There is a meme being developed by the leftist media regarding Barack Obama that can be boiled down to one phrase: anyone who doesn’t vote for him is a de facto racist. Surprising? About as surprising as the sun rising in the east.
For years, Americans unimpressed by the “race hustle” and its proponents–Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Louis Farrakhan, Maxine Waters, John Conyers, Jeremiah Wright, et al, and the legions of guilty white liberals who have aided and abetted them–have been forced to endure similar charges of racism. Those of us who believe the “content of one’s character is more important than the color of one’s skin” have watched this charade play itself out to the point of absurdity. How else can one explain the schizophrenia in which decades of blind allegiance to a Democrat Party has–according to the hustlers themselves–done virtually nothing to alleviate the plight of black America?
It’s easy. “Progress” only counts if liberal blacks make it. Conservative blacks don’t count.
Once one understands this dynamic, ignoring the likes of Clarence Thomas, Condi Rice, Colin Powell, Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, Ward Connerly, and a host of others–along with their monumental contributions to America–can be blithely ignored. In fact, such people MUST be ignored if racial grievance is to survive. Why?
The success of racialism depends on a steady supply of victims, victims whose plight can only be alleviated by government. Victims who must be made to believe that progress is beyond their grasp, all hope is quixotic, and that any and all bad choices an individual makes–the true barometer of success or failure–are completely irrelevant.
In this context, Barack Obama runs not as a presidential candidate, but as a Savior, the “last gas station of hope before the desert of despair.” The man whose nomination–historical though it is–is insufficient to “wash away the sins” of an irredeemably racist nation.
It’s president–or bust.
And if it is bust, we are being told, it will have nothing to do with his paper-thin resume’, his questionable associations with hard core leftists and unrepentant terrorists, or his boilerplate big government solutions for everything. “Details” are irrelevant.
It will be about white bigotry triumphing over enlightenment. “Enlightenment” in which the fact that 94% of black America supporting Barack Obama has no racial implications whatsoever. Blacks voting for a candidate of color is the “natural order of things.” Whites voting for a white man–when there’s a man of color available–is racist.
If the promotion of a racial guilt trip has a familiar ring, it’s because such shenanigans have formed the basis of the race hustlers’ strategies for decades. Only the scale has changed. Instead of a Jesse Jackson shaking down a single corporation with threats of boycotts, we have pundits promising something akin to a national conflagration should America reject the Chosen One.
Perhaps some people can be bullied to vote for Barack Obama out of such guilt, or fear. They are to be pitied for allowing their self-interest–the primary reason for any reasonable person’s vote–to be tossed under the bus by the professional intimidators who see this race, literally, in terms of black and white. Yet theirs is measuring stick skewed, not by grand ambition, but their OWN naked self-interest–the very same motive the would deny anyone who dares to defy them.
America will have a black president someday, maybe even as soon as this November. But if Barack Obama loses, it will be no indication of the electorate’s moral failure, except to those for whom such characterizations enhance their social standing or financial status. The rest of us have real lives to lead.
Barack Obama–or else? I don’t think so.
atahlert@comcast.net
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