The Mobilized Interests and the Potential Power Abuse

the action taken by the citizens when dealing with social issues. The government will be easier to rule the country if they can manage the people‘s behavior. So, the spirit of freedom and liberty are used to underline the norms to be logically accepted by the citizens if they want to attain what has been promised by such way of life. Thus, if the norms are presented as truth, the government will have no barrier in directing the citizens. Before going further, it is better to take a look at the facts of Obamacare cited from http:obamacarefacts.com . Obamacare‘s official name is Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act PPACA which was signed into law to reform the health care industry by President Obama on March 30, 2010 and upheld by the Supreme Court on June 28, 2012. Its goal is to give more Americans access to the affordable quality insurance and to reduce the growth in health care spending in the U.S. In facts, as cited from Obamacarefacts.com, Obamacare does not replace private insurance and does not regulate health care but it regulates health insurance. The goal, therefore, sounds well and helpful for Americans who has not had the health insurance but it also create some contradictions. In its implementation, as cited from Obamacare Pros and Cons, article by Kimberly Amadeo http:useconomy.about.com, Obamacare is success to give new healthcare benefits for Americans, preventive and wellness service, customer protections, cost assistance for middle class and small business, and also attention to quality over quantity. However, it also has the negative effects such as the raising taxes on small business, raising premium payment, and Obamacare actually cost government more money and limits the choice of doctors and medical care. In the beginning of his planning, Obama had not reached the agreement in the state fiscal budget with his oppositional Republican Party. It causes the government shutdown that started on October 1, 2013. Below is Obama‘s Remark on the government shutdown and Obamacare. ―Set aside the issues of security and finances and how you‘re impacted by that, the stress involved in not knowing wheth er or not you‘re going to have health care. This is life-or- death stuff. Tens of thousands of Americans die each year just because they don‘t have health insurance. Millions more live with the fear that they‘ll go broke if they get sick. And today, we begin to free millions of our fellow Americans from that fear.‖ Remarks by the President on the Affordable Care Act and the Government Shutdown, October 01, 2013, http:www.whitehouse.gov The government shutdown lasted for three weeks impacted worst on the U.S. economy vitality that urges the congress to finally accept Obama‘s plan on health insurance. As a politic commodity, Obamacare which has been promised during his campaign will be the main offer of Obama to gain the support of the citizens. That is why he suggests that the health of American is more important than saving the balance of state funding. Once a discourse is spread, it becomes mutual awareness and so is the economy discourse shared among U.S. citizens. The norms presented by the president are accepted as truth and so are the governments programs. When these all happen, there is a potential power abuse that might not be realized by the citizens. In facts, it is already happened in U.S. society. What the president wants is that the hard work of the citizen as individual to support the market economy. There is no real freedom as promised since the citizens are now directed to act as the government wants. It just looks like the citizens are free to act because they have become trust in the definition of liberal reproduced in the addresses. In fact, there is no such thing as individual‘s basic measure of happiness when it comes to living in society that is required to put the common purpose in front of one‘s purposes. Individuals are now alienated from themselves and they are not realize that the power has manipulated the way they are thinking and acting. In other words, the people no longer belong to themselves but to the calling that they have chosen. The economic recovery proposed by Obama happens to be an illusion covering the real labor which citizens must pay. Citizens are directed to support the free market system which known to be the economic system belongs to American Liberal Democracy. Again, the ‗free‘ in free market is only achieved by following the rules and regulations because every market has some rules and boundaries that restrict freedom of choice. Obama himself states that government function is to ensure the competition and fair play. Here, ‗free‘ market is a political definition where government is always involved and those free-marketers are as politically motivated as anyone. Free market is just a false impression. It is only free because the citizens so completely accept the adjustment that set them up so that they become unseen. As it is politically motivated, even the government has the potential to misuse the authority. When they say that regulation should be eliminated or the market should be expanded, it means that those who possess the capital should be given more power in that sector. Conversely, when they say that certain regulation should not be introduced, it means they refuse the rights that are to be preserved by the proposed law. Then, an ideological mask is utilized to disguise their political interest to be seen as an objective economic truth. In democracy, the danger is found if it is run by those who are ignorant. Since the self-interest is the most powerful human trait, the ignorant people will not know how to use the political power for preserving others‘ good. Equality must be difficult to earn even it is pledged by liberal point of view. The common people are easily swayed by the rabble-rousers who flatter and mislead them to win the power. So it happens also in the free market system. Obama speaks as if it is the government‘s which means tax payers‘ responsibility to guarantee that everyone enters the middle class. While, the free market system adjusted with ―free enterprise‖ and ―individual initiative‖ will make richer the rich with the already owned property while those without possession will remain weaker. His plan is to therefore raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans in the interest of covering the ―government works on behalf of the many, and not just the few.‖ That is his version of the utilitarian ―happiness for the greatest number‖ talks no matter if it violates the wealths‘ property rights. However, it is also impossible to do the re-distribution of wealth as viewed by a utilitarian. He also acts as politician who offers his own interpretation of the democratic ideal. The main purpose of politicians is to persuade their audience of the validity of their political claims. Political influence flows from the employment of resources that shape the beliefs and behaviors of others. Rather than redistribute the wealth, Obama tells the people of finding their basic measure of happiness which is impossible to do without comparing to someone else‘s standard of living. Furthermore, the vague definition applied to each raised values are potentially played by a party with tendency to benefit themselves. There, inequality will always exist.

B. The Linguistic Representation of Power and Ideology

In this part, the writer continues to present the analysis of texts themselves. In CDA, researcher must rely on text as the source of linguistic evidence by with the discourse is delivered and made meaningful by the addresser and coded by the addressee. Thus, this part will be divided into three parts according to the Systemic Functional Linguistics which tends to see how linguistic features are elaborated for having a social function. There are three main purposes in this part. First is to see the way text is structured according to the speaker structure of addresses. After knowing the structure of the text, second, the writer will show what is become the major concern of the speaker and see what problems, acts, and the importance which become the major concerns of the speaker. Therefore, the third, the ideology that works upon the speaker mind in delivering the addresses is also conveyed.

1. Ideational Function

It is through this function that the language from the addresses encodes the cultural experience and Obama encodes his own individual experience of the things of the world and his own consciousness. The ideational function mainly consists of transitivity which includes six processes called material, mental, relational, behavioral, verbal and existential. Table below shows how Obama uses the six processes encoding the reality he perceives and that is also how he wants the addressees to view so. Table 4.4. Transitivity in the first and second Inaugural Addresses Address Total Number Material Processes Mental Processes Relational Processes Behavioural Processes Verbal Processes Existential processes A 284 195 21 55 1 9 3 Percentage 69 7 19 0.5 3.5 1 B 222 168 18 30 3 2 1 Percentage 75 8 13.5 1.5 1 1 From table 4, material processes are used most in the addresses with a percentage of 69 and 75 followed by the number of occurrence of Mental Processes and Relational Processes. So here, the author will mainly analyze the first three ones.

a. Material Process

Material process is a process of ―doing‖. The process is usually indicated by a verb expressing an action, either concrete or abstract. There are usually two participants in the process: Actor and Goal. Actor is comparable to the Subject and Goal is comparable to the Object and both of them are usually realized by noun phrases. Table 4.5. Material Process in the first and second Inaugural Addresses Inaugural Address ACTOR MATERIAL PROCESS GOAL A I Stand - We, Americans, America gather, continue, taken, choose, change, carry, pick, act, build, harness, transform, restore, meet, reject, defeat, leave, work, lessen, play the presidential oath, hope, our school, new foundation for growth, the roads, the sun, it‘s role, vital trust, great gift of freedom, new threats, the nuclear threat, Iraq B We, American people, the people, America gather, continue, seize, harness, choose, defend, show, maintain, preserve a never ending journey, economic vitality, our national treasure, our planet, the demands of today‘s world, the commitments, our people, the courage None Avoid the devastating impact of raging fires a great nation care, protect it‘s people, the vulnerable Material process is found to be the most numerous type of process in both addresses. This indicates that the Obama is principally concerns with representing actions and events and the participants involved in them. So, in those addresses, Obama consciously share what he has achieved from the reality, how he acts on it, what he has done, and what he will do in the mentioned fields. Such things like that can be seen in the following example: 1. ―The state of our economy calls for action, bold and swift. And we will act, not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth. We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together. Well restore science to its rightful place, and wield technologys wonders to raise health cares quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age.‖ XII, a 2. ―…that fidelity to our founding principles requires new responses to new challenges; that preserving our individual freedoms ultimately requires collective action. For the American people can no more meet the demands of today‘s world by acting alone than American