The Hate, Now And To Come:

On January 20^th 2009 Barack Hussien Obama was sworn in as the 44^th President of the United States of America. Administering the oath of office to the new pres­i­dent was chief jus­tice John Roberts an appointee of George W Bush the 43^rd pres­i­dent whom Obama suc­ceed­ed. Roberts opt­ed to admin­is­ter the oath from mem­o­ry and botched it, every­one laughed off the man­gling of the oath,no one was pre­pared to allow any­thing to cloud that fate­ful day many peo­ple thought they would nev­er live to see.

America appeared jad­ed, the coun­try want­ed some­thing inspi­ra­tional to cheer about, we were engaged in two wars that were still drag­ging on with no end in sight and no under­stand­ing of what vic­to­ry would look like .Many were already invok­ing the word Vietnam into the war dis­course. America’s image abroad was in tat­ters , the coun­try and it’s pres­i­dent were lit­er­al­ly seen as a cow­boy with a bad atti­tude. The econ­o­my was in a reces­sion, the mag­ni­tude and scope of which experts gross­ly underestimated.

Despite the bad econ­o­my, two wars, the ter­ror attacks of September 11^th 2011, there was a gen­uine feel­ing of antic­i­pa­tion in the coun­try. America seemed to have crossed that divide, it had final­ly come of age , it had elect­ed a black man president!

It was awe­some to see the new first cou­ple as they held hands and basked in the glow of what must have been a sur­re­al feel­ing of “this is not real­ly not hap­pen­ing to us”.

Many of the over 3 hun­dred mil­lion Americans basked in the glow of the moment, blacks and whites, Jews and gen­tiles, for a moment we were all Americans. If the feel­ing in America was pal­pa­ble, the images on tele­vi­sion depict­ing the absolute joy on the faces of hun­dreds of mil­lions the world over, on every con­ti­nent, told an elec­tri­fy­ing tale. They were cheer­ing for Barack and Michelle, but one got the feel­ing they were cheer­ing for America, that they were cheer­ing for the good­ness and decen­cy deep with­in human­i­ty. A good­ness and decen­cy that had final­ly worked its way to the sur­face. It had tak­en hun­dreds of years, many tears but final­ly our human­i­ty had final­ly worked its way to the sur­face . Somehow we had final­ly come to the real­iza­tion that the super­fi­cial dif­fer­ence of skin col­or was all that sep­a­rat­ed us. That the blood that flowed with­in our veins was all the same blood irre­spec­tive of the col­or of our skin.

We were for that moment in time, all God’s children.

But as we are well aware, there are oth­er forces with­in the uni­verse. We were brought crash­ing down to the ran­cid real­i­ties of the oth­er side of what we had all wit­nessed . The oth­er side of what we all felt. We were brought back to the pre­em­i­nent feel­ing that we should not have indulged in that moment, because there would be pay­ment exact­ed by the uni­verse. The oth­er shoe would drop. We became painful­ly aware that those euphor­ic feel­ings we expe­ri­enced have sim­i­lar con­se­quences to the tem­po­rary high derived from a drug abuse indulgence.

All of us ‚as we allowed our­selves the lux­u­ry of that euphor­ic indul­gence, were painful­ly aware that not every­one shared in our joy. We were con­ver­sant based on the his­to­ry of this great coun­try, that there was a dark shame­ful side, that did not dis­ap­pear the day Obama was elected.

What I cer­tain­ly was not pre­pared for is the scorched earth return to Jim Crowe in the year 2012 in America. A scorched earth that not only scooped up African-Americans but threat­en to engulf oth­er groups who felt they had over­come in America.The avalanche of hate swept up women , immi­grants, Gays and lesbians,Labor unions, work­ing poor, the mid­dle class, and pret­ty much any­one who was­n’t a mem­ber of the white male club.

Even though we expect­ed that there would be a back­lash against blacks for Obama’s breach­ing of the last bas­tion of white suprema­cy, we were large­ly unpre­pared for the Tsunami of hate that was to follow. 

We nev­er antic­i­pat­ed the return of Jim Crowe. We did not antic­i­pate the Senate Minority leader say­ing his pri­ma­ry focus was to make Barack Obama a one term pres­i­dent. No one fore­saw Jan Brewer Arizona Governor stick­ing her fin­ger in the face of the pres­i­dent of the United States, Or rook­ie Supreme court asso­ciate jus­tice Samuel Alito shak­ing his head and mouthing “not true” to his oppo­si­tion to their recent cit­i­zens unit­ed deci­sion. A colos­sal bad deci­sion, the effects of which are already being felt in the fight for America’s Democracy. Maybe we should have seen the likes of South Carolina’s con­gress­man Joe Wilson shout­ing “you lie” at the pres­i­dent, as he deliv­ered his state of the union address.

In fact those of us mes­mer­ized by the ascen­sion of Barack Obama, were naïve in our euphor­ic trance. How could we not see the pos­si­ble attempts at dele­git­imiza­tion of the lunatic right in the form of the birther non­sense. How could we not rec­og­nize that some mis­guid­ed ele­ments in the mil­i­tary would refuse to take orders from the pres­i­dent, argu­ing that if the order is unlaw­ful they have a right to dis­obey? How could we not see that Obama’s ascen­den­cy would not cre­ate a con­fla­gra­tion of hate groups? In fact how could we not see a total and uni­fied com­ing togeth­er of repub­li­cans , house and sen­ate in oppo­si­tion of Obama that would vir­tu­al­ly clog up the works, mak­ing it impos­si­ble to get any leg­is­la­tion of mean­ing passed .

There is noth­ing beneath the lunatic igno­ra­mus fringe of the right that they deem too offen­sive to hurl at the pres­i­dent. Even those who were once con­sid­ered reasonable(sic) have now fall­en vic­tim to the genealog­i­cal defi­cien­cy called racism. So it is now accept­able for Iowa US Senator Charles Grassley to refer to pres­i­dent Obama as stu­pid. Race aside, I would read­i­ly throw my hat into ring for Obama when it comes to intel­lect, over Chuck Grassley. No group is above the gut­ter behav­ior. We have seen that the pow­er struc­ture of the dom­i­nant white male is feel­ing uncer­tain of itself. High court judges, and top actors with­in the catholic church have not seen fit to main­tain the thin veneer of faux respectabil­i­ty that once obtained in their enclaves. A veneer that masks a sore that refus­es to heal, a sore called racism.

President Barack Obama won the pres­i­den­cy with­out win­ning the white vote. This is scary for white men who have seen the last bas­tion of their lies torn down and laid bare for all to see for what it was for cen­turies, a damn lie. All men are cre­at­ed equal under God, by god. The infe­ri­or­i­ty com­plex inher­ent in some, that caus­es them to vis­it all types of unimag­in­able evil on oth­ers dif­fer­ent from them­selves in order to show them­selves supe­ri­or has been exposed and they are scared to death. The very lies which gave them legit­i­ma­cy has been stripped away, and they have been exposed to be just like every­one else, ordi­nary peo­ple , not supe­ri­or, not from a mas­ter race, just a pile of mat­ter like every­one else.

This aspect of white suprema­cy has served white men for cen­turies they are not about to roll over and die. As a mor­tal­ly wound­ed ani­mals can be par­tic­u­lar­ly dan­ger­ous, so too is the van­quished lie of white suprema­cy. Obama rep­re­sents all that they hat­ed in oth­ers, he rep­re­sents what they feared for cen­turies, the results of remov­ing the glass ceil­ing and the sticky floor. Despite the vile putrid attacks lev­eled at him this pres­i­dent and his wife con­tin­ue to smile and be grace­ful , exud­ing the grace and charm that many could only hope to emu­late. This White house thus far, despite snares from their ene­mies has been scan­dal free. There is no talk of infi­deli­ty, no talk of impro­pri­ety, as such the hate mon­gers are left dis­parag­ing the Obama’s for being the prod­ucts of ivy League edu­ca­tion. You know you are doing good when your ene­mies can only con­jure up lies and dis­tor­tions in order to attack you.

President Obama has stead­fast­ly sought to advance the equal­i­ty of all ‚just as he promised as can­di­date Obama,he signed

The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 is an Act of Congress enact­ed by the 111^th United States Congress and signed into law by on January 29, 2009. The bill amends the Civil Rights Act of 1964 stat­ing that the 180-day statute of lim­i­ta­tions for fil­ing an equal-pay law­suit regard­ing pay dis­crim­i­na­tion resets with each new dis­crim­i­na­to­ry pay­check. The law was a direct answer to the Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., 550 U.S. 618 (2007), a U.S. Supreme Court deci­sion hold­ing that the statute of lim­i­ta­tions for pre­sent­ing an equal-pay law­suit begins on the date that the employ­er makes the ini­tial dis­crim­i­na­to­ry wage deci­sion, not at the date of the most recent pay­check, as a low­er court had ruled.(source wikipedia​.com)

He has appoint­ed two women to the United States Supreme Court. Associate Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor. Sotomayor the first Hispanic to be appoint­ed to the high­est court in the land. His Administration has sided with wom­en’s groups in their fight against Republican assault on their repro­duc­tive rights , one which start­ed out in repub­li­can cir­cles as an Obama’s assault on reli­gious free­doms. That shell game did not sur­vive the smell test and was rather quick­ly revealed to be an attack on the repro­duc­tive rights of women.

His cab­i­net is remark­ably rep­re­sen­ta­tive of women.

Hillary Clinton Secretary of State:

Hilda Solis Secretary of labor:

Kathleen Sebelius Secretary of Health and human services:

Janet Napolitano Department of home­land security:

The fol­low­ing equiv­a­lent to cab­i­net positions

Lisa P Jackson envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion agency:

Susan Rice Ambassador to the United Nations:

Karen Mills Small busi­ness administration:

By all accounts this is an impres­sive array of pow­er­ful women,the pres­i­dent has demon­stra­bly shown his com­mit­ment to women and what’s impor­tant to them. Republicans may bury their heads in the sand , but this is exact­ly the rea­son Mitt Romney’s 4 point lead over Obama with women was wiped out and the pres­i­dent up in some polls by 12 – 15 points. Women are pay­ing attention.

Republican can­di­dates did not do them­selves any favors when they remained silent or at best mouthed mealy-mouthed ratio­nal­iza­tion of loud mouth Rush Limbaugh’s attack on a George Town University law stu­dent Sandra Fluke. Limbaugh in tra­di­tion­al style ref­ered to miss Fluke as a whore and a pros­ti­tute. Her crimes? tes­ti­fy­ing to a demo­c­ra­t­ic Congressional com­mit­tee on the prob­lems fac­ing young women in get­ting con­tra­cep­tive cov­er­age in their health insur­ance. Limbaugh’s boor­ish attack saw dozens of adver­tis­ers on his radio show run­ning for cover. 

Republicans in state after state have draft­ed leg­is­la­tion that seeks to strip away rights once believed to be set­tled laws. Many women are now won­der­ing whether in light of recent devel­op­ments, Roe:vs Wade is set­tled law.

Republican hate and hypocrisy has no lim­its, for the dura­tion of Bush 43^rd Presidency we were del­uged with the term “judi­cial activism” from the pres­i­dent, nei­ther the supreme court, the gods on the fed­er­al 5^th cir­cuit nor their polit­i­cal coun­ter­parts had a prob­lem with the pres­i­dent blast­ing the high court.

Of course all of the afore­men­tioned have a prob­lem with President Obama stat­ing that the supreme court has no busi­ness strik­ing down a law passed by a con­gres­sion­al major­i­ty. In fact what the pres­i­dent meant was that the supreme court should, if there are con­sti­tu­tion­al issues with a piece of leg­is­la­tion, send it back to the con­gress for fine tun­ing. But that aside, is the supreme court above crit­i­cism? Where is it writ­ten that no one may crit­i­cize the supreme court, least of all the President of the United States of America.

What the last three years plus has shown is the entrenched racism in this coun­try, cement­ed large­ly around white male. This elec­tion will be like noth­ing the world has ever seen before, it seemed they did not believe that Obama could win in 2008 , now they are not about to have him serve anoth­er four years. They will pull­out all the stops, the results will be like none we have seen before . That is how hate­ful repub­li­cans fight, by using lies innu­en­dos dis­tor­tions and cater­ing to peo­ple’s fears .

It is time that decent peo­ple stand up and repu­di­ate the hate mon­gers and the wares they are ped­dling. America is stronger because of its diver­si­ty, not despite it. America was not built by white men alone, it was built on the blood sweat and tears of blacks , native Americans, and all of the oth­ers who toiled to make this coun­try what it is. No one has a monop­oly on her, it belongs to all that have come and gone. Those who believe they own America will have a hard time defend­ing that posi­tion as this coun­try gets more and more diverse. Their fear is palpable.