I am, naturally, a politically inclined person. When the topic comes around, I am always willing to participate in the discussion. I try to explain my (extremely) libertarian position so that it makes sense. I am always willing to accept and respect the opinion of anyone else, provided he accepts and respects mine.
I have never been reluctant to take a stand with the exception of with one group – blacks, unless the particular person is a Republican, a conservative or a libertarian and that means very few of them. I now wait until I find out his political inclinations.
Every time I have made an exception, I have always come to regret it. I have concluded, very reluctantly, that the reason is an ingrown racism that has become part and parcel of their attitude.
In college, I knew several blacks. We’d talk about things politic but there was never any hostility. I agreed with Barry Goldwater’s reservations about the 1964 Civil Rights Bill and wound up fascinated with Malcolm X after reading the memoriam for him in National Review. I always have had a keen interest in what I felt was a raw deal that blacks had been given in this country; first by bigots and later by those with ‘good intentions’ that the road to hell is paved with.
As the years have passed, I have noticed a greater and greater tendency on the part of various pundits, black and white, to impute racism to anything that can roughly be called conservatism or libertarianism. First there were the ‘code words.’ When crime in the streets became an issue in the 1960s, why it was just a camouflage for ‘get the blacks,’ never mind that the vast majority of people likely to be victimized by crime were blacks themselves. Pointing that out was dismissed.
Assaults on blacks by whites, such as in New York City’s Bensonhurst and Howard Beach, are given front-page and lead story news while reverse incidents are ignored. They were so very convenient because they occurred in one of the very most liberal cities in the country. “If these things happened in New York City, just imagine what lurks in the minds of the rest of those white people.”
The entire matter has gotten so bad that Marc Lamont Hill has made a career out of finding the latent racism at work even in a compliment about a black person. When someone commented that Barack Obama was articulate, he and other blacks found it insulting because it meant that other blacks weren’t or that it was unusual if a black were. I guess I should cease my admiration for Walter Williams and Thomas Sowell. It has gotten so bad that one hesitates to wonder if we are permitted to comment at all about anything a black person does.
This circle-the-wagons attitude hit me with the O. J. Simpson trial. Many commentators had noted the racial aspect of the trial with one saying that Simpson did not have a lot of sympathy among blacks due to a perceived lack of involvement by him. Yet, when the verdict was announced, the evening news showed students at one famous black college erupting into smiles, cheers and high fives. It was as if all of them had been on trial.
This has now permeated all of politics and everyday life in this country. Racism is now accepted to be in the heart of every white person and failure to accept it and act and think accordingly is evidence of it.
The Clinton presidency was bad enough but the dispute over the Gore-Bush election brought it into focus. Just about every move the Republicans made was assailed as racist. With Barack Obama it has gone on steroids.
Since he took office, anything critical of him has been ascribed to the inherent racism of Americans but there is more to this than a simple black-white parameter. I voted for Alan Keyes for president in the 2000 Republican primary. I thought then, and still do, that he would have been a far better president than George W. Bush but I highly doubt whether he would have been accorded the same protectionism and immunity from criticism that has been given to Obama.
Barack Obama, not only is black ( but we should note, only about one-third) but his platform tells the world he hates this country’s free market system. That makes him an unalloyed hero to the Left and blacks who have been conditioned to resent the system that has given them the highest standard of living of any other black group in any other country in the world.
People like Williams, Sowell, Keyes, Clarence Thomas and Herman Cain are sell-outs, Oreo Cookies, Uncle Toms. Now, Barack Obama, he’s a REAL MAN! (For this, I have to thank Tom Wolfe and his essay, Radical Chic.) So immune to criticism is Barack Obama that you can’t use him as a target for the usual political jokes. Two experiences spring to my mind.
I have a mock stop smoking program that I distribute in my office. It’s step wise, starting with beating the patient with his choice of a bull whip or rubber hose to prevent scarring, through extinguishing his cigarette in his eyeball and finishing with what I call the ultimate in horror and cruelty; calling the patient up in the middle of the night and playing a Barack Obama speech over the telephone to him. Obviously, it’s a joke but it has gotten people to stop smoking.
A patient of mine showed it to a black female pharmacist who, she said, was outraged and demanded she take it out of her pharmacy, not even put in her wastebasket. That’s racist, she said.
In another case, in a health club locker room, a group of guys were talking about the inefficiency and corruption of government. I then told a joke that had made the rounds when Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi were Senate Majority Leader and Speaker of the House. It involved a priest asking for Pelosi and Reid to come to his bedside to be with him as he died. They dutifully came to his bedside but asked why he chose them for this honor. The priest looked from one to the other, with a look of peaceful contentment and said, “I wanted to be like Jesus and die between two thieves.”
I updated them to John Boehner and Barack Obama figuring they would be biracial and bipartisan targets. The one black guy became incensed and asked, “Am I supposed to get anything out of that? I think it’s disgusting.” He never spoke to me again. I learned a lesson. When you can’t make a politician the butt of political jokes like that, this country is in trouble.
Black and marinated in communism, he is perfect for the Left, far better than even Malcolm X could ever be. You see, a few inconvenient facts about Malcolm have been lost in history. He despised liberals and rejected government help as a vehicle for black advancement. He even went so far as to endorse Barry Goldwater in 1964 (gasp!!!) while just about every black leader went running to Lyndon Johnson with his blatantly unconstitutional civil rights bill that has given us quotas and other violations of our privacy. How dare any upstart black tell a liberal that blacks don’t need the government? In fact, how dare anyone, black or white, tell the government it isn’t needed. Such insolence!
And so, as Barack Obama puts his destruction of The Constitution into high gear through the various bureaucracies and Executive Orders, he will do so with the impunity of knowing that his race insulates him in his excesses to complete the socialization of this country. Vladimir Ulyanov Lenin would be proud.
“Published originally at EtherZone.com : republication allowed with this notice and hyperlink intact.”