Posted by MG on April 11, 2010 at 03:25:36
Thank you for a turn on the soapbox.
I want to begin with a comment that has to do with the American people, with race and current politics in America. I can do this best with a description of my family back home in Texas. We're Texans. I was born in El Paso and proud to have Texas as my home state. I’ve got two kids that live there, my son graduated from Southwest Texas University, and a daughter who has 2 masters from the Univ. of Texas. I’m white, my wife is white, of course so are my kids. But I’ve got a mom, two sisters, a brother livin’ in Texas, as well as nieces and nephews, an uncle and a whole lot of cousins. And here things get interesting. One of my sisters was married to this fantastic guy who’s now a sheriff, he’s black, which gave me a black niece and a nephew they're both gorgeous. My brother’s married to a beautiful brown Latina Texan of Aztec ancestry, thanks to them I have a beautiful dark skinned niece. My son’s girlfriend’s parents are Vietnamese immigrants. She's as Asian as they come. And we’re all proud Americans, and we’re Texas democrats, we all voted for Obama, along with the majority of Americans. And we won and we have a president we’re proud of. One look at a photo of me and my kids with my brother and sister and their kids portrays very poignantly what the real America is: it's very colorful and it’s light-years away from being only white, conservative, older, rich, and Republican.
I think it’s important for people to know that there are virtually no people of color who take part in the hysterical, tea-party, Republican, anti-Obama, often hate-filled rhetoric that is carelessly being thrown around these days. To see the whiteness of the Fox News generated opposition to Obama is very easy, one only needs to look at any news coverage of a conservative and/or Tea Party rally. There are virtually no Blacks or Hispanics in the crowd. (They are a few names they will give you to counter this, but it is by far very few.)
While I have this soapbox allow me to add: As a former Family member and formerly delusional follower of David Berg, I find it very interesting to keep abreast of some of the conspiracy theories (and their sources) that abound in the opposition to Obama. No one can deny that Berg was big on conspiracy theories too. Remember when he published the "News Digest" for the Family’s consumption, so that he could keep us "informed" of current events by reading new articles that had been culled and re-published along with Berg's end-time prophet’s comments in the margins? In fact quite a few of the articles came straight from the WorldNetDaily of which Berg was quite a fan. Currently, the WorldNetDaily is one of the sources for some of the craziest conspiracy theories about Obama that are now out there. For example: Obama is going to use the census to set up internment camps. And of course they never give up on saying that a conspiracy started back when he was born to fool everyone into believing he was born in Hawaii when he was really born in Kenya. And they go fuel the conspiracy theory that Obama is the Anti-Christ which many members of the extreme Christian right have swallowed. Just as the WorldNetDaily provided Berg with a lot of conspiracy theory material, they now provide a lot of conspiracy craziness for Glen Beck Fox News & Co., as well as for the Michelle Bachmanns and Sarah Palins.
To sum this up: the hysteria about Obama, who in reality is much more a centrist than anything else, comes from a small minority in America, a fringe, and if responsible Republicans don’t stop their Party from catering to and embracing that fringe, America will not be the better for it because America needs a rational Republican Party.