THE OUTRAGEOUS FRINGE OF CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN SOCIETY IS NOT A NEW PHENOMENA
PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER SPOKE RECENTLY AT THE CARTER CENTER IN ATLANTA ABOUT THE HARSH, NEARLY CRUEL TREATMENT OUR FIRST BLACK PRESIDENT IS RECEIVING FROM THE FAR RIGHT, THOSE WHO BELIEVE THEMSELVES TO BE DISENFRANCHISED AND, OF COURSE, THE PERPETUALLY ALIENATED REPUBLICAN PARTY AND WRONG HEADED DEMOCRATS WHO SUFFER FROM A MOUNTAIN OF UNEXPRESSED HOSTILITY
THE REPUBLICANS, HAVE FASTENED THEIR FUTURE TO THE FANTASIES THEY HAVE CREATED ABOUT THE CALAMITY THIS AFRICAN AMERICAN MAN IS ABOUT TO BRING TO IMPOSE UPON OUR NATION.
During the 2008 presidential campaign I encountered some of the most despicable criticisms of my liberal perspective on the campaign I could imagine, especially coming from people with whom I attended high school in Fairborn, Ohio.
Over the years I have idealized my high school years to a far greater extent than I could ever have imagined. It seems from the point of view that fifty years of separation has given, the actual events that I once believed were true were in reality nothing but wishful thinking and those with whom I had some form of a relationship in many cases was a delusion of my own creation.
High School is a rapidly changing phase of one’s life. We are attempting to prepare ourselves for the life we hope to live. Our minds are hurriedly expanding with the knowledge we must have in order to be accepted into the college of our choice and our bodies are rushing hastily toward adulthood as sex becomes more and more the driving force, particularly in the minds of men.
I simply did not realize the depths of the alienation of people who live in isolation, i.e. who never venture outside the cocoon in which they were born and never launch an inquiry into the details of their religious faith or their parents’ political fallacies. They still believe what they believed in 1950 although the world has changed dramatically in the past 60 years.
Science has advanced far beyond our most spectacular dreams. Medicine has added 20 years onto the length of the average person’s life and it has created drugs that ease the pain and agony that diseases fifty years ago inflicted upon us.
We can receive a transplant for nearly every organ in the body except the penis, although I am certain that young males in the future will be able to design the length, width, and shape of the most important organ their bodies [or at least the one with which he spends the majority of his time.]
We have marvelous cars, planes, rockets, and ships that can carry us the deepest depths of the oceans and the uppermost corners of this magnificent Milky Way. When we compare our life with those who are born in darkest Africa, with the people of Somalia, South Africa, Ghana, Kenya or even the countries of the Middle East, i.e. Palestine, Egypt, Turkey, Iraq and Iran we have to stand back in utter awe that our forefathers were able to build such a prosperous nation of such grandeur and personal freedom and individual liberty.
On November 8, 2008, we proved to the world that, in fact, we were “one nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all.” We were the first nation in the western world to elect a man of African ancestry as president of the United States.
Throughout the campaign, because of the Republican Party’s divisive battle and its lack of leaders who demanded that its followers pay respect and high regard to a man brilliant enough, eloquent enough, wise enough and idealistic enough to run one of the most successful campaign’s for the presidency in history. Its candidate for Vice-President provoke those in her audience whose prejudice was eking out through the language on their signs, the words that slipped out of their mouths, and their chanting of derogatory slogans at rally’s across much of the South and some of the Mid-West.
The Bible belt did not practice what it preaches every Sunday in its Baptists and Methodist churches whose white crosses dot the landscape of South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas. Not far behind the socially retarded South is the southern Mid-West.
In fact, Yahoo News did a study southwestern Ohio in towns like Springfield, Dayton, Fairborn, Miamisburg, Wilmington, and London and unearthed a massive pit of racial prejudice as they spoke to farmers in cafes, and blue collar workers [many of whom were out of work]. The racial bigotry was pervasive.
One man in a small rural area in central Ohio stated quite openly and unashamedly that “we just don’t vote for black men in this part of the country.”
I attempted to call the man a day later to conduct a telephone interview. I called three times and no one answered. Shortly thereafter I received a call from a young lady who asked if I had been trying to reach the gentleman. I explained who I was and that I was calling to conduct a telephone interview about his comments on Yahoo News the day before.
She said that he was giving no interviews and when I pressed, “I won’t take much of his time. Since I was born in the general area of Ohio where he lived, I was interested in what were the primary influences that caused him to believe that he should never vote for a black man for public office.
After she was comfortable with the fact that I was a blogger, a writer and was not out to do him harm she explained that his home was literally surrounded by media vans, that people had been driving by the previous evening throwing bricks into his windows until they called the local sheriff who closed the road and detoured traffic away from his home.
She went on to say that he was receiving threatening calls one after the other which was the reason the local sheriff called in the FBI. She went on to say “I am with the FBI and our entire local staff is here to provide protection for the man.”
While I did not follow up, I am certain that in a few days the heat of the moment cooled and things went back to normal.
But in interviews in café’s and clubs, Yahoo did not have to look far to find racially intolerant people. It was everywhere according to the author of the story.
I was shocked since I was born in a town not far from where this gentleman lives and in my home no racially insensitive talk was allowed. While we had friends and some member of our extended family who would use the “n” word, I would have gotten my butt beat if I tried to denigrate another race of people. Part of that comes from the fact that my mother’s side of the family had some Shawnee Indian blood. In fact, as a small boy I met my mother’s great, great grandmother who looked exactly like an American Indian pictured in the history books.
But the most deplorable and disappointing aspect of this bigotry is the number of people from my high school class that I have subsequently discovered are intolerant of anyone of a different race, political party or religious perspective.
After I sent an e-mail praising Barack Obama’s selection of Joe Biden as his running mate, I received an email from a guy in my class that I remember, but with whom I had only a passing acquaintance. When he discovered that I was working for Obama, writing for Obama, supporting Obama, he wrote me the most frightening letter I have ever received from what I believe to be a sane man [although after reading the letter I can not be certain]. Maybe he has Alzheimer’s, maybe he is just senile or suffers from some form of dementia, but he is convinced that if Obama is elected to the presidency the country will be destroyed. I can only wish that his health improves once a health care reform bill is passed.
Another letter came from a guy in my high school class, but never as a friend and he along with a large number of my classmates either were associated with the military or went into the military as a career. He made me feel that my endorsement of Obama was unpatriotic. I find that some [not all] who have served in the armed forces end up being hyper-patriotic.
However, the most hurtful came primarily from the wife one of my good friends in high school who was someone I could share my adolescent quandaries on a whole repertoire of subjects from the most personal aspects of sex, to college, dating, and, of course, girls in the general sense of the word.
To be honest, I think his wife wrote this truly nasty letter because while she was younger than we were by several years, I did not know her or even feel that I met her back all those years ago. We did visit each other in their Florida home one winter many years ago, but they moved to Tennessee and have spent decades in one of the most southern of southern states.
But it was all in her email. She is subtly intolerant of other races, other countries, and other ideologies.
I receive hundreds of emails from friends or members of their families who have lost their minds in the political marshland that has seeped into many parts of our nation.
These people never seem to free themselves of the prejudice and bigotry of their family of origin. They have not grown beyond their early years or even thought outside the boundaries of their parents’ politics, religion and social interaction. They are still adolescent philosophers caught up in the social alienation of the place where they spend the vast majority of their lives.
Did you hear the number of people that continue to believe that Barack Obama is not a citizen of the United States? His birth certificate has been posted on the internet for months as well as his birth announcement in the Honolulu newspapers and letters from the Governor of Hawaii and other government officials. Still, arguably smart people called “birthers” held fast to the myth that he is not a certified American citizen. These people aren’t birthers they are idiots.
During this long and unnecessarily drawn out debate on health care reform, I have seen the evils of politics at work. The Health insurance companies and their surrogates in the form of PR firms, PACs, Republican Operatives, planned and paid for the hiring of willing liars to attend the town hall meetings all over the country, to shout out loud phrases that impinge upon the veracity of the Obama health care proposal, carry signs that picture the president as Hitler with mustache and abominable names printed across the sign—Fascist, Communist and Socialist.
Either these people do not know the meaning of the words that scream out of the cardboard signs they carry, or they are just frauds.
They were hired by insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies and other groups including the Republican Party and paid to disseminate white sheets of paper printed with black lies all over them.
More importantly these events were heavily promoted by Fox News Network which rather than being fair and balanced became the last thing a news operation should be--terribly partisan.
Right to Life groups paid for by the anti-abortionists in the Roman Catholic Church including some of their rogue Archbishops, Bishops, and priests who refuse to be satisfied by accepting their unabridged right to “no” abortion at any time, in any manner, but insist that the entire country the majority of which totally disagrees with them, must also cease this controversial procedure.
The Roman Catholic Church along with Fundamentalists, Pentecostals, Southern Baptists and others of like stripe are marching, tying up town hall meetings with questions about the one issue they care about—abortion. Does this health care bill allow for abortion; if so, they are opposed regardless of the number of uninsured, regardless of the 44,000 people who die each year for lack of health insurance and regardless of the physical condition of the mother at the time of birth. These are the real Fascists who want to impose their will upon the entire country without the country’s consent.
Webster gives us this definition of Fascism: “A governmental system led by a dictator having complete power forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism, regimenting all industry, commerce, etc. and emphasizing an aggressive nationalism and often racism.”
Now for God’s sake will all of the groups mentioned above, who are nothing if not ignoramuses, cease and desist calling President Obama a Fascist.
Dante’s inferno has seven [for most] and nine [for others] layers of hell. A friend of mine and fellow professor from time to time was at a meeting recently with a dear friend. She was told by her friend that the Republican Party was so bad it was creating an eighth or tenth layer of hell!
Hmmm - Dante's inferno may shed some light on that projection for you. There are 9 layers of hell in total not seven:
1 - Limbo
2 - The Lustful
3 - The Gluttonous
4 - Hoarders & Wasters
5 - The Wrathful
6 - The Heretics
7 - The Violent
8 - The Fraudulent
9 - The Treacherous (Satan)
10- [THE REPUBLICAN PARTY AND ITS SURROGATES]
Isn’t it ironic that the GOP already fits well into two of Dante’s nine levels of hell without designing a new one just for them--the [5] Wrathful and [8] the Fraudulent both a characteristics of neo-conservative and right wing Republicans. With all of the sex scandals they have faced from the Governor of South Carolina, to the Senator from Idaho, and Congressman Foley from Florida and the young men who work as capital pages, perhaps [2] Lustful should be added.
They certainly are Hoarders and Wasters [4] of the tax dollars placed into their care by the electorate only to waste it on military projects that never saw the light of day, Neither Reagan, George H. W. Bush or George Bush never saw a deficit they did not like contrary to popular opinion.
They could surely be considered Violent [7] for the Afghanistan, the war they refuse to finish and the Iraq war which was a preemptive invasion where we simply captured and occupied a sovereign nation which posed about as much danger to us as a pack of mice.
That still leaves us with a name for 10th level of hell. We must give it some very serious thought, but I am leaning toward the word “heartless”.
JOE SHERIDAN’S BOOK—
JESUS WAS A LIBERAL/A Blogger’s Bold Opinions on Politics and Religion
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11:48:46 AM 
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