The Department Of Pointing Out The Obvious (DOPOTO) welcomes former President of The United States James Earl Carter to our world. In a question and answer session at The Carter Center in Atlanta, our former president responded to a question about the verbal attacks on our current president, Barack Obama, specifically the large number of Nazi and Adolph Hitler comparisons being bandied about. Mr. Carter’s response was: “There is an inherent feeling among many of us in this country that an African-American should not be president,” thus identifying the 800 pound gorilla in the national living room; racism. His comments naturally resulted in a torrent of denials of a character similar to one where William Shakespeare once noted how a certain party “doth protest too much.”
Kudos to Jimmy Carter, a man of honesty and integrity. The cynical and careful ways racists operate these days fool few Americans, yet even fewer of us are willing to point out the obvious, perhaps out of fear of being smeared with the same brush, or unwilling to revisit the national agony that is race relations for the entire history of the United States. Many would love to pretend that the election of a black president has waved a magic wand over the issue of racism and made it disappear. They would also like to pretend that the Wall Street titans who made all the money disappear will one day make it magically reappear with a “Presto, Change-O!” and tell us that the whole financial collapse was “all part of the show, ladies and gentlemen.”
The Department Of Pointing Out The Obvious, however, cannot let such illusions stand. Our mandate is a simple one: separate the wheat from the chaff, a duty that we take quite seriously. And so the firestorm over Mr. Carter’s candid observation begins. It will be interesting to see how President Obama’s critics justify their comparisons of the man to Adolph Hitler and his party to the Nazis, comparisons that should be saved for only the most heinous of mass-murdering dictators and their tyrannical state apparatus. So far it is an empty bag of gas, otherwise there would be no public voices of opposition or anti-government rallies permitted, as anyone with the slightest familiarity with The Third Reich can attest.
And exactly what element does the opposition appeal to when they spread lies about Mr. Obama being a Muslim of Kenyan birth? Certainly not to Rainbow Coalitionists. To be perfectly clear, that would be the racist elements of American society. Never before in the history of this Republic has a movement been launched to impeach a president before he has even been sworn into office. Generally those efforts are reserved for when a sitting president commits a crime against the Constitution he has sworn to uphold. Thus far in Mr. Obama’s 8 months as president he has yet to propose any legislation or practice any executive policies that would violate the United States Constitution. So, while impeachment is not a realistic option, it seems that thinly disguised racial attacks on his character are the way to go, those being far easier than formulating actual ideas and workable policies as an alternative to the president’s own agenda.
When Republicans brand Mr. Obama a Marxist and a Socialist, are they not purposely omitting the Republican Corporate Welfare System they created and maintained for decades? Taxpayer-funded direct welfare payments and tax relief to wealthy corporations have far outstripped the subsistence level welfare payments to underprivileged individuals by trillions of dollars and always have. They prefer that our nation abominates the poorest recipients of social benefits while ignoring the wealthiest beneficiaries of government handouts. The recent massive bailouts of America’s financial industry by both the Bush The Younger and the Obama Administrations were merely automatic extensions of an extensive Corporate Welfare State long established and rarely questioned.
Republicans walk on thin ice indeed with the Socialist accusations, so perhaps that explains the shift to Nazi comparisons, where no embarrassing corollaries can be pointed out, except perhaps for their torture and domestic spying policies. Perhaps they feel that impugning the man’s character and doing everything short of openly calling the president “a Nigger” will disguise their appeals to racist America. Not on DOPOTO’s watch, or Jimmy Carter’s either. The American people are not stupid, at least not many of them. Racists are are a dying breed, running in packs and howling that the sky is falling, and perhaps it is. On them. On their evil philosophy. On their day in the sun.
As for the rest of America, they have elected progress and turned their backs on racism. The results of the 2008 elections were obvious. Whether President Obama is a great president, a lousy president or somewhere in the middle of the pack has no bearing on the choice made in 2008. A man was judged by the content of his character and not found wanting. He was handed an overwhelming majority in both Houses of Congress and expected to govern according to his own lights within the Constitution of The United States of America. If that exposes the racists for who and what they are, so much the better. The Department Of Pointing Out The Obvious likes things to be clear and unambiguous. Frankly, we are uncomfortable with deceit.
This has been a report from The Department Of Pointing Out The Obvious.