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The woman behind the man, the darkness behind the light
Barack Obama may not be a “race man,” to use the old-fashioned expression for a black who puts his race first and foremost, but his wife Michelle is certainly a race woman. In the first ten minutes of a talk she gave on Sunday to a group of New Hampshire voters, the text and subtext of every sentence was that we are all isolated from each other, we’re all cynical and fearful of each other, because there has never been a black president, but if we elect her husband, that will show that we’re ready to go beyond our limits, ready to reach beyond our fears, prepared to leave our skepticism behind, and realize that we’re one people. In her mind everything bad and ill about America is connected with the “isolation” that we, meaning whites, are experiencing, meaning that we’re isolated from blacks, but we if elect Obama, then we won’t be isolated any more, and our psychic ills will be cured. The guilty, fearful white people (guilty toward and fearful of blacks) will be cured, by opening themselves fully to blacks. This woman is negative about everything about America, describing us over and over as a mean, fearful country, and in a tone of unwavering resentment.
This characterization of Michelle Obama’s talk may sound overblown and absurd to you. It’s true that she did not say in so many words, “Elect my husband, and you will heal the racial isolation that paralyzes your being and poisons America.” But that is what she was saying, in every sentence. If I can get the text of this talk or listen to it on the Web and transcribe it I will demonstrate exactly what I mean.
As I see it, Obama’s chances of becoming president have just significantly declined, because his wife is an unpleasant person, and a specific type of unpleasant person, namely an angry, resentful black. The entire talk, which I turned off after about 20 minutes, expressed the same, unwavering, unmodulated negative emotion, even when she was saying positive and appreciative things, for example, about her working class father and how steady and responsible he was in providing for his family in their modest Chicago apartment when she was growing up.
I have always had a positive response to Obama as a person, so I have not felt the kind of instinctive opposition that I might be expected to have toward a left-liberal and black candidate who by the very fact of his becoming president would further delegitimize America’s historic identity, make it harder to defend its existence as a distinct nation, and speed its Third-Worldization. But now that I see what his wife is like, my view of Barack has changed. I see in her the same deep-down dislike of America that I’ve seen in one black after another for the last 35 years (not all blacks, but a great number of them, and particularly the black elite), the same unappeasable anger, whether it’s openly expressed or just under the surface. It’s evident that after many years of marriage his upbeat sunny personality has not influenced her. He lives with this woman who is filled with negativity toward America, just as he attends a church whose pastor is an anti-white racist who hates America. And if he could not wean his wife from her racial resentment, what is the chance that he will be able to wean black America, which will be culturally empowered by his election, from their resentment? If Obama becomes president, that is what will be entering the White House, that is what will be empowered in the whole country. But I no longer think that that is likely to happen, because it’s impossible to imagine Michelle Obama as First Lady.
* * *
It’s really very simple: You do not put in the top leadership positions of a country people who have a chip on their shoulder against that country.
—end of initial entry—
Before I posted the above entry, I received this e-mail. M. Mason writes:
I was about to provide a direct link to that original Los Angeles Times article of nearly a year ago which describes the phenomenon we are seeing play out today with Obama among his rapturous liberal supporters. In the wake of his momentum-building win in the Iowa primary last week, the fervor has increased. The night of Obama’s victory, Chris Mathews let loose with the idiotic, offensive on-air observation that Barack Obama was “delivered” unto us, presumably to assuage our collective white Western guilt. Meanwhile (via The Corner), The American Prospect’s Ezra Klein was in a state of religious ecstasy as he beheld his secular messiah, breathlessly glorifying him as a kind of modern-day Lamb of God with the power to make time stand still and transform us all spiritually:
Obama’s finest speeches do not excite. They do not inform. They don’t even really inspire. They elevate. They enmesh you in a grander moment, as if history has stopped flowing passively by and, just for an instant, contracted around you, made you aware of its presence, and your role in it. He is not the Word made flesh, but the triumph of word over flesh, over color, over despair. The other great leaders I’ve heard guide us towards a better politics, but Obama is, at his best, able to call us back to our highest selves, to the place where America exists as a glittering ideal, and where we, its honored inhabitants, seem capable of achieving it, and thus of sharing in its meaning and transcendence.
And the breakneck liberal descent into ever-deeper madness continues.
LA replies:
Any number of white people are prepared to lose their minds over Obama, including conservatives such as George Will. Now, if we opposed Bush (and a continuation of Bush in the form of Giuliani) because of the irrational group think he inspires among Republicans, how much more should we oppose the election of Obama because of the irrational enthusiasm his election will inspire among both liberals and conservatives?
And there’s something else. Notice in Klein’s account the simple fact that it’s not blacks who are spiritually transported by Obama, it’s whites. in Brought into contact with Obama, whites are taken outside themselves, freed from their narrow, isolated state into a higher unity, exactly as Michelle Obama was describing. But, as we can see from Michelle Obama herself, blacks are not similarly transformed by Obama. Even his own wife has not been taken out of her racial resentment by living with him.
What will this asymmetry mean for America under an Obama presidency? It will mean whites in a state of ecstasy, “opening” themselves spiritually to blacks, or at least to blacks as represented by Obama, while the blacks continue in their own unforgiving racial grievance and dislike of whites. Obama is the pied piper who will lead race-blind whites to surrender to race-conscious blacks and other minorities.
David G. writes:
While I have not yet seen the New Hampshire speech by Michelle Obama that you wrote about, I did catch her televised talk to a group at the Iowa Caucuses. I watched for about 20 to 30 minutes and as she is talking I’m thinking, “Whoa!! Whoa!! This woman could be our first lady? No way, no way!!”
This woman’s expressionless face is a cold mask of seething contempt—and if her performance in New Hampshire was similar to her one in New Hampshire then you are not exaggerating in any of your comments. A sneering, ice queen, with a barely contained viciousness behind her words. I hope that this talk is rebroadcast because. to me, her words were far less important than her demeanor. As I remember, she alluded to the fact that Barak may only want to do this once, that is, run for the presidency, and I can see why. Michelle Obama couldn’t take two runs at it. Michelle Obama does not belong in front of a camera addressing the American people. This woman is a poison. My visceral response to her was one of unadulterated, unmitigated dislike—and I had never even seen her before.
Her interaction with the Iowans after her talk seemed feigned and mannequin-like as she tried to warm up to a few well-wishers. As the home-spun group engaged her she jabbed them with the dart like comment—“Are you going to caucus for Barak, will you caucus for Barak?,” with a mercenary style that was clumsy and embarrassing. What the hell were those folks from Iowa thinking? What were they seeing? Barak Obama is chained to a political assassin—his own wife.
LA replies:
“This woman’s expressionless face is a cold mask of seething contempt… A sneering ice queen, with a barely contained viciousness behind her words.”
This describes exactly what I saw but didn’t find the right words for. Also, her completely unchanged tone throughout her talk. She remained at exactly the same emotional level. She is fixed in her rage, it is the constant undercurrent of her being.
Hey, how about this for irony: Barack, the nice, pleasant, natural guy, the guy who is effortlessly at ease with himself and others, is thought of as the opposite of the cold, mechanical, inwardly seething Hillary. But Barack’s wife is a super Hillary—Hillary squared, Hillary cubed!
And how is it no one in the media has taken note of Mrs. Obama’s extraordinarily unpleasant personality?
Matthew H. writes:
You write:
But I no longer think that [Obama’s election] is likely to happen, because it’s impossible to imagine Michelle Obama as First Lady.
It’s really very simple: You do not put in the top leadership positions of a country people who have a chip on their shoulder against that country.
I ask, “Why not?” We did it in 1992. The only difference now is that the candidate has some African ancestry. I never believed Clinton would be elected. Reagan had changed things, I thought. America had moved across some demographic and cultural threshold. People had wised up from their fantasies of the 1960s and ’70s. After Manson, the Khmer Rouge, Jimmy Carter, etc., and after the entrepreneurial dynamism of that half of the baby boom generation which had spent the 1970s not drugging and whoring, but quietly creating a technological revolution, we had learned that America really was a great nation whose traditions, while perhaps needing to be modified from time to time, were fundamentally sound and that the American ideal of individual liberty, coupled with the individual’s responsibility toward himself, his nation and his God was, at last, triumphant. Surely, after all that we had accomplished in the 1980s, in the face of relentless leftist obstruction and nay-saying, and regardless of whatever compromises Bush, Sr. might have made, we could never entrust the government of our great, and newly restored, nation to a gang of former hippies whose repentance for which went no further than the affecting of business attire, the better to insinuate themselves into our national institutions.
But I was wrong. (Of course I was young then, with no real appreciation of the fact of human depravity.) [LA replies: First, I think you are seeing it in too cosmic terms. The simple fact was that the incumbent had checked out and no one was home. He gave no reason to re-elect him. A general election is a choice between two major candidates. If the Republican candidate is a non-entity, the Democrat will win. Second, the immigration-fueled changes of America, the advance of multiculturalism, the destruction of traditional values in the schools and the culture, all continued unabated during the Reagan years; his victory was only on the political level, not the deeper cultural level.]
Two anecdotes:
1. Recently I pulled my car into the parking lot of the small, and, I had thought, quite conservative, church I attend. I parked in a spot behind a car driven by the college aged sons of the pastor. There on the bumper was a new “Obama ‘08” sticker. Well they’re young, I thought. Kids! Surely, (I hope) their dad has more sense.
2. Last Friday I asked an acquaintance what he thought about the Iowa results. This is a man of sixty, NRA member, Republican contributor (with the thank-you pictures of W & Laura framed, to prove it), regular Mass attender who is, in addition, quite successful in his business career. He replied (with no further prompting) to the effect that he kind of liked Obama and he thought he would be “good for America.”
In darker moments I find myself thinking that the issues don’t matter, the experience doesn’t matter, the culture doesn’t matter (as a category, hardly exists), Obama’s Muslim background doesn’t matter. Certainly Michelle Obama won’t matter after the Democrat/Media makeover artists get through with her (picture Oprah Obama). What matters is that here is a chance to finally prove that we are not bigots. This appeal would seem to be powerful enough to pull sympathy, if not outright support, directly from the Republican base. It is an appeal to a fear into which Americans have for decades on end been so heavily propagandized, that, in order to exorcise it, they seem ready to roll the dice on our nation’s very soul.
Now combine this factor with the still massive, angry and politically famished Clinton electorate (not withstanding its apparent antipathy toward Hillary Clinton, personally), and the notion of an Obama Presidency appears quite plausible. No?
I’m not predicting it will happen. But it just might.
LA replies:
It seems to me that your explanation contradicts itself. Why would conservatives, who presumably are not driven by liberal guilt, support Obama in order to prove that they are not bigots? Obviously they support Obama primarily because they like him, not because they have some ulterior motive of trying to prove that they are not racist.
I am struck by the fact that so many readers of this website seem unable to imagine that a white person could have a positive response to a black person because of the black person’s positive qualities, and not because of some negative, guilty reason.
If we want to stop Obama from becoming president, we must understand where his white supporters are coming from. Obama supporters have positive reasons for liking him, just as Muslims have positive reasons for believing in jihad. But President Bush thinks that Muslims believe in jihad only because they “hate freedom,” just as some people believe that whites can only support Obama out of guilt. How can we effectively oppose our opponents if we fail to understand what motivates them? All men believe that they are pursuing the good. We need to understand the good that our opponents believe in.
LA continues:
Your quote of me at the beginning of your comment contains two distinct thoughts that I did not differentiate from each other. The first, about its being impossible to imagine Michelle as First Lady, relates to what I think is likely to happen: a candidate with an unpleasant wife is less likely to be elected. The second, about not putting resentful people in positions of high leadership, relates to what ought to be the case.
Laura G. writes:
My younger daughter grew up in a mid-size Southern town. Here, we have considerable racial polarization, but by and large there is also a great deal of co-operation, and she and I have been on good terms with almost all of the blacks we know and work with. It is hard to think of an exception. Well, a year ago she moved to New York, and she recently confided to me that she has a completely new and deep dislike and mistrust of black women. She describes their supremely entitled attitude, without their having any apparent reason that they are “owed” more. Pushy, contemptuous, aggressive, spiteful, demanding, and dishonest. She describes listening to conversations on the subway, day after day, in which a black woman is complaining to another about her “rights”, the multiple ways they are being infringed upon, and the means she intends to take to make someone else’s life miserable. My daughter says that she never expected to come to the North to start loathing a segment of our population, but that is what has happened. Interestingly, black men she meets haven’t had these traits. It sounds as if my daughter has been seeing a series of Michelle Obamas.
LA replies:
At least in New York City, black women in any position of authority, even the most trivial such as selling tickets in a bus terminal or or being assistant manager of a grocery store, are the worst, most unpleasant human beings I’ve encountered in my life. Their hostility takes your breath away. They go through their lives with this massive, fixed hatred (I don’t know if it’s just against whites, or against all humanity) inside them, along with the sense of entitlement. And yes, now that you mention it, Michelle O. resembles them.
Gosh, it looks as though Oprah with her New Age ministrations to the world and especially to black women has not healed this particular problem, has she?
Of course, I’m not speaking of all black women in positions of petty authority, but this is a pronounced and unique phenomenon which in my experience applies only to black women.
David B. writes:
Your post about Michelle Obama reminded me that there were similar thoughts about Hillary Clinton in 1992. I recall an article in The American Spectator that called Hillary the “Winnie Mandela of American Politics.” The piece described Hillary as “gaffe-prone,” and generally not likable, along with a past of political radicalism. The Clinton campaign went to considerable links to make her more attractive. She spoke with a Southern accent, which disappeared after the 1992 election. Her motherhood was played up. She kept changed her appearance. Remember all the hairstyle changes? The MSM played down her past radicalism, as well. Something like this will be attempted with Michelle Obama.
LA replies:
There are obvious similarities, the angry woman married to the charming, affable man; but Michelle is much worse.
I’m not saying that Obama must lose because of his wife. Much depends on the quality of the GOP candidate. But in my view Michelle’s seriously unpleasant personality significantly reduces the likelihood of Obama’s winning.
Laura G. writes:
My younger daughter grew up in a mid-size Southern town. Here, we have considerable racial polarization, but by and large there is also a great deal of co-operation, and she and I have been on good terms with almost all of the blacks we know and work with. It is hard to think of an exception. Well, a year ago she moved to New York, and she recently confided to me that she has a completely new and deep dislike and mistrust of black women. She describes their supremely entitled attitude, without their having any apparent reason that they are “owed” more. Pushy, contemptuous, aggressive, spiteful, demanding, and dishonest. She describes listening to conversations on the subway, day after day, in which a black woman is complaining to another about her “rights”, the multiple ways they are being infringed upon, and the means she intends to take to make someone else’s life miserable. My daughter says that she never expected to come to the North to start loathing a segment of our population, but that is what has happened. Interestingly, black men she meets haven’t had these traits. It sounds as if my daughter has been seeing a series of Michelle Obamas.
Dennis C. writes:
I don’t think that Obama’s campaign is about policy and government direction so much as it is about “fulfillment.” People have noticed that Obama’s policies differ essentially very little from the other Democratic candidates—they’re all rather plain from the left-liberal spectrum. What has imbued his candidacy with a sense of direction and energy is the unspoken thought that it is his person and racial role in American history that defines his candidacy.
Oprah Winfrey and others have spoken of him in almost messianic terms not because they necessarily believe that it is his social and economic policies that will “change” America but that simply through the fact that he will have been elected as a black man there will be a “fundamental” change in spirit and ethos. This “change” is not policy based—it is psychological.
Most blacks and liberals assume that white America exists in an alienated state—self-alienation—as long as it is not wholly “unified” with the black community. [LA replies: Yes, that’s exactly the view expressed by Mrs. Obama.] If the white community joins together with the black community in electing Obama, this becomes a “healing” process for the white community to overcome its inner divided self and overcome social fragmentation. In this sense there is almost a shamanistic dimension to Obama’s candidacy. Not that he would admit to this personally because he is after all simply a politician and the only transcendence he can invoke is limited—historical and social.
Notice that Obama has not been pressed on policy specifics by the media—his health-care proposals have been vague and changing. However most media pundits have “congratulated” Iowa on supporting for the first time a black man. Why this congratulation unless it is considered to be a landmark in the white American public persona and private psyche? Somehow America has been fated to “fulfill” the role of the black man (through the ultimate office) and this time has come.
In some respects Obama himself disappoints blacks because he does not use the same “religious” rhetoric as Jesse Jackson in fulfillment of his “historic role.” He sometimes hints at it but does not render it explicit. He even physically does not altogether resemble a full black man (his wife on the other hand does come across as a black woman). His eyes, his eyebrows, his nose, his hand gestures—all bespeak of a semi-black man. Thus the ambiguous reception of Obama in states such as South Carolina. His voice and the cadence of his speech is not the traditional roll of words we see in Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton. And yet his role in the political process has been designated as a “fulfillment” of sorts.
I almost sense that with each increasing victory, the media will start emphasizing this transformational aspect of his candidacy. And white America will be asked to join in or be questioned “why not?” However on a purely technical basis, Obama does not offer significant government change. His “election” would be more of an “election” (“chosen”)as thought of in religious terms.
KPA writes from Canada:
You write: “Why would conservatives, who presumably are not driven by liberal guilt, support Obama in order to prove that they are not bigots? Obviously they support Obama primarily because they like him, not because they have some ulterior motive of trying to prove that they are not racist.”
What I’m struck by is that both conservative and liberal supporters (and non-supporters) of Obama seem to rely mostly on “feelings.”
I think this emotional reaction is the most dangerous of all. Obama’s potential as President should be scrutinized factually, then intuition and other such reactions can have substance.
For example, he talks about his Christian faith all the time, but are his past Muslim associations dangerous for the country (and for him—as a possible apostate)?
Why does he let Oprah endorse him? Why doesn’t he reign-in his wife? What are his specifics on “change”?
Everything that Obama’s said and done is clouded in ambiguity. I think he might just want it like that, so that people can judge him based on feelings and his likeability factor.
LA replies:
KPA, your points are all well taken. But I just want to clarify that I had two “non-guilt” explanations for the white support for Obama jostling together that I did not distinguish from each other. The first is the emotional liking for him. The second is whites’ positive belief in universalism and the transcendence of racial barriers. What I have taken exception to in this discussion is the idea that any and all white support for Obama is driven by guilt. People keep forgetting that liberals (which includes “conservatives”) believe in the liberal equality and unity of mankind because they believe it is true and good, not because they feel guilty, just as Muslims believe in the worldwide rule of Islam because they think it’s commanded by Allah, not because they “hate freedom” or are angry over being “left behind.”
James W. writes:
Obama is a unique politician in my experience, and not because he is special. Rather, because he has a legitimate intelligence, as witnessed by his standing in law school, yet has managed to reach middle-age while remaining an air-head.
That his speeches say nothing is not the issue, since he is a politician, but whenever he is taken off-topic he becomes immediately lost. In other words, he has the equivalent of pretty-girl syndrome—we do not evolve if we are never challenged. He is a cardboard cut-out of some mass therapeutic notion of a leader.
Eric Hoffer suggests that the ability to get along without an exceptional leader is the mark of social vigor. Black Americans have historically always seen their salvation as coming through a Moses or other Second Coming. Liberals are not far behind in that need.
Obama is an ongoing creation of their imaginations, not his own. There is nothing home there. Obama would be the best possible choice to represent Democrats.
Ironically his wife is more developed, however badly, than he is.
Tim W. writes:
You write: “I am struck by the fact that so many readers of this website seem unable to imagine that a white person could have a positive response to a black person because of the black person’s positive qualities, and not because of some negative, guilty reason.”
If a charismatic, personable young white liberal were running for president, would he have made this much headway against the Clinton political machine? Would as many presumably conservative whites be considering voting for him? I doubt it. [LA replies: Why not? Suppose a reincarnation of John F. Kennedy appeared on the scene: you think that Democrats wouldn’t prefer him to Hillary?] It’s not that I can’t see people having a positive response to a black candidate because of his personal qualities. Michael Steele and Herman Cain are two examples of conservative black candidates in recent years who have attracted a lot of white support because they were intelligent, attractive candidates who were conservative. But they lost, in large part because blacks wouldn’t vote for them. Only a liberal black is considered to be really, truly black, and only a liberal black will get black votes, white liberal votes, and perhaps the votes of white conservatives who have been so browbeaten by PC that they feel guilty.
LA replies:
Please see my further clarifications above on the three possible white motivations, which I will summarize again here:
(1) White people simply like Obama;
(2) White people have a positive belief (not a guilt-driven belief) in interracial harmony and oneness, a belief which is frustrated by most black politicians because they are so awful and anti-white, but which is fulfilled by Obama because he is nice and not anti-white; and
(3) white liberal guilt.
Of the three explanations, only one, the third, has to do with guilt, and only one, the first, has to do with pure emotions or affections. That leaves the second explanation: the positive liberal belief in inter-racial harmony and oneness. Why can’t my fellow right-wingers at VFR understand that liberalism is a positive belief system, and that liberals (including conservatives) believe in it?
I think the answer is that it’s difficult to attribute a positive belief system, with its own vision of the good, to one’s enemies, because then one has to argue against that positive belief system and that vision of the good and and show why it’s wrong, rather than just say that one’s enemies are bad, deluded, sick, or “PC.” But we can never defeat liberalism unless we understand what its tenets are and why people believe in them.
Howard Sutherland writes:
I think if the Democrats nominate Obama, no matter who their VP nominee is and probably no matter who the GOP nominee is, they will lose. The resentment and racial polarization Mrs. O shows will just compound his existing problem.
It may be true that a lot of white Americans like—in principle—the fact that America might nominate a black as a major party presidential candidate, or even elect a black president. That is a welcoming sentiment, and makes people feel good about themselves. But in practice… I think Americans might be willing to elect a black president, if (big if) the candidate seemed mainstream (your Sidney Poitier factor), had a strong record not built on specifically black/civil right concerns, had a reputation for integrity (like Colin Powell before he allowed himself to be a shill for the Iraq invasion), and ran as a Republican.
Obama has a bit of the Poitier factor (although I actually think he is odd-looking, maybe because he is an unusual combination of East African and white American), but he isn’t even close on the other factors. Sailer has read Obama’s autobiographical books closely and his take is that Obama is actually race-obsessed and has resentments aplenty. The press has avoided characterizing Obama’s books as anything but uplifting, but if he becomes a truly serious contender they will get more critical scrutiny, and white readers may not like all they find there. Obama does not have a strong record at anything but winning a few elections (most people don’t care that he was editor of the Harvard Law Review and will presume—as I do—that his pigmentation had a lot to do with both his getting into HLS in the first place and then getting such a resume-building plum). He is a leftist Democrat with strong ties to actively racially resentful black people and organizations. His church in Chicago and its pastor are the examples usually given, but now, says Auster, we need to add his own wife to the list.
White Americans resent racial preferences. The Democratic Party is the party of racial preferences and resentments. Obama’s career to date has benefited enormously from the Democrats’ stance on these matters; no white Democrat of his youth and inexperience would be where he is yet, and everyone knows it—even if most people are too polite to say so. Whatever they may say in the way of platitudes about how what wonderful things a Obama candidacy says about America, most white Americans are not about to elect someone president who they assume—rightly, I think—would push the preference regime that they already suffer from to new extremes. I think people will say to themselves (sotto voce, no doubt) that Obama would be a president for the minorities, and quietly not vote for him.
He has a different problem at the other end of the pigment spectrum. This model black presidential candidate has no black American ancestry whatever, and I think that explains why he hasn’t got all that far with black Americans. Other than seeing him as a fellow non-white (although they know that what is American in him is white), they don’t feel they have much in common with him—and Clintons have delivered for them in the past.
So, I think Republican partisans should be praying the Democrats are stupid enough to nominate Obama.
LA replies:
I realize I’m undercutting my new thesis here, but if Obama’s book showed all these racial obsessions that Sailer says it showed, why didn’t Sailer present any evidence of it in his article?
David B. writes:
I just read Howard Sutherland’s astute analysis of Obama’s chances or lack of, in the general election. By the way, I agree with him that Obama is odd-looking because of his ancestry.
The general election is not like running in the primaries, especially the Democratic primaries, as several liberal Democrats have found out. Carter was about 30 points ahead after the convention. He won by 2. Dukakis led George H. W. Bush by 17 in 1988 and lost by 8. In both 1976 and 1988, the Democratic nominee was very much an unknown quantity at the start of the year. The GOP cut down their leads through campaign advertisements. With Obama, they can run adds on his very liberal voting record. In past elections, just showing the Democratic Party platform has done damage.
With Gore in 2000 and Kerry in 2004, the polls did not move very much as Gore was well-known, and George W. Bush was the issue in 2004. Obama hasn’t got much of a record, and will not want to advertise his 4-year Senate voting record anyway. I don’t think Obama has ever had a difficult race, or had his liberalism challenged. How will he react when this happens? Still, the GOP will have to push some hot buttons. An Obama victory is the worst possible outcome for 2008 under any scenario.
LA replies:
Yes, but look at it this way. Kerry, the worst candidate in the history of the galaxy, lost by just three points in 2004. If a pompous, arrogant, clueless buffoon like Kerry (remember his salute at the Convention?) could come so close to victory, doesn’t it stand to reason that an appealing personality like Obama, who doesn’t make foolish moves, can readily win?
David B. replies:
I just heard Peter Gemma of Middle America News on The Political Cesspool. Gemma edited the collection of Samuel Francis’ writings. Gemma stated flatly that Obama will win the Democratic nomination and general election. “Nobody can stop him.” He added that “nobody is home on the GOP side.” Gemma thinks this may be a good thing in “the worse, the better scenario,” and it will “wake up white Americans.” Obama’s “smarts and personality” is too much, in Gemma’s opinion.
Karen writes from England:
Is it not more likely that Obama has a mask of affability but in reality is no different from any other resentful black with a chip on his shoulder? Actions speak louder than words and he is married to a resentful woman and attends a church which openly expresses hatred of whites. He would not be affiliated with these characters unless he agreed with them. His presidency would be a disaster for America.What makes you think that he would be any different from any other black leader? When blacks have power they are abominable and this is multiplied several fold when they have power over whites.
Jeff in England writes:
Karen says words to the effect: “When blacks have power they are abominable, particularly when they have power over whites.”
No one by any stretch of the imagination could ever say that Nelson Mandela was abominable. One might disagree with his politics but abominable was not a word to describe him. Nor Kofi Annan. Nor Colin Powell. Nor Martin Luther King who held power over many black and white progressives.. Nor Tiger Woods (mixed race like Obama) who holds his own brand of power in the sports arena. Nor Oprah Winfrey who also holds a lot of power in the entertainment world worldwide..
Al Sharpton may be a pain in the arse (English spelling) but he would hardly be described as abominable. The same goes for Jesse Jackson.
Robert Mugabe yes. Idi Amin yes. Doc Duvalier of Haiti yes.
But wait. Obviously Stalin was abominable (Hitler by the way wasn’t…he was known for his personal charm). Ceausescu was up there. Hilary Clinton could be described as abominable. Margaret Thatcher for sure.. Richard Nixon no doubt. Donald Trump is said by many to be abominable. Do I dare mention they are white?
Dennis C. writes:
You mentioned the unpleasantness of black women, their arrogance and aggressiveness. Permit me to tell you a real story. I am originally a Canadian who came down to the U.S. 15 years ago; I was offered a business opportunity to join an American friend in creating a company. My wife and I emigrated to the U.S., after securing our Green Card, and five years later applied for American citizenship.
Part of the process of obtaining an American citizenship is to pass an exam. We were given 100 possible questions that we could be asked (and their answers). For example, “Who was the first president of the U.S.?” Or “What is the Bill of Rights”? After studying the questions and answers for several weeks, we were called in to be interviewed and to take the test.
My interviewer and examiner was a jovial middle-aged white man. He welcomed me as a future American and asked me the following questions. “In what year did America achieve its independence?” “What was the last state to join the union?” In total he asked me ten questions and I passed the exam. He congratulated me warmly, assured me that my new country was my home and that he was happy to have us be part of the American experience. Overall an enjoyable few hours spent at the immigration office.
My wife however got a different interviewer—a middle-aged black woman. The hostility on her face was there from the first moment. She aggressively asked my wife, “Why did you want to come to the U.S.?” Then she sat silently inspecting my wife’s papers, not saying a thing, letting her sit there uncomfortably. In fact she told my wife abruptly and loudly as if my wife had done something wrong, “Don’t sit there, sit in that chair.” There were three chairs where my wife could have sat down in the office.
Then she proceeded to examine my wife. “Do you know what the Emancipation Proclamation is?” “What is the Fourteenth Amendment?” “Who was Martin Luther King Jr.?” Almost every single question she asked my wife pertained to the Civil War, slavery, or the civil rights movement. This to a person who came from another country as if the most important thing to know about America was the issue of the black race. At the end she neither congratulated my wife nor expressed any feelings about a new immigrant coming to a new country. She simply told her to get her picture taken; when my wife asked where that was to be done, she said the guard at the door wouldl tell her where to go. A most unpleasant experience for my wife. I will remember warmly my interview, my wife won’t hers.
After hearing about my wife’s experience, I said in a loud voice (with a hint of humor) for all to hear, as we were walking out into the hall, “They should have given us bonus points for getting legally here, being white, speaking English, and working as professionals.” My wife said, “Ssshhhhh, let’s just get out of here with our citizenship certificate.”
Dennis C. continues:
BTW, the day my wife and I were interviewed and examined for our American citizenship, of 60 people scheduled that morning, we were only one of two white couples in the waiting room. 56 out of 60 people in the reception area were non-white (that’s 90%). Quo vadis USA?
James P. writes:
“At least in New York City, black women in any position of authority, even the most trivial such as selling tickets in a bus station or being assistant manager of a grocery store, are the worst, most unpleasant human beings I’ve encountered in my life. Their hostility takes your breath away. They go through their lives with this massive, fixed hatred (I don’t know if it’s just against whites, or against all humanity) inside them, along with the sense of entitlement.”
Ditto down here in DC.
LA replies:
A city of southern efficiency and northern charm.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 07, 2008 01:52 AM | Send
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