Posted on 10/11/2009 8:50:44 PM PDT by smoothsailing
October 11, 2009
Obama and the end of white guilt
By Jeff Lukens
Barack Obama portrayed himself as America's first "post-racial" president, yet he and his supporters continue to play the race card against ordinary Americans who oppose him. Despite a big election victory, Obama is unable to understand that ordinary Americans do not like being bullied. Nor does he understand that they do not like being called racists for political disagreements.
The Obama agenda is desperate and out of ideas. In their desperation, they deal from the bottom of the deck. The race card has never failed them before, and when the logic of their position fails, evoking racism always ends the discussion. Unfortunately for them, this time the discussion will not end. The more they smear everyday Americans with the charge of racism, the more meaningless the accusation becomes.
In the wake of town halls, tea parties and 9/12 protests against Obama's policies, many media pundits — Jimmy Carter, Maureen Dowd of the New York Times, and Newsweek Magazine, to name a few — have branded these patriotic Americans as racists. It is appalling to think that the Left has played this game for decades. Americans of all backgrounds have fought for Civil Rights for too long to have accusations of racism used in such an offhand manner.
Among the many who voted for Obama, there is a growing sense that they have been had. The idea of electing an African-American for president intrigued them. Many voted for Obama with the belief that he was sincere about ending partisan and racial animosities. They believed that he was a new and transformative figure in Washington.
That was then. Now people are wise to his ways and do not like what they see. From runaway deficit spending, to a sputtering economy, to cap and trade, to weak foreign policy, the list of policy failures goes on. The more Obama speaks about his health plan, the more people do not want it. His magical spell may still work in Oslo for a Nobel Prize, but with the public over here, it is gone.
Even with 60 Democrat votes in the Senate, it is doubtful whether Obama will get a health plan passed. He is fading in the polls because everyone knows that his speeches are just words and don't mean anything. It is all a smokescreen to obscure his true agenda of restricting personal freedoms and imposing ever-greater state control.
The Obama presidency is destined to fail due to his doctrine-over-practicality approach to politics, and the impossibility of his plans to succeed. And just as people aren't buying into Obama's policies, people just aren't buying into blind charges of racism either.
Obama and his allies are overplaying the race card so often and so wantonly that such accusations no longer have much meaning. The irony of Obama's presidency is that the demon of white guilt that has haunted the nation since the founding may finally be exorcized. Whatever sense of guilt whites may have felt about the racial injustice in our history has faded with his rise to the presidency.
No matter. With Obama's blessing, Attorney General Eric Holder plans to hire more than 50 new civil rights lawyers to search out racism wherever it can be alleged. Obama's Department of Justice will now set out to undo the emphasis on cases of obvious discrimination, and create a divisive new witch-hunt.
Author, columnist, and research fellow, Shelby Steele wrote his book, "White Guilt," in 2006. According to Steele, the success of the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s showed that America's power structure lacked moral authority. White guilt was an attempt by whites to regain that right by attempting to appear benevolent toward blacks, while many African-American leaders took advantage of white guilt to gain handouts such as affirmative action. The result has been troublesome for both races, and for America as a whole.
While we should confront racism when it occurs, over the years it has become rare and marginalized. Only in a country as colorblind ours is could a black man easily win the presidency when white Americans cast the vast majority of the votes.
With the passing of white guilt from the forefront of the national conscience, perhaps the likes of Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Jeremiah Wright, and all the other race hustlers of the land will no longer be taken so seriously. And perhaps the identity politics that has divided the country and sustained the Democrat Party for a half-century can finally be ended.
When Obama and his ways are finally rejected, perhaps then, we can finally live in a country where all will be judged by the "content of their character." This may be one Obama legacy that we can look forward to.
© Jeff Lukens
They would not believe anything prior to the election; being so hell bent on voting for him. Anything, Anything but Bush or Palin....God forbid. And now they feel like they have been had. Well excuse me if I don't shriek with joy at their 'awakening'. Now we're stuck cleaning up a horrific mess that they created. The question is, can it be cleaned up before permanent damage is done.
See my tagline for details.
Being labeled a racist is a joke. It has virtually become a badge of honor. Being called a racist in this day of Obozo means that one is most assuredly NOT a racist.
This author apparently is clueless as to what this fascist is capable of or what is actually being done. He is making the same fatal mistake that many others are making thinking that this is simply incompetence.
I give good odds on the kitten drowning. He probably has a liaison with PETA. The question isn’t whether we can make skeletons rattle in October 2012. The question is which ones, there are so many to choose from.
The “white guilt” is better put as “white appeasement.” Once whitey understands ole blackface as unappeasable, whitey will stop.
Personally, I can’t even focus on 2012....I’m not sure we’re going to make it to 2010. Although, I did get some assurance today from JR who believes we can pull this out. I pray he’s right.
I meant to say “because ‘whitey’”, once... I should decline help from the ‘Department of Redundancy Department’ when I write my next post.
(singing)
I'm a racist.
You're a racist.
He's a racist.
She's a racist.
Wouldn't you like to be a racist, too?
Now I’ve got that tune stuck in my head...dang you! You are such a racist!!!!!!
Be a racist.
Drink Dr. Racist.
Be a racist.
Drink Dr. Racist.
It's stuck in my head, too.
(I'm so racist, I probably think this song is about me.)
Obamacola:
I’d like to build the world a home
And furnish it with love
Grow apple trees and honey bees
And snow-white turtle doves
I’d like to teach the world to sing
In perfect harmony
I’d like to hold it in my arms
And keep it company
I’d like to see the world for once
All standing hand in hand
And hear them echo through the hills
For peace throughout the land
(That’s the song I hear)
I’d like to teach the world to sing
(Let the world sing today)
In perfect harmony
I’d like to teach the world to sing
In perfect harmony
Id like to build the world a home
And furnish it with love
Grow apple trees and honey bees
And snow-white turtle doves
Funny you should post that song. I got a Coke from a drive-through window today and thought it tasted different from any Coke I’ve ever had. Oddly bland...not watered down or made with too little syrup, just...bland. Out of the blue it crossed my mind that the Obama administration is already cracking down on Americans’ sugar consumption. I know that this admin has it in for sodas; I wondered today if the WH is quietly forcing companies like Coca-Cola to “make over” their products. I’m no conspiracy theorist, but nothing would surprise me at this point!
Racist! :)
What about?
Whats good enough for voting folks, aint good enough for me! Me and my DNC, me and my DNC!
IMHO, the independents and moderates who voted for the rats in 2006 & 2008 will be so burned by the rats’ serial moonbattery and lies that it will be a long time before they cast such foolish votes again.
Despite all the comments about how gullible voters are, it’s not that difficult to see. People learn. They won’t be fooled again. It’s as easy as: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
ND, given the fact that almost half of the voting populace doesn’t pay taxes and the party that represents them wants to give them more reasons to have government take care of them, how we gonna beat that?
I see it the same way.
Democrats who run as centrists because they know they can’t be honest about their true flaming leftist ideology and win are bound to be smacked down at some point by the voters who elected them.
Sheesh, that’s a long sentence! :)
They counted on it continuing to work, but they have made a mockery of it - and well, they have hoisted themselves by their own petard
RULE 12: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it." Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions. (This is cruel, but very effective. Direct, personalized criticism and ridicule works.)
The left knows the race card is powerful, but it is getting old though over use and unfair use.
“Sheesh, that’s a long sentence”! :)
Interesting that you should mention long sentences since they have been a topic with which I have long been interested with the exception of those who do your run of the mill run on sentences expept for those people who do, in fact, strive to make a point somewhere within the sentence they are writing.
Yep. I now openly mock anyone who plays the race card.
The best ones don’t have commas! :)
Offer common sense. That's all. Watch how the moderates & independents vote. It was the moderates & independents who gave 2006 & 2008 elections to the rats. They'll wake up, IMHO. The rats are wrecking the economy, promising to do more with cap & trade while a baseball playoff is going on at 29 degrees Fahrenheit and generally courting national security disasters.
IIRC, the rats have 61 Congressional Districts that voted for McCain or Bush in either 2008 or 2004. Don't be so gloom and doom.
What’s white guilt, something liberal democraps have?
“The end of white guilt”????
It would appear that he now endangers any person of color from the democratic side from ever being elected to President again. He portrays himself as “every blackman” in the country and what reasonable white person would ever do it again after waqtching him make a dangerous fool of himself and the country he is supposed to represent?
I don’t see him winning the Democrat primary in 2012; without a lot of jobs being created, everyone can see that they’ve been had. “Hope & change” that people voted for was actually just decent jobs, and they’re nowhere to be found.
I do not agree,
This marxist p.o.s. has pissed off so very many folks and the big deal will be economy and that sir is not going to come around by the 2010 election or even the 2012 election.
10 percent or more unemployed does not spell out good things for the dems.
I agree with your assessment.
And the answer is no.
I though that [people learn] after the Clinton regime. Boy was I wrong.
The question is, can it be cleaned up before permanent damage is done.
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
The answer is no, the permanent damage is already done.
obama didn't grow up here, so he doesn't understand things the way people who are born and raised here do. Besides, if it's not on his teleprompter or in Rev. Wright's "sermons" how would he know?
Enter 18 - 29 under 30 voted for "obama over mccain" two to one
They weren't paying attention, IMHO. They were too young. Obama signed up 14 million names for Organizing for America. He had to rely on union flunkies to counter demonstrate at the tea parties and townhalls.
...”Among the many who voted for Obama, there is a growing sense that they have been had.”...
This statement enrages me. There was ample evidence before the election that Barack Obam is a hard-left fraudulent creation of the dominant media. Folks in Illinois knew it long ago, when he stole elections and used nastry hardball tactics to drive opponents out of the arena.
The individuals who now claim “buyer’s remorse” sicken me. They willingly and willfully chose Obama and now the entire country will suffer because of their fantastical dreams.
As long as there are ditzy suburban white females, particularly in areas where blacks only exist on the television screen, there will always be “white guilt.”
The only thing the Demlibs fear is, is the troubling thought that they will turn the Democratic party into the “black party” and make it as appealing as the Harold Washington Party was in Chicago. Till Obama put the brakes on the race baiting they were within a couple of weeks of destroying their best weapon (the race card) on the rocks of irrelavancy.
Sounds good in theory but as long as we have the hundredsif not thousands of raced based groups, laws and otherwise this is a hollow statement.
America deserves much better than this.
By the 2012 elections they can carp about Bush all they want.
All those unemployed will be mad at the dems and ozero by then. Oh yeah, and inflation will take hold along with sky high interest rates by then too.
“Post racial President” has become “most racist _resident”.
It's not the evidence that matters, it is the seriousness of the charge.
I think the "race card" is worn out, when you can allege racism without any proof. This is straight out of the dim playbook.
People have lives and many depend on MSM for reliable news - I personally know several Obama voters who won’t make that mistake again.
...”many depend on MSM for reliable news”...
“Reliable news”. Are you kidding? There is little news coming from the dominant media that can be called “reliable” when it comes to the democrat party and Barack Obama. Instead, there is spin and untruths.
So, unless you define “reliable” to mean information about which the media can lie again...
That was the point....they thought they were getting reliable news .....and voted for zero accordingly. Now they know better. I blame the media for this giant disaster....although McCain wasn’t a good candidate either.
Some libs that thought they were buying racial atonement with their vote have figured out they’ve been RIPPED OFF.
However, there are those that, like someone who got ripped off on a purchase, continues to tout the superiority of the product they bought in order not to admit that they are fools.
I agree with you. Furthermore, I think the financial meltdown was orchestrated by Wall Street, George Soros, the media, and elements of the democrat party to cement the election of Obama. It is “coincidental” in my view that the crash and panic happened at the time McCain/Palin were ahead of Obama/Biden by 5% and starting to separate meaningfully. That was the “October Surprise”, no doubt.
McCain suspending his campaign to go to WDC and voting for the financial rescue package sealed his fate. It was a dumb move by McCain.
Gullible voters bought the fraud, which will prove to be the everlasting detriment of the USA.
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