Let me start this possibly controversial topic by saying that right now, because the law states that to be eligible to run for president, one must be a "natural born" American, that if incontrovertible proof ever comes up that Obama was born in Kenya, as he claimed when it was politically advantageous for him to do so, then I firmly believe he should be removed from office. However, I personally don't care where he was born; if he was born and raised in Texas but was still the man he is, with the policies and job performance he has, he'd be just as awful.
But in this post, I'm gonna admit something that might sound weird, coming from a conservative. I don't think being born in the United States should be a factor in whether or not you can run for president.
Think about it. What sense does it really make? After all, the presidency remains the only political office you cannot hold if you were born elsewhere than on American soil. Why? What does that have to do with anything?
Take the case of Ted Cruz. Cruz was born in Calgary, Alberta because his parents were at the time working in the oil industry. As I gather, they moved back to the US when he was still an infant, and he was raised as an American his entire life. Also, because his mother was an American citizen, he was granted American citizenship from birth. But then, his father is from Cuba. Does this mean he's not "natural born", as birthers have accused Obama of not being, even if he was born in Hawaii?
Well, the fact is, this is ridiculous. Assuming Obama was born in Hawaii, and as far as I'm concerned he was, then he should be eligible for the presidency, the same as how John McCain was born in the American Embassy in Panama, which is only American soil because it's been legally declared such.
The difference is, Ted Cruz was raised in America by Americans (well, his mother, anyway) who taught him to love America. John McCain was raised in America by Americans who taught him to love America (and to love compromise, but that's another story). Barack Obama was raised in Kenya and Indonesia by Communists who hated America and taught him to hate it. I don't care where any of them were born; where they were raised, what country they call home and whether or not they show themselves to love their country; that's all that should matter. Obama may be an American by birth, but he sure isn't by loyalty.
Really, all that this law's remaining on the books has done in recent years is to draw up inconsequential and silly arguments about whether or not so-and-so is legally able to run. Be it Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio or Bobby Jindal, the subject of where they were born or where their parents were born keeps coming up whenever their potential presidential aspirations comes up. The problem is, who cares?
Ted Cruz has proven that he loves this country and is an American at heart. So has Bobby Jindal. Marco Rubio is slowly proving that he is a Cuban at heart and doesn't give a rip about America's immigration laws. That is all that should matter.
Now, Cruz isn't my first choice for the GOP presidential nomination in 2016, and to be frank, no one is right now. There are a lot of people I'd love to see in that office, and quite a few others I'm hoping against hope decide not to run or get crushed in early primaries (Chris Christie, for example). But I hate to think that we're still at a point where we care where the candidates were born.
Tuesday, August 20, 2013
Friday, August 16, 2013
Race: Liberals Justify Anything and Everything
If a conservative is speaking on a political topic, liberals will find some way to make what they say into a statement of racial hatred. They will find one word, or phrase, and decide to conflate that into something racial, even when it's clear that race had nothing to do with it.
There was a website, that's since been taken down, that detailed the words, phrases and ideas that have been declared "racist" by the left since Obama became a household name. The list was both hilarious and frightening to read. Apparently, when conservatives say "peanut butter and jelly", "apartment" or "Chicago", what we're really doing is pandering to our racist base by using "code words" or "dog whistles." Also, using someone's first name is racist. When Newt Gingrich called John King and Juan Williams by their first names during the endless GOP debates during the 2012 primaries, white liberals like Chris Mathews called them racist for it. Yes, for nothing more than calling them "John" or "Juan". As far as I know, any time a politician addresses a member of the press, it's by their first name. But when Newt Gingrich does it and the journalist is black, that's racist.
Whoever the next GOP presidential candidate is, he or she should prepare themselves to be called "racist" at every turn, even if they're running against a white Democrat. They can guard what they say as carefully as they want. They can stay away from phrases like "black cloud" or "black sheep", or anything having to do with color at all, but that won't matter.
The candidate could ad-lib before a speech "Whoo boy, it's hot out today", and somebody, Chris Mathews or Chuck Todd or whoever, will suggest they're making a casual racial slur with their use of "boy". Don't laugh; almost that very thing happened to Mitt Romney. When, during a debate with President Obama, Romney responded to an accusation that his tax plan will raise taxes on low-income Americans to pay for tax cuts for the rich, he made the following statement: "I will not reduce the share paid by high-income individuals. I know that you and your running mate keep saying that, I know it's a popular thing to say with a lot of people, but it's not the case. Look, I have five boys, I’m used to people saying something that's not always true and keep on repeating it and ultimately hoping I will believe it. That is not the case. I will not reduce the taxes paid by high-income Americans. And number three, I will not, under any circumstances, raise taxes on middle-income families. I will lower taxes on middle-income families." (bold is mine)
Kevin Baker and Chris Hayes both decided that Mitt Romney had just called Barack Obama a "boy". No, I'm not kidding. Now, read that full quote in context. There is simply no way to believably pull a racial subtext from that. There just isn't. Romney was clearly making reference to his sons' attempts to lie their way out of a situation, as young boys are wont to do, and keep repeating the lie, hoping each time they do so that it sounds more convincing. Romney was calling Obama a liar, which Obama is, several times over, but to call this a racist statement is ludicrous. It happened, but it's stupid.
In an ideal world, it would be Baker or Hayes that suffered embarrassment at the comparison, but apparently some people actually believed that Romney was calling Obama a "boy".
Near the end of Michelle Bachman's run for the GOP nomination, she gave an outdoor speech on a rainy afternoon. A tent was set up and she and those who were there to listen to her speech crowded into a tent, already drenched. Bachman, her hair hanging damply around her face, wiped rain from her brow and asked the crowd "Who likes wet people?" This is clearly what she said, and it also makes perfect sense in context.
According to MSNBC, she was asking the crowd "who likes white people", and was clearly making a racist statement. Only in liberal-land where up is down, black is white and the party that has always stood for freedom regardless of skin color is the party of racism.
So, again, to whoever is hoping to run in 2016, be prepared to get called a racist. No matter what you say. But what if it's someone like Allen West? Well, as we saw with Herman Cain, he'll get called an Uncle Tom, race traitor or "house n-----r". He or she will get accused of "tokenism". Again, I'm not making that up.
"Tokenism" is a term for when a mostly white organization of any sort really wishes to display a veneer of diversity, so they hire one black person to join them. If a law firm wants to appear racially mixed even though it's made up entirely of white people, they'll hire one black lawyer, make him or her partner and bingo; they're diverse. Back in the 90's, if a TV series has an all-white cast and someone pointed that out, the producers would fall over themselves trying to find a black actor to fill a role that obviously exists only so they can add the black character (kinda how they do today with ensuring they include a gay character). Two of the more obvious examples that I can think of are The West Wing, which added the role of black attache to the president Charlie Young after a few groups complained that the entire cast was white. He didn't have much to do, but he was there now. The show had nothing to do with race relations but still, people cried racism, so a poorly-thought-out character (whose only purpose on the show was to be subservient) was clumsily added to the cast. The other was a short-lived TV series from the man behind Dawson's Creek. It was called Wasteland and was about six super-attractive adults. Of course it was. All six cast members, three guys and three girls, were white. Complaints about that started before the series even aired, so in a last minute decision, they added a black actor to the cast. One black actor. Now there were seven characters including four men, and since the show was about sex and relationships (of course it was), the black character was more or less left out in the cold. That's because he was nothing but a token. Now, the show was utter crap and unlike Dawson's Creek didn't clog up the airwaves for six years before everyone realized that, but still, it was an obvious case of tokenism.
Of course, you can't really call it "tokenism" if the number of blacks in the organization begins to grow. Off the top of my head I can list the following prominent conservative black political figures, either politicians or commentators; Allen West, Herman Cain, Tim Scott, Mia Love, Clarence Thomas, Condeleeza Rice, Sonja Schmidt, Alfonzo Rachel, Larry Elder, Walter Williams and Thomas Sowell, and there are quite a few more. It would be "tokenism" if there was only one or two of them, and they all just parroted whatever the white conservatives said. But listen to what any one of those people I just named have to say about modern politics and race relations and you will hear some pretty interesting and diverse opinions on the subject.
When liberals accuse us of "tokenism" when we point out that black conservative Republicans exist, they increasingly look like they're accusing the TV show The Wire of tokenism. The Wire is a now-cancelled HBO series about the drug trade in Baltimore from all sides of it; cops, lawyers and politicians (the corrupt kind and the more-or-less honest kind), high-level and low-level dealers, stick-up artists, addicts and work-a-day schmoes living in drug-infested neighborhoods. It ran for five seasons and got a ton of critical acclaim, which, I might add was deserved. I would suggest the cast was about 80% black. Of course, the modern GOP is not 80% black but it's far from The West Wing or Wasteland in terms of black representation, and we're hardly just scrounging up a few puppets to look like we care about diversity. Black conservatives are uber-passionate. If we could stir up a tenth of their passion in the current GOP congress, we'd win every election and we'd have swayed the media to our side by now. Black conservatives aren't conservative because they're sucking up to white people. They're conservative because that's what they want to be. Many of them have tried the other side and know how full of shit it is. Alfonzo Rachel even compares liberalism to "the plantation" and he and others call themselves "runaway slaves" who managed to escape the liberal plantation.
Terroja Kincaid, an internet reviewer who is almost equal to Michael Moore in terms of obnoxiousness, once talked about Glenn Beck's special on black conservatives on his youtube channel "The Amazing Atheist" (he's only half right in that title, by the way). If you didn't know, Beck did a special where all his guests were black conservatives and every audience member was also a black conservative. Kincaid was dismissive, saying that the whole thing reminds him of when racist people try to say they're not racist because "some of my best friends are black."
I just don't get the logic here. I guess I do understand how the claim "some of my best friends are black" might inspire eye rolls. The person making the claim might be obviously lying, or deciding that the clerk at their corner store who sells them their cigarettes counts in this claim, or the black people he or she describes as "best friends" may in fact not feel the same about them. I don't make that claim myself, because I'd prefer to say "I'll call anyone a friend unless you do or say something to me or my family that changes that." Personally, I don't care about skin color in and of itself. At all. I work in a diverse office with every skin tone imaginable. My church looks like the United Nations. And I just plain don't care. I make no claim that the fact that I work and worship around people of a vast variety of skin tone makes me not racist. I claim that the fact that I work and worship with them and never give their skin color a second thought does.
But Kincaid's reaction to Beck's special just confirms to me that to a committed leftist, conservatives will always be racist. The argument is entirely circular. Glenn Beck is a racist. Why? Because he is conservative (well, libertarian, but it's good enough for them). Why does that make him racist? Because conservatives are racist. Why? What makes you paint them all with the same brush? Because they love people like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh. But why do you call Rush Limbaugh a racist? Because he's conservative.
See, I see Glenn Beck sitting in a room with people who are mostly on the same page politically as he is. He's showing everyone how they all get along. He looks at a black conservative and says "I don't care what your skin color is; I like what you've got to say." That's racism now?
Actually, here's racism for you; demanding that all people of a certain ethnicity think, talk, dress, act, work and vote alike, or they're not "authentic". I really don't understand how this hasn't become widely known for the racist idea that it is. Think about it; no longer are you an individual. No longer can you do anything the way you want to. You have to conform to a role, or you're an outcast. And all because you happen to be born with a high melanin content.
Bill Maher can have white person after white person on his show or in his audience. He has black guests as well, but I'd say a majority of his guests have been white, as are a majority of his audience members. But he agrees with the idea of what "authentic" blacks are, so therefore he's not a racist.
But Glenn Beck says "I don't care how you look, dress, behave, or speak. I want to do a special where I show that there really are black people who vote Republican or self-identify as conservative. So if you're black and do either one or both, come one, come all." Apparently, that's racist.
Glenn Beck will never convince people like Terroja Kincaid that he's not racist, though. That's the thing; in the mind of a leftist, once he's declared you a racist, that's what you are. And all the justification he needs to do so is to hear that you're even just slightly right of center.
What Kincaid obviously meant was that the black people in Beck's audience and his black guests didn't count because they're "Uncle Toms". And we're back to the circular argument! Leftist logic dictates that if you are black, you vote Democrat and self-identify as liberal (even if you're really not). Why? Because Republicans are racist.
"But," says the black conservative. "I've studied the Republican platform, and I agree with a good deal of it, almost all of it. I never saw anything racist in it. Why shouldn't I vote Republican?"
Simple, because to do so makes you an Uncle Tom.
"Why?"
Because Republicans will never accept you.
"Are you kidding? I live in a heavily Republican area. Almost everyone I know is a Republican. I've never been judged or ostracized by any of them. In fact, the last person to call me the n-word was a white Democrat who didn't like that I voted for Romney."
He called you that because you hate yourself. Otherwise you wouldn't have voted for Romney.
"What? Obama's taxing the "rich" has crippled my small business. My business only earns 300,000 but I now pay almost 80% of that back in taxes. I can now only keep one other full time staffer other than myself. And thanks to Obamacare, which I can't afford, I also can't provide benefits to himself or me, and now I'm gonna have to pay a fee because I've opted out of Obamacare, so either way I'm looking at my business failing within the next six months. I voted for Romney because between the two of them, his ideas on how to save businesses made more sense. Now I'm stuck with President You-Didn't-Build-That. If I truly hated myself, I would have voted for him!"
You're just a shill for the man.
"What are you talking about!? Obama IS the man! He's president, and his party controls the Senate! If I was looking to shill for someone, it would be the Democrats!"
You have Stockholm syndrome. Republicans hate you. They only pretend to like you because you tell them what they want to hear.
"So...if I start telling YOU what YOU want to hear, I'm no longer an Uncle Tom, even though you're white."
Right. Because I'm a Democrat. I accept you.
"But wait, I thought you'd only except me as an authentic black if I start saying only things you agree with."
True.
"So...how's that any different from Republicans liking the fact that I agree with them?"
They're racists. I'm not.
"Listen, I go to church with a Republican who's farther to the left than I am. He believes in big government as long as the government is religious. I think government should be small and unobtrusive; there to protect me but not there to run my life or anyone else's. He and I disagree fervently about this and other issues. He's also white. But despite his being a white Republican and he and I disagreeing on several issues, we're still friends. In fact, when he and I talk politics, it always stays civil and respectful. As a matter of fact, he and all white Republicans I've ever met treat me better than ANY Democrat, left or right, once they find out I vote Republican."
...They're racists. They only accept you because you call yourself a Republican.
"But you've already admitted that you will only accept me if I start voting for and supporting Democrats. You also claim that you're not a racist."
Right, because I'm a Democrat.
"But if they're racists because, so you claim anyway, that they only accept me because I agree with them politically, why are you NOT a racist if you reject me because we disagree?"
Because, as a Democrat, I allow you to truly be yourself.
"You're not even hearing yourself. You've said repeatedly that you WON'T allow me to be myself and still accept me. I have to start saying things you agree with first."
Once you start agreeing with me, you can be an authentic black.
"How on earth can that be true? You're white! How does agreeing with another white person make me more authentic? Listen, until I told you my political persuasion you were all ready to accept me. You apparently believed I was an authentic black until then. Now you accuse me of being self-loathing, an Uncle Tom with Stockholm syndrome. And all because my political leanings differ from what you, a white person, believe they should be. So now, until I change my political leanings to be more like yours, a white person, you will reject me and see me as "not authentic." And yet you want to call Republicans racist!"
I'm gonna stop the conversation here because it's just gonna go in circles. The core principles are this: Democrats, especially white ones, are always exempt from charges of racism, even when they openly display it, such as ripping on blacks who "escape the plantation". Republicans, on the other hand, are racist no matter what.
I still can't believe the lengths liberals go to to justify this, and they can't even see it!
There was a website, that's since been taken down, that detailed the words, phrases and ideas that have been declared "racist" by the left since Obama became a household name. The list was both hilarious and frightening to read. Apparently, when conservatives say "peanut butter and jelly", "apartment" or "Chicago", what we're really doing is pandering to our racist base by using "code words" or "dog whistles." Also, using someone's first name is racist. When Newt Gingrich called John King and Juan Williams by their first names during the endless GOP debates during the 2012 primaries, white liberals like Chris Mathews called them racist for it. Yes, for nothing more than calling them "John" or "Juan". As far as I know, any time a politician addresses a member of the press, it's by their first name. But when Newt Gingrich does it and the journalist is black, that's racist.
Whoever the next GOP presidential candidate is, he or she should prepare themselves to be called "racist" at every turn, even if they're running against a white Democrat. They can guard what they say as carefully as they want. They can stay away from phrases like "black cloud" or "black sheep", or anything having to do with color at all, but that won't matter.
The candidate could ad-lib before a speech "Whoo boy, it's hot out today", and somebody, Chris Mathews or Chuck Todd or whoever, will suggest they're making a casual racial slur with their use of "boy". Don't laugh; almost that very thing happened to Mitt Romney. When, during a debate with President Obama, Romney responded to an accusation that his tax plan will raise taxes on low-income Americans to pay for tax cuts for the rich, he made the following statement: "I will not reduce the share paid by high-income individuals. I know that you and your running mate keep saying that, I know it's a popular thing to say with a lot of people, but it's not the case. Look, I have five boys, I’m used to people saying something that's not always true and keep on repeating it and ultimately hoping I will believe it. That is not the case. I will not reduce the taxes paid by high-income Americans. And number three, I will not, under any circumstances, raise taxes on middle-income families. I will lower taxes on middle-income families." (bold is mine)
Kevin Baker and Chris Hayes both decided that Mitt Romney had just called Barack Obama a "boy". No, I'm not kidding. Now, read that full quote in context. There is simply no way to believably pull a racial subtext from that. There just isn't. Romney was clearly making reference to his sons' attempts to lie their way out of a situation, as young boys are wont to do, and keep repeating the lie, hoping each time they do so that it sounds more convincing. Romney was calling Obama a liar, which Obama is, several times over, but to call this a racist statement is ludicrous. It happened, but it's stupid.
In an ideal world, it would be Baker or Hayes that suffered embarrassment at the comparison, but apparently some people actually believed that Romney was calling Obama a "boy".
Near the end of Michelle Bachman's run for the GOP nomination, she gave an outdoor speech on a rainy afternoon. A tent was set up and she and those who were there to listen to her speech crowded into a tent, already drenched. Bachman, her hair hanging damply around her face, wiped rain from her brow and asked the crowd "Who likes wet people?" This is clearly what she said, and it also makes perfect sense in context.
According to MSNBC, she was asking the crowd "who likes white people", and was clearly making a racist statement. Only in liberal-land where up is down, black is white and the party that has always stood for freedom regardless of skin color is the party of racism.
So, again, to whoever is hoping to run in 2016, be prepared to get called a racist. No matter what you say. But what if it's someone like Allen West? Well, as we saw with Herman Cain, he'll get called an Uncle Tom, race traitor or "house n-----r". He or she will get accused of "tokenism". Again, I'm not making that up.
"Tokenism" is a term for when a mostly white organization of any sort really wishes to display a veneer of diversity, so they hire one black person to join them. If a law firm wants to appear racially mixed even though it's made up entirely of white people, they'll hire one black lawyer, make him or her partner and bingo; they're diverse. Back in the 90's, if a TV series has an all-white cast and someone pointed that out, the producers would fall over themselves trying to find a black actor to fill a role that obviously exists only so they can add the black character (kinda how they do today with ensuring they include a gay character). Two of the more obvious examples that I can think of are The West Wing, which added the role of black attache to the president Charlie Young after a few groups complained that the entire cast was white. He didn't have much to do, but he was there now. The show had nothing to do with race relations but still, people cried racism, so a poorly-thought-out character (whose only purpose on the show was to be subservient) was clumsily added to the cast. The other was a short-lived TV series from the man behind Dawson's Creek. It was called Wasteland and was about six super-attractive adults. Of course it was. All six cast members, three guys and three girls, were white. Complaints about that started before the series even aired, so in a last minute decision, they added a black actor to the cast. One black actor. Now there were seven characters including four men, and since the show was about sex and relationships (of course it was), the black character was more or less left out in the cold. That's because he was nothing but a token. Now, the show was utter crap and unlike Dawson's Creek didn't clog up the airwaves for six years before everyone realized that, but still, it was an obvious case of tokenism.
Of course, you can't really call it "tokenism" if the number of blacks in the organization begins to grow. Off the top of my head I can list the following prominent conservative black political figures, either politicians or commentators; Allen West, Herman Cain, Tim Scott, Mia Love, Clarence Thomas, Condeleeza Rice, Sonja Schmidt, Alfonzo Rachel, Larry Elder, Walter Williams and Thomas Sowell, and there are quite a few more. It would be "tokenism" if there was only one or two of them, and they all just parroted whatever the white conservatives said. But listen to what any one of those people I just named have to say about modern politics and race relations and you will hear some pretty interesting and diverse opinions on the subject.
When liberals accuse us of "tokenism" when we point out that black conservative Republicans exist, they increasingly look like they're accusing the TV show The Wire of tokenism. The Wire is a now-cancelled HBO series about the drug trade in Baltimore from all sides of it; cops, lawyers and politicians (the corrupt kind and the more-or-less honest kind), high-level and low-level dealers, stick-up artists, addicts and work-a-day schmoes living in drug-infested neighborhoods. It ran for five seasons and got a ton of critical acclaim, which, I might add was deserved. I would suggest the cast was about 80% black. Of course, the modern GOP is not 80% black but it's far from The West Wing or Wasteland in terms of black representation, and we're hardly just scrounging up a few puppets to look like we care about diversity. Black conservatives are uber-passionate. If we could stir up a tenth of their passion in the current GOP congress, we'd win every election and we'd have swayed the media to our side by now. Black conservatives aren't conservative because they're sucking up to white people. They're conservative because that's what they want to be. Many of them have tried the other side and know how full of shit it is. Alfonzo Rachel even compares liberalism to "the plantation" and he and others call themselves "runaway slaves" who managed to escape the liberal plantation.
Terroja Kincaid, an internet reviewer who is almost equal to Michael Moore in terms of obnoxiousness, once talked about Glenn Beck's special on black conservatives on his youtube channel "The Amazing Atheist" (he's only half right in that title, by the way). If you didn't know, Beck did a special where all his guests were black conservatives and every audience member was also a black conservative. Kincaid was dismissive, saying that the whole thing reminds him of when racist people try to say they're not racist because "some of my best friends are black."
I just don't get the logic here. I guess I do understand how the claim "some of my best friends are black" might inspire eye rolls. The person making the claim might be obviously lying, or deciding that the clerk at their corner store who sells them their cigarettes counts in this claim, or the black people he or she describes as "best friends" may in fact not feel the same about them. I don't make that claim myself, because I'd prefer to say "I'll call anyone a friend unless you do or say something to me or my family that changes that." Personally, I don't care about skin color in and of itself. At all. I work in a diverse office with every skin tone imaginable. My church looks like the United Nations. And I just plain don't care. I make no claim that the fact that I work and worship around people of a vast variety of skin tone makes me not racist. I claim that the fact that I work and worship with them and never give their skin color a second thought does.
But Kincaid's reaction to Beck's special just confirms to me that to a committed leftist, conservatives will always be racist. The argument is entirely circular. Glenn Beck is a racist. Why? Because he is conservative (well, libertarian, but it's good enough for them). Why does that make him racist? Because conservatives are racist. Why? What makes you paint them all with the same brush? Because they love people like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh. But why do you call Rush Limbaugh a racist? Because he's conservative.
See, I see Glenn Beck sitting in a room with people who are mostly on the same page politically as he is. He's showing everyone how they all get along. He looks at a black conservative and says "I don't care what your skin color is; I like what you've got to say." That's racism now?
Actually, here's racism for you; demanding that all people of a certain ethnicity think, talk, dress, act, work and vote alike, or they're not "authentic". I really don't understand how this hasn't become widely known for the racist idea that it is. Think about it; no longer are you an individual. No longer can you do anything the way you want to. You have to conform to a role, or you're an outcast. And all because you happen to be born with a high melanin content.
Bill Maher can have white person after white person on his show or in his audience. He has black guests as well, but I'd say a majority of his guests have been white, as are a majority of his audience members. But he agrees with the idea of what "authentic" blacks are, so therefore he's not a racist.
But Glenn Beck says "I don't care how you look, dress, behave, or speak. I want to do a special where I show that there really are black people who vote Republican or self-identify as conservative. So if you're black and do either one or both, come one, come all." Apparently, that's racist.
Glenn Beck will never convince people like Terroja Kincaid that he's not racist, though. That's the thing; in the mind of a leftist, once he's declared you a racist, that's what you are. And all the justification he needs to do so is to hear that you're even just slightly right of center.
What Kincaid obviously meant was that the black people in Beck's audience and his black guests didn't count because they're "Uncle Toms". And we're back to the circular argument! Leftist logic dictates that if you are black, you vote Democrat and self-identify as liberal (even if you're really not). Why? Because Republicans are racist.
"But," says the black conservative. "I've studied the Republican platform, and I agree with a good deal of it, almost all of it. I never saw anything racist in it. Why shouldn't I vote Republican?"
Simple, because to do so makes you an Uncle Tom.
"Why?"
Because Republicans will never accept you.
"Are you kidding? I live in a heavily Republican area. Almost everyone I know is a Republican. I've never been judged or ostracized by any of them. In fact, the last person to call me the n-word was a white Democrat who didn't like that I voted for Romney."
He called you that because you hate yourself. Otherwise you wouldn't have voted for Romney.
"What? Obama's taxing the "rich" has crippled my small business. My business only earns 300,000 but I now pay almost 80% of that back in taxes. I can now only keep one other full time staffer other than myself. And thanks to Obamacare, which I can't afford, I also can't provide benefits to himself or me, and now I'm gonna have to pay a fee because I've opted out of Obamacare, so either way I'm looking at my business failing within the next six months. I voted for Romney because between the two of them, his ideas on how to save businesses made more sense. Now I'm stuck with President You-Didn't-Build-That. If I truly hated myself, I would have voted for him!"
You're just a shill for the man.
"What are you talking about!? Obama IS the man! He's president, and his party controls the Senate! If I was looking to shill for someone, it would be the Democrats!"
You have Stockholm syndrome. Republicans hate you. They only pretend to like you because you tell them what they want to hear.
"So...if I start telling YOU what YOU want to hear, I'm no longer an Uncle Tom, even though you're white."
Right. Because I'm a Democrat. I accept you.
"But wait, I thought you'd only except me as an authentic black if I start saying only things you agree with."
True.
"So...how's that any different from Republicans liking the fact that I agree with them?"
They're racists. I'm not.
"Listen, I go to church with a Republican who's farther to the left than I am. He believes in big government as long as the government is religious. I think government should be small and unobtrusive; there to protect me but not there to run my life or anyone else's. He and I disagree fervently about this and other issues. He's also white. But despite his being a white Republican and he and I disagreeing on several issues, we're still friends. In fact, when he and I talk politics, it always stays civil and respectful. As a matter of fact, he and all white Republicans I've ever met treat me better than ANY Democrat, left or right, once they find out I vote Republican."
...They're racists. They only accept you because you call yourself a Republican.
"But you've already admitted that you will only accept me if I start voting for and supporting Democrats. You also claim that you're not a racist."
Right, because I'm a Democrat.
"But if they're racists because, so you claim anyway, that they only accept me because I agree with them politically, why are you NOT a racist if you reject me because we disagree?"
Because, as a Democrat, I allow you to truly be yourself.
"You're not even hearing yourself. You've said repeatedly that you WON'T allow me to be myself and still accept me. I have to start saying things you agree with first."
Once you start agreeing with me, you can be an authentic black.
"How on earth can that be true? You're white! How does agreeing with another white person make me more authentic? Listen, until I told you my political persuasion you were all ready to accept me. You apparently believed I was an authentic black until then. Now you accuse me of being self-loathing, an Uncle Tom with Stockholm syndrome. And all because my political leanings differ from what you, a white person, believe they should be. So now, until I change my political leanings to be more like yours, a white person, you will reject me and see me as "not authentic." And yet you want to call Republicans racist!"
I'm gonna stop the conversation here because it's just gonna go in circles. The core principles are this: Democrats, especially white ones, are always exempt from charges of racism, even when they openly display it, such as ripping on blacks who "escape the plantation". Republicans, on the other hand, are racist no matter what.
I still can't believe the lengths liberals go to to justify this, and they can't even see it!
Friday, July 26, 2013
I'm a Racist, You're a Racist, We're ALL Racist Now
I am so tired of talking about racism. I'm tired of hearing about it. I'm tired of it being a word that still exists. I'm tired of people making an issue out of race even when there is no race issue happening.
I'm tired of people turning non-racial situations racial just because a person of color was involved. Take the Martin/Zimmerman case. Now, whether or not Trayvon was innocently wandering home (he wasn't; he was darting between houses and staring intently at a couple of them) and whether or not George Zimmerman followed him with intent to shoot (he didn't; he followed Martin to get a better idea of where he was headed so that he could tell the 911 operator where Martin was), the fact remains that this wasn't a case of a racist white guy shooting an unarmed, completely innocent black kid because he saw the black skin and hoodie and decided the kid deserved to die. He didn't even draw his gun until that "little kid" (who was taller, stronger and quicker than Zimmerman) was on top of him pounding his head into the pavement, and even then he screamed for help first.
But none of that matters to the race-baiters of today; the Al Sharptons, the Jesse Jacksons, the Ben Jealouses. All that matters to them is that Trayvon Martin was black, and George Zimmerman is "white" (even though he's not; he's mixed-race with black, white and primarily Hispanic heritage, and looks every inch the Hispanic. If he counts as white because his father was, then Barack Obama is white because his mother was). If Zimmerman had been a black man and Trayvon Martin was EITHER color, this story would never have made it past local news. It certainly wouldn't have been touched by Sharpton, Jackson, the NAACP or the Black Panthers. And it never should have anyway, because race was NOT a factor in the incident.
Whether or not you think Zimmerman's actions were appropriate, the fact is that the story spread is full of misrepresentation and outright lies. The best article that shows all this can be read here, but I'll give a few details here. First, the area Zimmerman lived in had many black families living in it, so it's not possible that Zimmerman saw a black man and decided "he doesn't belong here so he must be up to no good." There had been a series of break-ins in the area and the B&E artists had been seen on several occasions. They were young black males. Zimmerman saw a tall, muscular black man (not a small, cherubic-looking child). The man was behaving suspiciously, as I outlined above. It was Trayvon's BEHAVIOR, not his skin color, that caused Zimmerman to get on the horn to 911. What's strange is that if Zimmerman intended to scare, confront, shoot, wound or kill Martin, why on earth would he call 911 first? No anti-Zimmerman protester can answer that one.
I'll leave the rest of what happened to the article I linked to, and I encourage you to read it because it really puts into perspective just why the jury could have found Zimmerman innocent of murder. Now, I'm not putting Zimmerman on a pedestal. He's no saint. I understand he is twice divorced and was once arrested for battery. Plus, he's a liberal Democrat who voted for Barack Obama.
I was kinda joking with that last one, but it does go toward my next point, which is that, whatever Zimmerman's other sins may be, there is nothing in his past or present to indicate that he has a problem with black people, or a history of getting out his gun willy-nilly. If I had been in Zimmerman's shoes that night, I would have called 911 as well. The only thing I would have done differently is stay in my car, and even Zimmerman has said that's what he should have done.
But ultimately, in the eyes of the media, any among the public who ate it up, and especially people like Sharpton, George Zimmerman wasn't a man being put on trial. He was an ideal being tried and convicted by the court of public opinion. Sharpton wanted Zimmerman sent to death row (either legally, or by mob justice) not because he was convinced Zimmerman was racist, but because he could use Zimmerman to paint all white people as racist, the same game he's been playing for decades.
A Hispanic man named George Zimmerman who lived in a mixed race neighborhood, took a black girl to prom, has black relatives and even took up the cause of a black homeless man unjustly beaten by cops, was never the one on trial. Instead, the idea of George Zimmerman, whose name might as well have been Whitey Whiteman, a white racist hair-trigger who shot a black kid for being black was the one on trial. This man only existed in the minds of Sharpton and those like him, and those they misled. And he was a stand-in for every white person in America.
I'm white. I was on trial. If you're white, you were on trial, too. And we weren't on trial for murder, at least not in the minds of the Sharptons out there. Whitey Whiteman was on trial for being white and daring to be the survivor in an altercation with a black man. Because Whitey Whiteman is a racist. You and me, we're all Whitey Whiteman, and we're all racists.
Now, you may be saying to yourself "but I'm not a racist! I was hoping for a conviction! Plus I have black friends!" But that's the problem. You say that last part, and it just proves you're racist. In fact, the more you try to prove you're not a racist, the more racist the Sharptons of this world are sure you are. For that matter, you're racist if you don't have black friends. You're racist if you happen to have to cross the street and a black man happened to be walking your way when you did. You're racist for moving to a primarily white neighborhood because you wanted to be closer to your job. You're racist if you apply for a job that a black person has also applied for, and you get it instead of him. You're racist if you pass a black stranger on the street and don't look him in the eye. You're VERY racist if you DO look him in the eye.
So, how do people like Bill Maher or Chris Matthews NOT be tainted as racists, despite the fact that both have said blatantly racist things? Simple; they vote Democrat, support Obama, and make it clear that they hate themselves for being white.
Let me share a personal tale about racism. Once upon a time I was hired at a job that employed a pretty healthy mix of races. The guy who owned it was Oriental. Board members were Arabic, East Indian, Oriental and black. None were white. Among the employees at my level, a few were white, a few were Indian and a couple were black. My immediate supervisor was white, but I rarely actually saw her. At no point did I feel uncomfortable about working there.
A few months after I was hired, I noticed that one of the black employees that I worked with semi-frequently stopped speaking to me. I wasn't sure why, but I let it go. A short while after that, I was called into my supervisor's office and told that there was a formal complaint lodged against me. At first they asked me if I had any idea why that would be. I had no clue. I was upset, because I couldn't think of a single incident where I might have caused offense, and if there had been there surely wasn't any intent. The supervisor then explained that it was the black co-worker I mentioned above who had lodged the complaint. I then realized that was why she was no longer speaking to me, but I still had no idea what I had done to cause offense. I had worked several shifts with her before she had clammed up, and we had always gotten along before then. We had laughed, joked and shared stories. I wouldn't say we were friends but we were colleagues who worked well together, before she suddenly refused to acknowledge my presence.
It turned out, the SINGLE incident that caused her to lodge a complaint, and turned me in her mind from a friendly co-worker to a hostile one, happened during a call I was taking with a client where I was asked a question I didn't know the answer to. I put the client on hold briefly and asked the other two people in the room, the black co-worker who was sitting several seats away and a white co-worker who was closer. The black co-worker answered first, but she was sitting far enough away that I didn't hear her answer. I asked her to repeat herself, but before she could, the white co-worker, in a louder voice despite the fact that he was seated closer, answered instead, saying the same thing she said. He likely just wanted to make sure I heard it. Considering I had the client on hold, I said a general thank-you to both of them and went back to my call. The incident was such a nothing situation to me that it never occurred to me, even when I learned it was she who lodged a complaint, that she might have taken my actions as anything other than that I didn't hear her the first time. But no, she was convinced that I had deliberately decided to listen to the white person, and ignore her, because I was racist.
Now, I ask you, does any of the above sound like a racist action to you? Have you ever been guilty of not hearing what a black person said? Apparently, in any situation like that, if the first speaker is black, well then, congratulations, you're a racist!
Now, here's the thing. I didn't want to be the cause of trouble in the office, so I voluntarily went to her, explained what had happened and said I was very sorry for any hurt I had caused. She seemed to accept that, but still didn't look happy. After that, she didn't ignore me anymore, but she treated me like every action I took was suspect and wrong. Once, after that incident, I said something to her that was work-related, but made the cardinal sin of not addressing her by name. Later, when she was the only other person in the room, she cast a harsh glare at me and growled; "My name is [name withheld]" in a tone that suggested that the very fact that I had not said her name while speaking a very short sentence was a racist act. Later she and I were the only two people working on shift, and she was the senior. I had to go to the bathroom. I should explain that the job I was at didn't give formal breaks, and you basically snuck away whenever the work flow died down for a bit. So, I went to the bathroom during a slow period. Apparently, it got busy before I came back, so she decided to write me up for "abandoning" her and making her do all the work. I told her to go ahead, because I knew this time that I had done no wrong and that she had just decided that she had a problem with me. Nothing came of the incident. I'm pretty sure the supervisors understood by then what the real story was.
So let me ask you; who was being racist there? According to Sharpton, I am by default the racist, and at the very least I probably deserved to be fired, if not sued for millions of dollars in emotional damage. And all because ONE TIME I couldn't hear something she had said and someone else beat her to the clarification.
Would I be a rational person if I decided that every time a person of color appeared to be slighting me (whether or not they actually were), that this was absolute proof of "reverse" racism, and I decided to treat the person accordingly from there on out? Do any of you reading this, regardless of your color, think she was in any way justified to lodge complaints and treat me as she did?
Since my teens I've worked in a variety of jobs, and with a wide variety of people. I've worked with Protestants, Catholics, atheists, Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus, Buddhists, practicing Jews, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, men, women, senior citizens, very young people, heterosexuals, homosexuals, people who loved to drink and talk about drinking, people who got offended very easily, people who got a kick out of causing offense, and, of course, every racial group or nationality imaginable. At NO OTHER POINT was I accused of any form of discrimination by ANY of them on ANY grounds.
Again, I ask, do you think the incident described was in any way a racial slight by me? Do you think the lady in question was justified? Do you think that whether or not there was any intent on my part to slight her, the mere fact that she felt slighted still makes me the racist bad guy?
Or do you think she was the one being racist? Now, some of you are probably laughing at the very idea, even if you don't think I was being racist. After all, racism is white people hating black people, isn't it?
No. It's not. And it never has been.
Racism is what you call it when you consider a person's skin color before you consider anything else about them. If you walk into a room and note its racial content before you note anything else, you're a racist. If you are in a small group of people and it matters to you whether or not they're a different skin color from you, you're a racist. If you watch a TV show and notice that most or all of the characters in the cast are the same race, and that bothers you, you're a racist. If you hear about a black kid getting shot by a non-black and you think "of course, because this country is so racist", it is YOU who are the racist. If a person of a different skin color than you does something that offends you, and you decide that they did it on purpose just because you're not the same race they are, you're a racist. Even if it turns out that they DID offend you because they don't like your race, it doesn't make you any less racist that you assumed it before you had the facts. It just means you're both racists.
And, for that matter, if you think black comedians are hilarious when they make fun of white people, you're a racist. If you like it when movies make white people into the idiots or villains because white people deserve it, you are a racist. If you are a boss who hires a less qualified black person over a more qualified white person because you want more people of color among your employees, you're a racist, even if you're white yourself. If you assume your black co-worker must be a great dancer/basketball player/lover without watching him dance or play, or sleeping with him, you're a racist. If you know nothing about two candidates for office other than that one is black and the other is white, and you vote for the black guy because you like the idea of more black people in office, you're a racist. If you continue to praise and love a terrible failure of a politician because they're black, you're REALLY racist.
And of course, all of that is still true if you reverse the colors. Because racism doesn't mean hating black people. It may not even involve hate at all.
Ever heard the phrase "the soft bigotry of low expectations"? It's not a very commonly heard phrase these days but it is probably the most prevalent form of racism in America today. It's the attitude that we should hold people of color to a different standard based on nothing but their race. And don't tell me it's because of abuse they suffered in the past. Unless they're still suffering that same abuse today, and they're not, you're basing it on nothing but their skin color.
"Oh, but they are still suffering today!" shout the racists reading this. These are the people who look at cities like Baltimore or Detroit, cities that are violent, dangerous urban wastelands, and declare that it must be white hatred of blacks that have forced so many of them to live in places like this. It can't be because the black inhabitants of these cities are for the most part racists themselves, and continue live there because they've been told that to do otherwise is "trying to be white" and being "a traitor to your race." They look at the fact that there are so many black people in prison and shout "victims of white racism!", without ever considering that those black people are in prison because they're actually criminals, and some of them are definitely racist criminals who mug and kill white people for being white.
Many black people freely use terms like "race traitor", "Uncle Tom", "House N----r", etc. and freely describe self-made, well-educated successful black people as "trying to be white", which of course is a horrible thing, even worse than gunning each other down. Just imagine for a moment if white people did that. Would we be racist for that attitude? Of course we would.
Black people with this attitude hold each other down, tell each other that success is wrong or to go work and live among white people is "trying to be white" and that makes them "Uncle Toms". They shoot each other in gang wars, impregnate and then leave their women, force their children to grow up without fathers. And they call any black person who wishes to escape that lifestyle race traitors? It's they who are the race traitors, and racists to boot.
Al Sharpton once said: "White folks was [sic] in caves while we was [sic] building empires.... We taught philosophy and astrology and mathematics before Socrates and them Greek homos ever got around to it." For some reason, when a black man says this, it's not called racist (or homophobic). This statement basically makes Al Sharpton the black Fred Phelps. But for some reason, he gets his own show on MSNBC and personal invitations to the White House, and nobody goes on TV and calls him what he is; a horrible, evil, homophobic, racist monster.
Back to the soft bigotry of low expectations. Ever heard of Affirmative Action? Of course you have. Affirmative Action is the practice of hiring in the work place and accepting into colleges and Universities a certain percentage of black workers and students. They do this, ostensibly, to level the playing field. The underlying message is that black people cannot succeed without the help of benevolent white people. Somehow, this means that a black man who uses the system to get ahead is less of an Uncle Tom than a self-made black man. Huh? Which one accepted the hand-out from white people?
Affirmative Action may as well call itself Affirmative Bigotry. Sanctioned Low Expectations. Because that's exactly what it is. It keeps black people in a victim mentality, decided that the only way they CAN succeed is to work the system, or just simply ignore the system and stay poor and living in violent, drug-infested war zones. It sets a different set of standards for black people, telling them that they don't have to work hard or better themselves; the system will choose whether or not you succeed and you definitely don't have to succeed on your own merits. And now, a man who coasted through his life using his race to get ahead and never learning more than he wanted to learn, never bettering himself, is president of the United States. The message that the first black president should have sent is "It doesn't matter what your skin color is, you can work hard and achieve anything." Instead it was "milk your race to the system and you can coast your way along, even to the White House." The black population may not acknowledge that about Obama, but they see it. Don't tell me they don't. That's why since Obama has been elected, racial tension has only been heightened.
It's easy to just simply call white people racist and blame that on everything, and the biggest problem is, it's worked so far. But the good news is, it can't keep working. More and more, people are waking up and realizing that the problem isn't that they're racists. It's that racist black people, who feel completely justified in their racism, wish to keep the race war going.
I'm tired of people turning non-racial situations racial just because a person of color was involved. Take the Martin/Zimmerman case. Now, whether or not Trayvon was innocently wandering home (he wasn't; he was darting between houses and staring intently at a couple of them) and whether or not George Zimmerman followed him with intent to shoot (he didn't; he followed Martin to get a better idea of where he was headed so that he could tell the 911 operator where Martin was), the fact remains that this wasn't a case of a racist white guy shooting an unarmed, completely innocent black kid because he saw the black skin and hoodie and decided the kid deserved to die. He didn't even draw his gun until that "little kid" (who was taller, stronger and quicker than Zimmerman) was on top of him pounding his head into the pavement, and even then he screamed for help first.
But none of that matters to the race-baiters of today; the Al Sharptons, the Jesse Jacksons, the Ben Jealouses. All that matters to them is that Trayvon Martin was black, and George Zimmerman is "white" (even though he's not; he's mixed-race with black, white and primarily Hispanic heritage, and looks every inch the Hispanic. If he counts as white because his father was, then Barack Obama is white because his mother was). If Zimmerman had been a black man and Trayvon Martin was EITHER color, this story would never have made it past local news. It certainly wouldn't have been touched by Sharpton, Jackson, the NAACP or the Black Panthers. And it never should have anyway, because race was NOT a factor in the incident.
Whether or not you think Zimmerman's actions were appropriate, the fact is that the story spread is full of misrepresentation and outright lies. The best article that shows all this can be read here, but I'll give a few details here. First, the area Zimmerman lived in had many black families living in it, so it's not possible that Zimmerman saw a black man and decided "he doesn't belong here so he must be up to no good." There had been a series of break-ins in the area and the B&E artists had been seen on several occasions. They were young black males. Zimmerman saw a tall, muscular black man (not a small, cherubic-looking child). The man was behaving suspiciously, as I outlined above. It was Trayvon's BEHAVIOR, not his skin color, that caused Zimmerman to get on the horn to 911. What's strange is that if Zimmerman intended to scare, confront, shoot, wound or kill Martin, why on earth would he call 911 first? No anti-Zimmerman protester can answer that one.
I'll leave the rest of what happened to the article I linked to, and I encourage you to read it because it really puts into perspective just why the jury could have found Zimmerman innocent of murder. Now, I'm not putting Zimmerman on a pedestal. He's no saint. I understand he is twice divorced and was once arrested for battery. Plus, he's a liberal Democrat who voted for Barack Obama.
I was kinda joking with that last one, but it does go toward my next point, which is that, whatever Zimmerman's other sins may be, there is nothing in his past or present to indicate that he has a problem with black people, or a history of getting out his gun willy-nilly. If I had been in Zimmerman's shoes that night, I would have called 911 as well. The only thing I would have done differently is stay in my car, and even Zimmerman has said that's what he should have done.
But ultimately, in the eyes of the media, any among the public who ate it up, and especially people like Sharpton, George Zimmerman wasn't a man being put on trial. He was an ideal being tried and convicted by the court of public opinion. Sharpton wanted Zimmerman sent to death row (either legally, or by mob justice) not because he was convinced Zimmerman was racist, but because he could use Zimmerman to paint all white people as racist, the same game he's been playing for decades.
A Hispanic man named George Zimmerman who lived in a mixed race neighborhood, took a black girl to prom, has black relatives and even took up the cause of a black homeless man unjustly beaten by cops, was never the one on trial. Instead, the idea of George Zimmerman, whose name might as well have been Whitey Whiteman, a white racist hair-trigger who shot a black kid for being black was the one on trial. This man only existed in the minds of Sharpton and those like him, and those they misled. And he was a stand-in for every white person in America.
I'm white. I was on trial. If you're white, you were on trial, too. And we weren't on trial for murder, at least not in the minds of the Sharptons out there. Whitey Whiteman was on trial for being white and daring to be the survivor in an altercation with a black man. Because Whitey Whiteman is a racist. You and me, we're all Whitey Whiteman, and we're all racists.
Now, you may be saying to yourself "but I'm not a racist! I was hoping for a conviction! Plus I have black friends!" But that's the problem. You say that last part, and it just proves you're racist. In fact, the more you try to prove you're not a racist, the more racist the Sharptons of this world are sure you are. For that matter, you're racist if you don't have black friends. You're racist if you happen to have to cross the street and a black man happened to be walking your way when you did. You're racist for moving to a primarily white neighborhood because you wanted to be closer to your job. You're racist if you apply for a job that a black person has also applied for, and you get it instead of him. You're racist if you pass a black stranger on the street and don't look him in the eye. You're VERY racist if you DO look him in the eye.
So, how do people like Bill Maher or Chris Matthews NOT be tainted as racists, despite the fact that both have said blatantly racist things? Simple; they vote Democrat, support Obama, and make it clear that they hate themselves for being white.
Let me share a personal tale about racism. Once upon a time I was hired at a job that employed a pretty healthy mix of races. The guy who owned it was Oriental. Board members were Arabic, East Indian, Oriental and black. None were white. Among the employees at my level, a few were white, a few were Indian and a couple were black. My immediate supervisor was white, but I rarely actually saw her. At no point did I feel uncomfortable about working there.
A few months after I was hired, I noticed that one of the black employees that I worked with semi-frequently stopped speaking to me. I wasn't sure why, but I let it go. A short while after that, I was called into my supervisor's office and told that there was a formal complaint lodged against me. At first they asked me if I had any idea why that would be. I had no clue. I was upset, because I couldn't think of a single incident where I might have caused offense, and if there had been there surely wasn't any intent. The supervisor then explained that it was the black co-worker I mentioned above who had lodged the complaint. I then realized that was why she was no longer speaking to me, but I still had no idea what I had done to cause offense. I had worked several shifts with her before she had clammed up, and we had always gotten along before then. We had laughed, joked and shared stories. I wouldn't say we were friends but we were colleagues who worked well together, before she suddenly refused to acknowledge my presence.
It turned out, the SINGLE incident that caused her to lodge a complaint, and turned me in her mind from a friendly co-worker to a hostile one, happened during a call I was taking with a client where I was asked a question I didn't know the answer to. I put the client on hold briefly and asked the other two people in the room, the black co-worker who was sitting several seats away and a white co-worker who was closer. The black co-worker answered first, but she was sitting far enough away that I didn't hear her answer. I asked her to repeat herself, but before she could, the white co-worker, in a louder voice despite the fact that he was seated closer, answered instead, saying the same thing she said. He likely just wanted to make sure I heard it. Considering I had the client on hold, I said a general thank-you to both of them and went back to my call. The incident was such a nothing situation to me that it never occurred to me, even when I learned it was she who lodged a complaint, that she might have taken my actions as anything other than that I didn't hear her the first time. But no, she was convinced that I had deliberately decided to listen to the white person, and ignore her, because I was racist.
Now, I ask you, does any of the above sound like a racist action to you? Have you ever been guilty of not hearing what a black person said? Apparently, in any situation like that, if the first speaker is black, well then, congratulations, you're a racist!
Now, here's the thing. I didn't want to be the cause of trouble in the office, so I voluntarily went to her, explained what had happened and said I was very sorry for any hurt I had caused. She seemed to accept that, but still didn't look happy. After that, she didn't ignore me anymore, but she treated me like every action I took was suspect and wrong. Once, after that incident, I said something to her that was work-related, but made the cardinal sin of not addressing her by name. Later, when she was the only other person in the room, she cast a harsh glare at me and growled; "My name is [name withheld]" in a tone that suggested that the very fact that I had not said her name while speaking a very short sentence was a racist act. Later she and I were the only two people working on shift, and she was the senior. I had to go to the bathroom. I should explain that the job I was at didn't give formal breaks, and you basically snuck away whenever the work flow died down for a bit. So, I went to the bathroom during a slow period. Apparently, it got busy before I came back, so she decided to write me up for "abandoning" her and making her do all the work. I told her to go ahead, because I knew this time that I had done no wrong and that she had just decided that she had a problem with me. Nothing came of the incident. I'm pretty sure the supervisors understood by then what the real story was.
So let me ask you; who was being racist there? According to Sharpton, I am by default the racist, and at the very least I probably deserved to be fired, if not sued for millions of dollars in emotional damage. And all because ONE TIME I couldn't hear something she had said and someone else beat her to the clarification.
Would I be a rational person if I decided that every time a person of color appeared to be slighting me (whether or not they actually were), that this was absolute proof of "reverse" racism, and I decided to treat the person accordingly from there on out? Do any of you reading this, regardless of your color, think she was in any way justified to lodge complaints and treat me as she did?
Since my teens I've worked in a variety of jobs, and with a wide variety of people. I've worked with Protestants, Catholics, atheists, Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus, Buddhists, practicing Jews, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, men, women, senior citizens, very young people, heterosexuals, homosexuals, people who loved to drink and talk about drinking, people who got offended very easily, people who got a kick out of causing offense, and, of course, every racial group or nationality imaginable. At NO OTHER POINT was I accused of any form of discrimination by ANY of them on ANY grounds.
Again, I ask, do you think the incident described was in any way a racial slight by me? Do you think the lady in question was justified? Do you think that whether or not there was any intent on my part to slight her, the mere fact that she felt slighted still makes me the racist bad guy?
Or do you think she was the one being racist? Now, some of you are probably laughing at the very idea, even if you don't think I was being racist. After all, racism is white people hating black people, isn't it?
No. It's not. And it never has been.
Racism is what you call it when you consider a person's skin color before you consider anything else about them. If you walk into a room and note its racial content before you note anything else, you're a racist. If you are in a small group of people and it matters to you whether or not they're a different skin color from you, you're a racist. If you watch a TV show and notice that most or all of the characters in the cast are the same race, and that bothers you, you're a racist. If you hear about a black kid getting shot by a non-black and you think "of course, because this country is so racist", it is YOU who are the racist. If a person of a different skin color than you does something that offends you, and you decide that they did it on purpose just because you're not the same race they are, you're a racist. Even if it turns out that they DID offend you because they don't like your race, it doesn't make you any less racist that you assumed it before you had the facts. It just means you're both racists.
And, for that matter, if you think black comedians are hilarious when they make fun of white people, you're a racist. If you like it when movies make white people into the idiots or villains because white people deserve it, you are a racist. If you are a boss who hires a less qualified black person over a more qualified white person because you want more people of color among your employees, you're a racist, even if you're white yourself. If you assume your black co-worker must be a great dancer/basketball player/lover without watching him dance or play, or sleeping with him, you're a racist. If you know nothing about two candidates for office other than that one is black and the other is white, and you vote for the black guy because you like the idea of more black people in office, you're a racist. If you continue to praise and love a terrible failure of a politician because they're black, you're REALLY racist.
And of course, all of that is still true if you reverse the colors. Because racism doesn't mean hating black people. It may not even involve hate at all.
Ever heard the phrase "the soft bigotry of low expectations"? It's not a very commonly heard phrase these days but it is probably the most prevalent form of racism in America today. It's the attitude that we should hold people of color to a different standard based on nothing but their race. And don't tell me it's because of abuse they suffered in the past. Unless they're still suffering that same abuse today, and they're not, you're basing it on nothing but their skin color.
"Oh, but they are still suffering today!" shout the racists reading this. These are the people who look at cities like Baltimore or Detroit, cities that are violent, dangerous urban wastelands, and declare that it must be white hatred of blacks that have forced so many of them to live in places like this. It can't be because the black inhabitants of these cities are for the most part racists themselves, and continue live there because they've been told that to do otherwise is "trying to be white" and being "a traitor to your race." They look at the fact that there are so many black people in prison and shout "victims of white racism!", without ever considering that those black people are in prison because they're actually criminals, and some of them are definitely racist criminals who mug and kill white people for being white.
Many black people freely use terms like "race traitor", "Uncle Tom", "House N----r", etc. and freely describe self-made, well-educated successful black people as "trying to be white", which of course is a horrible thing, even worse than gunning each other down. Just imagine for a moment if white people did that. Would we be racist for that attitude? Of course we would.
Black people with this attitude hold each other down, tell each other that success is wrong or to go work and live among white people is "trying to be white" and that makes them "Uncle Toms". They shoot each other in gang wars, impregnate and then leave their women, force their children to grow up without fathers. And they call any black person who wishes to escape that lifestyle race traitors? It's they who are the race traitors, and racists to boot.
Al Sharpton once said: "White folks was [sic] in caves while we was [sic] building empires.... We taught philosophy and astrology and mathematics before Socrates and them Greek homos ever got around to it." For some reason, when a black man says this, it's not called racist (or homophobic). This statement basically makes Al Sharpton the black Fred Phelps. But for some reason, he gets his own show on MSNBC and personal invitations to the White House, and nobody goes on TV and calls him what he is; a horrible, evil, homophobic, racist monster.
Back to the soft bigotry of low expectations. Ever heard of Affirmative Action? Of course you have. Affirmative Action is the practice of hiring in the work place and accepting into colleges and Universities a certain percentage of black workers and students. They do this, ostensibly, to level the playing field. The underlying message is that black people cannot succeed without the help of benevolent white people. Somehow, this means that a black man who uses the system to get ahead is less of an Uncle Tom than a self-made black man. Huh? Which one accepted the hand-out from white people?
Affirmative Action may as well call itself Affirmative Bigotry. Sanctioned Low Expectations. Because that's exactly what it is. It keeps black people in a victim mentality, decided that the only way they CAN succeed is to work the system, or just simply ignore the system and stay poor and living in violent, drug-infested war zones. It sets a different set of standards for black people, telling them that they don't have to work hard or better themselves; the system will choose whether or not you succeed and you definitely don't have to succeed on your own merits. And now, a man who coasted through his life using his race to get ahead and never learning more than he wanted to learn, never bettering himself, is president of the United States. The message that the first black president should have sent is "It doesn't matter what your skin color is, you can work hard and achieve anything." Instead it was "milk your race to the system and you can coast your way along, even to the White House." The black population may not acknowledge that about Obama, but they see it. Don't tell me they don't. That's why since Obama has been elected, racial tension has only been heightened.
It's easy to just simply call white people racist and blame that on everything, and the biggest problem is, it's worked so far. But the good news is, it can't keep working. More and more, people are waking up and realizing that the problem isn't that they're racists. It's that racist black people, who feel completely justified in their racism, wish to keep the race war going.
Wednesday, June 5, 2013
Liberals and the Double-Standard. Again.
In order to understand the liberal double-standard, all one needs to do is imagine the current crop of liberal democrats reacting to exactly the same situation as is happening, but flip the sides.
Imagine, if you will, that it was discovered that the IRS during the Bush years had begun harassing any group that could be tied to liberal causes, demanding that in order to secure funding, they had to turn over donor records and answer a series of increasingly invasive questions that no one should have to answer. Imagine that any group that was deemed "liberal" by the IRS had their applications held up for months as answers to more and more deeply invasive questions are demanded of them, all while conservative groups get their applications fast-tracked.
Picture a congress who stone-walls the liberal groups who petition them, and tells them it's their own fault for having dared apply. Picture a group of stone-faced Republican congressmen sloughing off these concerns by suggesting that these liberal groups are "highly political" and that they're "just trying to hide how much money they're making", or even making the asinine statement that somehow being tax-exempt is the same as being funded by tax-payers (hello, Jim McDermott, tax-exempt means they get by on charitable donations, not tax dollars, idiot) and therefore heavy scrutiny is just routine. Imagine they're being told this while groups that openly advocate for George W. Bush see no delays whatsoever in receiving their tax-exempt status.
Because that's what happened yesterday, and what has been happening for the last four or five years, only in reverse. It's conservative groups that were held up, delayed, asked questions the IRS had no right to ask, and yesterday it was they who were told that the delays and questions were due to the groups' "highly political" nature, they who were told that their groups, unlike all those liberal tax-exempt groups, don't represent "the public good", and therefore it was their fault for all this scrutiny because they dared to apply.
Meanwhile it was the Democrats talking out of both sides of their mouth, both claiming that the actions of "a few rogue IRS agents" were deplorable, but that the conservative groups deserved them.
And that's one of THREE scandals to hit recently.
Now, the press has repeatedly acted as if there is no scandal here, and the other two aren't scandals, either (even if they're struggling mightily to justify the AP phone tapping). But think for a moment how the press reacted any time George W. Bush so much as sneezed. Think about the immediate reaction of the press during the Bush years whenever ANYTHING bad happened. 9/11? That's Bush's fault! (Maybe he even planned it!) Hurricane Katrina? It's Bush's fault that people weren't evacuated in time even though it's a state-level responsibility and the Louisiana governor actually told Bush that no help was needed and not to send anyone.
If a fly farted on the wall of a school room, the teacher would call it an example of failed Bush policies. The only difference is, she still would, and Bush hasn't been president in four and a half years!
If you truly believe Benghazi, for example, isn't Obama's fault, ask yourself, if it happened during the Bush years, would it be Bush's fault? Of course it would! Don't lie to yourself! Bush was at fault for EVERYTHING bad that happened.
Bush planned 9/11, Bush failed to capture the terrorists responsible, the war on terror was going badly, the economy stunk and so did the unemployment rate of 5.2%, taxes were too high and spending was out of control. All Bush's fault.
Benghazi, however, isn't Obama's fault, and neither was the BP oil spill (somehow that was Bush, too), Obama personally captured Osama bin Laden, and the fact that he waited for two weeks to give the order to proceed means nothing (same with the fact that it was the very enhanced interrogation techniques he derided that got the info on where he was), and Obama has killed at least as many civilians with his drone strikes as Bush's war ever did. Now, Obama has declared the war on terror "over", and he liked to claim Al Queda is "on the run", which is why he had to call Benghazi something other than a terrorist attack and had to pin blame on a clearly not responsible youtube video. After all, the only other option was to admit that Al Queda is far from "on the run". The economy is worse and joblessness is at all-time high. But hey, look, Obama just created 12,000 jobs! Forget that it was millions of jobs that were lost. Taxes are higher and spending is through the roof; Obama has spent more in his first term than Bush did in two.
...But that's not his fault. He's still a great president.
He's apparently so great a president that anything bad that happens in his term just has to be someone else's fault. Has to be. He never ordered the IRS to target conservative groups! It must have been rogue agents. He didn't tell the DOJ to monitor AP's phone records and pursue a criminal investigation of a reporter for the "crime" of doing his job just because he worked for Fox News! Even the Attorney General was unaware of that! And forget that his signature is on the order.
All you have to do is replace the names. Put Bush were it says Obama, et al. Now do you see how ridiculous Obama's defenders look? Do you think for one minute anyone would buy it if Bush had been caught in the same scandals currently plaguing Obama and tried to suggest that the first he heard of it was on the news? Do you think for one minute that he wouldn't be blamed for Benghazi, or even suggested to have planned it? Do you think for one minute that it wouldn't be said that as Commander in Chief, he's responsible for what his IRS and DOJ do?
You don't think it would be blown up into the story of the year if Bush's DOJ was caught targeting an MSNBC reporter for criminal prosecution for the "crime" of trying to get a good lede on a story? You don't think Bush would be raked over the coals if it was his IRS that was targeting groups like Organizing for Action or Media Matters for America (both of whom make more money in a day than the groups that were targeted do in a year, and are overtly political)? And I can tell you right now he'd be blamed for Benghazi 100%.
Are you starting to get a picture of why we keep talking about a double standard? For liberals, it's okay as long as a liberal does it. It's not okay if a conservative does it. Nothing is.
Imagine, if you will, that it was discovered that the IRS during the Bush years had begun harassing any group that could be tied to liberal causes, demanding that in order to secure funding, they had to turn over donor records and answer a series of increasingly invasive questions that no one should have to answer. Imagine that any group that was deemed "liberal" by the IRS had their applications held up for months as answers to more and more deeply invasive questions are demanded of them, all while conservative groups get their applications fast-tracked.
Picture a congress who stone-walls the liberal groups who petition them, and tells them it's their own fault for having dared apply. Picture a group of stone-faced Republican congressmen sloughing off these concerns by suggesting that these liberal groups are "highly political" and that they're "just trying to hide how much money they're making", or even making the asinine statement that somehow being tax-exempt is the same as being funded by tax-payers (hello, Jim McDermott, tax-exempt means they get by on charitable donations, not tax dollars, idiot) and therefore heavy scrutiny is just routine. Imagine they're being told this while groups that openly advocate for George W. Bush see no delays whatsoever in receiving their tax-exempt status.
Because that's what happened yesterday, and what has been happening for the last four or five years, only in reverse. It's conservative groups that were held up, delayed, asked questions the IRS had no right to ask, and yesterday it was they who were told that the delays and questions were due to the groups' "highly political" nature, they who were told that their groups, unlike all those liberal tax-exempt groups, don't represent "the public good", and therefore it was their fault for all this scrutiny because they dared to apply.
Meanwhile it was the Democrats talking out of both sides of their mouth, both claiming that the actions of "a few rogue IRS agents" were deplorable, but that the conservative groups deserved them.
And that's one of THREE scandals to hit recently.
Now, the press has repeatedly acted as if there is no scandal here, and the other two aren't scandals, either (even if they're struggling mightily to justify the AP phone tapping). But think for a moment how the press reacted any time George W. Bush so much as sneezed. Think about the immediate reaction of the press during the Bush years whenever ANYTHING bad happened. 9/11? That's Bush's fault! (Maybe he even planned it!) Hurricane Katrina? It's Bush's fault that people weren't evacuated in time even though it's a state-level responsibility and the Louisiana governor actually told Bush that no help was needed and not to send anyone.
If a fly farted on the wall of a school room, the teacher would call it an example of failed Bush policies. The only difference is, she still would, and Bush hasn't been president in four and a half years!
If you truly believe Benghazi, for example, isn't Obama's fault, ask yourself, if it happened during the Bush years, would it be Bush's fault? Of course it would! Don't lie to yourself! Bush was at fault for EVERYTHING bad that happened.
Bush planned 9/11, Bush failed to capture the terrorists responsible, the war on terror was going badly, the economy stunk and so did the unemployment rate of 5.2%, taxes were too high and spending was out of control. All Bush's fault.
Benghazi, however, isn't Obama's fault, and neither was the BP oil spill (somehow that was Bush, too), Obama personally captured Osama bin Laden, and the fact that he waited for two weeks to give the order to proceed means nothing (same with the fact that it was the very enhanced interrogation techniques he derided that got the info on where he was), and Obama has killed at least as many civilians with his drone strikes as Bush's war ever did. Now, Obama has declared the war on terror "over", and he liked to claim Al Queda is "on the run", which is why he had to call Benghazi something other than a terrorist attack and had to pin blame on a clearly not responsible youtube video. After all, the only other option was to admit that Al Queda is far from "on the run". The economy is worse and joblessness is at all-time high. But hey, look, Obama just created 12,000 jobs! Forget that it was millions of jobs that were lost. Taxes are higher and spending is through the roof; Obama has spent more in his first term than Bush did in two.
...But that's not his fault. He's still a great president.
He's apparently so great a president that anything bad that happens in his term just has to be someone else's fault. Has to be. He never ordered the IRS to target conservative groups! It must have been rogue agents. He didn't tell the DOJ to monitor AP's phone records and pursue a criminal investigation of a reporter for the "crime" of doing his job just because he worked for Fox News! Even the Attorney General was unaware of that! And forget that his signature is on the order.
All you have to do is replace the names. Put Bush were it says Obama, et al. Now do you see how ridiculous Obama's defenders look? Do you think for one minute anyone would buy it if Bush had been caught in the same scandals currently plaguing Obama and tried to suggest that the first he heard of it was on the news? Do you think for one minute that he wouldn't be blamed for Benghazi, or even suggested to have planned it? Do you think for one minute that it wouldn't be said that as Commander in Chief, he's responsible for what his IRS and DOJ do?
You don't think it would be blown up into the story of the year if Bush's DOJ was caught targeting an MSNBC reporter for criminal prosecution for the "crime" of trying to get a good lede on a story? You don't think Bush would be raked over the coals if it was his IRS that was targeting groups like Organizing for Action or Media Matters for America (both of whom make more money in a day than the groups that were targeted do in a year, and are overtly political)? And I can tell you right now he'd be blamed for Benghazi 100%.
Are you starting to get a picture of why we keep talking about a double standard? For liberals, it's okay as long as a liberal does it. It's not okay if a conservative does it. Nothing is.
Friday, May 17, 2013
Something Obama, and All His Supporters, Need to Remember
Much has been made of how Obama is the first President since 1956 years to get elected twice with over 50% of the vote. Left alone, that figure seems pretty impressive. After all, even Reagan and Clinton, both of whom were much loved by their respective parties and many in the other parties, couldn't manage this.
However...
Multiple news sources have reported that a much smaller electorate came out to vote than is normal. Yes, the 2000 was smaller (54%), as voters on neither side could muster up enthusiasm for their candidate, but in this really heated election, only 57% of eligible voters got excited enough to come out and vote.
Now, I still wonder if all votes that went to Obama were legit, but nearly everyone who's looked into this (on both sides) suggests that if there were fraudulent votes cast for Obama, there weren't enough of them to really turn the tide. However, I keep hearing reports that there were numerous counties where the number of votes exceeded the number of eligible citizens from those counties, and it's a plain fact that every state that required voter ID went to Romney. That last in particular keeps screaming at me.
But I'm not gonna call shenanigans, mainly because I have been poking fun at conspiracy theorists on the left for years, and I'm sure I don't look any better doing it myself. But the fact remains; only 57% of eligible voters actually voted in 2012.
So, when Obama supporters talk about how "loved" he is, and that he's the first president in over fifty years to get 50+% of the vote twice, they need to remember that he's only "loved" by 51% of 57% of the country. That explains why even though he won, it's still possible to drive from one coast to another, and one border to the other, and not even drive through a county that went to Obama, much less a state. To be honest, I'm not even sure the 29% of the country that actually voted for Obama "loves" him; they just didn't like Romney. Oh, sure, the liberal establishment voted for Obama, but rank-and-file voters? No, I can't believe they voted out of loyalty. They just got afraid their welfare, free healthcare, Obamaphone, etc. would be taken away if Obama lost.
So what happened to the other 43%? What kept them from voting? Well, some blame voter apathy. Not me; I blame voter despair. The fact is that as much as I, and others, talked about Romney morphing into a viable candidate, he never inspired much enthusiasm among the electorate. Many said he was as bad as Obama. Others said that he may not be as bad, but he wouldn't be appreciably different. I don't know, perhaps he wouldn't have been. Many are tired of voting for the lesser of two evils, and don't want to vote at all until they can vote for someone they believe in, and not just as a stop-gap measure. They're tired of establishment types who could never, even at gunpoint, truly relate to them and understand their issues. Obama could fire up people who were afraid their free ride would end, or just were afraid of Republicans in general. Romney simply didn't have the same ability to motivate voters.
The problem, as I've said before, is that Republicans can't look past the next election. Already I hear people talking about who can run in 2016 that will inspire the voters; why aren't they talking about inspiring people RIGHT NOW? You can't tuck your tale between your legs for every two-to-four-year period and then try to get people excited for a brief period, just long enough to convince them they should vote for you. We don't have many fighters on our side, and we're apparently trying to get rid of the few we do have. Allen West, Ted Cruz, Trey Gowdy; we should be rallying behind these people and anyone of like mind who are fighting for the conservative cause, not just trying to get a career in Washington. And we should start fighting NOW, not when there's an election at stake.
We can start by impeaching the guy who just squeaked back into office thanks to a mere 29% of the country. Since his re-election, Obama has behaved as if he's invincible, what with the attempted gun grab, openly slagging his opposition using more open rhetoric than before (he used to act like Repub's were just curmudgeons; now he openly calls them the enemy), the IRS scandal, etc. He does this, I assume, while believing that enough people will blindly worship him that he can do whatever he wants. This is not true, but it could be if good men and women continue doing nothing.
However...
Multiple news sources have reported that a much smaller electorate came out to vote than is normal. Yes, the 2000 was smaller (54%), as voters on neither side could muster up enthusiasm for their candidate, but in this really heated election, only 57% of eligible voters got excited enough to come out and vote.
Now, I still wonder if all votes that went to Obama were legit, but nearly everyone who's looked into this (on both sides) suggests that if there were fraudulent votes cast for Obama, there weren't enough of them to really turn the tide. However, I keep hearing reports that there were numerous counties where the number of votes exceeded the number of eligible citizens from those counties, and it's a plain fact that every state that required voter ID went to Romney. That last in particular keeps screaming at me.
But I'm not gonna call shenanigans, mainly because I have been poking fun at conspiracy theorists on the left for years, and I'm sure I don't look any better doing it myself. But the fact remains; only 57% of eligible voters actually voted in 2012.
So, when Obama supporters talk about how "loved" he is, and that he's the first president in over fifty years to get 50+% of the vote twice, they need to remember that he's only "loved" by 51% of 57% of the country. That explains why even though he won, it's still possible to drive from one coast to another, and one border to the other, and not even drive through a county that went to Obama, much less a state. To be honest, I'm not even sure the 29% of the country that actually voted for Obama "loves" him; they just didn't like Romney. Oh, sure, the liberal establishment voted for Obama, but rank-and-file voters? No, I can't believe they voted out of loyalty. They just got afraid their welfare, free healthcare, Obamaphone, etc. would be taken away if Obama lost.
So what happened to the other 43%? What kept them from voting? Well, some blame voter apathy. Not me; I blame voter despair. The fact is that as much as I, and others, talked about Romney morphing into a viable candidate, he never inspired much enthusiasm among the electorate. Many said he was as bad as Obama. Others said that he may not be as bad, but he wouldn't be appreciably different. I don't know, perhaps he wouldn't have been. Many are tired of voting for the lesser of two evils, and don't want to vote at all until they can vote for someone they believe in, and not just as a stop-gap measure. They're tired of establishment types who could never, even at gunpoint, truly relate to them and understand their issues. Obama could fire up people who were afraid their free ride would end, or just were afraid of Republicans in general. Romney simply didn't have the same ability to motivate voters.
The problem, as I've said before, is that Republicans can't look past the next election. Already I hear people talking about who can run in 2016 that will inspire the voters; why aren't they talking about inspiring people RIGHT NOW? You can't tuck your tale between your legs for every two-to-four-year period and then try to get people excited for a brief period, just long enough to convince them they should vote for you. We don't have many fighters on our side, and we're apparently trying to get rid of the few we do have. Allen West, Ted Cruz, Trey Gowdy; we should be rallying behind these people and anyone of like mind who are fighting for the conservative cause, not just trying to get a career in Washington. And we should start fighting NOW, not when there's an election at stake.
We can start by impeaching the guy who just squeaked back into office thanks to a mere 29% of the country. Since his re-election, Obama has behaved as if he's invincible, what with the attempted gun grab, openly slagging his opposition using more open rhetoric than before (he used to act like Repub's were just curmudgeons; now he openly calls them the enemy), the IRS scandal, etc. He does this, I assume, while believing that enough people will blindly worship him that he can do whatever he wants. This is not true, but it could be if good men and women continue doing nothing.
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
Has Obama Finally Over-reached Himself?
Battered spouses. We've all met a few. They stick by their man as he ignores her, smears her and cheats on her. He may even beat her a few times. But eventually they snap. There's the odd story you hear of a woman just up and shooting her husband (or cutting off his...Bobbit). Far more common are the spouses who wake up and realize that they're slowly losing themselves. "I wasn't me anymore; I'd lost everything that made me who I am." And then they leave him.
Sometimes it's just a bunch of instances piling up, and sometimes it's one thing; one straw that breaks the proverbial camel's back. "After that, I realized I couldn't do it anymore." It happens usually when the husband becomes so complacent, so sure that his wife will always support him no matter what he does, that he ends up finally crossing that last line; the one that wakes the wife up. Maybe he was always verbally abusive and disloyal, but never hit her, until the day his abuse ceased to be just words and became a physical blow. Maybe he beat her regularly, but this time he put her in the hospital. Maybe she accepted his beating her (on some level may even have felt that it was her fault) but turned on him when he started beating the kids, too. Maybe she was able to live with anything he did as long as no one else knew, but then he either beat her in public or another woman announced she was pregnant with his kid.
Whatever the case may be, the battered spouse that is the media has been putting up with its husband Obama's abuse and disloyalty for years now. Obama would never have gotten where he is without the media, and on some level, they know it. They buried his past and told America that it didn't matter when he was running for president the first time. All the while, they played up the foibles and odd past of John McCain and Sarah Palin, all while suggesting we pay no attention to that Bill Ayers or Jeremiah Wright or Frank Marshall Davis or Tony Rezko behind the curtain. They failed to ask him any hard questions, openly fawning over him, even helping him destroy Hillary Clinton.
Once their initial mission (get Obama elected) was accomplished, they moved on to phase two; protect him at all costs. They covered for Cash for Clunkers, a failed program that they insisted "worked". They talked up the Stimulus, another failed program that they, along with the Administration, claimed "worked". They praised Obamacare to the high heavens, acting as if it was the answer to everything, including unemployment. As for unemployment, they acted like that was no big deal, and faithfully reported that it was still at 8%, not counting those who had quit looking for work and had gone on welfare.
When one of the biggest scandals to ever happen to a sitting president first hit the blogs, the main press first tried ignoring it entirely, and then later acted as if it wasn't, couldn't be, the scandal that "the Right" was insisting it was. Of course, I'm talking about Fast & Furious. The fact that at least Eric Holder, if not Obama himself, isn't sitting in a jail cell right now awaiting his trial for treason to begin is a testament to just how thoroughly the Obama-obsessed media managed to make this story go away; a story that should have been front-page news. Of course, had it been, Holder, and likely Obama, would be completely done for, and if Obama managed to escape trial, he would have at least been made to look like a fool, and people would have started asking the wrong questions. It would have unquestionably cost him the election. So, like the faithful spouse they were, the same media that played up 9/11 as though they really believed the Truthers (all while denying they did) and talked endlessly about Hurricane Katrina as if Bush had personally created it, refused to touch a story about the Justice Dept, with full knowledge of the Attorney General, who reports directly to the president, who just about had to have full knowledge, delivering unmarked guns to Mexican drug cartels. When they finally had to talk about it, they decided it was just the fall-out from Bush's Operation Wide Receiver, despite the fact that Wide Receiver had been done in collusion with the Mexican government (the Mexican government had ZERO knowledge of F&F), the guns were marked and tracked (there was no way to track F&F guns, and the DOJ lost them until they were found having been used as murder weapons at crime scenes), and best of all, no one died as a result of WR, while hundreds died as a direct result of F&F.
Then there was Benghazi. For several months after the embassy attack, Obama refused to call it terrorism, refused to acknowledge there were terrorists present, blamed a youtube video, even arresting the filmmaker. And the press either didn't talk about it at all, or tried to act as though it didn't matter. Some are still talking this way.
In all that, the press stuck by him, and in fact, kept sticking by them while he fooled around behind their back. He denied them answers to legitimate questions. He frequently barred them from accompanying him in circumstances that the Press Corps always had. He would often hold "press conferences" where he would refuse to take questions. He even trash-talked "the media" in general when one or two "mainstream" journalists actually dared to ask questions that he was uncomfortable answering.
But now he may have gone too far, and the press is finally starting to notice.
I'm not talking about how a number of credible Benghazi whistle-blowers that the press simply are unable to discredit are now coming forward.
I'm not talking about how the IRS has been caught specifically targeting conservative groups for audits (including religious groups).
I'm talking about the revelation that the DOJ has been keeping tabs on the phone records of the Associated Press. Yes, it took Obama spying on them before they'd wake up and realize what sort of monster they married.
Now Obama isn't just attacking "them". Now it's not a scandal that they can shrug off because it doesn't directly affect them. Obama has stopped merely cheating on his wife and is now beating her, and the public has witnessed it.
To use another metaphor, the media has, up until now, been Obama's partner in crime (and I don't exaggerate when I say "crime"). But all they're really guilty of is being an accessory by covering for him. When the police catch a criminal who could "rat" on some much bigger criminals, one tactic they use is to assure the perp they've caught that their partners are going down, and when they do he'll go down with them, or he can talk, and let them take the fall while he gets a lighter sentence.
The media may just be at a point where it's considering "ratting" on Obama. At this point, they have to know that their credibility has been almost irrevocably damaged by the constant ass-covering they've been forced to do to support their partner. Now, they can either go down with him, or they can start singing. Recently I think they've been deciding on the latter course.
All that's needed is for Congress to call for Obama's impeachment, which is long overdue (he could have been impeached over his Cordray appointment alone; add on F&F, Benghazi and the IRS issue and he would be impeached in short order). We'll see, if that happens, how, or if, the press chooses to cover for him.
Sometimes it's just a bunch of instances piling up, and sometimes it's one thing; one straw that breaks the proverbial camel's back. "After that, I realized I couldn't do it anymore." It happens usually when the husband becomes so complacent, so sure that his wife will always support him no matter what he does, that he ends up finally crossing that last line; the one that wakes the wife up. Maybe he was always verbally abusive and disloyal, but never hit her, until the day his abuse ceased to be just words and became a physical blow. Maybe he beat her regularly, but this time he put her in the hospital. Maybe she accepted his beating her (on some level may even have felt that it was her fault) but turned on him when he started beating the kids, too. Maybe she was able to live with anything he did as long as no one else knew, but then he either beat her in public or another woman announced she was pregnant with his kid.
Whatever the case may be, the battered spouse that is the media has been putting up with its husband Obama's abuse and disloyalty for years now. Obama would never have gotten where he is without the media, and on some level, they know it. They buried his past and told America that it didn't matter when he was running for president the first time. All the while, they played up the foibles and odd past of John McCain and Sarah Palin, all while suggesting we pay no attention to that Bill Ayers or Jeremiah Wright or Frank Marshall Davis or Tony Rezko behind the curtain. They failed to ask him any hard questions, openly fawning over him, even helping him destroy Hillary Clinton.
Once their initial mission (get Obama elected) was accomplished, they moved on to phase two; protect him at all costs. They covered for Cash for Clunkers, a failed program that they insisted "worked". They talked up the Stimulus, another failed program that they, along with the Administration, claimed "worked". They praised Obamacare to the high heavens, acting as if it was the answer to everything, including unemployment. As for unemployment, they acted like that was no big deal, and faithfully reported that it was still at 8%, not counting those who had quit looking for work and had gone on welfare.
When one of the biggest scandals to ever happen to a sitting president first hit the blogs, the main press first tried ignoring it entirely, and then later acted as if it wasn't, couldn't be, the scandal that "the Right" was insisting it was. Of course, I'm talking about Fast & Furious. The fact that at least Eric Holder, if not Obama himself, isn't sitting in a jail cell right now awaiting his trial for treason to begin is a testament to just how thoroughly the Obama-obsessed media managed to make this story go away; a story that should have been front-page news. Of course, had it been, Holder, and likely Obama, would be completely done for, and if Obama managed to escape trial, he would have at least been made to look like a fool, and people would have started asking the wrong questions. It would have unquestionably cost him the election. So, like the faithful spouse they were, the same media that played up 9/11 as though they really believed the Truthers (all while denying they did) and talked endlessly about Hurricane Katrina as if Bush had personally created it, refused to touch a story about the Justice Dept, with full knowledge of the Attorney General, who reports directly to the president, who just about had to have full knowledge, delivering unmarked guns to Mexican drug cartels. When they finally had to talk about it, they decided it was just the fall-out from Bush's Operation Wide Receiver, despite the fact that Wide Receiver had been done in collusion with the Mexican government (the Mexican government had ZERO knowledge of F&F), the guns were marked and tracked (there was no way to track F&F guns, and the DOJ lost them until they were found having been used as murder weapons at crime scenes), and best of all, no one died as a result of WR, while hundreds died as a direct result of F&F.
Then there was Benghazi. For several months after the embassy attack, Obama refused to call it terrorism, refused to acknowledge there were terrorists present, blamed a youtube video, even arresting the filmmaker. And the press either didn't talk about it at all, or tried to act as though it didn't matter. Some are still talking this way.
In all that, the press stuck by him, and in fact, kept sticking by them while he fooled around behind their back. He denied them answers to legitimate questions. He frequently barred them from accompanying him in circumstances that the Press Corps always had. He would often hold "press conferences" where he would refuse to take questions. He even trash-talked "the media" in general when one or two "mainstream" journalists actually dared to ask questions that he was uncomfortable answering.
But now he may have gone too far, and the press is finally starting to notice.
I'm not talking about how a number of credible Benghazi whistle-blowers that the press simply are unable to discredit are now coming forward.
I'm not talking about how the IRS has been caught specifically targeting conservative groups for audits (including religious groups).
I'm talking about the revelation that the DOJ has been keeping tabs on the phone records of the Associated Press. Yes, it took Obama spying on them before they'd wake up and realize what sort of monster they married.
Now Obama isn't just attacking "them". Now it's not a scandal that they can shrug off because it doesn't directly affect them. Obama has stopped merely cheating on his wife and is now beating her, and the public has witnessed it.
To use another metaphor, the media has, up until now, been Obama's partner in crime (and I don't exaggerate when I say "crime"). But all they're really guilty of is being an accessory by covering for him. When the police catch a criminal who could "rat" on some much bigger criminals, one tactic they use is to assure the perp they've caught that their partners are going down, and when they do he'll go down with them, or he can talk, and let them take the fall while he gets a lighter sentence.
The media may just be at a point where it's considering "ratting" on Obama. At this point, they have to know that their credibility has been almost irrevocably damaged by the constant ass-covering they've been forced to do to support their partner. Now, they can either go down with him, or they can start singing. Recently I think they've been deciding on the latter course.
All that's needed is for Congress to call for Obama's impeachment, which is long overdue (he could have been impeached over his Cordray appointment alone; add on F&F, Benghazi and the IRS issue and he would be impeached in short order). We'll see, if that happens, how, or if, the press chooses to cover for him.
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
Yet again...
...Liberals respond to a tragedy by suggesting, nay, demanding, a new law that not only would not have prevented the tragedy, but may well lead to more.
Let me tell you something, people. I hate politicizing a tragedy. I HATE it. It strikes me as sub-human. When I look at the pictures of those students and teachers who were gunned down by a maniac in Connecticut, my reaction was tears. Liberals, apparently, loved it, and immediately thought about how to use this to further their ends.
It happens all the time. It happened after the Jared Loughner shooting. It happened after the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman shooting. It happened after the Utah shooting. It happened after the shooting of people waiting in line on the day The Dark Knight Rises opened. It happened after the Jovan Belcher murder suicide. And this time, after I wiped the tears from my face, I wondered how long it would be before some idiot liberals started demanding stricter gun laws.
Now, here's the odd thing; argued emotionally, it makes sense to want to take guns off the street because of a tragedy. Hell, it makes sense to want to see all guns in the world destroyed. I confess; I don't like guns. I've never owned one, and I've certainly never shot one other than once as a teen shooting my grandpa's hunting rifle under tightly controlled circumstances, including the fact that I never pointed said gun at anything that moved. Even in those circumstances, I was a little afraid. I had pure respect and terror for the raw power of the object in my hands to end a life.
I can understand how someone who feels that way might want to take all guns off the street. But their thinking never goes beyond that. Those who mean well literally stop with "remove guns", believing that this will prevent gun violence. Being against gun violence is something anyone with a conscience simply must be, and it's easy to fall into the fallacy of believing that being against gun violence must also mean that you're against gun ownership.
The problem is that meaning well isn't the same as producing good results. The simple, practical, bare fact is that removing guns from the street will not reduce gun violence, and in fact will make things worse.
It's become an oft-repeated phrase that when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns. Because the phrase is repeated so often, it's easy for liberals to dismiss it as an out-dated "old wives' tale" or something like that. But it's true. Gun violence is ALWAYS caused by people who have no regard for the law (any many had mental issues as well). And until the day comes when there's an outbreak of gun violence at a police convention, NRA meeting or gun show, you simply cannot say that gun violence is caused by people who love guns. In fact, some of the most gun-responsible people, some of those who know gun safety inside and out, are the very people I just named.
In the imagination of liberals, the more people who are allowed to own guns, the more there will be accidental shootings, or people who have always been gun-happy will simply get more so, and turn into full-fledged maniacs. They imagine a world where EVERYBODY has a gun, and therefore EVERYBODY IS SHOOTING EVERYBODY ELSE!! And these are just the ones that mean well!
The problem? Reality shows different. The areas of the United States where gun control is loosest, where nearly any citizen can be armed anywhere they choose to be, are without fail the areas where gun violence is lowest. Imagine that; a large number of gun owners does not equal a large number of trigger-happy freaks shooting each other.
For that matter, I'm not an old man but within my lifetime, gun ownership has fallen per capita, gun laws have gotten more and more strict, and yet gun violence has risen. How could that be possible, if the liberal take on this had even a grain of truth?
The fact is, gun violence has risen because criminals who would use guns for crime or violence feel more free to do so knowing that there is a very tiny chance the person they're attacking will be able to defend themselves. Hanging up a sign that says "This is a Gun Free Zone" is tantamount to telling criminals "Come here and shoot us all you like!" A person who would use a gun to hurt someone else is NOT a person who's going to care that there's a sign up.
Of course, this doesn't stop liberals from having their fantasies. I recall an episode of Dr. Quinn: Medicine Woman (has there ever been a more liberal show) wherein Dr. Quinn's adopted son is elected sheriff of their town, and in the same episode an outlaw ends up shooting the town's bartender. Because of this ONE SHOOTING (I should remind everyone that this show takes place in the old west), the town votes to outlaw guns. Yup. In this case, they don't even let the sheriff himself have one. Realistic writing, there.
But it gets worse. This outlaw comes back, and is met by the sheriff in the town square. The sheriff says guns aren't allowed in their town, and that he has to turn his over, or leave. The criminal threatens to shoot him dead, and the sheriff tells him he can try, if he likes, but then he'll have to go through the entire town to do so. Seeing the angry looks of the townsfolk, who are each and every one of them inside houses, looking out of windows, the criminal mutters something like "You win this round" and then turns around and leaves!
WTF?! In real life, this criminal would mow down the sheriff and then pick off anyone who left those houses, one by one. It would be fish in a barrel. But to the liberals who run that show, that's how they envision a world where no one is allowed to have a gun; that their "moral high ground" will win. No, unfortunately it won't.
The fact is that if a criminal has a gun, and knows you don't, he won't hesitate to use it on you should he feel he needs to. Conversely, the more he believes you might have a gun, the less likely he is to risk attacking you, knowing you could shoot him just as easily.
Now, I know people are going to bring up the Trayvon Martin case, specifically that Trayvon Martin was unarmed. They see this as another case of a trigger-happy gun-owner murdering a defenseless boy. The problem is that according to EVERYONE who witnessed the event, Martin WAS the attacker, and likely attacked because he was a cocky young thug who was sure that Zimmerman either didn't have a gun or didn't have the guts to use it if he did. And he likely thought that due to the anti-gun messages he likely heard everywhere. Martin, again, according to witnesses, rushed Zimmerman, threw him to the ground, straddled him, and started banging his head against the pavement, and punching him in the face, all while yelling "You're going to die today". Zimmerman managed to reach his gun and fired in self-defense. If he had not been armed, Zimmerman would be dead, and Trayvon Martin would be a murderer (likely never caught or convicted).
But what do liberals advocate in the wake of such a thing? Make it harder for responsible, law-abiding citizens to get guns. NOT make it easier to defend themselves against people who would break the law; make it harder to do so. Why? Why do they never understand that this is where it simply must lead?
They can't even answer the question on the most basic level; how do you expect to enforce gun laws on people who don't follow the law? What makes you expect that laws against guns would actually take guns off the street? Do they also feel that laws prohibiting cocaine and heroin have successfully made those drugs impossible to get hold of?
But they don't ask those questions. All they want to talk about is how best to get rid of guns. All they can do is spit questions back at us: "Why do you NEED a gun?" "What types of firearms do you think SHOULD be banned? Automatic? Semi-automatic?" They don't want to dialogue about it; they just can't get off the train of thought that guns simply MUST be banned, and that will reduce gun violence.
Now, I've said a lot about people like this who mean well. Many of them probably do just want to end gun violence. They've latched onto a completely wrong-headed method of doing so, but at least their hearts are in the right place. But there's another level to this. When politicians start talking about banning guns, everyone should be very, very worried.
There are politicians out there who are seriously proposing anti-gun legislation. They don't want stricter gun laws; they want to outlaw guns. Oh, not for the police or military, obviously. Just private citizens. Which means, not only will criminals still have guns, but the government will now be the only ones who have fire-power to back up their stance.
Do you know what you call it when the only people who can carry guns are those directly authorized by the government to do so?
A dictatorship.
Let me tell you something, people. I hate politicizing a tragedy. I HATE it. It strikes me as sub-human. When I look at the pictures of those students and teachers who were gunned down by a maniac in Connecticut, my reaction was tears. Liberals, apparently, loved it, and immediately thought about how to use this to further their ends.
It happens all the time. It happened after the Jared Loughner shooting. It happened after the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman shooting. It happened after the Utah shooting. It happened after the shooting of people waiting in line on the day The Dark Knight Rises opened. It happened after the Jovan Belcher murder suicide. And this time, after I wiped the tears from my face, I wondered how long it would be before some idiot liberals started demanding stricter gun laws.
Now, here's the odd thing; argued emotionally, it makes sense to want to take guns off the street because of a tragedy. Hell, it makes sense to want to see all guns in the world destroyed. I confess; I don't like guns. I've never owned one, and I've certainly never shot one other than once as a teen shooting my grandpa's hunting rifle under tightly controlled circumstances, including the fact that I never pointed said gun at anything that moved. Even in those circumstances, I was a little afraid. I had pure respect and terror for the raw power of the object in my hands to end a life.
I can understand how someone who feels that way might want to take all guns off the street. But their thinking never goes beyond that. Those who mean well literally stop with "remove guns", believing that this will prevent gun violence. Being against gun violence is something anyone with a conscience simply must be, and it's easy to fall into the fallacy of believing that being against gun violence must also mean that you're against gun ownership.
The problem is that meaning well isn't the same as producing good results. The simple, practical, bare fact is that removing guns from the street will not reduce gun violence, and in fact will make things worse.
It's become an oft-repeated phrase that when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns. Because the phrase is repeated so often, it's easy for liberals to dismiss it as an out-dated "old wives' tale" or something like that. But it's true. Gun violence is ALWAYS caused by people who have no regard for the law (any many had mental issues as well). And until the day comes when there's an outbreak of gun violence at a police convention, NRA meeting or gun show, you simply cannot say that gun violence is caused by people who love guns. In fact, some of the most gun-responsible people, some of those who know gun safety inside and out, are the very people I just named.
In the imagination of liberals, the more people who are allowed to own guns, the more there will be accidental shootings, or people who have always been gun-happy will simply get more so, and turn into full-fledged maniacs. They imagine a world where EVERYBODY has a gun, and therefore EVERYBODY IS SHOOTING EVERYBODY ELSE!! And these are just the ones that mean well!
The problem? Reality shows different. The areas of the United States where gun control is loosest, where nearly any citizen can be armed anywhere they choose to be, are without fail the areas where gun violence is lowest. Imagine that; a large number of gun owners does not equal a large number of trigger-happy freaks shooting each other.
For that matter, I'm not an old man but within my lifetime, gun ownership has fallen per capita, gun laws have gotten more and more strict, and yet gun violence has risen. How could that be possible, if the liberal take on this had even a grain of truth?
The fact is, gun violence has risen because criminals who would use guns for crime or violence feel more free to do so knowing that there is a very tiny chance the person they're attacking will be able to defend themselves. Hanging up a sign that says "This is a Gun Free Zone" is tantamount to telling criminals "Come here and shoot us all you like!" A person who would use a gun to hurt someone else is NOT a person who's going to care that there's a sign up.
Of course, this doesn't stop liberals from having their fantasies. I recall an episode of Dr. Quinn: Medicine Woman (has there ever been a more liberal show) wherein Dr. Quinn's adopted son is elected sheriff of their town, and in the same episode an outlaw ends up shooting the town's bartender. Because of this ONE SHOOTING (I should remind everyone that this show takes place in the old west), the town votes to outlaw guns. Yup. In this case, they don't even let the sheriff himself have one. Realistic writing, there.
But it gets worse. This outlaw comes back, and is met by the sheriff in the town square. The sheriff says guns aren't allowed in their town, and that he has to turn his over, or leave. The criminal threatens to shoot him dead, and the sheriff tells him he can try, if he likes, but then he'll have to go through the entire town to do so. Seeing the angry looks of the townsfolk, who are each and every one of them inside houses, looking out of windows, the criminal mutters something like "You win this round" and then turns around and leaves!
WTF?! In real life, this criminal would mow down the sheriff and then pick off anyone who left those houses, one by one. It would be fish in a barrel. But to the liberals who run that show, that's how they envision a world where no one is allowed to have a gun; that their "moral high ground" will win. No, unfortunately it won't.
The fact is that if a criminal has a gun, and knows you don't, he won't hesitate to use it on you should he feel he needs to. Conversely, the more he believes you might have a gun, the less likely he is to risk attacking you, knowing you could shoot him just as easily.
Now, I know people are going to bring up the Trayvon Martin case, specifically that Trayvon Martin was unarmed. They see this as another case of a trigger-happy gun-owner murdering a defenseless boy. The problem is that according to EVERYONE who witnessed the event, Martin WAS the attacker, and likely attacked because he was a cocky young thug who was sure that Zimmerman either didn't have a gun or didn't have the guts to use it if he did. And he likely thought that due to the anti-gun messages he likely heard everywhere. Martin, again, according to witnesses, rushed Zimmerman, threw him to the ground, straddled him, and started banging his head against the pavement, and punching him in the face, all while yelling "You're going to die today". Zimmerman managed to reach his gun and fired in self-defense. If he had not been armed, Zimmerman would be dead, and Trayvon Martin would be a murderer (likely never caught or convicted).
But what do liberals advocate in the wake of such a thing? Make it harder for responsible, law-abiding citizens to get guns. NOT make it easier to defend themselves against people who would break the law; make it harder to do so. Why? Why do they never understand that this is where it simply must lead?
They can't even answer the question on the most basic level; how do you expect to enforce gun laws on people who don't follow the law? What makes you expect that laws against guns would actually take guns off the street? Do they also feel that laws prohibiting cocaine and heroin have successfully made those drugs impossible to get hold of?
But they don't ask those questions. All they want to talk about is how best to get rid of guns. All they can do is spit questions back at us: "Why do you NEED a gun?" "What types of firearms do you think SHOULD be banned? Automatic? Semi-automatic?" They don't want to dialogue about it; they just can't get off the train of thought that guns simply MUST be banned, and that will reduce gun violence.
Now, I've said a lot about people like this who mean well. Many of them probably do just want to end gun violence. They've latched onto a completely wrong-headed method of doing so, but at least their hearts are in the right place. But there's another level to this. When politicians start talking about banning guns, everyone should be very, very worried.
There are politicians out there who are seriously proposing anti-gun legislation. They don't want stricter gun laws; they want to outlaw guns. Oh, not for the police or military, obviously. Just private citizens. Which means, not only will criminals still have guns, but the government will now be the only ones who have fire-power to back up their stance.
Do you know what you call it when the only people who can carry guns are those directly authorized by the government to do so?
A dictatorship.
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