Really?

Once, in the middle of winter, when he was bored, my friend Paul bought a putter in Wal Mart. He took it home, used it on his rug for a few days, and then, bored again, returned it. He told the clerk, a lovely buxom young blond who was probably a loser from some Beauty Contest, “This thing doesn’t work.” “Really,” She said, quite concerned, and allowed him to return it. That is the way I feel at the moment about a lot of things. I mean, how else would you react to such improbables, as when someone like Michele Bachmann says, for example, President Obama is going on a trip to India that is going to cost the taxpayers 200 million dollars a day. Really? Or when she says global warming is all “voodoo, nonsense, hokum, a hoax?” Really?

Or what about when Leon Panetta, our Secretary of Defense, announces that if the Industrial/Military/Political Complex budget is cut it will spell “doomsday” for America? Really? Or how about when Rick Santorum, candidate for the Presidency, says the recession in American was caused by Gay marriage? Or if Romney becomes the candidate for President it will “destroy the country?” Really? Of course there is also Rick Perry who has asserted that defeating President Obama is the equivalent of fighting D-Day on Omaha Beach during the Second World War?” Really? Then there is Romney, insisting that President Obama is a “job killer.” Really? Gingrich wants us to believe that Obama is “The greatest food stamp President ever,” and “Blacks should insist on paychecks rather than food stamps.” Really?

I find it impossible to either to comprehend such claims or take them seriously. They seem to me completely absurd, bogus, ridiculous. They have no substance to them whatsoever, and are apparently being made for no reason other than drawing attention to the nitwits that make them. In the case of Newton Leroy (The Asinine) Gingrich one might well ask, if you want Blacks to draw paychecks you might do something about providing jobs for them. Santorum’s position is even worse, he claims, for example, he does not want to take money from some (Whites, of course) in order to provide better conditions for others (Blacks), but to make it possible for them to help themselves through working (I gather in jobs that are nonexistent, having been opposed by his party consistently). It is interesting that the racism that infects the Republican Party is no longer even pretended to be hidden. When we hear “poor people on food stamps” we know it is Blacks we are talking about, even though there are more Whites on food stamps than Blacks. Similarly, when we hear of those lacking a work ethic, or male role models, we know who it is they have in mind.

Make no mistake, one of the most obvious reasons Republicans hate Obama is because he is Black, and being so, has also moved into their territory, the White power structure that has always ruled our country. A Black person is not supposed to be there, it’s an unprecedented attack on what Republicans believe is the natural order of things. They are terrified he might even move in next door to them, as their fear of such a terrible thing drove them in a panic in the not too distant past into a complicated and much despised program of “Bussing,” rather than pass an Open Housing Ordinance that would have allowed Blacks to live next door to them (and would have made bussing unnecessary). The only thing I find surprising about their racism is that it has more and more come out in the open. This can be seen not only in the comments of the Republican candidates, but also in the emergence of bumper stickers that read “Don’t Re-Nig,” and descriptions of Michele Obama as “yo mama,” and so on. Perhaps it is better these things become public, at least it makes it easier to recognize the bigots and racists that infest Republican circles. One can only imagine what terrible remarks they must circulate in private.

I doubt that anyone believed racism died the day we elected a Black President. But would you have believed in a hatred so intense that Republicans have failed to honor the Office of the President itself? Or what is worse, to allow the nation to stagnate and deteriorate in their single-minded attempt to make him a one term President? Would you have believed they could hate and denigrate him so much they would be willing to stand by and do nothing with millions unemployed and children going hungry, simply watch as half the nation falls into poverty, allow people to die rather than offer them health care, boo an American soldier because he is Gay? I would not have anticipated such cowardly behavior even on the part of Republicans.

Now it surfaces that Ron Paul, one of the Republican candidates for President, has himself published a newsletter filled with hateful racist comments. One of his supporters believes homosexuals should be executed, others produced an absolutely despicable ad about Jon Huntsman’s adopted Chinese daughter. The kindly old doctor disavows it all, claims he didn’t write the newsletter and didn’t even read it. Really, Dr. Paul? Really?

I have no pretensions whatever to that kind of elegance which consists in tormenting a respectable man.

Jane Austen