Teaching Your Children to Fear The President
Next Tuesday the President of the United States is scheduled to speak to millions of school children about hard work, good grades and staying in school. It was a message that was meant to inspire and motivate kids to put their nose to the grindstone and do their best. Instead, it has become a lesson in how the right wing uses lies, fear and panic to score cheap political points. According to the radical right, Obama is only interested in exposing the children to his deadly mix of socialistic, fascist, racist, un-American, Islamic, terrorist brainwashing.
Those of us on the left have been initially shocked by the ridiculous nature of the concern, but if you look at the way most Republicans think about the President, it all comes into focus. Only 47% of Republicans can say for sure that they believe Obama was born in this country. That means that the majority of Republicans believe that Obama is not the legitimate President of the United States. The birther conspiracy is not just for wingnuts any more. With the amount of negativism and hate speech that substitutes for policy debates these days, it really shouldn’t come as any surprise if many Republicans have become totally and irrevocably terrified of their President. Oh, excuse me, the man pretending to be their President. Not even the rancor and animosity that the right felt about Bill Clinton’s presidency is equal to the abject fear and hatred directed towards President Obama.
I believe that this level of emotion cannot be explained away through simple disagreements over health care, tax codes or bank bailouts. The real reason for this fear, the great big Republican elephant in the room, is that we have an African American as President of the United States. It is not a coincidence that most of the south is Republican and voted for John McCain. It is not a coincidence that an overwhelming majority of birthers reside in southern states. It is no coincidence that not one county in the state of Oklahoma voted for Barack Obama and that the minute he was elected to the Presidency, the Governor of Texas started talking seriously about secession. Many conservative white Americans have not come to terms with the fact that an African American has been elected to the highest office in this land and the leader of the free world.
This Presidential address to school children is designed to be non-political and non-partisan. It is going to be about universal ideas that everybody should agree on like hard work, good grades and staying in school. If you think that your kids can benefit from hearing that kind of message from the duly elected President of the United States, than send your kids off to school on Tuesday. If you believe that an African American in a position of power giving that message is somehow a danger to your children’s very soul, then by all means keep them home to listen to Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh.
If race was an issue Obama never would have gotten elected. You can’t pull the race card now after he won and claim he is being unfairly treated bacause he’s African American. Obama got elected because he told everybody what they wanted to hear and just as many people that were dumb enough to elect Bush to a second term were also dumb enough to believe he could do all or most of what he was saying he would do.. Obama was able to beat the party that was smart enough to get Bush reelected. This is where all the animosity really comes from. After succeeding on the monumental task of getting Bush reelected the Republicans thought they were never gonna lose again and now they want their power back. I think the mass emails on both sides are counterproductive as they only intend to outrage one side against the other instead of offering suggestions or solutions to solving our real problems. It is absurd to think that the Republicans are upset with Obama because he’s African American– Obama was African American when he got elected and at the time he had an approval rating that was through the roof. The Republicans are merely trying to get in a position to regain their power and Obama who becomes less smooth with each passing day is fueling their fire.
I never said that he was being treated unfairly by the nation that elected him. I believe it is the southern, white Republicans who are exhibiting the extreme hatred towards President Obama, and not people that voted for him in the last election. Obama won the election but he lost the south, Just like Abraham Lincoln in 1860 and that ended in a Civil War. To them, Obama is illegitimate, whether he was born in this country or not. To many, the very color of his skin makes them nervous, scared and angry. That is the underlying principle behind the protests regarding his school speech and that is the lesson that those voters kids will learn.
You may not have said it he was being treated unfairly, but it sure sounded like you were implying it. Also your observation that the South doesn’t like African American people is not news, but how is the way they feel different than African Americans from the North, East and West not liking any of the white presidents before Obama. The issues are the real source of the controversy between these two parties, but the real problem is that Obama is not the aisle crosser he claimed to be and both parties are too stubborn to allow the other to get credit for accomplishing something that they would rather bad mouth each other than solve problems.
I reject the idea that issues were what drove those parents to keep their kids out of school. These people have attacked the President on every issue and with the most extreme rhetoric that they can muster. The very argument that he can be both a socialist and a fascist at the same time shows their total lack of understanding of the issues, of history, or political ideology. By the way, not every white president was hated by African Americans.
The discussion has gotten a little off track. The article is not about Obama’s ability to cross party lines or the Republicans refusal to do the same. It is about southern white Republicans being fearful and angry about having an African American President talk to school children.
You talk about the entire Republican Party not liking Obama because he’s African American, then you try to throw the northern, eastern and western Republicans under the bus by stringing together a few coincidences that make the entire Republican Party subject to the control of Southern Republican thought processes. Southern people have hated and disrepected African American people since long before you wrote this article and will most likely continue long after the world has forgotten what you wrote. As for the attacking, both parties attack with all they can muster, but the difference is that the Republicans are better musterers and the Democrats are better at crying about being mustered. By the way not every African American President is hated by white Americans.
The discussion has gotten a little off track because the tracks you laid led to a conclusion that wasn’t even close to being news. (Southern people don’t like African Americans) You really didn’t need to write a whole article to reach that conclusion. As for the other issues like Obama and his ability to even lean far enough to see across the aisle, we can discuss them another time.
The underlying racism that prevails within the Anti-Obama protesters does need to be talked about if they are claiming that it is something else. I state in my commentary that simple disagreements over policy decisions do not account for the level of anger and fear that has stirred up the parents of these kids. My conclusion is that race is the underlying factor. It does not sound like you disagree with that premise.
By the way, the definition of muster is to gather troops or resources. Mustered is simply the verb form of muster and there is no definition for musterers.
Your conclusion is something we’ve all known since before the Civil War. The South are not the biggest African American fans in the country.
I know musterers is not a word, maybe I should have put ‘ ‘ around it, but the point I was making should still have been crystal clear.