Hatred!
The definition of hatred is: “the feeling of one who hates; intense dislike or extreme aversion or hostility.”
As we survey the American political and social scene at this time, we see a great deal of hatred displayed on its horizons. Although we would like or desire to believe that most of it comes from the neoconservative right, some of it comes from the radical left just as well. No one defines the radical left any better for us than the New York Times op-ed writer Maureen Dowd. If Dowd does not have an outright hate for President Obama, her aversion to him and her utter disrespect for him shows in so many things that she writes.
Dowd is the poster child for those who bought in completely to what Obama said in his broad sweeping statements about hope and change made public during the 2008 presidential campaign. Obama never really filled in the gaps in what that hope and change might be but apparently people like Dowd filled in those gaps for the president in their own minds and nothing that the president has ever really done has satisfied their cynical idealism and its wanton desires.
We do not think that anyone but a few in the know really realized the challenges that this first black president would face with large swaths of the electorate. And, we wonder if Obama himself even knew the fight that he would have on his hands from those who resist change as an normal course of events, much less when it is foisted off on them by a man of a color that they have never respected in their lives. We use that term “foisted’ because so many on the right would find its use and tone appropriate. There is a great hate among the neoconservative right for all things that they describe as liberal and the ultimate insult was when the nation, due mainly to the conservative failures with George W. Bush, decided to elect a black man to the White House. There is also still a great resentment among many on the left, however, that, instead of the first black man, we did not elect as a body politic, the first woman to hold that high office. We feel that much of what is behind people such as Maureen Dowd’s vitriol is the long simmering resentment over the fact that Barack Obama sits in the oval office instead of their person Hillary Clinton. It does not seem to matter to them that Hillary Clinton sits in a commanding position for her party’s nomination because of the defference that Barack Obama paid to her by letting her make the office of Secretry of State her own. All so often in the past the president has had his own forwign policy apparatus in place inside the White House to the frustration and exclusion of past secretary’s of State. Just ask Colin Powell about that fact!
It is odd really that even among the far right, the idea of Hillary Clinton in the White House sits better with them than the fact of this well educated black man who so threatens their world. When you hear so much of what they write on the blogospheres, they have almost been accepting of the idea that Hillary might be our next president in 2016. But now they see some hope on the horizon in the Benghazi manufactured scandal that is giving them the wedge issue that they might be able to use to rally the troops as they seek that mystical return to power and the finishing of the destruction of the government that began under Ronald Wilson Reagan and was almost completed under George W. Bush. After last fall’s election, there was literally no hope for the right but now due to these minor scandals, great hope again rises on their horizon.
There is a feeling of incompetence surrounding Barack Obama that is being foisted off on the populace by the republicans and the press and the talking heads among it as they survey Benghazi, the IRS, and the Associated Press events, and, the polls indicate that, to some degree, the American people are listening to what is being said. But, these same polls show that the president is maintaining his standing among the American people. In point of fact, there is a floor of Obama support that he cannot seem to fall below and there is also a sort of glass ceiling of support that he cannot seem to break through. But, we best remember that as each day passes by, the republican party becomes a little older and grayer and more and more of their core attend the funerals for their friends who continue to remember that past that includes the racism that generates so much hatred toward Mr. Obama and his ilk. Racism and hatred die hard, multi-generational deaths, but they are being buried across this nation each and every day of the year.
The great overarching problem that the American people may have with this incompetence of government approach that the neoconservatives have wrapped themselves around is the simple fact that it is simply not true in the larger sense. Each and every day, week, and month that passes by sees increasingly better economic numbers and even the great conservative issue--the deficit--is beginning to come down from its historic heights of the last few years.
The incompetent Barack Obama has led the stock market to highs that it has never seen before and that has helped so many who have had the angst about retirement and working longer years to realize that they might not have to do that after all. People are accruing wealth in their houses again as the prices begin to rise and there is beginning to be visible a feeling of more well being around the nation than we have seen in a number of years. The neoconservatives can fill the airwaves with their talk about incompetence but the great competency of prosperity may just overcome it all in the end. Hatred has nothing at all positive about and it leads no where at all. And the great mass of people in this world are simply not haters by nature. In the deep south and out on the plains of this nation they will continue to hate but they are being replaced every day by those who simply do not have that attribute in their souls. Given a chance at an opportunity in life, so many are going to go for it and leave the politics of hate behind. And, that may be the greatest legacy that Barack Obama could ever leave us. Hate is a burning thing but all fires except those in hell eventually burn out!
IOVHO,
Regards,
Joe
To say that "God exists" is the greatest understatement ever made across space and time.
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