The Promised Land

by Dennis Green

President Barrack Hussein Obama is perhaps the most misunderstood figure in all of American history. As others have observed, he is the great national Rorschach test — what you see is what you feel about yourself and the world around you, more than it is some objective perception of the man.

His election was, and remains, remarkable. But he did not win a majority of white votes. (And neither did John Kerry.) But we are no longer a white nation, and his election, in spite of his unpopularity among white voters, proves that.

The latest code phrase, used by former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, (that Wop!), is “social democrat,” i.e., sort of a limp-wristed socialist. A liberal, a Pinko, a Commie sympathizer…or something like that. Sputter, sputter, gasp!

Well, we’ve heard from White Supremacists before, most notably that Aryan perfectionist, Adolph Hitler, who valued the purity of the race enough to attempt to exterminate the Jews. And Obama is also disliked in a very mean-spirited fashion by African-American commentator Tavis Smiley, who resents the competition, and appears to identify with an older generation of black revolutionaries, which Obama is not.

A new book — The Bridge by author David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker — explains in some detail an Obama most of us are not familiar with at all, a man “in translation,” who, though black, grew up in a white household, never knew his Nigerian father, lived most of his life in Hawaii, where most black kids are U.S. military dependents living on Navy bases, who attended schools with very few black students. In short, he had to search for what it means to be black, in an entirely new, post-Civil Rights era. And he finally found it in Chicago.

Ironically, Martin Luther King, before his assassination in Memphis turned his attention from “Civil Rights to Human Rights.” We must now, he preached, look deeper, for economic justice. So long as unemployment, dropout rates, imprisonment, earning power, life expectancy, and every other measure of success in our society is weighted against blacks, especially black males, there is no justice, and there will be no peace.

King also spoke out against the War in Vietnam before he died, and in the process lost the support of many of his followers, both white and black. Such sentiments, in early ’68, were still not widespread in America, even if they were in Isla Vista. King saw that a disproportionate number of black soldiers had been fighting and dying in that far off land, to support a dictator who didn’t even have the allegiance of the South Vietnamese people, and was toppled from power.

When Obama claims to stand on King’s shoulders, and then ramps up troop numbers in Afghanistan, he is sadly mistaken, and taken in by the generals whose only raison d’etre is warfare. (So long as they aren’t the ones dying.)

But his treaty with the Russians for arms reduction, cutting the nuclear arsenals in half, will save billions in money currently wasted in “defense” weaponry outdated since the 1980s. Republicans fail to acknowledge that success, and in fact talk about increasing defense spending on large occupation forces and other outmoded strategies.

And just because his election is a sign of remarkable changes in America, that doesn’t mean he’s perfect, or even staying even. But the typical Republican, and Tea Party sound-bite criticisms are mostly beside the point. They distract from the real critique we should all be making as his presidency unfolds.

But if President Obama is imperfect, his worst critics are, for the most part, seriously deluded. Their greatest delusion is that they will win back control of the Congress, and in 2012 the White House, by their carping. Sorry, it doesn’t work like that. If anything, Obama is a hundred times more powerful every victory he wins. And there is no real GOP contender anywhere in sight.

©2010 Dennis Green