Last November I wrote about an experience at a bowling alley just days after the election. I had made a small joke about Barack Obama's dismal bowling score, an embarrassment he endured during the 'get in touch with blue collar folks' part of the Democratic primary campaign. I had spoken the comment off the lanes in a one-one-one discussion but a passerby, a black man bowling on one of our other teams, heard it. I was deemed a "Racist!" and a "Hater!" and the tension was so thick that I was predicting a brawl in the bowling alley before the game was through.
I'm just glad, for my sake, that I didn't make any comments about Obama's race!
I questioned in the article and later in some supporting commentary if this was the sign of things to come, will there be a trend forming where any criticism of Obama will be hit with the charge of racism, the classic leftist intellectual fallback position?
XXXXX XXXXX of Newsvine [name blocked to protect the Left] responded to this question with, "...it seems a bit extreme to be worried that it will be a "trend" of some sort." Doing his part for this non-existent trend, he added, "I've heard stories, both in the news and anecdotally [sic], of horribly racist things said about Obama, but I wouldn't write an article asking if it's a "trend" we should expect from the GOP."
He'll just mention that he's heard it, but if he doesn't write about it then it's not a problem - no one making empty charges of racism here! His logic is dizzying!
The interesting part of what XXXXX and others believe is that often what is identified as racist is not racist at all. In some cases, such as the opposition to government health care, it's not even racial. Diversity is supposed to be wonderful and beautiful, yet the Left uses and abuses diversity as a political hammer, exploiting differences between people to guilt or shame their political opposition into compromise. It's worth noting that the word "diversity" is similar to the word "division".
Coincidentally, "diversity" is also a lot like "divert", which is often the motivator behind the Left's accusations of racism. The only time the Left denies or refuses to identify racism is when there is actual racism involved in a story or event. Otherwise, it's almost a rule of thumb that when charges of racial bigotry are injected into a debate, it's practically a guarantee that race has nothing to do with it. I wasn't quite sure what to think of Joe Wilson's outburst during President Obama's government health care speech to Congress…that is until people began to frame Wilson's shout out of "You lie!" as one motivated by racism. That's when it became obvious to those of us who know how to process this stuff that the president must have been lying.
Hank Johnson, a Democratic Congressman, stated that if the attitude of Wilson and other government health care opponents aren't rebuked, the "logical conclusion" to allowing people to oppose President Obama is that "we'll probably have folks putting on white hoods and white uniforms again and riding through the countryside, intimidating people."
Diane Watson, a black Democratic Congresswoman from California, declared, "They are spreading fear and they're trying to see that the first president who looks like me fails" (apparently black people think that all black people look the same) - because prior to Obama, Republicans and conservatives loved Democrats! All around role-model Charles Rangel said of those not hypnotized by The Obama and who didn't vote for Him, "They go to sleep wondering, 'How did this happen?'" (of course Rangel could be referring to the sensible minority of New York's 15th District who ask themselves this question every two years)
That about represents the Democrat mind at its best. Rep. Johnson wasn't clear on if he believed that racist Americans were going to start riding actual horses in his fantasy or not. Pundits and activists like Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, Maureen Dowd and Janeane Garafalo have all characterized opposition to government health care as being steeped in racism. One of America's most enduring and inspirational anti-Semites, Jiminy Carter – always looking for a way to make his presidency less pathetic by being even more pathetic as a post-president – even went so far as to declare that racists made up an "overwhelming portion" of government health care opponents.
Somehow Democrats have managed to slip this black guy right past us and into the White House! Because Obama's race never came up during the campaign, millions of Americans thought Obama was a regular white guy! It only makes sense that opposition to government health care can only be a racist notion – after all, the same opposition occurred when Hillary Clinton tried to ram this big government boondoggle down America's throat and those of us who have seen Hillary speak to black churches in the South know just how mocha she is.
The current crop of Democrats and their Leftist agents have one of the strangest ways of winning in politics that I have ever encountered. Their strategy is to denigrate and isolate potentially 50% of the American public – including some moderate Democrats and huge numbers of independents who are now secretly apologizing for foisting this catastrophe of a presidency on their fellow Americans. Nothing brings new supporters and voters into your tent more than slandering them with labels such as 'bigot' and 'racist' when all they want is a controllable federal government. By making enemies of the very people they need support from, only then will government health care pass. Obama understands this and the implications this will have for his party and his own reelection; even he is telling these bratty children to knock it off.
The Left throws these charges around as if it's unreasonable and completely unheard of for Americans to oppose giving the federal government massive expansion and intrusion into our most personal matters. To equate this very American attitude with racism is ridiculous – if Obama announced tomorrow that he was going to push to lift government regulations on health insurance, these same 'racists' would be rallying around him, treating him like a hero (yes, these same racist Republicans who are very fond of their black party chairman).
So if it's racist to oppose big-government health care, I guess the "logical conclusion" is that the concept of big-government is a racial concept; that big-government is apparently a 'black thing', as infused with black skin color as the BET network.
Ultimately, we all know what the truth is (except perhaps the aging Carter, who recently began asking for updates on the Iranian hostage crisis). Even the most rabid of leftwing ideologues know that accusations of racism ring hollow. Mainstream Americans need to understand that if a Democrat ever calls them 'racist' for expressing a political view, chances are that their view is right and decent and American.
