Crossposted from Dailykos.
Although Ministry of Truth made a great many good points yesterday with his Kosdiary "Why don't you just get it over and call him N----", I think he's missing a much deeper point that everyone who is left of center in this nation needs to understand.
Those on the right don't Fear and Loathe President Elect Barack Obama simply because he's Black - that a negative bonus point for them - it's largely because he's Democrat and for them - as I stated back in 2006 - Liberal Bashing in the New Racism
In 2006 I said...
John Lennon once sang that "Woman is the Nigger of the World". In the last few weeks, something has become increasing clear to me. Times have indeed changed from the bad-old days of the Civil Rights movement and women's suffrage. No longer is it women who are the chief second-class citizen of this nation. It's not the gays. It's not the immigrants. It's not minorities, be they Black, Brown, Red or Yellow.
Granted, there are an increasing number of issues which affect each of them, but the one method for getting a full on smash-mouth whack at all the above - without being called nasty names, and being accused of being uncivil, impolite, or basically a Fucking Dick - is to attack just one group.
Liberals.
In Hating the "Enemy",... Namely Us. I pointed out what the usual type of attacks against Democrats from Republicans have been for some time...
# Sean Hannity suggested that the DNC may have been behind the Abu Ghraib prison abuse photos, asking: "Was that a DNC plot too?" (The Sean Hannity Show, 9/10/04)
# Laura Ingraham stated that Democratic Sens. John Kerry (MA), Joseph R. Biden Jr. (DE), and Barbara Boxer (CA) are "on the side of" North Korea leader Kim Jong Il because they were opposed to John R. Bolton's nomination as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. (Hannity & Colmes, 4/11/05).
# Ann Coulter on Bill Clinton, "he was a very good rapist" and "molested the help" and on Al Gore, "Before we knew he was clinically insane" - "He seemed kinda gay".
# Bill O'Reilly says he doesn't do "personal attacks", except of course for when he does.
I'm not saying that the most recent vile attacks on our current President haven't been ramping things up to a entire new level of ugly and vicious - not to mention completely unjustified - but the ground work for this type of thing has been well laid for a very long time, and it's been part of the MAINSTREAM of Political discourse for that entire time.
It's only natural that with the Trifeca of a Smart/Left-of-Center, African-American, PRESIDENT would drive some people completely up the batshit crazy cave.
But just imagine if that President were a Republican like say, Colin Powell? What if it were Michael Steele? What if it were Alan Keyes (who the Repubs carpet-bagged in to challenge Obama for the Senate?) What if it were someone they find "acceptable" (and easily bribable) like Armstrong Williams?
You think we'd be seeing bone-through-the-nose cartoons about them? You realize how loudly they would bellow at Watermelon Patches on the White House Lawn, if it were a Black Conservative were President?
To this very day - they complain about how badly Clarence Thomas was treated and say his grilling was entirely Racial - then turn around in a blink and accuse Justice Sotomayor of so-called Reverse Racism. for accurately following precedent.
They'd be more than willing to tolerate the "Blackness" of those particular people and pat themselves on the back for us - at least in public - just as Laura Ingraham was able to be good "friends" with the rather Gay David Brock back when he still a part of the Right-Wing establishment before he regained his dignity and self-respect (as well as sanity) and started Media Matters.
As he wrote in his book Blinded by the Right.
...of all the conservatives I had met since coming to Washington, I grew closes to Laura. For several months after we met in November 1994, we were inseparable companions. Laura drew me out of my shell; she helped me to relax and enjoy myself among the conservatives. She was a much more prodigious networker than I was, and she was also a wicked gossip, befriending the likes of Rush Limbaugh and George Will, then repeating their often creepy confidences to me.
Even after he came out they remained close...
Laura took the place of a mate. We were out on the town virtually every night together, cohosted seveal parties and dinners at my home, and vacations in souther California with the Huffingtons. [Long before Arriana's split with her gay husband Michael and her own eventual disenchantment with the right] We shared a lot of laughs. Despite her public persona as a voice of Gingrichism, I also saw in Laura a glimmer of humanity, softness and vulnerability, buried beneath all of the role-playing. In candid moments, she confided she didn't believe much of what she was saying on the airwaves. Channeling into our politics our emotional problems [in Laura's case, the pain of a difficult childhood, and her tortured relations with men, whether married or not], we were both trapped in devices of our own making.
But then he learned the truth.
I hadn't known of Laura's antigay past at Darthmouth, where, along with her then-boyfriend Dinesh D'Souza, she had participated in the infamous outing of gay students, who were branded "sodomites," until I cringed as I read about her Dartmouth Review exploits in a 1997 profile in Vanity Fair. To make matters worse, I was quoted int the piece saying that Laura was unreservedly accepting of homosexuality, which in my presence she always had seemed to be.
We'll, you were one of the "good ones" David. Like Andrew Sullivan, acceptable for deviant ways because of your "Right" thinking. Then that changed.
The bottom line being that if Barack Obama were A Conservative - we wouldn't be seeing any of this crap. He'd be "One of the GOOD Ones" - not one of those Reparations Seeking, Angry, Socialist, Black-Nationalist, Commie, Pinko, Anti-American, White-Hating, LIBERALS! that they so fear.
It was the Liberals - like John, Robert and Teddy Kennedy - who fought against Racial Oppression during the Civil Rights movement. It was Liberals who removed blatant racial bigotry from our immigration policies. It was the Liberals who fought against the crimes of the Vietnam - and Iraq - Wars. It was the Liberals who fought for Women's Equality. It was the Liberals who fought for the protection of the Elderly. It continues to be the Liberals who fight for the Sick and the Dying.
Very often, the ones who feel the most vicious brunt of Racial Hatred aren't black people or brown people. It's those LIBERALS who dared to stand beside them, like the Freedom Riders. They called them "Race-Traitors" "N--gger Lovers!"
The same is true of those who stood with women through suffrage.
Liberals represent All of the Oppressed and Disenfranchised. The Workers. The Poor. The Gay. The Alternative Worshipper. The Dismissed. The Ignored. THE HATED!
If we think things are bad now, we should remember just how bad they used to be. Back when the person they called "Socialist" - was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Barack represents for them something they fear above all other things. The potential for a resurgent and vibrant new Liberal Movement which would bring together all of these factions and forever change the power structure of this nation. Barack WILL Take "Their" (White, Christian, Straight, Right-Wing and Priviledge) America away from them, and share it with the rest of us. All of us.
Barack is a dramatic shift away the bleak, but determined, outlook I wrote about in 2006.
But Last year Rosa Parks died. This year saw the passing of Coretta Scott King. Many of the old Civil Rights Warhorses are losing their steam (Rep. John Conyers being a notable exception). The time is coming where we will need to begin the planning and actualization of a new Human Rights Movement.
A movement that focuses on spreading and protecting the basic and fully equal rights to election integrity, personal privacy, habeas corpus, trail by jury, freedom from torture, access to affordable healthcare, quality education, security, retirement protection, comprehensive sex education, preservation of reproduction rights and access to contraception along with an improved adoption and foster care system for alternative parenting options, an aggressively green energy policy, and the right to love and marry one consenting adult of your choice for all persons, regardless of race, nationality, religous persuasion, gender or gender orientation.
In short, for Freedom. But not Freedom as the Right defines it, as the "Right" to amass power and fortune unto onto oneself by taking it away from everyone else. True Freedom is not just a manifestation of personal desire, it has to be tempered with public responsibility, it is the right to do as you please, except when your actions begin to limit the freedom of others. We have to be willing to protect each others personal freedom as carefully as we protect our own, or none of us will be free.
This New Freedom Movement will need to fight as relentlessly as does the Reich-Wing, if not nearly as underhandedly.
We need to embrace who we are. We are the Fags. We are the Niggers. (Yes, dammit I'm saying it - and I'm Black!) We are the Dykes, the Kikes, the Goyim, the Gaijin, the Rag-heads, the Geeks, the Freaks, Weirdos, Nutballs, and Moon-bats. We are also the bold, whom fortune will ultimately favor. The meek who will inherit the Earth.
We're coming for our rights, and we're not stopping until we have them -- all of them. It won't be easy, it's going to be painful, difficult, dangerous, frustrating and thankless - but worth it.
Are you with me?
Now in 2009 I ask again but with renewed vigor, we are coming for our Rights - we won't get them easily or all at once. If not today, then tomorrow. If not tomorrow then the next day - if not then, the day after that, but we WILL have them. All of them.
Are you with me?
And are we with Barack?
It's not just Barack they're truly afraid of, it's all the rest of us.
Vyan
Updated For those who've stated that Ideological Bigotry is somehow lesser than Racial Bigotry either in intensity or Danger : Watch these.
Couple Arrested for wearing Anti-Bush T-Shirts.
2008 RNC Protestors charged with "Terrorism"
During the Bush Era people with Anti-Bush or Anti-Iraq Bumper Stickers on their cars were targeted, harassed and excluded from even being involved in Presidential Town Halls. Now people bring AR-15's to them.
Vyan
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