Twenty years from now historians and social critics will be able to look back on the
Obama is a secret Muslim who hates Christians and America and wants America to fail phenomenon with a bit more detachment than we can currently muster, and hopefully with a bit more interest than we can currently muster as well. Of interest is not that the premise exists, but the extent to which it was (is) adopted into the central belief system of the Republican Party. When an omnipresent former vice president muses not just that Obama may be the "worst president we've ever had" but, more pointedly, that Obama's policy decisions are what a leader might do if that leader secretly "
wanted to take America down", he is not merely insulting the president but playing to the similarly omnipresent theories supposing that the sitting president might be doing just that.
The former vice president is not alone, after all; the number of sitting and former members of the House and the Senate, as well as Republican party functionaries of various levels and a seemingly innumerable number of state officials, that have expressed the notion that Obama is a secret other have ensured those "theories" have remained firmly in the public eye throughout the first nonwhite president's two terms of office. And, of course, the notions of the president being an illegitimate American, or an illegitimate Christian, or a man who sympathizes more with terrorists or foreigners than with Our American People all seem to crop up most regularly among party members who already have made a name for themselves as persons particularly uncomfortable the nonwhite members of our broader population. Ex-Congressman Tom Tancredo covered all the bases during his most recent interview.
“Listen, this president, no matter how he tries to portray himself in terms of his religious proclivities — because he’s never been baptized, to anybody’s knowledge, in a Christian church — we do know, of course, of his past participation in Islamic religion in terms of schooling and that sort of — so, the reality is he is not a Christian,” he said. “I don’t think he cares one twit about what Christians say. And I think, this is my belief, that he is antagonistic to Christianity because it is part of Western Civilization, and that is what he also finds disdainful.”
These are peculiar theories. They are not, however, uncommon ones. The notion that the current president was "indoctrinated" during a few grade-school years abroad has been a staple of Fox News theories on why the president may secretly seek to knock the nation down a few pegs; the premise that Obama is
anti-colonial, to use the most common expression, is used as shorthand to convey "proclivities" that lean against "Western Civilization" and towards the myriad enemies of that civilization.
(Continued, below the fold.)
Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2005—Diagnosing Joe Klein:
Joe Klein, columnist for Time Magazine, is of course, most famous as the "Anonymous" author of "Primary Colors", the roman a clef about the Clintons.
Today, Klein is most prominent playing the role of scold to the Democratic Party, most notably on Russert's Meet the Press.
In his column this week, Klein takes the opportunity of the Schiavo travesty, and the DeLay Scandal and the Pope's passing, to find, yet again, somehow to find fault with Democrats. Don't get me wrong, I am sure this "tough love" is all with the good of the Party and the country in mind. I don't have a problem with that. My problem is that Klein's analysis and advice is so poor. The question is why? Klein is not a stupid man - in fact he can be very astute at times. But not about Democrats of late. Some examples from his column:
There has been a fair amount of covert gloating in the liberal community over the congressional Republican flameout. Senator Bill Frist's ridiculous videotape diagnosis of the stricken woman, DeLay's toxic effusions, the President's unseemly dash to Washington to sign the Schiavo legislation all found their just rewards in the polls that revealed an overwhelming public disgust with the political shenanigans. But Democrats would be wise to stow their satisfaction and give careful consideration to what thoughtful conservatives are saying about the role of the judiciary in our public life because the issue is about to get a lot more contentious.
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I do not understand how any candidate survives a presidential race in the Age of Twitter.
— @RalstonReports
On
today's Kagro in the Morning show: the Walter Scott shooting tops the news. Tom Coburn carries the "states' rights" ball out of bounds, declares touchdown.
Greg Dworkin joins the police shootings discussion, rounds up Rand Paul news, notes the newest assaults on the poor, and takes us through the politics of medical certification. Conservatives love devolution, but only when power comes to rest with them.
Joan McCarter breaks down Rand Paul's campaign launch nonsense and mansplaining, and Ted Cruz's interest in creating a constitutional crisis. Joan also offers her thoughts on the Scott shooting, and recommends John Oliver's interview of Edward Snowden for our edification.
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As a nation, we still ignore all of it. Fox News may host an off-kilter psychologist to talk about the sitting president's "anti-American" inclinations for years, but there is no similar query by the other networks as to why such a theory is so very commonplace among the right-leaning. Congressmen and vice presidents can all pop up with those theories in front of town halls, or during press interviews, or within the Capitol itself but no connection seems to be made or conclusion drawn as to how such curious theories came to be or what the common links between those that suppose them might be.
It is because our political press is, broadly speaking, genteel. We do not like to think poorly of our national leaders even when they are clearly people who should be thought poorly of; this is why a budget proposal that relies on figures outside the bounds of our own reality is still considered a serious attempt, and why Sen. Jesse Helms was not considered a sack of shit even though a lifetime of evidence would seem to support that claim. We do not like to broadcast notions that yes, the various cities surrounding St. Louis are dens of open racial oppression, and linking the elected and non-elected leaders of those regions with the flagrant racism of their policies is simply not done. The racist policies just happened. We don't know how. It is a crying shame, America, but all the forces of our national press can find no explanation for how this could have happened.
We do not like to talk about racism, period, so supposing an individual is operating from racist assumptions is right out. We cannot explain why Ted Cruz is obviously a true American and Barack Obama is more questionable, it is just one of those things that happened. We cannot explain why so many people think spending a few very young years abroad in a Muslim nation is the stuff of indoctrination, but the notion of presidents being secretly indoctrinated by anti-American forces while studying abroad simply did not come up until this moment. We cannot explain the exact cultural phenomenon that led birth certificates or terse newspaper announcements to move from rote documents to hotly contested ones; it happened, to be sure, but since we can summarily discount any racial overtones to those queries we find ourselves thoroughly stumped as to why, exactly, the fuss became a fuss. We have a prominent ex-congressman looking for the long-form baptismal certificate. We're not sure why.
It is probably going to take a few long decades to determine why. The why will probably become clear only after the people we must be steadfastly polite to have died off, thus freeing our most prominent national observers and political wags to suggest that, looking back, perhaps their intentions were not all that pure. It is important to be accurate when reporting on our discourse and our politics, of course, but it is more important to be polite about it. As every generation from the 1960's to the 1980's to the now can attest, America is not a racist nation and our politicians are not racist and only the boors among us would think such things. We don't know why all these curious things happen, they just do.