Wednesday, January 28, 2015

Yes, You Are a Racist


Steve, a reasonably intelligent, well educated client I work with on occasion made an unsolicited statement I recently overheard.  He forcefully said, “Obama is the worst President in the history of this country. The man is repulsive”.  I didn’t catch the origin of his conversation and it would be nice to think it was an isolated comment.  Unfortunately, I have heard the same remarks (either literally or in essence) from other Conservative friends and individuals on more occasions than I can recall.  I work in a Conservative environment, so I’d expect to hear observations that didn’t favor the Obama Administration, but…”the worst”?? 

 Admittedly, I felt something close to the same about George W.  Still, with ‘W’ you had a President who entered office with a Nation experiencing an extended period of economic prosperity, budget surpluses, and international sanity.  His initial banal leadership exposed the Country to cataclysmic terrorism.  He then proceeded to turn over the budget surpluses (and more) to the top 5% of the Country’s wealthy with tax cuts, ran up the National Debt to historic levels primarily by those tax cuts while waging two unfunded wars (one incompetently - one unnecessarily),  and officiated the largest financial crisis in the Nation’s history as he stepped off the podium.  That doesn’t even include his sitcom quality communications skills and endless gaffes.

 My son, in the National Guard before the Iraq War began, was sucked in for two years of deployment in Iraq and was wounded in a conflict that Bush, Chaney, and Company virtually concocted in their attempt to control oil markets…needless to say I have personal reasons to despise George W. Bush.

Obama, on the other hand, came into to office in the depths of the havoc George Bush’s leadership created and has had the helm of the Nation during a steady recovery, one that brought us from financial collapse to pre-Bush prosperity, as well as making the US the current economic engine for a still struggling World.  For the first time since the Clinton years the deficit (as % of GDP) has been substantially cut (70%). He has orchestrated the end to both wars and, to his credit or not, avoided any internationally based terrorism on US soil (which Bush couldn’t manage for 10 months).  His administration introduced the first steps to get the US out of the healthcare hole it had dug itself into (using a Conservative Republican plan), and forced open the dysfunctional immigration issue to public view, among many other things.  

There is plenty Obama has done or failed to do with which I disagree or take issue with and I’m hardly Conservative, but…the “worst” President?  How does Steve or anyone else come up with that?  Even setting aside George W… I mean Herbert Hoover, Calvin Coolidge, James Buchanan, Richard Nixon, Millard Fillmore, Warren G. Harding???? There is obviously something else going on, something that feeds the likes of Steve, or Rush Limbaugh, or a host of Fox News pundits.

Many of my progressively minded friends have, without hesitation, assigned the vitriol leveled at Obama to one simple fact; the man is black.  For years this explanation seemed too simplistic to me. Combining the knowledge I have of Conservative friends and acquaintances who are good people I’m confident they would take immediate issue if not downright offense at being labeled as prejudice against African Americans.  However, as time has passed and the hatred for Barack Obama has only escalated, primarily among Caucasian men, I’ve needed to re-think the source.  At this point I’ve concluded that the reason for this loathing is not because Obama is black…it’s because he is not white.

 The inherent need we have as social creatures to find like associations between ourselves and others as a mean of mitigating the fear of being isolated and, therefore, vulnerable has manifested itself with historical relevance ten thousand fold.  Nobody is exempt from harboring prejudice thoughts.  As a matter of course, it is one of the ways ordinary people ease the fears that they create themselves or are bombarded with from a variety of sources.  I have reason enough to believe Steve, and others like him, have personally done quite well during Obama’s term in office.  Steve’s job has been secure, inflation low, his children remain in private schools, and I suspect his investments have soared.  In fact, the wealthy and Corporate American have been far and away the largest beneficiaries in the Obama years, yet they are the ones who vilify him the most.  Obama does not represent what they want, but more importantly he does not represent who they are.

I believe these folks could take nearly everything Obama (that which he has done and that which he proposes) if you could only wrap him up in a package that looked like Mitt Romney.  When all is said and done, the uninhibited hate these folks find growing from every orifice in their bodies is because Obama is not one of them.  It isn’t a matter of disagreement.  It is because Obama’s policies have been so bending Right (not the least of which has been his adoption of the Heritage Foundation’s health plan without a public option) that makes this gut opposition look so obvious. I can’t even get my Conservative friends to discuss issues championed by the Obama administration because, I believe, their fear of agreement might contradict their fundamental revulsion.

Prejudice and racism manifest themselves in both overt and subtle ways. Religions have historically excelled at it. Even as any of us might recognize the fear in ourselves we properly suppress it relying on and having confidence in evolving ethics.  However, when Barack Obama is labeled “the worst”, it’s clear that there is no suppression going on, and that the tirade of fear that has thwarted attempts to eliminate prejudice of race is still strong and allowing itself to be manifest under a banner of politics.

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