Violence and Racism

I have been a critic of liberals and liberal policy ideas ever since I stopped calling myself a liberal. Yes, I once considered liberalism to be the enlightened path and considered myself one of the enlightened. But in all fairness, at the time I was living in West Texas and it was probably about 35 years ago. And at that time in West Texas, if you were young and had long hair (I was and did) you were absolutely liberal by comparison.

But I have found the past few months to be an infuriating time to be a critic of liberalism. Not because liberals are currently holding all the power (although they don't seem to be holding it very firmly or getting what they wanted out of it.) What's been so maddening has been the constant parade of accusations of racism and incitement of violence through our "incivility." I said back when Obama won the election that many people voted for him for many different reasons. And one of them, without a doubt, was the notion that we, as a country, could put to lie the idea that we are a racist nation.

But far from putting that notion behind us, liberals have resorted to crying racism more than ever. Last week Jimmy Carter, a man whose presidency could be called a failure by most any standard, put his mind reading powers on display and declared that the opposition to Obama's health care reform was due to racism plain and simple. What did he offer as evidence? Nothing other than his perception. He wasn't alone. Here are some quotes from the talking heads from just the past few weeks:

CAMPBELL BROWN: (music) ...vicious, racist imagery attacking our first African-American president.

LAWRENCE O'DONNELL: (newsroom noise) Gentleman Joe Wilson has done much to make the racist history of South Carolina jump back into our present consciousness.

CANDY CROWLEY: (b-roll) Critics think this is about resistance to a black man as president.

JAMES CARVILLE: People are upset with President Obama because of the color of his skin. Who cannot believe that?

CHRIS MATTHEWS: Could there be a refusal to accept the legitimacy of Barack Obama as president because of his race?

WOLF BLITZER: A small but disturbing minority within the tea party movement is also blatantly anti-black.

JOHN RIDLEY: When you talk about racial image, this is not just standard debate.

ELAINE QUIJANO: (b-roll) A small but passionate minority is also voicing what some see as racist rhetoric.

JOHN AVLON: Hitler. Communism. Racism. All this ugliness is bubbling up.

ANDERSON COOPER: There is an undercurrent of racism in some of the criticism of the president.

JUAN WILLIAMS: An attack on somebody because you really don't like the fact that they are president or because of their race.

ROSS DOUTHAT: Clearly Barack Obama's race plays some role in the kind of anxieties that are roiling the political right.

CLARENCE PAGE: (outdoor noise) People are not just mad at Obama. They are mad at Jesse Jackson. They are mad at Reverend Wright. They are mad at Al Sharpton. They are mad at people who have nothing to do with Obama except they all happen to be black.

The references to Joe Wilson, the S. Carolina congressman who jumped up an yelled "You Lie!" to Obama during his address to congress, have been particularly numerous, despite the fact there he did not stand up and shout "You're black!." Maureen Dowd not only saw racism, she heard it, writing that there was an unspoken word that followed. She heard "You lie, boy!" Obviously the word "boy" was spoken in one of those frequencies that only dogs and NY Times columnists can hear. Calling somebody a racist is, in one way, similar to accusing somebody of rape. It's an easy charge to make, all you have to do is say it outloud. And the accused is reduced to lame responses like "Some of my best friends are black," in a vain attempt to prove a negative.

When it comes to backing up their charge, liberals have found a few convenient incidents that they consistently point out. The most common, it seems, is the poster of Barrack Obama depicted as the Batman villain, The Joker. They claim the racism is evident in the fact that the character wears white pancake makeup, which they claim is the equivalent of a sort-of-reverse blackface. At first, they claimed the image was the work of right wing racists, but that was before it was revealed to be the work of a 20 something year old Palestinian-American who happened to be a supporter of far left loony Dennis Kucinich. Left wing wack job Joel McNally used the Joker image as an example of racism along with a description of one that actually would have been racist. It showed Obama as a witch doctor with a bone through his nose. But he couldn't seem to find a picture, so I guess we'll just have to take his word, that at one time, there was such a picture and that an actual individual person carried it. No doubt evrybody else at that place was thinking it. McNally was determined to draw clear lines to the racist heart of those who oppose Obama, so he zeroed in on Michelle Malkin who had spoken at a tea party in his home town of Milwaukee. The proof of her racism was a quote ("I've never been so proud in my lifetime to be part of this angry mob!") and the titles of 3 books she wrote. One was called "In Defense of Internment: The Case for Racial Profiling in World War II and the War on Terror." The other two were termed "racially tinged." Their titles were "Invasion: How America Still Welcomes Terrorists, Criminals and Other Foreign Menaces to Our Shores" and "Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks and Cronies." I guess you have to read them to understand their true racist nature, because I sure don't get it from the titles. He then launched into a guilt by association bit where he points out that Malkin's columns have appeared on a web site deemed as a "hate" site by the Southern Policy Law Center. In other words, her writings aren't racist, but some of the people who read them are.

But the worst of this has been the suggestions about violence. Nancy Pelosi got all choked up the other day, talking about her fear of the strident rhetoric on the health care debate. She invoked the memory of the assassination of Harvey Milk and the mayor of San Francisco decades ago, saying the tone was frighteningly familiar. The epitome of this nonsense culminated with a speech by the latest disgrace from the Kennedy family, congressman Patrick Kennedy of Rhode Island. Never has there been a more fitting description of a person who woke up on third base and thought he hit a triple.

He too, blasted the tone of incivility and then linked it, of course, to the assassinations that took his two uncles JFK and RFK. Then he dropped this bomb:

“George Wallace didn’t need a gun to pull a trigger. We just need to be mindful of the wisdom of people … who have been through these ugly periods in American history. Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

First, does anybody else find it astoundingly ironic (and idiotic) that he puts forth an image of a racially intolerant George Wallace as leading to violence, when Wallace himself was shot and paralyzed in an assassination attempt? But make no mistake, he didn't conjure up that image by accident. He's merely advancing the storyline of a long running, fraudulent myth that his uncles were killed by the "forces of intolerance", with a heavy implication that racists were involved. Always be sure to include an association with Martin Luther King. They all died for the same reason, at the hands of the same rednecks.

JFK was a cold warrior to the core. He spent the day before his death bragging to the defense industry in Fort Worth about how much he had boosted military spending and expanded our forces in Viet Nam. Despite Oliver Stone's demented fantasy, he was NOT about to pull out of Viet Nam (only to be thwarted by a right wing assassin.) Conversations that JFK taped with a Whitehouse taping system (And hasn't he gotten free pass on that particular pactrice compared to some other presidents?), show him and RFK being quite apprehensive about Martin Luther King and what he possibly meant for their political futures. They were brought in to the civil rights movement, maybe not kicking and screaming, but certainly with great caution and apprehension. JFK was murdered by an avowed communist who had previously defected from the US Marine corps to Soviet Russia. After returning to America, he spent his time agitating for Fidel Castro. Three weeks before he shot Kennedy, he took a shot at right wing general Edwin Walker with the same gun he later used on Kennedy. RFK was killed by a drunken anti-Zionist who hated his support of Israel. The point is neither were killed by or for the benefit of racists. But that has never stopped the unimpressive collection of remaining Kennedys from making that ridiculous claim.

But what has been so infuriating about all of this is that all the people who are opposing Obama's policies, opposed those same policies when espoused by any other liberal, white or black. They opposed socialized medicine when Bill and Hillary put it out there. They opposed higher taxes when Walter Mondale tried being "honest" and said he'd raise taxes. The same people have opposed these ideas for DECADES, not just the nine months that we've had a black president. But apparently the consistency of the opposition is overlooked entirely. It must all be due to racism. There is simply no other explanation.