I read conservative op eds almost daily and I just wanted to let you know that I feel terribly for conservatives. I myself have experienced debilitating fears that have left me incapacitated and borderline irrational, and I can say with certainty that the right's cartoon version of Obama is just as terrifying as anything I have feared before. The entire world experience of any one individual is broken down into two basic parties: the "self" and the "other". We all do this - across all races, creeds, cultures, etc - we have our sense of self and identity, and we sense everything else (the other). Sartre perhaps best summarized the conflict between the self and the other with the simple phrase "hell is other people." I do not think anything can more aptly describe the post-millenium neo-conservative philosophy better than this statement. George Carlin took a crack at it with his "my sh*t is "stuff and your stuff is sh*t" line, however Sartre does him one better. These are facts: the conservative base are white, Christian baby boomers, mostly southern, mostly religious. This demographic's notion of the "other" is perfectly personified by black males. We see it in Othello, Native Son, we even see it in Moby Dick (Queequeg), not to mention all of the real life instances (slavery, Jim Crow laws, voter suppression, the US prison system, Japanese internment during WWII, the anti-muslim movement, the Tuskeegee experiments). Regardless, it is well documented in psychological/philosophical research and analysis that nothing is more terrifying to the identity of any particular culture group than the concept of being the victim of a hostile takeover at the hands of the other.
Enter Obama. He is black with a Muslim name, son of a Kenyan immigrant who impregnated a white women (another worst fear of the conservative base), who chose to become a community leader over being a lucrative lawyer (blasphemy to conservatives and also scary as the word "community" sounds like "communism"). He talks about CHANGE!!! Connect the dots and we have a Muslim manchurian candidate, clearly sent here from abroad, who is going to enslave white people as reparations for slavery 300 years ago. Or something like that.
Now let's look at his record. He ensured that healthcare will be privatized by the ACA (a conservative idea first pushed by the Gingrich congress). He has voted to extend the Bush tax cuts (check your 2011 return). He has promoted jobs and infrastructure spending just like every other president ever. He has attempted financial reform which is badly needed since the repeal of the Glass-Steagall act, one of the most idiotic legislative repeals ever (which was actually signed into law by Clinton, but that is a
different argument). In other words, everything he has done has perfectly represented the politics of a centrist populist president. But no, he is a dictator, a socialist, a radical, a terrorist apologist. These blanket accusations go hand-in-hand with a great conservative talent - taking mean and hateful ideas and making them palatable. Just like how they're not rich people they are "job creators", or how the civil war was about "state's rights" and not slavery, or how we're battling "climate change" and not global warming, Obama is not the "other": he is a socialist/dictator/terrorist/radical/hipster/etc. Well done folks.
Once again, I feel terribly for the conservative base as I wonder how they sleep at night. They remind me of Eric Cartman waking up in a cold sweat in the middle of the
night, replaying the Beijing opening ceremonies in his head, terrified that the Chinese are taking over. We all have boogeymen that scare us half to death - I personally am terrified of house centipedes to the point that if I see one in my room I will check into a hotel. However, when I go and research house centipedes and learn more about them, I find out that they are not poisonous, they feed on cockroaches and termites, and actually have reasonable intelligence for *arthropods. I just hope that the cartoon Obama that plays in the right's head night after night isn't nearly as terrifying as a house centipede, but if it is, then maybe they should just do some more research and it will help allay their irrational fears. Once this occurs, the neo-conservative "movement" can stop the fear-mongering and hysteria by writing and talking about facts and not Republican talking points, and we as a nation will finally be able to have an adult discussion.