Kyle City Limits
by BRENDA STEWART
Looking back, I’m not sure that a lot of folks thought that Obama could actually win the election. And when he did, they began almost immediately trying to undermine his plans – the ambitious platform of bringing America back to peace and prosperity.
“He’s not from here”, the birthers began to hiss on cue. And then there were those rumblings about him not being “all black”, like somehow that made him a traitor to both races and not to be trusted. They worked it from every angle for the past 18 months and they finally figured it out. Race and nationality are going to incite some of the folks, but not enough to keep the momentum going. And, frankly, racism is not very politically correct these days. They needed something a bit more covert.
And I’m not exactly sure who “they” are. The Tea Party is not driving this train, much as they’d like to think so. They are just easy to whip into a massive herd-like frenzy which plays well on Fox News. Palin doesn’t have the brains to manipulate the masses like this. Beck’s a publicity puppet like Limbaugh, blowhards on a payroll. I would imagine, though, that there is a paper trail somewhere which leads directly to the oil industry. Regardless.
“He’s raising our taxes.” “He’s not helping the little guy enough.” “He has no military experience.” “He’s sacrificing our soldiers to the Taliban.” “He’s withdrawing our troops before we’ve killed Bin Laden.” “It’s because he’s ‘one of them’”. Haven’t you heard?
The latest fear mongering exploit seems to be the statement of “fact” that Obama lied when he said that he was a Christian (and has been his entire life) and he’s really a closet Muslim. Like Satan. They’ve pulled out the oldest trick in the book: Terrify folks into thinking that someone is trying to take their god away and will make them bow down to pagan images, or worse, Allah.
Hit them in that hazy hallowed space of the entanglement of god and country, where there are no definitive answers except those conveniently whispered by god directly into the ear of whomever happens to be holding the microphone.
And as much as I know they deny this, if the president was a middle-aged protestant white man, there would be no insinuations about his nationality, no question of his beliefs, no conspiracy theory concerning his agenda.
This whole issue is about racism and fear and lies. It’s just cloaked conveniently in the Stars and Stripes, spoon-fed to folks who often don’t bother to think for themselves, and, ironically, called patriotism.
