Does Mitt Romney have a dashiki in his closet? Is he hiding bean pies and bow ties in his garment bag?
Apparently, Joe Biden wants to put "you people" back in chains. Barack Obama is also running a political campaign of hate, anger, and division. Such claims by "Bat Bain" Mitt Romney and the "Boy Wonder" Paul Ryan wreak of the rancid stink of desperation. How low will Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, and the Tea Party GOP sink before election night in November?
It is clear to most thinking people that Joe Biden spoke a plain truth when he suggested that the banks, credit card companies, and the financier classes basically have the American people in a state of debt peonage. By rolling back modest consumer protections enacted by President Obama, the Tea Party GOP and Mitt Romney would only make our shared pain even worse.
In these heady political conversations, we must be careful to not forget how chains are actually pretty useful objects. Chains hold bikes to poles so that thieves will not abscond with them. My dog wears a chain so that he will not run off, acting the fool, and get hit by a car. Some people like to play with chains for fun. I like professional wrestling for example, and miss the old school, chain wrestling, Texas catch-as-catch-can style matches from the 1970s and early 1980s. There are also criminals who need to be in chains so that good citizens, and we civilians, will be kept safe from harm.
In all, the vast majority of references to chains have little to do with the horrors of slavery, the Middle Passage, and the Black Holocaust. That Romney's campaign would play with such historically potent imagery--efforts made even more insincere given the Tea Party GOP presidential nominee's blatantly racist Barack Obama is a lazy negro welfare king ads--is not surprising.
In the United States, the history of black Americans is commonly denigrated, made fun of, and mocked by the Right. Moreover, conservatism and racism are one in the same in post Civil Rights America. Consequently, a not so refined mix of race baiting and racial demagoguery is the air that the New Right breathes; it offers them life and sustenance. People can also get high and die from oxygen poisoning; an oxygen rich environment can also burn you alive. If Romney and Ryan continue to play with the combustible politics of white racial resentment and overt bigotry they may suffer either outcome: I can only dream that such an improbable turn of events may yet come to pass.
Sometimes a person has no choice but to yield to the absurd in order to protect their sanity. As such, I will take Mitt Romney's obsession with the chains of racism and Joe Biden as an opportunity to have a cathartic laugh, and to turn matters on their ear, in order to expose the foolishness and insincerity which colors the Right's most recent discovery of anti-black racism.
As I alluded to above, chains are very useful and practical. References to chains are also common in popular music. Given Mitt Romney's obsession with chains, let's help him build a playlist of "chain" related songs to listen to on his jet alongside the theme from the Harrison Ford movie Air Force One.
A few suggestions to start us off:
1. Unchained melody by the Righteous Brothers
2. Breaking the Chains by Dokken
3. Chain of Fools by Aretha Franklin
4. In Chains by Depeche Mode
5. Chain of Love by Journey
What songs would you add to the list?