Invitation

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The President

The President
Obama looks ahead

Sunday, January 1, 2012

HATRED!

                                            by Michael White

December 31, 2011. The end of the most tumultuous year in international politics and economics this generation has seen.
In the United States Congress went home. Thank God. It was a time of reflection, particularly for Republicans. They had a lot to reflect on. A clear and honest examination of conscience would have brought up all the shenanigans they engaged in throughout the year. They would have had to lay down at the altar all the things they did to bring America to its worst pass, close to the brink of destruction, all because of a single-minded determination to make their President fail.
As 2012 begins we can only hope that instead of perpetuating the culture of hate nurtured in 2011, the New Year’s Resolutions are based on Scriptures like these:

“Pray for all those who lead in all areas of life, and for all that are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty.” 1Timothy2:2

 “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourself. Look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.” Philippians 2:3-4.

“What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something but don’t get it. You kill and covet but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive because you ask with the wrong motives.” James 4:1-3

America elected a black man to the Presidency in a season of mature reflection on the ills of the past. Many welcomed the election as a sign of the raising of a post racial society, the maturing of America. They heralded it as a major victory for human rights and racial equality, or at least tolerance, at home and abroad.
All well and good.
But hidden underneath was a gruesome reality. Entrenched, institutional racism does not die in a society without a fight. And the death pangs can be long, painful and destructive. There still lingers the ghost of, to some, an idyllic past where blacks were restricted to one corner and whites to another.
It is not easy for a bigot to come to settle in his mind that it is not a national calamity for a black man to sit in the white house. In fact, it is as difficult as it is for the class bully to surrender his ways.
It should appear strange to all sane people that the America handed over to Obama to salvage was one racked with debt, an economy on the brink of collapse, a badly diminished  manufacturing base, a collapsed housing market, a decadent financial system, a declining middle class, a ruined educational system with far too many underachievers,
He immediately proceeded to the agenda to reverse these disastrous trends with the tools he had at hand.
Republicans have incessantly blocked and diminished President Obama’s agenda. They have concocted all kinds of outlandish and patently disingenuous counter attacks to anything he has put forward. They have invented all kinds of catch phrases to ridicule and diminish his policy prescriptions; they have created and promulgated a narrative designed to prove that nothing he has done has been in America’s best interests.
They have refused to concede that even his obvious triumphs in the foreign policy arena have been successful. Since they campaigned on the pretext that he would not be a strong Commander in Chief, it is impossible for them to acknowledge that his triumphs in this arena are credible. Even as he seeks to end the disastrous, ill-conceived war in Iraq that they started, they brazenly postulate that history will judge Obama as the worst American foreign policy leader. This is a new talking point of the Republican clan.
What could be the reason for this level of hatred of this excellent son of the soil? It is simple. President Carter and several other wise men tried very early to sound the warning bell. For a black man to succeed in pulling the country out of the morass in which they left it, it would mean that he has been a better President than his predecessors, white men, could be. It would be destroying all their age-old traditions and stereotypes; punching holes in the theories that they espouse of racial superiority and their divine right to rule.
Republicans and those swayed by their crusade, offer all sorts of excuses and justifications for the unabashed bigotry that still prevails. They make lame excuses for the sustained attacks on everything Obama does and says. We are in an era of gross rationalisation of the actions and statements of those who, simply, hate.
As we welcome 2012, amid all the idle chatter, let all America come to accept that there are those who not only want Obama to fail for political reasons, but for racial reasons. The black man has had his chance and now it is time for the people’s white house to be occupied by a legitimate tenant: a white man.
Obama, enough! Time to go.
The entire theme of many Republican leaders and spokespersons, for the years of Obama’s presidency, is that he should be a one-term president. From the very outset, everything has been tried to get him to fail. He is Kenyan, he is not American, he is too black, he is not black enough, he is not a leader, he is a liar, he does not understand America, he is weak on foreign policy, he apologises too much for America, and on and on....
Of all the absurdities we have witnessed in 2011, one of the most glaring is the pundits’ apparent “amazement” at the President’s inability to make the factions in Congress work cooperatively! After all, he is in charge so it is his responsibility to get Congress to act together! How absurd, when the decision and resolve of one side in Congress is not to cooperate on any terms. It is nothing but a game. For instance, when they hear the economy is getting better they pivot quickly to another line of criticism that Obama is the one responsible for the deadlock!
There is a real fear in the hearts of the bigots that Obama might really succeed as President; this would mean that at last, just perhaps, the black man is equal to the white man, at least in performing in the highest position in the land. To accept that fact is to admit that a whole chunk of US history has been wrong-headed, all the ills of the past that arise like ghosts in a cemetery to haunt the dreams of the bigoted class.
The only consolation one has, and it is a not insignificant one, is that there are so many millions of noble Americans who do not share the dark motivations of their overtly racist compatriots, and are genuinely striving for an America that is true to its highest declared values.
We thought we had a countdown last night. Wait till you see the countdown to the end of this year. Or, who knows, perhaps the Republican conscience and resolutions will kick in and we will all really have a HAPPY NEW YEAR.
We are betting on a right thinking America. In the end it is likely that the just will prevail.