Posted on 07/08/2010 1:51:01 PM PDT by sdcraigo
A Stranger in Our Midst
The following essay by Robert Weissberg, Professor of Political Science - Emeritus at the University of Illinois , Urbana , offers a description of what most Americans are feeling about our government, but haven't been able to articulate.
Every once in awhile, someone comes along and uses just the right words to describe a situation. This is it.
April 29, 2010 - A Stranger in Our Midst, by Robert Weissberg, Professor of Political Science - Emeritus at the University of Illinois , Urbana
As the Obama administration enters its second year, I -- and undoubtedly millions of others -- have struggled to develop a shorthand term that captures our emotional unease. Defining this discomfort is tricky. I reject nearly the entire Obama agenda, but the term "being opposed" lacks an emotional punch. Nor do terms like "worried" or "anxious" apply. I was more worried about America 's future during the Johnson or Carter years, so it's not that dictionary, either. Nor, for that matter, is this about backroom odious deal-making and pork, which are endemic in American politics.
After auditioning countless political terms, I finally realized that the Obama administration and its congressional collaborators almost resemble a foreign occupying force, a coterie of politically and culturally non-indigenous leaders whose rule contravenes local values rooted in our national tradition. It is as if the United States has been occupied by a foreign power, and this transcends policy objections. It is not about Obama's birthplace. It is not about race, either; millions of white Americans have had black mayors and black governors, and this unease about out-of-synch values never surfaced.
The term I settled on is "alien rule" -- based on outsider values, regardless of policy benefits -- that generates agitation. This is what bloody anti-colonial strife was all about. No doubt, millions of Indians and Africans probably grasped that expelling the British guaranteed economic ruin and even worse governance, but at least the mess would be their mess. Just travel to Afghanistan and witness American military commanders' efforts to enlist tribal elders with promises of roads, clean water, dental clinics, and all else that America can freely provide. Many of these elders probably privately prefer abject poverty to foreign occupation since it would be their poverty, run by their people, according to their sensibilities.
This disquiet was a slow realization. Awareness began with Obama's odd pre-presidency associations, decades of being oblivious to Rev. Wright's anti-American ranting, his enduring friendship with the terrorist guy-in-the-neighborhood Bill Ayers, and the Saul Alinsky-flavored anti-capitalist community activism. Further add a hazy personal background -- an Indonesian childhood, shifting official names, and a paperless-trail climb through elite educational institutions. None of this disqualified Obama from the presidency; rather, this background just doesn't fit with the conventional political resume. It is just the "outsider" quality that alarms. For all the yammering about George W. Bush's privileged background, his made-in-the-USA persona was absolutely indisputable. John McCain might be embarrassed about his Naval Academy class rank and iffy combat performance, but there was never any doubt of his authenticity. Countless conservatives despised Bill Clinton, but nobody ever, ever doubted his good-old-boy American bonafides.
The suspicion that Obama is an outsider, a figure who really doesn't "get" America , grew clearer from his initial appointments. What "native" would appoint Kevin Jennings, a militant gay activist, to oversee school safety? Or permit a Marxist rabble-rouser to be a "green jobs czar"? How about an Attorney General who began by accusing Americans of cowardice when it comes to discussing race? And who can forget Obama's weird defense of his pal Louis Henry Gates from "racist" Cambridge , Massachusetts cops? If the American Revolution had never occurred and the Queen had appointed Obama Royal Governor (after his distinguished service in Kenya ), a trusted locally attuned aide would have first whispered in his ear, "Mr. Governor General, here in America , we do not automatically assume that the police were at fault," and the day would have been saved.
And then there's the "we are sorry, we'll never be arrogant again" rhetoric seemingly designed for a future President of the World election campaign. What made Obama's Cairo utterances so distressing was how they grated on American cultural sensibilities. And he just doesn't notice, perhaps akin to never hearing Rev. Wright anti-American diatribes. An American president does not pander to third-world audiences by lying about the Muslim contribution to America . Imagine Ronald Reagan, or any past American president, trying to win friends by apologizing. This appeal contravenes our national character and far exceeds a momentary embarrassment about garbled syntax or poor delivery. Then there's Obama's bizarre, totally unnecessary deep bowing to foreign potentates. Americans look foreign leaders squarely in the eye and firmly shake hands; we don't bow.
But far worse is Obama's tone-deafness about American government. How can any ordinary American, even a traditional liberal, believe that jamming through unpopular, debt-expanding legislation that consumes one-sixth of our GDP, sometimes with sly side-payments and with a thin majority, will eventually be judged legitimate? This is third-world, maximum-leader-style politics. That the legislation was barely understood even by its defenders and vehemently championed by a representative of that typical American city, San Francisco , only exacerbates the strangeness. And now President Obama sides with illegal aliens over the State of Arizona , which seeks to enforce the federal immigration law to protect American citizens from marauding drug gangs and other miscreants streaming in across the Mexican border.
Reciprocal public disengagement from President Obama is strongly suggested by recent poll data on public trust in government. According to a recent Pew report, only 22% of those asked trust the government always or most of the time, among the lowest figures in half a century. And while pro-government support has been slipping for decades, the Obama presidency has sharply exacerbated this drop. To be sure, many factors (in particular the economic downturn) contribute to this decline, but remember that Obama was recently elected by an often wildly enthusiastic popular majority. The collapse of trust undoubtedly transcends policy quibbles or a sluggish economy -- it is far more consistent with a deeper alienation.
Perhaps the clearest evidence for this "foreigner in our midst" mentality is the name given our resistance -- tea parties, an image that instantly invokes the American struggle against George III, a clueless foreign ruler from central casting. This history-laden label was hardly predetermined, but it instantly stuck (as did the election of Sen. Scott Brown as "the shot heard around the world" and tea partiers dressing up in colonial-era costumes). Perhaps subconsciously, Obama does remind Americans of when the U.S. was really occupied by a foreign power. A Declaration of Independence passage may still resonate: "HE [George III] has erected a Multitude of new Offices [Czars], and sent hither Swarms of Officers [recently hired IRS agents] to harass our People, and eat out the Substance."
What's next?
Must be that British father thingee.
Hit the nail on the head. Your president is the head of an alien occupying force. I hope enough voters have the sense to change this dynamic in November.
BINGO!
A good article but this guy has a thing for Britain doesn’t he?
I would also question his history. Great Britain didn’t occupy America as a foreign force. America was born OUT OF that force. Americans didn’t get colonised - THEY were the colonisers.
Prince Charles was once accosted in New Zealand by an angry white woman New Zealander, holding a sign that said “Colonist go home!” Dare I say the irony is deafening.
Geography matters. The colonists that populated America were a mix of ordinary migration with a strong component of those escaping religious persecution in England. The culture that evolved from that mix was necessarily different than the stalwart authoritarian aristocracy they left behind in England. Add to that the physical separation of an ocean, and it becomes inevitable they would grow apart and develop deep and irreconcilable differences.
“Geography matters. The colonists that populated America were a mix of ordinary migration with a strong component of those escaping religious persecution in England. The culture that evolved from that mix was necessarily different than the stalwart authoritarian aristocracy they left behind in England. Add to that the physical separation of an ocean, and it becomes inevitable they would grow apart and develop deep and irreconcilable differences.”
No-one denies that but to suggest that Britain was a foreign occupier of America is to be ignorant of history and American origins.
For me the question is, if this were an alien occupying force (say we were conquered by the mighty Tuvalu), would we really all be calmly sitting around talking about how we’re gonna fix things November while our country burned down around our ears? I don’t think so. You’d have to assume an occupying force would not let something as trivial as the will of the people expressed in an election get in their way, that they’d have that figured into the plan. And you’d have to assume they think the game is already over because we are, evidently, willing to let them keep wrecking the country for the next four months. I don’t know, but that’s not how I pictured us dealing with alien invaders.
Exactly. When Mexico threw 30 million invaders over the border we... never mind.
The British were, in a de facto sense, foreigners with respect to the American colonies. The question is not one of shared origins, but of divergent cultures. There are communities here in America where the dominant culture is not dominant, and “occupying forces” would feel as strange and as deeply offend the sense of freedom as any other “formally” foreign power. As a thought experiment, put a garrison of militant San Francisco politicians in direct, dictatorial control over an Amish community and see how well that works. So my question to you is this: How long do two cultures with a common origin have to be separate before they can be considered “foreign” in relation to each other?
Exactly, and the media doesn't even have the integrity to tell Americans what those immigrants are really costing us in benefits they take from this country, in wages they send back to their country, or in the children hooked on the drugs they help smuggle in. Yet, every time I hear some politician speak it's like he's living in a dream world, talking like these are all great people who just need a break and we shouldn't begrudge them that.
Illegals only occupy 25% of federal prison space, but other than that, they're just here doing the jobs Americans won't do and stuff.
I guess it would only be fair if the French started calling us FROGS.
At least the french tried to resist.
I think it’s a matter of pride. The South Americans do the same with the Spanish and Portuguese. They talk about the big bad colonists forgetting THEY are the colonists.
Imagine 10,000 Americans from NASA start a new moon colony and 100 years later declare independence from the USA. Would it be good history to teach their children that the USA was a foreign occupier of their Lunar colony or the fact they are the foreign occupiers themselves who decided on different rule?
But what’s the bright-line rule for becoming “foreign?” Any two people groups might have some common roots, even some shared political history, if you go back far enough. Are all Indo-Europeans not foreign to each other? If they are, when did they become so? What does it take to become “foreign?” It is a thousand years? Five hundred years? Never?
I am not clear on your premise for defining “foreign.” The establishment of a different rule of government, as based on an incompatibility of cultures, is exactly what makes nations foreign, by my understanding. If you don’t allow for cultural or at least jurisdictional difference as the true basis for “foreignness,” I am not sure what else is left.
bump
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