If you oppose government-run healthcare, you are racist. Welcome to Obama-world.
It's now official. I'm a racist. No less than a former president of the United States has declared that if I oppose the takeover of 17% of our economy under the guise of health care reform, I hate black people.
According to President Carter, U.S. Representative Joe Wilson's objection to a "misstatement" in President Obama's speech to Congress last week was an act "based on racism" and rooted in fears of a black president. And a Rasmussen survey shows that fully 12% of Americans agree with him.
The old media has chimed in, with the Left's favorite columnist, Maureen Dowd, going a step further. Representative Wilson said, "You lie" to Obama. But Maureen Dowd heard, "You lie, boy." Boy being one of the many politically incorrect words the Left has decided is an indicator of racism. Point made. Case closed.
Another columnist, E. Danielle Egan, has joined the growing chorus. In the Philadelphia Enquirer, Egan blithely dismissed the approximately 2 million protestors who turned out last weekend to protest Obama's policies, writing them off as illegitimate. "So I have decided it's time that what I've been watching be called what I believe it is: racism." She continues, "The level of rage being expressed is different and out of sync with what we know from the past." I guess she was visiting Atlantis during the Bush years, or something.
And just in case anyone has missed the point, ABC has devoted a full story to the racist motives of the Obama protestors.
So there. The media and political elite have spoken. Any opposition to Obama means the protestor is a bad person. A person unable to see beyond the color of his skin. A racist. (Isn't that called profiling?)
Conveniently for these elites, they have also decided that responding to ignorant racists is quite beneath them. Being a racist is bad, therefore there is absolutely no need to respond to the underlying complaint. Whew.
This is the ultimate free pass. It almost makes me wish I had been born black. Then I could make any claims I want, without any facts to back them up, and still maintain the moral high ground. I could blame every bad decision I ever made on racism and, best of all, put my opponents in the impossible situation of trying to prove a negative.
I would gain membership in the ever growing class of "victims," which automatically grants me immunity from the normal rules of civilized behavior.
The fact that Joe Wilson was quite correct in branding Obama a liar is not the point. By diverting the issue to racial animus, Obama's "misstatement" is conveniently overlooked. This is called a win-win situation.
Wilson's audacity in branding Obama a liar has caused a national firestorm. The Left is in high dudgeon, quickly spinning the truth of Wilson's (admittedly disrespectful) assertion into a condemnation of his integrity, topping it off with the unprecedented act of issuing a formal rebuke from the House. Bad boy! (Can I say that?)
Not mentioned in this national brouhaha is Senator Reid's December 15, 2004 statement, where he called called President Bush a liar. "President Bush is a liar. He betrayed Nevada and he betrayed the country."
I guess its OK to call white guys liars. Even when they can't come up with any specific lie. It's just something everyone knows. Bush lied. Strangely enough, I've never been taken up on my challenge to pay $100.00 to anyone who can cite a specific lie that Bush told. I digress.
Also not included in the conversation the Left is successfully controlling, is President Obama's statement last week branding Kanye West a jackass. But, hey, West is black . . . this is starting to get confusing.
I'm in awe of the Left. Though they have admitted not knowing the details of the 1,000-plus pages of the Obama health care "reform," they have managed to divine what is in my heart. And the hearts of millions of others. And it's called racism.
Despite having elected a black president, the Left would have us believe that the millions of whites who voted for Obama still hate black people. They would have us believe that, even though we can't see it, racism is still a dominant force in America. It's just evolved into the silent "institutional" kind of racism that no one can quantify. But it's still there. I guess we just have to take their word for it. If we dare question their premise, we're racists. Game, set and match.
It's not as if nobody could see this coming before Obama was even elected. During the campaign, even the left's previous darling Bill Clinton – and by extension his wife – was painted with the racist brush. What does it say about us that we live in a country where a black man can be elected president, but a racist white woman can be appointed by the black president as his secretary of state
This will only be a relevant criticism as long as people continue to give credibility to the boy (no pun intended) who cried wolf.
Racism; Last Retort of the Scoundrel.
"Racism!" is the constant cry of the progressive. The charge serves two purposes:
First; once one side of the debate is labeled 'racist' further debate is unnecessary. The progressive believes he's made the only point required to prove his position. "I win the policy arguement because I have discovered you are a racist!"
Second; the progressive is spared the mental gymnastics required to defend his latest vacuous, incoherent, policy offering. The charge of "Racism!" is used as the last defense of the indefensible.
It is actually an extremely Freudian charge. It is the progressives that most note race, sexual preference, gender, and other qualifiers to 'victim' status in order to decide hierarchal issues of support. In this version of "Through the Looking Glass"; the more 'qualifiers' you can claim, the more seriously all must treat your plight. In this world, a black, transgendered, female, Muslim found to be illegally in the country could very well be the ultimate victim.
This explains the problems liberals had with the 2008 Primaries. Which 'victim' group triumphs? Is it the women's groups with their complaints of 'glass ceilings', misogyny, and suffering at the hands of a patriarchal society? Or is it the black man with his ancestral background of slavery, his generations of persecution, and unspoken societal reinforcement that "He's just not good enough?" Which group's demand to preferential treatment should be elevated over the other? Which side more clearly demonstrates our personal commitment to 'fairness'?
Progressives finally threw Hillary under the bus, deciding that the 'racial' victim group, for now, would take precedence over the 'sexual' victim group. The 2008 election wasn't about anything historic; it was all about doling out preferential treatment among the Democratic Party Institutions; which has never been anything more than a loosely organized amalgamation of special interest groups. All of which, I might add, are willing to cut the throats of any other group to advance its cause over the others.
This gives lie to the statements made during the General Election of 2008. Pundits said that the election of Barrack Obama would usher in a new era of post-racial bipartisan compromise. His election would prove that America had finally moved beyond race. Actually his election guaranteed the exact opposite. We now live in an era of hyper-racial partisanship. The progressive definition of 'bipartisanship' has always been when others cross the aisle to their point of view and never the other way around. In this world of progressive domination; any and all criticism of Obama's policies, in their opinion, are firmly rooted in institutionalized racism.
See paragraphs two and three above to establish the new progressive policy comfort zone.