The Obama Effect

There has been a heavy air over the country in recent months, something that many weren’t expecting with the election of the 44th President of the United States.  Many thought that with the coming of Barack Obama, the skies would open, the Earth would flourish under our feet, and our Utopia would finally have arrived.  Instead, we’re saddled with a teetering economy, a health care crises, torture investigations, Iran, Iraq, Russia, Venezuela, global warming, energy reform, and heaven knows what else.  If we step back, though, and get some perspective, things really haven’t changed that much.  It’s nothing unusual for the President of the free world to have a lot on his plate; that’s part of the job.  The difference for this President is that not only does he have all of these problems to solve, he also has a hefty dose of racism served up, piping hot.

Most people want to avoid playing the racism card for a various number of reasons – the stigma it carries, the inability to truly prove it in many cases, the weakness of the argument in many cases, and the simple fact that it doesn’t really advance society to fall back on calling any person who disagrees with a black man, a racist.  But there really is no other reason for the pervasive idiocy we’ve seen in the recent months.

One of the most important things to remember in this situation, and one that people often forget, is that George W Bush presided over one of the greatest expansions of government in our countries history, and was instrumental in ballooning our debt to unseen heights, and implementing wasteful spending across the board.  Yet, there wasn’t a single tea party protest of wasteful government spending over the past 8 years (unless I’m mistaken).   The right sat there, and essentially gave Bush and his cronies carte blanche to do what they want, with nary a peep.  Yet, when a black, Democratic President arrives, the flood gates open, and out pours this venomous mass of angry right wingers hell bent on stopping wasteful government spending.

In defense of these protests of the President (in particular the invocations of Hitler, Mussoulini, Stalin, etc.) is that the left did the same thing to Bush during his reign.  While this fact is true, there are two caveats that should be pointed out.

1. The number of people who protested Bush, and invoked the kind of messages we are seeing today, was not nearly as pervasive as we see with President Obama (nor this early in his Presidency).
2. The protests that did occur, were protesting actual, physical policy (for the most part) and not this nebulous, insinuated, manipulated, twisted, utterly false, fear mongering.

Last time I checked, the reason people were so upset about going to fight in Iraq, was because we KNEW that the administration lied to us.  Obviously there will always be people who protest wars, because there will always be people who don’t believe in killing other human beings.  The fact remains, there was such a virulent outpouring against the war, and Bush (as the figure head) because people knew that there was no yellow cake, that the people who attacked us were not from Iraq, and that the people we needed to be going after were in Afghanistan and not Iraq.  People protested Bush because he did order ANWAR to be drilled, and he ordered domestic wire tapping, and because he could barely formulate a coherent sentence.

Ok, the last one is unnecessary.

You cannot say the same thing about the current President.  So far, he has, in every measurable way, governed from the center.  Clearly there are Democratic values that he has stuck by, but for the most part, he has driven right down the middle of the road.  The only real policy effort that he has undertaken, his health care reform, has been utterly marred with blatantly false facts, and misinformation, from the right, and the special interests that stand to lose the most.

No one in their right minds would protest giving health care to all Americans.  As conservative as some people might be, that is a truly callous and selfish stance to take.  On top of that, many of the people protesting this initiative, do not have health care, or are on a government run health care plan.  Factor in the reality that if we do not control health care spending, it will literally bankrupt our country (see IOUSA) and sprinkle in the fact that the President has said on numerous occasions that he will not sign a bill that is not budget neutral, and you have to wonder what it is these people are protesting?

I doubt, in all 8 years of the Bush presidency, that there was a single black protester walking down the street with a poster of George Bush eating a saltine, and yet at almost every rally against health care, or wasteful spending, there’s at least one poster depicting the President as a witch doctor, or a teletubbie, or a reference to him being a Muslim, or Muslims taking over the country.

Most people won’t come out in public and confirm that they hate blacks, or they hate Jews, or they hate Hispanics, but as the old adage goes, actions speak louder than words.  You can see from the videos, from the sheer inanity of the comments at the town halls, from the sheer disrespect shown by both civilian and government official, that this goes beyond wasteful spending, and a fear of more government programs (because again, where were they over the past 8 years?).

We can bury our heads all we want, but it won’t make the problem go away (and only will make the problem worse).  We need to confront these issues head on, and eliminate this cancerous growth on our country, one that has lay dormant, yet close to the surface, over these past 40 years.  Racism, bigotry, hatred, all of these things have no place in our great country.  Unless we confront this cancer when it is at the forefront, it will continue to fester, and spread and grow, and we will never be able to remove it and move on.

What better time, then when there is a black man sitting in the office of the President?  Truly, what better time?