I don’t know about the rest of you, but I am disgusted by the crazy self-professed Christians whose recent “Faith and Freedom” Convention was highlighted by the presence of crude racist figurines of President Obama in the urinals.
This crude and childish prank was only marginally more offensive than last Saturday’s call for Obama’s impeachment by the South Dakota GOP. (As a friend noted on Facebook, Article I of the specifications would be “Governing while black.”)
I have a news bulletin for the South Dakota Republican Party: disagreeing with a President and/or his policies is not grounds for impeachment. Like him or hate him, find him competent or feckless, this President has done nothing remotely approaching the high crimes and misdemeanors that warrant impeachment. Impeachment isn’t a recall mechanism. (Besides, if Dick Cheney wasn’t impeachable, no one is.)
There are lots of reasons why people might disagree with this or any President. And certainly this is not the only era in which toxic partisanship has encouraged unhinged animus toward an occupant of the White House. But in my (long) lifetime I have never seen anything approaching the level of pure hatred, disrespect for the office of the Presidency, and complete and utter irrationality that has characterized the reaction of so many Americans to the Obama Presidency.
Is everyone who opposes this President a racist? Of course not.
But most of those who hate him are. And in their hysterical efforts to deny our first black President any policy or political successes, these moral midgets are willing to block progress for the whole country. They are willing to keep judicial and administrative positions unfilled for years. Willing to shut down the government. Willing to oppose measures that they themselves introduced and formerly championed. Willing to tear the country apart in order to blame Obama for failing to hold it together.
They are willing to piss on America if just a little of that piss lands on the President.
There was a post on Facebook yesterday from a crazy woman accusing President Obama of cross-dressing and having sex with older men during his collge years. I commented that she must be a full member of the “Christian” GOP and a friend of Rush Limbaugh. I got a reply from a man who stated to the effect, he would like to see an article about Limbaugh but this one was about Obama – then he told me to keep up. How do you reach people with any truth on any issue when people do not HEAR what you say or READ what you write? Their mind seems to go blank and then backtrack to Jim Crowe days when the name of President Obama comes before them. This also seems to be true of the Constitution and all Amendments; they have convinced themselves these well thought-out documents, meant to fairly serve everyone in this country, is as they believe they should be to better serve themselves. The pictures in the urinals is another abuse of Freedom of Speech as protected by the 1st Amendment and the proliferation of guns on our steets is the misinterpretation of the 2nd Amendment. The upcoming elections in November have me worried that money and lack of voter rights in some areas will dig us deeper into the deep, black hole (no pun intended) of racism. It is with us 24/7; sometimes overtly as in this ugly urinal instance but mostly covert – a dog whistle format – to those who have been paying attention. Being profoundly deaf the past 4-5 years I have HEARD more racism and irrational definitions of the Amendments than were openly spoken 30 years ago. How can we offset the effects of this – VOTE IN NOVEMBER TO BEGAIN CLEANING UP CONGRESS. Then, begin looking forward to selecting the best candidate for 2016 to begin returning this country to the real United States of America.
If these acts you describe we’re being done by folks in another country, these same people would be outraged. They are haters. When Obama is gone, they will be finding someone or something else to hate. They get stimulated by hate the same way drug addicts get their highs from substance. You cannot hate like that and follow the teachings in the New Testament. They deceive themselves when they call themselves Christian.
Our Christian Taliban…
It would appear that current Political Parties of the United States have similarities to the Political Parties of Great Britain in the 1840’s. Corruption, Cronyism, the Old Boy Network, Racial Profiling, etc, etc. Government in Britain went through a period of purging and cleaning itself up. At or around 1860 the political system had streamlined itself, reduced the annual budget by 20 million pounds per annum, while building schools and hospitals. Additionally, the number of elected officials was also reduced in the streamline process.
This cannot happen here without the general public going out and voting. It also needs dedicated/intelligent people running for public office. I have often listened to the line “surround yourself with intelligent people, etc” and everything will be OK. Unfortunately, an idiot surround by six intelligent people is still an idiot. I’m sure that the fear of losing one’s situation and paycheque is a valid reason for not pointing out irregularities and mistakes in governance to those who have elected positions by those who have appointed positions.
America is a relative new nation (238 years so far) has anybody learned anything as yet?
Is this nation really ready to part of the rest of the world?
Because we appear to be sliding backwards, not going forward.
I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned this before but I can only report about my own family relationships and how the second election of President Obama split our family in two. Totally and completely broke my Mother’s heart the way that my brother stopped all communication with her. For 30 years, my brother lived in Indy and called our Mother every week for a chat. Once the President was elected the second time that was the final straw. He divorced himself from the liberals in the family. Absolutely no reason why he would do this and when Mother finally forced him to talk months later, he said that he was upset about Obama winning and that he didn’t want to talk to her. Or me. Or my other brother. Totally and completely shut us out. That is racism pure and simple. He listens to Rush and watches fox daily. Nothing more needs to be said and my Mother who is 82 is just heartbroken. The man has no shame. It’s disgusting. Oh yeah, he’s the Catholic. My Mother still cries about it. She said, what did I do wrong? I said, nothing Mother. He’s a grown man. He’s made this decision and you are just one of the enemies in his mind.
AgingLittleGirl; wonder if we have a family connection somewhere down the line. When I divorced my 1st husband whom my family loved deeply, my father offered me money to drop the divorce. When I refused, he ignored me totally for 12 years. When I married my 2nd husband, a black man, I was disowned and disinherited and my ex-huband was made executor of their wills and set to inherit my 1/3. This was later reversed when they discovered the ex-husband should have been divorced years before I made the move…and he was/is a white Republican. My father would spin in his grave if he knew I voted for JFK and that I was an Independent voter – not Republican till – turning Democratic the past 10 years. Nothing separates a family faster than politics, racism or religion; when you combine any two of them – the split is usually permanent. Sad, isn’t it? I look at it this way; I didn’t lose much but they did:)
JoAnn, this split has broken my Mother and she didn’t deserve that. After not discussing politics at all in our family, we were all a bit surprised and thought he’d get over it. Two years later and he’s still not talking to her and THAT has infuriated my brother and I. You know, how many years does my Mother have left?
“Faith and Freedom”. Really? Freedom? How dare they use that word.
Faith is a choice among desirable unknowns. Which possibility do I wish for. Freedom is what allows that choice.
These people think in terms of what their faith entitles them to. In truth, faith is a free personal decision that entitles one to nothing.
The Constitution doesn’t grant freedom. It captures our consent to be governed. What parts of our lives we give over to collective decision making for the greater good provided no infringement into the parts we reserve for ourselves.
Our consent to be governed reserves what we say as a personal decision.
We, collectively, get to hire and fire our governors. We don’t get to hire and fire our freedoms though.
Our specific freedoms from government oversight are what we require from our duly elected government, and what we choose to grant to each other.
Faith is not government. Our consent to be governed is clear on that. The faithful are free to say, but, thank whoever anyone chooses, not free to govern.
Our democracy requires responsible action on the part of every citizen. Perhaps most important is the election of those who fully support the kind of government that we have consented to. Right minded actions are always based on knowing pertinent reality. Knowledge has to be the basis for the power of we, the people.
Forums like this are, therefore, the bastions of freedom. Not the silliness of those who favor their personal choice of divine guidance. Perhaps good for them, but we choose the freedoms that we have eliminated government from, not what any religion would determine.
The mislabeled ‘Christian Right’ actually implies ‘Christian White’, and they seem to be OK with that. Nothing christian about that! Nothing!
Our President is bi-racial and he is still President. They have never dealt with it. They never will. They are NOT willing to see past the color of his skin. So then, we haven’t come very far with this equality thing, have we?
None of us can even imagine to what extremes President Obama’s security team has gone in just keeping him alive the past six years. We also cannot imagine how he manages the enormously important affairs of this country along with the not-so-subtle insults he encounters on a daily basis. He deserves much more respect as a man and as the President of the United States.
As a white daughter, sister, mother, grandmother and great-grandmother I dislike refering to President Obama as “black”. I have, on occasion used that term for simplicity, but that term negates his white heritage; the loving mother, grandmother and grandfather who raised him to be the fine man he is. Their nurturing and guidance brought him to the point in life where he has TWICE been elected to the most powerful position on this earth. Anyone who has read southern novels, as well as southern history, are aware that it seems to be an established fact that one drop of black blood somehow determines a person’s race. I have one biracial great-granddaughter, two biracial great-grandsons and one Mexican American great-granddaughter. Were President Obama’s mother and grandparents living, I can tell you as fact that they would resent being excluded from his ancestry. I resent those who refer to my great-grandchildren as black – that sadly includes some family members. Racism will never disappear from this country any more than racism, bigotry, anti-religion distrust or the caste system disappear from other countries. This is a sad fact that the world shares and refuses to let go of except in small groups of open-minded, humanistic, intelligent people everywhere. I am proud to be part of the slowly changing racial history in this country who supported, highly praised and sent what financial donations I could afford to be a player in the part of America’s history to elect TWICE a phenominal biracial American man as president.
I think this calls for segregated bathrooms again …
One for the republicans with Obama’s in the urinal
and
One for the democrats with George W Bush in the urinal
(Romney, wasn’t worth pissing on)
I can’t but think that these comments from the SD GOP and Eric Cantor’s victor in Va. will be found in the history books years from now under the topic of how America was changing from a predominately WASP society to a more ethnically diverse one. Nativism is not dead.
Amen!