This was, as I have said, a point in my life where everything I liked two years ago "totally sucked." Metallica sucked. Iron Maiden sucked. Judas Priest sucked. And somehow through all that negativity and mindless conformity to a new standard, Guns N Roses escaped unscathed.

At a certain point between then and now waiting for the next GnR album became less of an anticipation like Christmas and more of a game like seeing how high you can let dishes pile up before you decide to actually fucking do them. I'll confess that until this morning when I heard that it was being released (only at Best Buy for some reason which is beyond my understanding) I had basically decided that it was never coming out. Every couple of years Axl would claim "No, really guys... this is the year." Every couple of years our hopes were dashed until we just gave up hope. Guns N Roses was done, and that was probably for the best as a revolving cast of characters including Replacements alum Tommy Stinson, NIN touring guitarist Robin Finck, shred prog guitarist Buckethead, to name only a few, slowly replaced the classic lineup leaving only increasingly bizarre frontman W. Axl Rose and keyboardist Dizzy Reed.

So it's fair to say that I've been waiting half my life for Chinese Democracy to finally hit the streets if only to see what Axl Rose has been driving himself mad over the last fourteen years. And to be frank, it's a very difficult album to review. In the first place, the hype about the record is impossible to live up to. It is arguably the most anticipated rock album of all time. It is possibly the most expensive rock record of all time. And through it all, it's hard to tell if Axl is trying to strike a balance between his new vision of the band and giving the old school fans something worth waiting for or if he can't decide to pursue the future or the past. The album has a schizophrenic quality befitting the stewardship of Axl Rose, arguably the most troubled frontman in the history of rock. Sometimes it sounds like the album after the two Illusions ("Chinese Democracy" and "Scraped"). Sometimes it sounds like dated Nine Inch Nails outtakes ("Shackler's Revenge", "If the World", and "Better"). Sometimes it sounds like a bad Queen song ("Street of Dreams").

One thing it doesn't sound like is a cohesive album. There are elements of all of the aforementioned bands, influences that Rose wears on his sleeve like his favorite old Devo t-shirt from back in Indiana. But there are also hat tips to the past which are not so much homage as they are pathetic attempts to recapture the old magic. You can't help but notice that the guitar work of Robin Finck in particular sounds as if Axl instructed him to "sound like Slash." Ditto on the drums and Matt Sorum. While the rest of the original lineup have moved on to other projects, most notably the recently defunct Velvet Revolver (featuring the guys who made Axl Rose something other than a fifth rate hard rock singer by giving him a band to front and featuring the only man who looks as good in a leather cop hat on vocals) Axl seems to be the only one still stuck in 1996, two years after Spaghetti. It's easy to get the impression that Axl has become a sort of rock n roll Gil Gunderson, sure that he's headed straight back to the top with just the right alchemical mix of the old sound, alternative rock influence, and big pop hooks.

Ultimately the joke is probably on me. I'm sure that Axl will get himself a fleet of new cars, an even bigger house, and a series of super model girlfriends to beat the piss out of for the crime of causing him to stub his toe by asking him to come talk to them for a second. But Axl, listen, and listen well. If you wanted to make a solo album you could have done it a lot easier, with less pressure, and without the pretension if you'd just fucking done it. This sham GnR masquerading as the real McCoy doesn't do anything but tarnish the reputation of the band and more importantly (to you and your overinflated ego in any event) your reputation as one of the most vitriolic forces to ever grace the world of rock n roll. In the final analysis Chinese Democracy isn't bad. But we should expect more from the band that made rock dangerous again.

I'll try and remember you as that beautiful, violent, angry, frail-looking thing in chest protectors and kilts that I fell in love with so many years ago and not the bloated dinosauric monstrosity that you've chosen to become. And forgive me if I don't bother to listen to the next overproduced nightmare you painstakingly craft out of the frustration of your fans.

Games Assholes Play

"I guess there's just two kinds of people- my kind of people, and assholes." - Connie Marble

One thing never seems to change. The world is filled with assholes. No matter where you go, where you live, what groups you ally yourselves with, the world is filled with assholes.

Some definition seems in order. There's a difference between creeps and assholes. Creeps are quiet, unnerving, and you just want them to go away. They are relatively few and far between. Assholes are loud, obnoxious, and they can stick around if they want as long as they change. Sometimes people wear the "asshole" label as a badge of honor. These people are possibly the biggest assholes of all. Calling yourself an asshole and being proud of it is sort of like calling yourself a rapist and thinking it's something worth telling mom about.

In the spirit of helping assholes to change, I have compiled this handy list of signs that you, your friends, and your associates may be assholes. Consider this a public service.

Assholes Believe in God

It's not so much the belief in the Invisible Sky Monster that distinguishes assholes, though you'll certainly find legions of assholes in the pews of your preferred denomination on any given Sunday. No, what distinguishes the asshole from your run of the mill religious son of a bitch is the desire to believe in something more than themselves in the face of all competing evidence. Pagans have their metaphors, occultists have their science, deists have their appreciation of nature, shamans have their magickal thinking. Assholes stand reason on its head and argue that the mere existence of a stream through a mountain indicates the existence of a supernatural personage. Often times this leads assholes to senseless acts for altruism for other assholes which neither deserve nor appreciate them.

Assholes Are Perfect

Assholes never seem to do anything wrong. They're incredibly adept at perfection. No matter how many times you point out to them where they've fucked up they always have another person or a set of circumstances to blame. No matter how many times they get basic facts wrong they still shoot their mouth off like they're the bloody Pope in Rome, infallible on all matters period, the end, full stop. The most obvious sign of an asshole is that when you confront them on their stupidity, failure, or creativity with the facts their first reaction is to generally get angry and defensive. They don't even appreciate the rudimentary effort you're taking to make them not look like an asshole in the future.

Assholes Share Old Memes

I'm trying not to be a dick here (totally different from an asshole, and not out of bounds in many situations dealing with assholes. Sometimes when you encounter an asshole the only response is to be a dick and fuck them). I understand that not everyone can exist at the Luciferean memetic vanguard like your present writer. That's why I perform a public service in the form of disseminating my vanguard memes to the masses in a myriad of media. There's nothing wrong with not knowing about something. But what there is something not just painfully irritating, but downright wrong about is sharing old memes like you're the first person in the world to hear about them. We all know this person. They start talking about something, you politely interject that you know what they're talking about and they then proceed to go ahead and tell you about it anyway even though you started being bored with it at least 100 years before they knew what the fuck it was. What fucking assholes!

Assholes Write Poetry

"A poet who reads his verse in public may have other nasty habits." - Robert A. Heinlein

You're not T.S. Elliot. You're not Ezra Pound. You're not Bukowski. You're not even Richard fucking Braughtigan. You're just some asshole who thinks that arranging his mundane thoughts in the most pretentious way possible makes you look deep, interesting and mysterious. You're wrong. It doesn't. It just makes you look like an asshole.

Assholes Don't Do Anything

Of course not. It would give you the opportunity to point out that they're an asshole. They gripe, moan, bitch, complain, but never create an alternative for people to vote thumbs up or thumbs down on.

Assholes Think They're Smart

You know this guy. He quotes lots of stuff he hasn't actually read. He talks about concepts that he doesn't understand. He probably spends a lot of time creating art in various media for the purpose of inflicting his painful ignorance and stupidity on the rest of the world. Assholes never tire of the sound of their own voice, but the bigger the audience the better. They love pontificating at length about a mish-mash of half-digested concepts like the asshole in tenth grade who knew a little bit about everything and ended up looking really smart. Assholes never progress beyond this point because synthesis of real knowledge will put their smug self satisfaction in peril.

Assholes Don't Like Anything

The thing about an asshole is you can give them a cocaine-filled pinata made of solid gold and they'll bitch about how they wanted one in the shape of a dog and not a burro. Assholes will always find a reason to complain, no matter how good the situation for them. You take twenty people out to the titty bar and there will always be one complaining about the color of the stripper's thong.

Assholes Blame You

Perhaps the fastest way to pick an asshole out of a crowd is to not like them. Their reaction isn't accepting that there might be something about themselves that rubs you the wrong way. It isn't that you can't like everyone. It isn't that you don't know them well enough or that they didn't put their best foot forward. It isn't that they don't care about your opinion of them. The assholes finds out that you're not interested in intellectual intercourse and companionship and blames you for being an asshole. You need to ignore their glaring personality deficiencies, total lack of social skills, and psychic vampirism and just be best friends.

Your Homework

Everyone reading this knows at least one asshole. You're probably even friends with this person. Give a call and let them know exactly how they're being an asshole. Not only will it give you a warm and fuzzy feeling inside, it will also make the world a brighter place by lowering the asshole quotient. Then sit down in front of the mirror and ask yourself how am I an asshole?

The Modern Hipster is a Spiritual Eunuch

"Hipster," a term which is bandied about like a generic insult with all the meaning and weight of "douchebag" or "dickhead" once had a single, clearly defined, specific meaning. It meant a white person with an appreciation of Black culture so deep that they often didn't even have white friends. The exemplar of this period was jazz clarinetist / saxophonist Mezz Mezzrow who, by the 1920s, declared himself a "voluntary Negro." The term still carried a fairly specific meaning into the 50s and 60s when the racial connotations of the word were mostly lost. "Hipster" still meant someone who was... well, hip. This not only meant that they knew how to dress but they were also hip in the sense of wise or "in the know." The hipster of the 1950s and 60s generally had an interest in countercultural thought, alternative historical paradigms and no amount of ego testing through the always popular means of sex and drugs. He knew more than a thing or two about jazz, poetry, mystic traditions, and things you couldn't get at the local Woolworths. Of course by the 1970s the term was as much of a joke as the culture that spawned it. The dream of the 60s was dead in the face of the Manson Family, Altamont and the landslide re-election of arch-reactionary Richard Nixon.

I remember first hearing the term bandied about with its present meaning about ten years ago. Its present meaning is a narrowly defined, predominantly white subculture filled to the brim with refugees from the emo scene trying desperately to figure out what Rolling Stone will be writing about in five years so they can bitch about how everything they love is becoming mainstream. In one sense it is the logical conclusion of the counterculture. The revolutionaries of the 60s got married, had kids and now talk about teenage rebellion in the context that they have created- the semi-necessary individuation period gone through by adolescents and young adults. But nothing to get terribly bothered about or take too seriously. And in a sense they are correct as most mammal species undergo a similar period. However, I'm going to suggest that there is something more going on here.

The contemporary hipster is a spiritual eunuch. Raised in a society of decadence, their main refuge lies in the realm of irony, whereby they are able to detach themselves from all emotional interaction with art. It seems worthwhile to point out the difference between irony and kitsch. Kitsch is the appreciation of the sublimely bad in art, that which transcends its place as a cultural artifact and becomes a sort of high folk art purely by virtue of its' own tastelessness. Lawn jockeys are an excellent example of kitsch as is Googie architecture. But the contemporary hipster is incapable even of appreciate the beauty of the base. Rather the contemporary hipster abdicates all emotional and spiritual connection by setting his sights on the gutter of middle America a frankly racist appreciation Black ghetto.

The specific examples of the modern hipster's total lack of spirit, soul, anima, psyche or whatever one chooses to term it are plentiful. They have built an entire subculture specifically revolving around not the rejection of decadent art and culture, but a celebration of it and in its worst forms. Perhaps the most damning accusation that can be made against them is that, rather than following the pattern of young people coming of age since time immemorial and creating a new culture with its own, secret semiotic cues and the secondary benefit of horrifying squares, the contemporary hipster has instead cannibalized the past. Whether it be garage punk, classic rock or the dated sounds of indie rock, even the music and culture which the hipster ostensibly "takes seriously" (assuming that they are even capable of such aesthetic connection and analysis) comes from their parents or older siblings generation. With the odd exception (for example the harsh noise and breakcore scenes) much or all of the hipster's cultural consumption is from a bygone age. And he likely cares not at all.

Take as an example of the spiritual bankruptcy and soullessness of the contemporary hipster fascination with religious (particularly Catholic) art. The paintings and prints are stripped of all meaning and context, instead becoming the punchline to a non-existent joke. Indeed, much of the furnishings around the contemporary hipster's dorm room exist merely as visual cues of meaninglessness, as funny and intelligent as the green monkey befouling David Brent's work place in The Office. Or perhaps the more current fascination with the worst of pop rap radio. Rather than connecting with an existing, vibrant culture like hip-hop the contemporary hipster chooses instead to ironically enjoy a racist and misogynist lampoon of that culture, often coming with the explanation (common among hipsters as an explanation for their taste in anti-culture) "it's so BAD... I love it!"

The hipsters' attempting at appropriating blue collar culture speak volumes about their massive insecurities. Trucker hats, once ubiquitous and now a tired cliche verboten for any self-respecting hipster worth their Mogwai bootlegs, serve as an emblem for the culture that even my grandmother could process. Your average hipster has, of course, likely never actually created anything grander than a cup of coffee with his bare hands and feeling that emptiness deep inside themselves offset it by turning the legitimate and authentic culture of hard working people into a joke, an ironic statement meaning absolutely nothing. See also the fascination with Bukowski, one of the few working class poets to emerge in the 20th century and easy enough to alphabetize between Ballard and Burroughs on one's MySpace page.

"By their fruits you will know them." Spend ten minutes talking to a hipster if you can stand it. Count the number of ironic references to subjects that only a depraved person would take any pleasure in. Their politics, if extant, are largely a mish-mash of misunderstood Chomsky, Marxist sound bite sloganeering, and no small sense of entitlement. They know of no avant-garde art or culture, because such phenomenon are truly difficult to obtain and even to understand.

The modern hipster is so depraved that meaningful connection with culture and society is an absurdity, a non-sequitor. Seeing a world filled with the so-called "art" of the mob, debased and decadent culture so completely corrupt that it believes its own pretenses at aesthetic validity, the hipster eschews the hard work of finding or creating an alternative, opting instead for ironic detachment. Indeed, ideas of "culture" and "society" are so much nonsense to them, armed only with a simplistic misunderstanding of critical theory, postmodernism and deconstructionism. They exist in a world entirely devoid of any meaning or value. They are soulless, ball-less and deserve little more than your contempt or a good stiff kick in the teeth. I eagerly look forward to seeing the fruits of several years of capriciousness, callousness and cocaine abuse on my generation whose bourgeois excess and academic flights of fancy exceed anything thought possible by the baby boomers at the depths of their depravity.

Preliminary Thoughts on Sociobiology

On Humanity

"Fundamental principle of justice: do not make equal what is unequal." - F. Nietzsche
Human beings are primates capable of both flight and destruction. We didn't just spring from the breath of an ancient Hebrew deity, we are the product of literally billions of years of evolution. Evolution is a funny thing, caring little for parliamentary procedure, Christian morality or Marxist notions of "equality" (read "slavery"). Mother Nature and Father Time, in her quite literally unquestionable wisdom, has built us from violence, hatred, fear, and rape.

Perhaps the only Christian / Marxist virtue that has been built into nature is that of cooperation. The tribe is far smarter than any of its individual members, and individuals who set themselves apart from the tribe rarely fare well. Nature rewards individual excellence, to be sure. But to crib an idea from Robert Anton Wilson, The Jews are more intelligent and capable than Einstein by himself. Any society producing a surplus automatically begins dividing labor up among the tribe. The collective is indisputably more efficient than the individual, regardless of how much one may hate group projects.

Still, the superiority of collective organization doesn't do away with a number of unpleasantfacts. Recent developments in biology show that female primates are just as murderous and violent as male, preferring to restrain their bloodshed to the traditional domain of woman, the home. Lady Macbeth is not the only primate female who destroyed children in the name of asserting the dominance of their genetic lineage. Infanticide is a fairly common behavior of primate females, as it gives them a way to eliminate the genetic progeny of their rivals, assuring the best food, shelter and social position for their own children. Further, women inspire men to violence by rewarding aggressive and violent behavior in men with those most quintessential of evolutionary rewards- coupling and mating.

According to recent empirical, scientific observations (a thing far more powerful and meaningful than the mamby-pamby theories of the so-called "social sciences") Jung was right. Human beings basically exist to do two things- destroy (i.e. kill, cripple or otherwise incapacitate) their enemies and fuck anything they can get their hands on. What this means is that liberal notions of a humanity that is basically good but made corrupt by a materialist world has a massive fallacy built in. Science just doesn't square with such optimistic visions of what human beings are. Indeed, it seems to only be the western world, infected with the cancerous memes of Christianity, Marxism and liberalism, which strives for the unattainable (and I would argue, undesirable) goals of peace, equality and unity.

The fruits of these collective delusions should be evident to anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of the last two hundred years of human history. The crimes of fascism and communism with forever be etched onto the human psyche, even if middle-class college pricks too numerous to mention crow about the liberating potential of discredited ideology. Christianity, the disease of western civilization which aggressively encourages weakness and stupidity, guilt and shame, has left a trail of bodies miles long and deep in its insane quest to impose a particularly perverse brand of brotherly love on those who would follow the ways of strength. Contemporary political liberalism (which has little to do with pluralism, tolerance, and the marketplace of ideas) has finally borne the fruit of its sick project on the one hand enforcing an unjust "equality" between wolves and sheep and on the other hand gleefully bombing into oblivion anyone that dares to question the wisdom of such a project.

Simply put, Marxism, liberalism and Christianity are not "good ideas gone wrong" as is the common claim of the sheeple. They are antithetical to the human condition and the sooner that we can cut them out like a cancerous growth the better. Only a weakling or a fool would oppose the principle of rule of the strong and worthy. It is only the insecurity and fear of the white, western world which forces it to recoil at the reality of biology and allows forgetting that those who beat swords into ploughshares will soon become the slaves of those who did not.

A final thought: chimpanzees- human beings' closest genetic "cousins"- were recently observed making tools, a first for them. They have long utilized the objects they find around them, such as taking a stick, putting it down a hole and eating the ants that cling to the stick. However, the creation of a spear is a new skill for the pan genus. These creatures, devoid of any human social conditioning did not use their spears for hunting or even for defense against other tribes during times of war. They used them to senselessly kill smaller primates for the pure fun of it. Human blood lust is not socially determined. It is hard wired into our DNA, as essential to our primate existence as the drive to socialize, live in communities, and strive for the stars.

How different can you pretend to be from something with which you share 99.4% of your genes?

10 Reasons Not To Drink the Hope Kool Aid

After eight years of the worst President ever, Americans are correctly excited about the changes coming to Washington. Finally, after eight years of the worst kind of frat boy back slapping, anti-intellectual jihad, and shady back room deals, America has a President who seems capable of forming intelligible sentences and gives at least lip service to the idea of transparency in government.

I think that Americans are also rightfully proud of having elected a Black President. Race was a near non-issue in the general election. America did not elect an "affirmative action candidate." Quite the contrary, they rejected a candidate who enjoyed the type of affirmative action reserved for the sons and grandsons of Admirals. Exit polling consistently showed that Barack Obama even enjoyed an edge among those with negative opinions of Black Americans. So America, while not fully moving beyond the legacy of slavery and segregation can feel free to give itself a big old pat on the back for electing a Black man to the Presidency with very little muss and fuss. And that is certainly a much better thing even than replacing Mr. Bush and the Keystone Kriminals that accompanied him to the White House.

But I've become increasingly alarmed by the words and attitudes of many of my friends, particularly those who consider themselves progressives. I've started calling it the Hope Kool Aid. Simply put, there is so much jubilation over the election of a Democrat who at least pays lip service to the notion of progressive political values, that any legitimate critiques of Mr. Obama and his nascent administration are deemed irrelevant or nit-picking. There are very legitimate reasons to criticise President-Elect Obama. Here are just ten reasons to not believe the hope.

10 Reasons Not To Drink the Hope Kool Aid

• Civilian National Security Force

"We cannot continue to rely on our military to achieve the national security objectives we've set. We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well funded."

No one really seems to know what Big O means by this, but it seems to be distinct from his universal, mandatory public service for college credit. The words "national security force" send chills down my spine by themselves, but the modifier "civilian", particularly when coupled with the notion that it would be "just as strong, just as well funded" as our military smacks of the German Stasi. While the language used is vague (what else is new?), the notion that America needs more cops is never one that sits well with me. Mr. Obama comparing them to the military in terms of strength and funding is downright terrifying.

• Record on the Right to Bear Arms

Mr. Obama's voting record shows a contempt for private ownership of firearms and the right of private citizens to defend themselves. While in the Illinois Senate Mr. Obama voted against allowing women with domestic violence protective orders to carry concealed weapons. He voted against allowing the sale of firearms within five miles of a school or park, which would prohibit the sale of firearms within almost all of the inhabited parts of the United States. He is also in favor of a nation wide ban on the right of private citizens to carry concealed weapons.

• Wall Street Bailout

$700 billion dollars with almost no oversight for the foxes guarding the financial hen house. He could have opposed it. He could have stood up and said that the sky wasn't falling, the world would keep spinning, and that Congress should move with all deliberate speed to create a bill that didn't reward the neo-robber barons of the last two decades and moved aggressively against the corporate criminals who destroyed the retirement accounts of millions of Americans. But he didn't. He bought into the Chicken Little atmosphere in Washington. Rather than providing leadership, Obama followed. And we'll be paying the price- literally- for decades to come.

• Support for FISA

Rather than refusing to support a bill which granted immunity to telecommunication companies who gave information about your private communications to federal spooks, Mr. Obama caved in fits and starts to the Bush Administration's demands. He could have simply voted against the bill. He could have supported a bill that did not grant immunity to the telecom companies and led the Democratic party in repeatedly only sending such a bill to Bush's desk. Instead he engaged in the type of milquetoast, conciliatory liberalism we've come to expect from Washington politicians.

• No End to the Drug War

Barack Obama is for decriminalizing possession of marijuana. Except he doesn't know what that means. And sometimes he isn't for it at all. He has waffled on eliminating the discrepancy between crack and powder cocaine sentencing. And the selection of War on Drugs Hall of Famer Joe Biden as his running mate should give pause to anyone looking for meaningful change in federal drug policy. Again, this is another example of President-Elect Obama being just another typical Washington politician, changing the drapes at the White House without bringing meaningful systemic change.

• Takes AIPAC's Line on Israel

I am aware that Israel is a third rail of American politics. I do not expect politicians to take a line even approximating mine on the Arab-Israeli conflict. But Barack Obama has consistently kowtowed to the far-right AIPAC line in an attempt to prove his pro-Zionist bona fides. He supported Israel during their illegal invasion of Lebanon, an invasion designed to combat a political party and not the government of Lebanon. He is the first presidential candidate to back Israel's position on an undivided Jerusalem as the perpetual capital of Israel. He has repeatedly described the ruling government of the Palestinian Authority as a "terrorist organization" and says that "no options are off the table" (for those unaware, this is a long standing coded phrase meaning "nuclear strike") in regards to deterring Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.

• Energy Policy
  

A hardcore proponent of ethanol subsidies from a corn-producing state, Barack Obama has chosen political expediency over truth. The facts show that ethanol is not a viable alternative to fossil fuels and does little more than drive up food prices- particularly in the developing world. He also supports liquid coal development and has been inconsistent on offshore drilling. His energy policy has largely been lurching from one politically expedient opinion to another.

• Vacillation on the Cuba Embargo

In another example of changing his position for political expediency, Barack Obama was originally in favor of normalizing relations with Cuba and ending the embargo which has crippled the island nation since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Of course, when he entered the general election Florida was in play with its large, ultra right wing Cuban exile community. He then hardened his stance, coming out in favor of continuing the embargo until such time that all political prisoners were freed. We have little reason to expect anything but status quo on Cuba from the Obama Administration.

• The Afghanistan War

Mr. Obama not only plans to continue the War in Afghanistan but to increase the troop load there. It seems important to be very clear on the history of the War in Afghanistan. America was never attacked by Afghanistan. America was attacked by an extra-governmental force whose base of human resources is in Pakistan and whose financial support comes largely from Saudi Arabia. A criminal pursuit of the perpetrators of 9/11 is not only the sensible response (similar to how the Israelis pursued Black September), it is also the preferred response everywhere outside of the United States and Britain. It is unclear how Barack Obama's Afghanistan policy differs from that of the Bush Administration other than being "bigger, better, more."

• Unprecedented Corporate Moneys Raised

The Democratic Party is not a labor party. It does not draw the majority of its resources from the people of this country, their labor unions, or civic organizations. Much was made of the small donors that supported Barack Obama in his pursuit of the Presidency. Almost nothing was made of the fact that wall street investment banks were among his largest donors. Also noteworthy is support from telecom giants and insurance companies- which of course have nothing to do with the President-Elect's positions in favor of immunity for illegal spying and against single-payer health care.

Why Does This Matter?

The British labor movement gave critical support to the pre-New Labour Labour Party using the slogan "Vote Labour With No Illusions." The intent was to remind the British working class that Labour may have had advantages over Tories, but this alone wasn't saying much. Further, the Labour Party needed a militant labor movement to hold their feet to the fire to ensure that the demands of the working class were acted upon.

Anyone with doubts that this applies just as much in America as it does in Little Britain is encouraged to look at the activities of the present Congress, elected with a clear mandate to end the War in Iraq, and arguably a mandate to impeach the Vice President. Simply cheerleading for what passes for "the left" in American electoral politics is woefully insufficient to affect social change. In fact, it is probably counterproductive. While the desire to remain optimistic is understandable, it is far more important that Americans remain vigilant and demand more of their government. This must begin with a hard, thorough look at the record of Barack Obama and a realistic evaluation of where he stands on the political spectrum. Slightly to the left of Bill Clinton is an improvement over Bush 43 to be sure- but not much of one.