It’s Not About Racism, It’s About Payback
I’ve always enjoyed political debate. I live in a part of the country where most do not agree with my political points of view. I’ve always enjoyed engaging people in honest political debate about the issues of the day, but I’ve always felt that there was give and take on both sides of the debate. I’ve lost complete faith in that reality. Up is down, left is right, and reflexive arguments turn back around on you. What’s the point of coming together or trying to find a consensus?
This has become a childish game of oneupsmanship between the great sides of the American political spectrum. When Bill Clinton was elected the political right in this country was apoplectic over the Reagan/Bush years being over. They viewed the Presidency as their political birthright since basically controlling the White House other than for four years from 1968 to 1992. Come hell or high water they would regain their birthright even if they destroyed the country in the process. Bill Clinton was subjected to every ridiculous rumor and supposition imaginable. When Bill Clinton was accused of murdering Vince Foster there was a Congressional investigation. When it came time to asking about George W. Bush’s use of cocaine, of course that couldn’t be dignified with an answer at all. Bill Clinton guided the country to unprecedented growth, paid down the debt and balanced the budget. Clinton even built the army Bush used to defeat the Taliban 9 months after Clinton left office and Republicans continue to claim his Presidency was an unmitigated disaster, all because he lied about an affair he had under oath. But Bush was elected while losing the popular vote by half a MILLION votes and we were supposed to all come behind him no matter what.
Bush in his Presidency was faced with unprecedented protest and doubled the the national debt while the worst domestic attack since Pearl Harbor occurred on his watch. But again this was personal with Republicans. As they disavow him three times before the rooster crows today, they still hold a burning grudge that the country did not bow down to him like Reagan Christ. The burning childish anger that the right has for Barack Obama has very little to do with racism as the unhelpful Jimmy Carter seems to think. It has to do with payback for Bush being wronged, but none of them have the balls to say that they were Bush supporters. Republicans and Republicans in libertarian clothing hold President Obama to a standard that is light years ahead of what they abided with Bush, but when this is pointed out they revert to some schoolyard attitude that the point being brought up belies some kind of weakness on the part of the liberal’s political point. Republicans masquerading as “Tea Party” enthusiasts all decry actions from Obama that they supported or quietly accepted while supporting Bush. The protests themselves are as night and day. When anti-Bush citizens wearing t-shirts showed up at Bush rallies they were arrested, anti-Obama wack jobs get to show up to rallies carrying guns. Bush was elected by half the country in 2004 but by 2008 most of those people were awfully quiet or claimed to have never liked him. They ask rightly why what Bush did matters today, as if it’s a cop out to simply blame him for anything. The reason it is important is that to pillory someone for actions that you felt were just cool with the last guy, you lack any and all credibility in the current debate. If you were fine with the last person doing it than shut the fuck up about the current guy doing it. The next point is always that I or those among the left seemed to think that what Bush was doing was so bad, but now we all seem to excuse it when it comes to our guy.
That would be a great point if we had or do. I have said for anyone willing to read here or my Twitter feed that there are plenty of actual policy reasons to disagree with the President other than the birth issues and the question of if the President is the Antichrist. Also when that is pointed out it is excused by saying that, tada, Bush suffered some of the same treatment. What does that mean, this is all payback. If it was bad for Bush why is it suddenly justified now? But I have stated that Obama has no exit strategy as he is surging in Afghanistan. He uses signing statements that are an abuse of power just as Bush wrongly did. He spends too much and has no meaningful spending cuts to adjust to, and he plans on continuing elements of the anti-democratic Patriot Act. Now, after that do I expect to hear much from the right on what they agree with the President on? Not really, because this has never been about the issues, it’s been about payback.
Related posts:
- Harry Reid And Another Awkward Attempt At Payback
- On Bad Dem Pardons, And Perfectly Acceptable GOP Pardons
- Historical Perspective On Health Care Reform Before The West Coast Swing
- Obama Didn’t Inherit Problems Because He Didn’t Succeed Bill Clinton
- On Over Inflated Predictions Of Doom
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Anyone who ignores the racial overtones of the antipathy for Obama is either hopelessly naive or willfully ignorant. The White House wants to believe that race is not a factor, and there are good political reasons to adopt that stance. But if you watch the clips of the teabagers and cannot see brimming redneckism, you are blind.
By the way, as a longtime resident of northeast Louisiana, I know a little something about rednecks.
Unless one has walked in another one’s shoes, one cannot begin to imagine what it is like for that person. I am an African American female, over 50, college-educated, retired with excellent benefits, including health insurance. Here in GA, among many whites, my accomplishments mean absolutely nothing. I am judged instantaneously on sight and deemed inferior. I lived through segregation and the civil rights era and experienced all of it. Someone who is not a member of a minority group, and who hasn’t lived life in these United States and hasn’t experienced what I have experienced and continue to experience, wouldn’t understand how I’ve had to live for over 50 years. In fact, IMO, they are incapable of really understanding issues of racism. It is easy to dismiss charges of racism if you’re not a target of it. It doesn’t always have to be overt in nature, and if you’re in a minority group, it doesn’t take very long to recognize it in its’ overt and covert forms. My daughter began to experience it when she was 4, and she was born in 1981. The the election of Obama as POTUS did not usher in a post-racial America. I don’t believe that all who oppose President Obama are racists, but based on my experience, the majority of them are. America has always run away from discussing the issue of racism, and in many places in the South, whites who have many members of minority groups they call “friend” are discouraged from forming these types of relationships. It’s generally taboo. Even in 2009. I live in a white/black/hispanic neighborhood, and the fact that my white neighbors don’t accept my family has been made obvious time after time. When people you’ve lived with in the same neighborhood for over 20 years still act like they don’t see you as you pass by in your car and wave at them all you can conclude is that they don’t ever want to acknowledge that you are there. Same thing when you see that only the white neighbors are invited to the neighborhood barbecues and other events. What conclusion do you reach when your 5 year old who plays with the neighbors’ children is not good enough to be invited to the birthday party? How do you explain to this kid that the children you thought were your friends’ parents didn’t think you were good enough to attend their child’s birthday party? How do you explain to your kid that when one of her best friends in neighborhood who happens to be white tells him/her that she wanted to invite her to her birthday party, but that her mom says it’s a whites’ only party? America needs to stop denying that people don’t discriminate against others in these modern times on the basis of race. It’s a lie.
Stop! You’re both right — er, correct! The racism is the cream cheese frosting on the carrot cake of indignant payback. I believe that if Colin Powell had run and been elected as a Republican, this would not be happening. Democratic president + black president = perfect target for the now-dominant idiot wing of the Republican party. And since they claim that the left said and did worse about the Shrub, everything that they say and do about Obama is okay — just part of a spirited dialogue. It is impossible to have an honest discussion of the issues with those who believe that Obama is turning the executive over to czars who will run everything and answer to no one, that a fascist, a socialist and a communist are the same thing and Obama is all three, that Obama is a Moslem, a terrorist and a traitor, that health care reform will kill their granny, impoverish their grandchildren and deny them their god-given right to sody-pop, fried pork rinds and beer and/or that health care reform is code for reparations to blacks over slavery. (Yeah, I have actually heard all of that, here in California’s answer to redneck-Christian-right central.) The Stalinists and radical agorist Libertarians I knew back in the 60s were sane compared to these people — they at least knew the difference between a fascist and a communist. The difference between wanting to see ShrubCo tried for war crimes (the most extreme thing I have heard from the left) and wanting to see Obama lynched (which I have heard from the wingnuts) is more than just the indignation of loss, it’s racism, but I still do not believe that the same amount of racist venom would be directed at a black Republican president — no cake to frost.