Paul R. Lehman, Republicans hold on to old biases through Obama

October 17, 2010 at 10:27 pm | Posted in American Bigotry, Race in America | 3 Comments
Tags: Chait, Ignatius, President Obama, Rattner, Reconstruction, Republicans, the economy

A recent poll released by Public Policy Polling indicated that 35% of all Republicans would support impeaching President Obama. No specific reason was given for wanting him impeached. Jonathan Chait, a writer for The New Republic, in a recent article stated “Hear me now and believe me later: If Republicans win and maintain control of the House of Representatives, they are going to impeach President Obama. They won’t do it right away. And they won’t succeed in removing Obama. (You need 67 Senate votes.) But if Obama wins a second term, the House will vote to impeach him before he leaves office.”On numerous occasions Republican politicians have stated that if they gain control of both houses of Congress, they will either move to impeach the President and/or shut down the government.

 One must ask the question why someone would want to impeach the President or shut down the government without a valid reason. Although some might disagree with the answer, it is because of Obama’s ethnicity; he is African American. So what does that have to do with anything some might ask? From the outset of slavery Africans and subsequently, African Americans have been viewed as less than human and treated in accordance with that belief.  A reference to the period in history known as Reconstruction helps to make clear the problem. A former slave, William A. Sinclair, stated in his book The Aftermath of Slavery, (1905) that freedom for the African American after the Civil War was “a treasurer above all price.”He added “But the white people of the South took a different view of it. They loved freedom for themselves and would die in defense of it; unfortunately, however, they regarded the freeing of the colored man as a wrong to the white man. The virus of slavery was present in the brain!” In essence, the hatred, anger, and bigotry that were part of American slavery did not end with the passage of the 13^th, 14th, and 15^th Amendments. As a matter of fact, it still lives today. Too many Americans still believe that the freeing of the slaves wronged the European Americans.

 Today, common sense dictates that if some people want to impeach the President or any office holder for that matter, there has to be a reason. If the people are afraid or ashamed to publically state their reason for wanting someone impeached then their motives must come into play. With the 35% of Republicans wanting to impeach Obama, but know not why specifically, then it must be because they fear something within themselves or something they do not want attributed to them. That something is a loss of self-worth and value that is diminished because they should accept and respect their President, but feel they cannot because he represents an element in their lives that calls into question their sense of humanity.

 More and more, reasonable Americans are beginning to see the bogus excuses given for wanting to impeach Obama or to cause his administration to fail. Two of the favorite reasons are the economy, and how Obama and his policies have not been right for the country. David Ignatius of the Washington Post Writers Group, in commenting on a recent book by Steven Rattner, Overhaul: An Insider’s   Account of the Obama Administration’s Emergency Rescue of the Auto Industry,makes reference to the following quote about the state of the  economy: “Private companies made bad decisions that put the U.S. economy at risk; government made good (if politically unpopular) decisions to keep these mismanaged companies afloat, fearing that a collapse would mean much worse trouble.” Ignatius continues by adding that “And here’s the point that nobody in politics seems to get: The government interventions worked. The companies were saved. Most of the money that taxpayers invested is likely to be repaid. Politicians talk as if the whole process was a disaster, but it wasn’t. Private actors made bad decisions, but public officials generally made good ones.”

 Why is it that some people are able to see clearly what Obama and his administration has done and continues to try and do for the country and others want to make a mockery of any and everything that he does? When the feelings of these Americans are so strong that they want to impeach the President for no good reason they can state, then their selfishness shows them to be unchristian, unpatriotic, and bigoted. They are apparently willing to sacrifice the country, the government, and their so-called sacred honor for pure biased selfish “unreasons.”

Many Republican and Tea Party candidates are running on a campaign to defeat Obama. They accuse him and his administration of destroying our country and its economy, but offer no proof but their word that his policies are detrimental to the country. Ignatius  and Rattner disagree, and states that “President Obama and the Democrats should stop running scared on this one. The truth is that the government rescue of the auto and finance industries was a success, and a necessary condition for the economic recovery that’s slowly gathering steam. Stop apologizing; start taking credit for the policies that worked.”

The fear and scare tactics that have been used by some politicians to create a division among Americans are slowly coming to a head. If things are so bad now, what will things be like when they (the Republicans) shut down the government as some say they want to do? What good can be expected from impeaching the President and/or shutting down the government? In a democracy such as ours, the engine of government runs slowly because that is the nature of this form of government. The benefits of this form of government is that it depends on the involvement of the people to make it work; therefore, the people must be informed in order to make good decisions that benefit the whole society. A society cannot hold on to the past if it wants to enter into the future. Americans need to decide if it wants to hold on to the dark prejudices created in the past or move into the light of the future. For goodness sakes, let there be light!