10 Things That Make Me Angry: Number 6

6. Bishop Lowery's "Prayer." Inauguration Day--wow, it’s finally arrived. The day that we have been waiting for…well, some of us anyway. I am very torn about this particularly momentous moment—not too redundant a phrase, I hope—in history. The historian in me is shouting for joy and gratitude, as is the American, the Yankee, the child of Lincoln, the advocate for diversity and tolerance of all races, all peoples, all creeds. That being said, I must painfully admit, the conservative in me is not gleeful, not impressed, not saturated with the hero worship that I'm told I must absorb in order to avoid the modern-day Scarlet Letter “r” for racist, “b” for bigot, “n” for narrowminded. I even had someone I care very deeply about throw this accusation at me recently. I said that, between John McCain and Barack Obama, I felt Obama deserved the sacred honor of becoming President much less. Not because of his color, his creed, or his personality—I’m not that medieval—but because McCain had spent more than two decades in the military (including six years in a North Vietnamese POW camp, after which he still reenlisted), had spent two decades in the Senate fighting for what he thought was right, reaching across the aisle often to the dismay of his own party to get the people’s business done. Not a rock star, not a god, not a 90 percent party hack, not an idol to be worshipped by the masses…a smart, thoughtful, dedicated, virtuous American veteran and public servant who I felt had not only the experience to bring about positive effective change but also who saw the war, the nation, the world for what they really were. And what did I get for holding that opinion? The r-word thrown right in my face. “He doesn’t deserve this, Doug? You aren’t becoming a racist now, are you?” I looked back at this person, a fellow conservative mind you, in shock. Is that how it’s going to be the next four years? Are we going to be labeled traitors, fascists, bigots everytime we disagree with the Holy and Anointed One Barack H. Obama? Isn’t that what we Republicans were accused of doing while Bush was in power…of calling the other side unpatriotic, anti-American, pro-al Qaeda everytime a Democrat stood up and decried George W.’s management of the Iraq War?

Ironically, only a few minutes after this little spat between this person and myself we watched the Reverend Joseph E. Lowery, one of Dr. King’s fellow SCLC founders, ridicule white people in--and this was my favorite part--a prayer meant to show respect and honor for the day. Allow me to quote his prayer in its entirety:

"Lord, in the memory of all the saints who from their labors rest, and in the joy of a new beginning, we ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get in back, when brown can stick around, when yellow will be mellow, when the red man can get ahead, man; and when white will embrace what is right. Let all those who do justice and love mercy say Amen. Say Amen. And Yellow will be mella!"

"And when white will embrace what is right"? Glorious...so sophisticated too. What if a Republican had said that? What if a Republican President's priest, bishop, or minister had said such a thing on the sacred steps of the United States Capitol Building? When was open season declared on white people? Yes, there were white slaveowners; yes, Hitler's henchmen were all white Germans; yes, the Romans were whites who enslaved and oppressed peoples from all over the Mediterranean; yes, the cavalry who slaughtered countless hundreds, even thousands, of Native Americans protecting their own land were white. But so were the Union soldiers who defeated Lee at Gettysburg, who liberated Richmond and the South and established martial law to prevent slavery from being reborn; so were the Yankees who freed poor Cuban farmers from the oppressive yolk of Spanish tyranny in 1898; so were most of the American GIs who fought, who were wounded, who were often killed in the fight against the Nazis to liberate the Jews from their hellish concentration camps; so were the American soldiers who fought and died to help liberate the Japanese, the South Koreans, the South Vietnamese; so were the Protestant ministers down south who risked life, limb, and liberty to speak out against their fellow whites who were preaching racism and segregation; and guess what? So were the thousands, indeed millions, of supporters who voted for Barack Obama to cleanse the racial guilt they should not have been forced to bear in the first place, or to simply show their support for a political candidate with whom they agreed.

And guess what? Blacks can be racist, fascist jerks too...Idi Amin, Robert Mugabe, Mobutu Sese Seko, just to name a few. Not to mention the Black Panthers here at home--racist militarism is bad no matter what color is involved. Newsflash, Latinos can be evil too, even here in America...just read about some of the horrible things done by the Spanish conquistadors to the Native Americans in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, or about the massacres of unarmed civilians and enemy combatants by Generalissimo Santa Anna, or about the Hispanic gangs like MS-13 responsible for hundreds, even thousands, of deaths in L.A., south Texas, and elsewhere. As for Native Americans, they have done their fair share of brutality. Thousands of innocent white settlers were massacred from the time we landed at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607, until the effective end of the Indian Wars in 1890. Yes, the U.S. government was less than forthright or honorable in its dealings with Indian tribes, but does that justify lighting missionaries on fire, ripping out their tongues, eating their hearts, pouring pots of boiling water on them? If you think I'm exaggerating, I'd be more than happy to share with you the accounts I've read of such events. And as for Asia? How much time do you have? Whether it's the systematic torture, terror, and conquest of the Ottoman Empire, or the rampaging fervor of Mongolian Genghis Khan, or the racist imperialist militarist fascist Japanese oppression of the 1930s and 1940s (just ask China), there's plenty of guilt for the Asian cultures to go around. But do we burden non-white races with these things? No, and we shouldn't. "What is past is prologue," to quote my buddy Oliver Stone (sarcasm!). So why are whites all KKK members all of a sudden? Huh, Dr. Wright? Huh, Rev. Lowery? Forgive me if I drag up the frightful racial ghosts and goblins of the past, but if you don't understand the history every nation, every culture, every ethnic group has then you can never understand the sheer dishonesty and inaccuracy of what the PC lobby tells you.

How dare you, Reverend Lowery? I know you've worked hard for justice and fairness towards your people, and I salute you for that. I fell in love with the history of the African American civil rights movement long ago, but that doesn't negate my feelings about your speech. How dare you rail about politics at Coretta Scott King's funeral three years ago, in the very presence of four living U.S. Presidents, all of whom appointed minorities to their administrations? How dare you profane the Inauguration with your snide, stupid, racist prayer making fun of whites and Asians, and then join hands with the political correctness crowd to crucify those who dare say anything negative about any black, any Hispanic, any Arab? Where is the consistency? Where is the respect for whites that you wish them to show to blacks? Where is the gratitude for the day, the thankfulness that the most powerful man in the history of the world is an African American? I applaud Glenn Beck for writing a letter to President Obama complaining about your indecency. I can already hear the cries of "racist" from those who lapped up your little poem; I can already hear the accusations that I'm overreacting, that I'm just a pitiful white nerd who is jealous of Barack Obama and his victory. Well, in part that's true but it's deeper than that: I'm big on consistency of moral outrage, on actually showing love and respect and tolerance even for the Big Bad White Man. If you claim to be the heirs to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s legacy, then do like he would expect and see black and white as no better, no worse, no different. "Celebrate Diversity," right?

10 Things That Make Me Angry: Number 7

7. Obamania. I have yet to really write a blog about Barack Hussein Obama, but I think it is about time that I do so. I have expressed my thoughts and feelings about the man in private conversations, little posted items on my Facebook profile, etc., but have yet to really put down on paper what I think of this phenomenon called President-elect (President in two more days) Obama.

First of all, let it be known that I am extremely happy that my country finally has elected an African-American President (although he is not 100 percent in that heritage, I think it is irrelevant to the discussion at this point). Indeed, I will do my best to honor and respect his authority, and will refrain from insulting him or calling him disrespectful names. That being said, I’ll be honest: I’m a bit peeved. A whole lot peeved, in fact. Here are half a dozen reasons—and I could probably come up with more, but I will spare my poor readers:

1. He…has…done…nothing. Not as President anyhow. I drove through my hometown in Michigan recently, and on the corner in the Democratic Party office’s window a sign read “Yes We Did.” Did what? Got elected? That’s the easy part. Now govern, now do what’s right, now save America like you’ve promised. I am reminded of the 1976 election in which James Earl “Jimmy” the Peanut Farmer Carter was expected to be the savior from the evil Nixon legacy and the mediocre Gerald Ford administration. Instead, we got four years of incompetence, inefficiency, and embarrassment: Iran hostage crisis, oil embargo, economic collapse, super-high taxes, creation of the disastrous Department of Education, you name it. At the very least it paved the way for Ronald Reagan to take office in 1981.
2. Michelle. Yes, she’s smart; yes, she’s beautiful; yes, she’s a capable wife and mother, but with the millions of wonderful, patriotic, hardworking housewives we have in this country, we have to get the one who arrogantly declares she was never proud of her country until her own husband became a contender for President. Does anyone else feel condescended to?
3. William Ayers. Yes, Obama does know him; yes, Obama has worked with him on “education reform” (whatever that means); and yes, Ayers has given Obama glowing praise in more than one interview. Yikes. Liberals can say, “We don’t believe in guilt by association,” but I’ll remind them of that the next time some Republican is caught in the same room as George W. Bush. If you dish it, take it.
4. Obama’s nutty preacher friends: Jeremiah Wright and Michael Pfleger. Obama belonged to Wright’s church in Chicago for twenty years and, unless he was asleep in the pew or busy playing his Game Boy, heard every incendiary word Wright spoke. While I honor Dr. Wright for his military service and understand his bitterness over the treatment he received back home, I cannot condone his “theology.” We can play the “out of context” game all we want, but the fact of the matter is, we have elected to the highest office in the land a man who has approved of and been repeatedly instructed by a man who thinks of America as a racist, fascist, militaristic society not worthy of praise or merit…a man who has said “God damn America” in public and has said that big bad America (“the U.S. o f K.K.K.A.” in his words) deserved 9/11. Never mind the many blacks and minority individuals who died horribly that day as well. As for Pfleger, who has publicly threatened gun salesmen and been arrested for disorderly conduct, he screams twice as loud as Wright in his sermons and makes even less sense. He made a fool of himself for railing about Democrat Hillary Clinton and how she resents Barack Obama because of his being black. If anything, she resents him because she lost. I don’t say much in favor of the Clintons, but they have always been staunch defenders of the African-American community—why else would Toni Morrison, a black writer herself, refer to Bill as the first African-American President? The media can complain all it wants about the crazy Religious Right, but the crazy Religious Left is alive and well too.
5. The media’s “slobbering love affair” with Barack, as political and current events commentator Bernard Goldberg calls it. Absolutely inexcusable. Sickening, really. I watched a CNN special preparing for the Inauguration earlier today and had to turn it off because everything said about Obama was so Orwellianly positive, optimistic, uncritical, laudatory. Does anyone realize the inherent danger of not criticizing one’s President, of living in a country where the most powerful person never receives a shred of bad press? The scariest part, I think, is the comedians who say there isn’t anything about Obama they could possibly make fun of. What? What about his arrogance? His big ears? His enormous smile no matter what the situation? His never-ending effort to please every man, woman, child, and creature without ever ruffling a feather or wrinkling a forehead? His inexperience? His endless flip-flops on the Iraq surge, offshore drilling, raising taxes, gay marriage? Out of all that, you can’t find one thing to ridicule or humorize? Does your Bush derangement syndrome have the side effect of Obama infallibility? We’re all human—we all make mistakes, we all need redemption, we all have annoying foibles and shortcomings. Make use of them! This is not Jesus Christ, Santa Claus, or the Easter Bunny… this is a human being. This is a weak, sinful, prideful man like you and me. And incidentally, this is not Abraham Lincoln. I can’t imagine anything more presumptuous or self-congratulatory than Obama following the same train route as Lincoln in 1860, but oh…he’s already done that.
6. His views. Senator Barack Obama has a 90 percent lifetime approval rating from Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) and has been named the most liberal Senator in the United States Senate. Moderate? Uniter? Bipartisan? I think not. He may not ram his liberal ideology down the American people’s throats, but I do believe he will subtly try to fulfill such an agenda (he’s much smarter than Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi put together, I will say that for him). The man who champions the little guy condones the infanticide of 4,000 silent victims every day here in America; encourages Georgia to show restraint when it is blitzkrieged by mighty Russia; supports super-high taxes on corporations and businesses and massively increased wages for union workers, which compel “greedy” American companies to decrease jobs and look elsewhere for better business. Regardless of the moderate rhetoric, Obama is a dyed-in-the-wool liberal who is not likely to change with majorities in both houses of Congress and a vast majority of American governors being Democrats.


In closing, let me say this: I will support Barack Hussein Obama (no, I’m not being racist by using his midde name; as an historian, I like using presidents’ full names) when I think he’s right, I will refrain from calling him nasty names or dragging his family into the mix (yes, I criticized Michelle, but I realize she is not the Prez and will try not to make a habit of it); and I will give him the benefit of the doubt on every issue. I will not do, I refuse to do, what you maniacal anti-Bush folks have done for eight years now. I will not berate, I will not rant or rave, I will not despise. God forgive those who have done so to George Walker Bush. He is a good and decent man who, just like Barack Obama will, has made his fair share of mistakes in office. He is not a Nazi, he is not Adolf Hitler Junior, he is not a dictator. If he were, you would all be in prison for saying such provocations. You Bush haters on the left who preach tolerance and love and diversity and political correctness are no more privy to those things than the David Dukes and Strom Thurmonds with whom you equate all conservative Republicans. I don’t dislike Barack Obama, I don’t detest him, I will resist all temptations to bash and belittle him. I am overjoyed that Dr. King’s work has come full circle.

But I will close with something “arrogant” and provocative myself: that’s what makes conservatism better. We put the emphasis on individual responsibility, on personal morality and goodness rather than on collective dogma, enforced politeness, and hero worship. Why do you think so many more Republicans dislike George W. Bush than Democrats dislike Bill Clinton? If you want “Change We Can Believe In,” you can start by challenging your own Messiah when you think he’s wrong. Feel free to desert the cult, people. He’s a mortal, he’s a man…you only hurt your leader and your country when you expect the actions of a god. It's not fair to Barack to place such high expectations on him. Obama’s place of work is Washington, not Calvary. OK, now I’ve said my piece…time to move on.