(Arthur brings us a tremendous report, and forces all of us to take a long hard look at ourselves. This really is the time for a change in America. Our 125th post since Bad Hat started.)
Of all things, it takes the English language version of the Qatar-based television network to take a frank look at the people of Kentucky and broadcast their answers. The most interesting of these interviews seemed to me to be with the guy who thought that whites might be put "in the back of the bus" in revenge for mistreating African-Americans for so many years. To the extent that fear is at all typical, it should be possible to talk many of those people through that fear.
But I think the "racial" factor is not so much a matter of dislike of black-skinned people as it is a more natural and understandable sympathy for those perceived as similar to an individual, as contrasted with those who seem more different, more foreign. And it may take a longer time for Barack Obama to win their sympathy, to break through their sense that he is "other" than them. One thing he has going for him is his quite remarkable biography. Neither he nor anyone in his family was ever a slave in the United States. Oddly, on his mother's side of the family one branch owned some slaves. Arguably, as unlikely as it sounds, Obama is closer to the "white working class" in Kentucky than he is to the African-Americans whose family history is that of slavery, followed by decades of discrimination and being marginalized. If there was ever an individual who was uniquely qualified to help bridge the historic wound of slavery in the United States, Barack Obama is it and the time is now.
I should note that I have mixed feelings about the idea of reparations. I am not sure one can put a price tag on mistreatment, particularly mistreatment that in some cases is generations old. There may reasonably be things that could be done to provide some form of redress, but I come back to the colorful Kentucky miner and his concern that whites might be disenfranchised. There would not be much point to helping one disadvantaged group at the expense of another disadvantaged group. And if we want to go deeper into that, what of the American Indian community? With a few shining exceptions where Casino wealth has lifted local tribes into sudden and surprising prosperity, most "Native American" communities are ravaged and depressed areas with the highest rates of alcoholism in the country. What responsibility do we bear for that social phenomena? And what can we do to address those problems?
There are more than enough issues on our plates. We have to start by deciding that despite our differences we are going to need to start trusting each other before there can be any hope of a positive change. Some politicians will work to unite us, others will continue to work to divide and turn us against each other. I know which kind I plan to vote for.
And when this election is over, I hope a lot of the windbag "talking heads" are sent into permanent retirement and the "infotainment industry" goes out and does some real investigative journalism for a change, instead of sitting around and endlessly giving their opinions about the spin and lies put out by dishonest politicians who are far more interested in grabbing and holding power than they are in the truth or in good government. I think you can all guess who I am talking about.
But I think the "racial" factor is not so much a matter of dislike of black-skinned people as it is a more natural and understandable sympathy for those perceived as similar to an individual, as contrasted with those who seem more different, more foreign. And it may take a longer time for Barack Obama to win their sympathy, to break through their sense that he is "other" than them. One thing he has going for him is his quite remarkable biography. Neither he nor anyone in his family was ever a slave in the United States. Oddly, on his mother's side of the family one branch owned some slaves. Arguably, as unlikely as it sounds, Obama is closer to the "white working class" in Kentucky than he is to the African-Americans whose family history is that of slavery, followed by decades of discrimination and being marginalized. If there was ever an individual who was uniquely qualified to help bridge the historic wound of slavery in the United States, Barack Obama is it and the time is now.
I should note that I have mixed feelings about the idea of reparations. I am not sure one can put a price tag on mistreatment, particularly mistreatment that in some cases is generations old. There may reasonably be things that could be done to provide some form of redress, but I come back to the colorful Kentucky miner and his concern that whites might be disenfranchised. There would not be much point to helping one disadvantaged group at the expense of another disadvantaged group. And if we want to go deeper into that, what of the American Indian community? With a few shining exceptions where Casino wealth has lifted local tribes into sudden and surprising prosperity, most "Native American" communities are ravaged and depressed areas with the highest rates of alcoholism in the country. What responsibility do we bear for that social phenomena? And what can we do to address those problems?
There are more than enough issues on our plates. We have to start by deciding that despite our differences we are going to need to start trusting each other before there can be any hope of a positive change. Some politicians will work to unite us, others will continue to work to divide and turn us against each other. I know which kind I plan to vote for.
And when this election is over, I hope a lot of the windbag "talking heads" are sent into permanent retirement and the "infotainment industry" goes out and does some real investigative journalism for a change, instead of sitting around and endlessly giving their opinions about the spin and lies put out by dishonest politicians who are far more interested in grabbing and holding power than they are in the truth or in good government. I think you can all guess who I am talking about.
Oh, and one last thing? Every one of Hillary Clinton's advisors has been publicly exposed as a bald-faced liar. How can I be so rude and so sure of that? Because all of her major shills, McAuliffe, Wolfson and Penn came out the night of the Pennsylvania Primary and announced that she was well on her way to raising Ten Million dollars in one day. Wowie! What momentum! She's a winner! And the next day they announced that she "reached her goal" by 2 PM the next day. Now consider this: the polls closed at 8 PM and that meant that in the next 18 hours she raised $10,000,000? From hundreds of thousands of small donors? If all those small donors slept for 8 hours that night, logically that meant that when they were awake they were pumping a million dollars an hour in to her campaign? Hogwash. That ranks up there with the claim by Ron Paul's supporters that they raised $4 million in one day. Again, what a great news story, but how odd, since Paul always seemed to be broke.
And now we get the FEC report for the Clinton campaign and we learn that she did raise a good sum of money on those two days... a total of a bit over $3 million. A good showing, but where did the other $7 million come from? or did it? The answer seems to be, there were some additional loans by Clinton to her campaign, but that is not exactly "fund raising" or from "small donors" is it? And all you need to do is watch that pack of lying weasels shouting out how fantastic the response has been... to know that the entire campaign was knowingly lying to the voters about what did or did not happen.
I'm not sure about you, but that very much reminds me of the sort of thing the Bush administration does on a fairly regular basis: they decide what they want the story to be and they send out surrogates, retired Generals, pet reporters, Senators and assorted camp followers to repeat their "talking points" (English: lies) over and over and over and over until their Big Lies permeate the public consciousness.
Again, I am not sure about you, but I am ready to move beyond having a President who is a pathological liar, supported by a political party composed of pathological liars. To my mind the solution is not to elect a President who has similar tendencies.
On Memorial Day weekend it is worth recalling the words of the last living French soldier of World War One (which I believe is the war the Holiday was first intended to honor) who died recently in France at age 109. He gave some memorable interviews in the last years of his life in which he said the following, "There is no glory in war, there is only one man killing another man who is someone's father" and "My only emotion during the war was to feel certain that we were all going to die". There has to be a better way. That is called "diplomacy" and it often saves lives, rather than squandering them.
War is probably the dumbest way to solve problems that has ever been thought of.
Arthur
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