The Defacing of an American President

There's more than one way to deface the image of a president. It can be done with spray paint, with words, and thorough the use of an assortment of negative images.

It's not enough to do it once. To have a lasting impact, it's important that it's done, over time, again and again--the way that time, rain, and wind, together, can wear down almost any structure that stands in their way.

For our president, that wearing-down, destructive force of time, rain, and wind, has come in the form of the Tea Party Movement. Recently an organization has come to the president's defense--one other than MSNBC, and liberal radio personalities. In an uncharacteristic move, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), apparently fed up with the Tea Party's racist assaults upon this nation's first black president, has backed a resolution to "curb its enthusiasm:"

Tea Party members have used "racial epithets," have verbally abused black members of Congress and threatened them, and protesters have engaged in "explicitly racist behavior" and "displayed signs and posters intended to degrade people of color generally and President Barack Obama specifically," according to the proposed resolution.

"We're deeply concerned about elements that are trying to move the country back, trying to reverse progress that we've made," NAACP spokeswoman Leila McDowell told ABC News. "We are asking that the law-abiding members of the Tea Party repudiate those racist elements, that they recognize the historic and present racist elements that are within the Tea Party movement."

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, in coordination with 170 other groups, including labor unions, is planning a protest march in Washington, D.C., Oct. 2 as the next step in building momentum against the Tea Party.

The "One Nation" march is designed as an antithesis to the Tea Party, and it's about "pulling America together and back to work," McDowell said. More here

Now that the resolution has been adopted by those attending the NAACP's annual convention, it was not surprising that the Tea Party leadership, and other supporters, Fox News for one (no surprises there), are condemning the NAACP for their stance, and for calling for the Tea Party to repudiate those racist elements in its midst.

I applaud the NAACP for the resolution. Other groups should follow its example, and insist that the Tea Party distance itself from this kind of racist behavior by calling it out, and condemning it.

But that won't be happening, and here is why:

The wave of public acclaim that swept Obama into the White House had to be met with a force equal to, or greater than, lest he and Democrats for the next five national elections continue to ride high in the hearts and minds of the American people.

This offense to the Republican party, and conservatism, could not stand, and would not stand.

Liberalism was a bigger threat to the sanctity of the American Way, the Holy Grail of the U.S. Constitution, and the honored memory of our Sainted Forefathers who fashioned this document to govern the affairs of men--than al-Qaeda, the Iranians and their persistent effort to enrich uranium to build nuclear bombs with which to destroy us and Israel.

This threat wasn't lost on Rush Limbaugh. His was the first shot across the bow of Obama's freshly formed "regime," which was soon picked up in sundry incarnations:

"I want him to fail."

Sensing that the Republican party had played too nicey-nicey, allowing the liberal (now socialist) takeover of the presidency and the congress, the Tea Party Movement (more edgy, and more conservative than the mainstream) was given birth.

They in the movement had one goal: Topple Obama.

If he was seen as an icon (Shatter his image!). If he was a unifier (Brand him a racist!). If he galvanized a crowd with words alone (Call him the anti-Christ!).

For months now the destruction of a president and his party has been well under way, the assaults occurring daily--here a little, and there a little, a chipping here and a whittling there.

And the method has been sinister, a Machiavellian plot that Machiavelli himself would have endorsed, and would have been proud to call his own.

The opposition party resorted to several tactics, using a stratagem that would be the envy of Tricky Dick, were he alive, and will, over time, be inducted into the Hall of Fame of Dirty Tricks

The method was simplicity itself: The Tea Party Goers would, until the next national election, put all their collective energies toward the following: the radicalization, the Islamization, the socialismization, the Hitlerization, the blackenization, the racialization, the foreignization*, of Obama.

It didn't matter that, by associating Obama with Hitler and the holocaust, that it marginalized both--the horror that emerged as concentration camps, and the mass extermination of Jews, and the evil that was Hitler and the Nazi Party.

Predictions have it, from the White House Press Secretary himself, Robert Gibbs, that the Fall elections could result in a hand over of the keys to the U.S. House of Representatives to Republicans.

Although I, for one, am not certain of the outcome of the election for the House or the Senate come this Fall, I have never underestimated the power of bad press, and its destructive potential, especially when those who would wield it, wield it unscrupulously, and with deadly intentions.

A late but timely revision to this blog entry, thanks to "Blinders Off". If you watch only one You Tube video this week, this is it: "What if the Tea Party was Black"? Who says our young people aren't paying attention.


*Some words created just for this blog entry.

Liberals-Progressives vs. Republicans-Conservatives

I left this post on another blog. I hate to let a post go to waste: It didn't receive that much attention on that blog, so I'm featuring it here. Besides, I'm a little overdue on updating my own blog.

I'm looking forward to Repubs taking back the White House and Congress.

I'm looking forward to giving them the liberal version of birthers, death panels, Town Hall madness, gun-toting, "don't tread on me" idiots, and frustrating every bill the Repubs try to pass by erecting a wall of obstructionism.

I'm looking forward to the liberal protests that will feature Republican elected officials as Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, and painting their faces with some joker reference, and decrying the inhumanity of conservatism.

I'm looking forward to invading their conservative, Republican blogs and hurtling red-neck references, racist diatribe, and depicting the then president's kids and his wife in some disgusting, Photoshop pose.

As much as I'd like to see a tit for tat, it's not going to happen.

You know why?

And this is going to anger some of the Repubs that hang out here, and their conservative counterparts, regardless of political leaning, but liberals and progressives aren't closed minded enough, not hateful enough, not mean spirited enough, not cold hearted enough, not inhumane enough to do something that cold and calculating on a massive scale.

They're just not!

Liberals and progressives have evolved a little past their conservative brethren on the spectrum of human compassion, and "good will toward all men."

We're not called "bleeding heart liberals" for nothing. The term is used derisively, but it should be held up as a badge of honor.

Liberals care. Repubs and Conservatives don't. They couldn't give a good damn about their fellow man. And where such compassion seems to appear, it's a cover for advancing a conservative agenda at the expense of compassion. Liberals uphold the human element; Repubs uphold property, greed, and a "every man for himself" mindset.

Whether Repubs and conservatives are self-made, or suffer from some genetic flaw, science may some day determine.

But, for now, they're evolutionarily behind liberals and progressives, and only good for starting wars they don't complete, violating the Constitution they're sworn to uphold, spying on their fellow Americans against conscience and the prevailing law, resorting to torture against the collective wisdom of those who say it's counterproductive, overturning legislation and regulations designed to keep our economy healthy (and not a "dog eat dog" free market feeding frenzy), name calling, and allowing their greed to run amok, as they bring a robust economy to its knees, as they use business practices that reward reckless investing and adventurism, and not prudence, and falling back on "too big to fail" as their excuse to be bailed out of their financial woes, using the little guys' tax dollars.

Strange Days

A movie came out a few years back, starring Angela Bassett, as a member of this partly all-star cast, called Strange Days. No it's not the movie I wish to review here, nor to critique Angela Bassett's performance in this Science Fiction look into a future where technology is used to capture experiences for later viewing and reliving as though they were just happening.

It's the title that intrigues me.

We seem to be living in Strange Days, a departure from those saner days when we could pretty much predict with some certainty how people might behave.

During the last few days, I caught a little of CPAC, not because I'm a Republican, or even a conservative, but because it's good to know what the political parties of our nation are contemplating.

Now a days, politics is shaping not only our economy, but some of our social interactions.

Strange days, indeed.

Rush Limbaugh's speech before CPAC resembled a pep talk of a sort, receiving so many standing O's that the people were standing more than sitting, with the ovations more than rivaling Obama's first address before a Joint Session of congress.

Rush restated his unequivocal position, "I hope Obama fails," as a way to further defy opposition from the left, and from some members of his own party.

In an equally defiant tone, he gushed, "I hope liberalism fails. Liberalism is destroying the country."

That's going to be hard sell. But then gullibility thrives because too many of us prefer the laziness of ignorance over the industry of knowledge.

You don't need that much of a fact check to learn that Republicans not only controlled both Houses of Congress for six years, but own the presidency for eight.

It wasn't liberalism that was in charge during that time, but conservatism, and it was this conservatism, this laissez-faire approach to the economy (few or no regulations in the financial sector of the economy), that led to our economic meltdown.

We're told: "Greed is good for the country. Capitalism flourishes under Greed."

Perhaps, but unregulated greed has only led to disaster for most, and has plunged the world's economy into a "black hole," one that is sucking up the light of opportunity, and the world's financial stability.

Strange days, I tell you!

Limbaugh called for a taking back of the country, "We can take back our country," he insisted, with a hubris that suggested that it belonged exclusively to Republicans, and we must do it because of our love of country.

(Of course, only Republicans love their country.)

Liberalism was equated with "socialism," that insufferable evil and anathema to capitalism, despite the recent foray into it with the TARP funds, and years and years of flirtation with it in our economy through subsidies of one sort or another.

Most Republicans believe that the party failed, not because it failed to articulate its advantage over its opponent's, not because it has become irrelevant to a growing number of Americans, not because it has been unwilling to distance itself from the failed policies of the Bush years (we're seeing some of that now), but because Republicans strayed from their center, their core values.

And if the party succeeds it will be because of its willingness to reconnect with those values. They believe that in a showdown, liberalism fails. When conservatism is compared with liberalism, the differences of the two will be blatantly obvious, and the superiority of conservatism over liberalism will be self-evident.

In that case, why all the urgency to supplant conservatism with liberalism. If liberalism is the self-evident evil that conservatives insist that it is, then, why do anything?

Liberalism will die of its own accord. And Republicans can be the vultures to pick away at the little flesh that's left on our economic bones.

Yet, this is not what Rush and company want: They want to destroy liberalism, to take back the country, to save the country from this liberal evil.

Republicans tell us that they can't allow liberalism under Obama to succeed. If it is allowed to succeed, the country, as we know it, is doomed. The statement, in and of itself, is contradictory. Liberalism, according to Republicans, can't succeed, since it carries within it the seed of its own destruction.

So what is it that Republicans and conservatives are afraid of? They're afraid of this: They're afraid that if Obama is allowed to succeed, then that success will spell the end of the Republican party as it is now constituted, and will signal their eventual demise, as it will be all but assured.

If Obama succeeds, they fail. It's as simple as that.

So the party has to root for the home team, rather than for the league, the league being the country.

Better the country goes down along with liberalism than allow it to stand strong under it.

Strange days, to be sure!

And what is the Republicans' prescription for fixing the economy? It is their "core values," of course, those values that we hear so much about these day, those principles that should govern the actions of every Republican, those "core conservative values" that will clearly, once and for all, show the country, and indeed the world, just how evil, and destructive (of human happiness, success, and enterprise) that liberalism is to the economic, social, and political landscape.

Some conservatives identify so much with what they call their "core values," that I don't think that they can survive without them. Those values are linked indelibly to their self-image, and their self-worth, and is the cornerstone of all things holy and righteous for them.

This self-identification is intractable, it can't be compromised, can't be modified without damaging a holy allegiance, or a Mount Sinai handing down of godly commandments filled with Thy Shalt Nots.

Here are the conclusions I've reached: Republicans and conservatives cannot allow, will not allow, Obama and liberalism to succeed, because it will steer the country further and further away from those core, conservative values that are quickly becoming the party's new/old identity, and prescription for saving the country from itself.

They see their mission as a holy, and just one, because we Americans just don't know what we're doing by our flirtation with "socialism," and the supposed direction that the liberals are taken us--perhaps Marxism, or outright communism.

And they point to the class warfare that Obama is fomenting between the haves and the have-nots, the rich, the middle class, and the poor, by taxing those who earn more than $250,000 more severely than those making less than that amount (not taking into account that it's merely reversing "top-down economics" with "bottom-up economics" that has favored the rich at the expense of the "working poor," and not taking into account that the gap between the two are still growing exponentially), as proof of their claim.

Robert Reich's Blog discusses these two models on his blog, not to say that those making $250,000 are being punished for their success, and are in the same boat as corporations, but that the models underscore a difference in the tax direction that's been prevalent for many years in our flagging economy, along with all its assumptions that rich corporations and individuals will take care of those who work for them, as long as corporations and individuals are doing well financially.

I said earlier: These are strange days. And I can only imagine just how strange they must seem to some Republicans and conservatives who are now seeing their "core conservative values" under attack by the liberal party in power who're pushing a so-called liberal agenda.

And if Republicans have any hope of seeing more days to their liking, and of their making, they have to hope that the country fails under both liberalism and the Obama administration--fails economically, politically, and perhaps socially (there's a great deal of talk about overthrowing the government these days). And Republicans have already signalled, with their unwillingness to sign on to the Economic Recovery Bill, that their party will do whatever it has to, to assure that.

I don't think it gets any stranger than that!