A Post-Racial President? Hardly

[Stephanie]

SNIP:


From Our Writers:
On March 18, 2008, then-candidate Barack Obama gave a game-changing speech in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, titled, “A More Perfect Union.” The speech was to address specifically the racist and anti-American remarks of Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who was Obama’s pastor at the time. But the speech was also to cast Obama above the polarizing specter that race and politics can create in a political campaign.


After the speech, the accolades for Obama were decidedly on the level of greatness. Comparisons to civil rights-icon Dr. Martin Luther King were tossed about by the punditry, so enamored were they with this “post-racial” presidential candidate.

read the rest here.
A Post-Racial President? Hardly

 

[JakeStarkey]

What amazes me is the fact that the majority of board posters who have read the Bible believe we are an exceptional people who must protect the U.S. from a timeless threat as coming from within one party or another (but usually the Democrats). We swallow the lie of American Exceptionalism (that America is special or more enlightened, that Americans are special or more enlightened). We swallow the mythology of "The Founders" and of the anachronistic interpretations of their intentions in drafting the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

But in the end, we don't see these lies as coming from the corporationists, those who have purchased our lawmakers, the super-wealthy. These puppet-masters have turned us against the poor and unfortunate by directing our attention to the huge sums of tax money being wasted on social programs for the lazy and indigent. Then they pump us full of nationalistic pride and patriotism so that we ignore the far vaster sums of tax money we spend on defense (a nice little euphemism, but when was the last time America was invaded by a foreign army?). Thus we see the poor are the enemy of the middle class when it is, in fact, the super-wealthy who exploit both middle class and poor.

We invade Afghanistan because there's political hay to be made. It allows our leaders to sell the invasion of Iraq when they know we bombed to powder all of Saddam's WMDs back in 1991. But Exxon gets to privatize the Iraqi oil fields and make astounding profits, while the American government and its supporting taxpayers don't see a dime of those profits going toward recouping some of the capital outlay wasted in the invasion. Oh, and let's not forget the no-bid contract that Haloburton "won" for the rebuilding of Iraq. (Seen any photos from there lately? What a vacation spot its becoming! )

So we blindly criticize the "socialism" that threatens our country's special status in the eyes of God, pushing for privatization of all services, never thinking of the clearly not-for-profit passages of our Christian scriptures. So we blindly victimize the orphan, the widow elderly, the mentally ill in the name of privatization.

We follow our politicians (bought-and- paid-for by Wall Street) who eschew the regulation of banks and financial markets because to do so would hamstring the innovation needed to create wealth. And as we allow our homes and savings to be pillaged by these "innovators", we happily sip the Kool-aid.

Actually, Americans don't sip. We slam it back because we hope that some day we too can be rich, thus proving to others (and ourselves) that we have kept an eye single to the glory of God and have been blessed.

 

[Big Black Dog]

I'm not so sure the founding fathers would agree with your opinion. Not real sure anybody would...