Wednesday, June 24, 2015

HATE, Part I

Americans mourned the cold-blooded murder of 9 fellow citizens last week at the Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, South Carolina. An evil, white, 21 year old sat and prayed for an hour with parishioners before opening fire on them. Despicable, and one can only hope that he gets the death penalty.

As we have come to expect from this president, Obama passed up the opportunity to give an inspiring and unifying speech; but, rather, spoke as the Divider in Chief. Obama: "The legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, discrimination in almost every institution of our lives, you know, casts a long shadow, and that's still part of our DNA that's passed on. We're not cured of it. And it's not just a matter of it not being polite to say n..... in public." (For the record, Obama used the full "n" word, which this writer chooses not to do.)

Obama typically starts such a speech by noting that race relations and racial equality have improved dramatically in this country. However, he never seems to mean it as it is always followed by a "but," after which he makes it sound as if we are still in the first half of the last century. Exactly what is passed on in our DNA? Racism? A desire to kill blacks? Where does such nonsense come from? Worse, what does he think of white Americans, so many of whom voted for him twice?

Somehow, the main stream media decided that the real problem must be the Confederate flag, flying above various buildings in the south. (Guns, of course, were the other culprit.) Missing from much of the discussion was that evil exists. A check of US census data revealed that, as of 2014, there were an estimated 4,832,482 people in South Carolina. 68.3% were said to be white. That amounts to 3,300,585 white people. Has the sight of the Confederate flag thrown those 3 million white people into a murderous frenzy? Of course not. This was an evil young man who used certain symbols to demonstrate to others, and perhaps to himself, his feelings about race.

Do not misunderstand. I believe there are legitimate arguments that can be made about the flying of the Confederate flag - by both sides. But it is absurd to suggest that the flying of that flag was the cause of the perpetrator's murderous actions. It is ironic, is it not, that Obama links this killing to widespread racism, but is unable to see any connection between Islam and the killing of tens of thousands around the world. He will not say - nor allow anyone in his Administration to utter the words - "radical Islam." No, Islam is a religion of peace, but whites are a bunch of murdering scoundrels, I guess.

What was also of interest was how the Confederate flag was seen as a Republican issue only. Said the 6/23/15 front page of the LA Times: "...Republican presidential candidates struggled to keep from becoming embroiled in a long and potentially damaging debate over the painful legacy of racism from some in their party's ranks." Excuse me? Did the Times miss the fact that the Republican Abraham Lincoln was the president who fought a war to end slavery? Did they miss Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation? Clearly, they missed all the Democrats that fought the civil rights legislation of the 1960s, while Republicans made sure there enough votes to pass these landmark pieces of legislation.

In his recent interview, Obama once again managed to go after Fox News. It must really burn him that Fox easily draws more viewers than MSNBC and CNN. Obama: "...if you watch Fox News you inhabit a completely different world with different facts than if you read the New York Times." Of course, he was holding out the NY Times as the standard for the mainstream media. I agree with Obama's assessment. It is a different world. If you only read the NY Times or LA Times or other mainstream papers, you miss much of what is actually going on in your country and the world. Just look at the quote from the LA Times in the above paragraph. Are the Times writers and editors, perhaps, more interested in presenting the news within a left wing framework, or are they completely ignorant of history - you know, morons? It's one or the other. Maybe both.

1 comment:

  1. You make an excellent point about Obama not hesitating to link this atrocity to racism and symbols that represent it, but willfully ignoring the link Islam plays in ideology of terrorists. Having said that, it is sad that it took the killing of 9 innocents to finally remove the Confederate flag from the SC capitol. That flag is a rebel flag that seceded from this Union in order to perpetuate slavery, and should have been banned from state and federal grounds immediately after the war's end.

    ReplyDelete