Now That You Mention It . . .

Courtesy Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post ~

A World of Change in 287 Days
By Eugene Robinson
Tuesday, November 3, 2009

It's been a year since a healthy majority of American voters elected Barack Obama to change the world. Which is precisely what he's doing.

Like many people who desperately want to see the country take a more progressive course, I quibble and quarrel with some of President Obama's actions. I wish he'd been tougher on Wall Street, quicker to close Guantanamo, more willing to investigate Bush-era excesses, bolder in seeking truly universal health care. I wish he could summon more of the rhetorical magic that spoke so compellingly to the better angels of our nature.

But he's a president, not a Hollywood action hero. Most of my frustration is really with the process of getting anything done in Washington, which is not something Obama can unilaterally change, nimbly circumvent or blithely ignore. One thing the new administration clearly did not anticipate was that Republicans in Congress would be so consistently and unanimously obstructionist -- or that Democrats would have to be introduced to the alien concept of party discipline. It took the White House too long to realize that bipartisanship is a tango and that there's no point in dancing alone.

Step back for a moment, though, and look at Obama's record. His biggest accomplishment has been keeping the worst financial and economic crisis in decades from turning into another Great Depression. Yes, the $787 billion stimulus package has been messy, but most economists believe it was absolutely necessary -- and some believe it should have been even bigger. Yes, Obama continued the Bush-era policy of showering irresponsible financial institutions with billions in public funds. Yes, the administration bailed out the auto industry -- and we actually heard the president of the United States reassure Americans that General Motors warranties would be honored.

But these and other actions convinced the financial markets that the White House would do anything to avoid a complete meltdown. The economy grew at a rate of 3.5 percent in the third quarter and, while unemployment may not yet have peaked, the odds of a strong and fairly swift recovery have greatly improved.

Responding to the crisis required creating an enormous fiscal deficit that Obama will spend years trying to reduce. But not even the most conservative economists recommend attacking the deficit before the economy is stabilized on a path of growth. Only Republican demagogues think that's a good idea.

On national security, Obama moved at once to categorically renounce torture -- a big step toward removing the ugly stain that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney left on our national honor. It looks as if Obama will miss his self-imposed one-year deadline for closing the Guantanamo prison, but a delay of a few weeks or months will be worth it if the administration succeeds in developing a comprehensive legal framework -- consistent with our ideals and traditions -- for bringing terrorism suspects to justice.

Obama should have supported a full-blown investigation into apparent Bush-era violations of national and international law. And, at a minimum, he should allow the limited torture probe ordered by Attorney General Eric Holder to follow the evidence wherever it might lead.

But at least the administration is on schedule in withdrawing combat troops from Iraq. I don't think Obama knows the right answer on Afghanistan; I'm not sure anybody does.

Obama's months in office have been so action-packed that it's easy to forget some of the historic steps he has taken: nominating Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the first Hispanic on the Supreme Court. Going to Egypt and speaking directly to the Muslim world about cooperation rather than conflict. Embracing multilateralism as the template for U.S. foreign policy in the new century. Accepting the scientific consensus on climate change. Investing in "green" jobs and education reform as key engines of economic development.

And then there's health-care reform. I've been impatient with Obama's strategy of letting Congress take the lead on writing legislation, but he's brought us to the brink of truly meaningful reform much faster than anyone could have imagined a year ago. We still have some fighting to do over two words -- "public" and "option" -- but it looks like the principle that everyone is entitled to health insurance, a Democratic Party goal for at least six decades, is about to become law.

Quite a record for 287 days: All that, and a Nobel Peace Prize, too.

Some White Folks Is Crazy!

Crazy white folks. (Not all. Just some, of course. Cause, this isn't, you know, typical of them.) Acting like they can't tell the difference between being charged for having said or done something racist and being racist. They act like there're difference degrees of racism. For example, E.J. Dionne told Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC that there're some white people who aren't pure racist who may still have a problem with a black president.

Umm, yeah, E.J. That's call a racist.

But, I do agree with E.J. on this, "Like it or not, Obama's race is an issue, just as John F. Kennedy's religion was an issue in 1960 -- and racism runs deeper in our history than anti-Catholicism." And this, "Is this unfair? Yes, it is. But if our nation is to cast off the shackles of race this year, Obama will have to grapple more than he'd like with the burdens that our history and the past travails of liberalism have forced him to bear."

And I have to say that while I agree with Eugene Robinson's opinion, linked here and above, on the whole, the crimes against humanity committed against African Americans continued into the 1970s and today. Black folk aren't so much concerned about "racial sins" committed long ago so much as the "racial sins" committed nowadays. Like Texas State Republicans selling a button asking, "If Obama is president, will we still call it the White House?"

But other than that, I agree with Eugene's assertion that, "I'm confident that Sen. Lindsey Graham and the rest of John McCain's front-line surrogates know full well what messages they're sending about Barack Obama and race. On the off chance that they -- or, more likely, some of the white voters they're trying to reach -- don't know text from subtext from context, here's a deconstruction."

And there's one last thing I wanna touch on.

It would be unfair, however, for Obama's campaign to cry "racism" every
time Republicans try to define the Democrat in unflattering terms. It would also
be a mistake, likely to backfire with voters who won't take kindly to a relative
newcomer trying to exempt himself from the ordinary, if unfortunate,
rough-and-tumble of a presidential campaign.

That's Andres Martinez's take on why Barack Obama is farther ahead of John McCain. I'm kinda tired now, so let me just tease the point . . . Martinez is wrong.

A Special Brand of Patiotism

A Special Brand Of Patriotism with My Comments

By Eugene Robinson
Friday, July 4, 2008; A17



Anyone who took U.S. history in high school ought to know that one of the five men killed in the Boston Massacre, the atrocity that helped ignite the American Revolution, was a runaway slave named Crispus Attucks. The question the history books rarely consider is: Why?

Think about it for a moment. For well over a century, British colonists in North America had practiced a particularly cruel brand of slavery, a system of bondage intended not just to exploit the labor of Africans but to crush their spirit as well. Backs were whipped and broken, families systematically separated, traditions erased, ancient languages silenced. Yet a black man -- to many, nothing more than a piece of property -- chose to stand and die with the patriots of Boston.

Now think about the Buffalo Soldiers and the Tuskegee Airmen. Think about Dorie Miller, who, like so many black sailors in the segregated U.S. Navy of the 1940s, was relegated to kitchen duty -- until Pearl Harbor, when Miller rushed up to the deck of the sinking USS West Virginia, carried wounded sailors to safety and then raked Japanese planes with fire from a heavy machine gun until he ran out of ammunition.

Think about Colin Powell -- but also think about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, a former Marine. And consider, as we celebrate Independence Day, how steadfast and complicated black patriotism has always been.

The subject is particularly relevant now that the first African American with a realistic chance of becoming president, Barack Obama, has felt compelled to give a lengthy speech explaining his own patriotism. It is not common, in my experience, for sitting U.S. senators to be questioned on their love of country -- to be grilled about a flag pin, for example, or critiqued on the posture they assume when the national anthem is played. For an American who attains such high office, patriotism is generally assumed.

It seems that some people don't want to give Obama the benefit of that assumption, however, and I have to wonder whether that's because he's black. And then I have to wonder why.

The fact that African American patriotism is never simple doesn't mean it's in any way halfhearted; to the contrary, complicated relationships tend to be the deepest and strongest. It's a historical fact that black soldiers and sailors who fought overseas in World War II came home to Southern cities where they had to ride in the back of the bus -- and that they were angry that the nation for which they had sacrificed would treat them this way. To some whites, I guess, it may seem logical to be suspicious of black patriotism -- to believe that anger must somehow temper love of country.

It doesn't, of course. It never has. Black Americans are just more intimately and acutely aware of some of our nation's flaws than many white Americans might be. This generalization is less true of my sons than of my parents, and I hope that someday it won't be true at all. I think one must add here, that for the most part, both white and African Americans are ignorant of the reality of present day racism. What Robinson says may be true, but it's not because the country has gotten astronomically better, or that white Americans are more aware, but that African Americans are less. But only in the past half-century has the United States begun to fully extend the rights of citizenship to African Americans -- and only in the past year has the idea that a black man might actually be elected president been more than a plot device for movies and television shows. We're someplace we've never been.

Michelle Obama was sharply attacked for saying that she felt proud of her country for the first time in her adult life. Her phrasing may have been impolitic, but I know exactly what she meant. I knew what she meant, too. The last time I was really proud of my country, I was in elementary school. By middle school, I was starting to have doubts about the greatness of the US of A.

This isn't about whether or not Barack Obama wins. Just the fact that he might win is an incredible change for this country -- and recognizing the importance of that change is, to me, the very essence of patriotism.

What's unpatriotic is pretending that the past never happened. What's unpatriotic is failing to acknowledge that we've struggled with race for nearly 400 years. What's unpatriotic is relegating "black history" to the month of February when, really, it's American history, without which this nation could never be what it is today. Here is where I really, wholeheartedly agree with Robinson. Presently, I can't think of anything to add.

My father, Harold I. Robinson, served in the Army during World War II and has lived to witness this transformative moment of possibility. My father-in-law, the late Edward R. Collins, was a sailor who saw action in the South Pacific; he rests at Arlington National Cemetery. I have no patience with anyone who thinks that patriots don't have brown skin. For my part, one of my grandfathers fought in WWII, at least two of my uncles and my father were in Vietnam, a cousin had been in Afganistan. The fact that the country doesn't treat peoples of color any better than it does is part of the reason you want see me joining the military. My health notwithstanding.

eugenerobinson@washpost.com
dreamsofthesouthwind@gmail.com