Barack Obama Cannot Be Trusted!
For anyone who may have missed this, above is a link to a clip from a McCain rally in Minnesota from last week. The idea expressed by the woman at the end is not a new one. Barack Obama’s name is one of many handicaps that he’s had to deal with along the campaign trail for the last two years or so. We’ve never had a president with an “ethnic sounding” name. Many people seem to be uneasy with the name Barack Hussein Obama regardless of how they feel about his policies.
Here’s the interesting part in my eyes. The rambling, stuttering, ill-conceived statements of this red-white-and-blue-blooded American and McCain’s response was as follows:
Woman: “I can’t trust Obama…I’ve read about him…He’s an Arab.”
McCain: “No ma’am. He’s a decent family man, citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues, and that’s what this campaign is all about.”
We can see that ABSOLUTELY NOTHING HAS CHANGED in this country. Just as Russian equaled communist in the 80s, Arab is now synonymous with terrorist. McCain’s response, which I find abhorrent, just feeds the fire because it seems to acknowledge that were Barack Obama an Arab or of Arab descent, you would be well within your right not to trust him.
This should act as a red flag to all the ridiculously naive political analysts on television and online pundits who think that race is not much of a factor in this election. Hogwash, I say. The Bradley Effect is pronounced and significant. The average person knows, contrary to adamant racists like those of white supremacist groups and the like, that racism is morally reprehensible. Most people would never admit to another human being that they would have trouble voting for Obama because of his race or name. They know intellectually that it’s ridiculous and that we’re all human beings yet emotionally something inside them is saying not to vote for a black man or a man with a name that has Arabic roots.
On the other hand, McCain who knows better, is hardly in a position to get into a conversation with this woman about how being an Arab is not the same as being a terrorist because it would fall on deaf ears. It would be campaign suicide for him to say that being an Arab itself is not condemnable and not all Arabs are terrorists because that would somehow turn into “McCain supports terrorism!” People like the woman in this clip cannot differentiate between “good Arabs” and “bad Arabs”. Anything more than that is way too philosophical.
So to everyone who thinks that racism is so 1960s and this country has changed, you’d better take a look around and realize that sweeping dirt under the rug doesn’t make the floor completely clean. The United States has a long, dirty history of bigotry and racism that will not end or even begin to turn until the children and grandchildren of those raised during the Obama administration reach adulthood.
AK Yams
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Hmmmm . . . You mean to tell me that 72-year old John McCain, was totally flummoxed by the racism behind the question from an apparently equally old woman?
It is almost as though McCain came of age in an era before black people were afforded many (much less all) of the same civil rights as white citizens of this country.
Can we all not see the innate disdain - if not outright contempt - that McCain has for Obama written all over his face whenever the two share the stage? It goes without saying - or at least, it should - that McCain has no respect for Obama at all. We could pretend it has to do with Obama’s relative youth, but to do that we would have to overlook the fact that McCain is more than smitten with his even younger VP-selection.
So, we all know that racism exists in America. But that does not change the question: will it have an effect on this election?
Thankfully - if one can be ironically thankful to Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan - over the past 40-years, most of the racists have found a home in the Republican Party. Furthermore, while the country has been minting new voters daily - as they reach the age of 18 - the Republican Party finds itself stagnate to in decline, as more and more people tire of the outright and sub-rosa shout-outs to the racist hard-liners in the party. That is why both the Democratic Party and those registered as Independents are growing, along with increasing numbers of members for third-party groups.
Ignoring for a moment the even more virulent racism of some third-party movements (Alaska Independence Party, are your ears burning?), we are without question in a period of American history over which racism has less sway than at any point in our short existence as a republic. This election - if we work hard to turn out the vote of all those with any sympathies for liberals or progressives or merely simple thought - can produce the sort of political landslide not seen since the realignment Reagan created in 1980. Remember: that race was down to the wire and it was the final debate - days before the election - that sealed a shift across so many states from Carter to Reagan, so much so that Reagan eventually carried 44-states and received 489 EV.
Those targets are within reach for Obama in this election, irrespective of the racists in our midst. There is a possibility that McCain will merely end up with UT, OK, ID and WY in his camp come Wednesday morn.
It will take more work on our part to bring about a realignment this historic, but never before in our nation’s history has the need for such a realignment been so great.
Ever - including the Civil War period and “the greatest generation” of WWII. For we stand not just at the precipice of the end of the American Century, as we grow ever older and more indebted, but we stand on the edge of the Carbon Era and the energy we have extracted from the Earth as coal, oil and natural gas. The miracle of economic growth - which is but a few minutes on the clock of human existence - stands mute before the progress of history and with but a few more years of burning carbon and expelling it into our atmosphere, our world could change irrevocably into one more hostile for our needs as a species.
Could a small-mined racist like John McCain lead us out of the darkness and into the light?