People living in reality live in one America, Sean Hannity lives in another. Without a doubt the Obama White House is corrupt, double dealing and full of people with checkered histories...like every other administration before it. But with his new book "Conservative Victory," Hannity tries to peddle some sort of bizarre fantasy where Obama is some sort of closet Marxist revolutionary, who has an insidious plot in place to smash the old America and replace it with his own version of the 1871 Paris Commune. This would be laughable if Hannity didn't have so many angry, disillusioned Americans ready to munch into this hallucination.
Let's start with Hannity's points on Obama's foreign policy. They are quite bizarre when compared with the facts. Hannity slams Obama's actions during the right-wing coup in Honduras, criticizing Obama for not agreeing with the action taken by Honduras' business elites against an elected president, kidnapping him in the middle of the night and dumping him in Costa Rica. Hannity goes so far as to describe the coup plotters as fighters for democracy. He fails to mention that under the new regime, Honduras has become a major human rights violator in Central America where dissidents and journalists are being murdered in stunning numbers, youth activists against the new regime are frequently found hacked to death or shot. But those little details aside, Obama didn't do much to stop the coup, Hillary Clinton's "Aria Accord" scheme managed to keep the coup in power and opened the door for elections which were later held under the point of a gun. This is not new for Hannity, who in his previous books describes Oliver North and his involvement in death squad atrocities in Nicaragua as the work of a "freedom fighter." Hannity condemns Obama for shaking hands with Hugo Chavez and "appeasing" North Korea, this is strange considering Obama has now surrounded Venezuela with brand new military bases in Panama and Colombia. The US Fourth Fleet is also back to patrolling the Caribbean. And what exactly does Hannity mean when he accuses Obama of "appeasing" North Korea? Are we to just bomb them without reason? Iran is a major target of course, another government Hannity claims Obama is "appeasing," despite the fact that Obama has now singled out Iran as a nuclear target and has boosted covert operations against the Islamic government. Of course there are no complains for continued US support and funding for other dicatorships such as those in Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and major human rights violators in Colombia, Peru and Mexico.
Hannity spins strange accusations about Obama's handling of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, despite the fact that Obama has basically kept the same course as the second half of the Bush administration. When we get to domestic policy the book really goes into the Twilight Zone, here we get a scenario painted where Obama is planning to convert the US into some sort of socialist society. According to Hannity, this is already underway. But the evidence he provides is quite laughable. Any state intervention by Obama is really no different than that practiced by average capitalist societies the world over. Take General Motors for example, did Obama put GM or any other industry under workers' control? The same CEOs are still running these places, which is strange considering basic socialism calls for workers to run the key zones of industry. Is Obama nationalizing all education? On the contrary, charter schools are on the rise while public schools are being left behind, in areas such as Detroit they are closing in record numbers. Hannity makes other claims about Obama's inner circle, claiming many of them are part of some sort of secret society of Commies plotting to put us all under the hammer and sickle. But the evidence he cites is quite weak, he mentions some public statements, some previous articles and essays written where nobody ever claims they seek the overthrow of the American state. In his recent book "The Family," Jeff Sharlet describes how right-wing religious figures privately cite people such as Lenin and Mao as examples for manipulating crowds and forming organizations. No doubt some of Obama's people feel the same way, but so must many Republicans.
"Conservative Victory" is the kind of right-wing work which desperately wants readers to believe that somehow, the "real" America is being lost. The problem is that there never was some sort of conservative "Golden Age," times are simply changing and new crisis and scenarios are presenting themselves, but men like Hannity, terrified of the future, invent a past which they ALWAYS claim is being washed away by some sort of liberal, socialist or Islamic threat. If there are any serious problems in the US system under Obama, they are the same problems which have been manifesting themselves ever so greatly for decades. How different are Obama's policies from those of the second half of the Bush administration? The American working class IS being abused, liberal elites ARE running a crooked system, but instead of providing real answers, Hannity wants to glorify figures such as Ronald Reagan which were part of the same, rotting system. There is nothing worthy here, only illusions.
