The Crispus Attucks Blog: Obama - It Doesn't Seem Like He's Going To Get It

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Obama - It Doesn't Seem Like He's Going To Get It

Tonight, in his State of the Union address, President Obama is expected to call for a three-year freeze on discretionary spending. Despite the economy continuing to stagnate, Mr. Obama has decided, counter to the best economic minds in the country, to curtail government's role as the spender of last resort, and go along with the proposal made by his election opponent, John McCain.

Every time I hear some Republican politician, strategist, spokesperson or shill suggest that the president move to the right and adopt GOP ideas I wonder if Mr. Obama asks himself what I ask myself: When was the last time Republicans were right about anything?

Republicans have been wrong about trickle-down economics, they've been wrong about Iran, and torture. They were wrong about family leave and wanting to let individuals invest their Social Security savings in the stock market. They've been on the wrong side of history on civil rights, women's rights, and gay rights. Over the past 30 years, on the biggest issues, the Republicans have been consistently wrong, and yet the spineless ConservaDems, Blue Dogs, and the conflict-averse president can't wait to kowtow to them. Mike Pence goes on TV and lies that the Republicans have tried, in good faith, to work with the president, and is not even mildly rebutted by the often bombastic Dylan Ratigan. Those two can be substituted by a dozen other GOP pols or news-biz hosts, and you'd witness the same thing; near lapdog compliance with the right-wing's narrative.

Despite polling to the contrary, the Democratic loss of the Massachusetts' Senate seat has been spun by the Republicans and the malleable media to be a referendum on Obama going too far left. The facts, as stated by the results of the survey, are the opposite; the majority feels that Obama has not gone far enough.

This latest rush to embrace another bad Republican idea continues to assure such facts will not interfere with Obama's insistence of fealty to the Republicans and the ConservaDems. "Fighter", indeed.

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Crispus Attucks?

According to PBS.org:

"In 1770, Crispus Attucks, a black man, became the first casualty of the American Revolution when he was shot and killed in what became known as the Boston Massacre. Although Attucks was credited as the leader and instigator of the event, debate raged for over as century as to whether he was a hero and a patriot, or a rabble-rousing villain".

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part2/2p24.html

From its earliest days black people have fought and died for this country, in every war we've fought, as soldiers and patriots. The average person, if they were to judge from the media and their lifetime of misteaching, would believe all we've ever been were slaves, civil rights workers, athletes, entertainers, welfare recipients and criminals.

In the minds of many people, Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton, or both, are the leaders of Black America. The utter ridiculousness of such thinking is apparent if its applied it in the inverse, say by considering Newt Ginrich or Sarah Palin to be the leaders of White America.

Black Americans are a complex mosiac within the expansive tapestry of this country and its history. Our sweat, blood, and toil helped create and maintain America, and we've paid a price higher than those paid by many others. This blog is a reflection of that point of view.

Why are you talking anyway?

Although we've seen many changes in our society, for me, there's still a lot of misunderstanding about Black Americans and our role in shaping this society...and not just by people who are not black.

Al Sharpton is not Black America. Jesse Jackson is not Black America. Neither was Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. DuBois, Harriet Tubman, Fredrick Douglas, or Cripus Attucks, but they all were Black Americans. And despite the rhetoric used against them during their lives and times, they all have proved their love for their country by challenging it to be true to its promise of justice and equality.

I feel the same way as they did. They used their voices. I want to use mine.

The Crispus Attucks Blog