It All Comes Down to Skin Color

Absurd as it may be, America’s economy could be in its current ‘malaise’ simply because the President is black. And more than anything else, it may have less to do with Obama’s incompetence – God Forbid – and more to do with the fact that his opponents just cannot bear the thought of an Obama Deliverance. If the economy were to grow in leaps and bounds like it did under Bill Clinton and also under Ronald Reagan, there are Americans who could not live with themselves. Reductionist as this may sound, it really is that simple.

The past week has been very illuminative: Pat Toomey, a Republican senator from Pennsylvania, came out and suggested that the recent Gun Control bill to ensure background checks for anyone that wanted a gun failed because the Republicans did not want to be seen helping Obama. The two important words here are ‘seen’ and ‘helping.’ In the wake of the Newtown, Connecticut massacre, background checks are extremely popular in America. However, that this measure failed in the U.S. Senate was much too illogical for outsiders to fathom. And the fact that 4 Democrats voted against the measure is just mind boggling! But is it, really? Surely, the National Rifle Association was not that powerful. After all, Senator Pat Toomey and Senator Joe Manchin, the Democratic co-sponsor, both bear stellar NRA credentials. Ultimately, almost all Republicans killed the measure because their constituents wanted background checks, but ‘hated’ Obama too much to give him anything! Republicans and those 4 Democrats could not be ‘seen’ helping a Marxist agenda along.

Of course, Obama is not Marxist. Neither is he socialist or even as close a liberal as Fox News and other conservative news outlets and websites project him to be. In fact, Obama has been more stridently centrist than Bill Clinton. His Affordable Care Act – Obamacare – is actually more conservative than Hillarycare from 1994. It is built on a Republican idea of penalizing anyone that does not take up health insurance, it expands Medicaid – an already existent federal program, it depends on the private insurance companies to provide coverage – and for this, the program spends about US$1 Trillion dollars over a 10-year period to ensure that children do not get rejected by insurance companies because they have pre-existing conditions, that young people stay on their parents’ insurance plans till they are 26, and effectively covers over 30 million people who, otherwise, were being treated for free each time they showed up in emergency rooms

There’s another element to all this: Obama became President at a time when the country was really going to the dogs. George Bush, undoubtedly, managed to turn an excellent economy into three things: A war on terror, two expensive wars in the Middle East, and an aggressive recession that threatened to bring the global economy to its knees. In his first act as President, Obama did what any logical Keynesian would have done: He intervened in the private sector like a good government is supposed to do. The Stimulus Package of over US$787 billion dollars did more than its share and could have done even more if the Republicans had not riled up their followers into a frenzy of anti government spending. By pivoting towards the deficit and forcing America to reduce expenditure, the Republicans managed to hand Obama both the negative elements of austerity and also the pain of dealing with anyone that became unemployed because of federal government cuts. All those government employees who were laid off have every right to hate Obama because he fired them – and they do not even have to remember that Obama’s hand was forced.

Would any of this have happened if Obama were white? We doubt it. The Tea Party Movement, which is not necessarily ‘racist,’ has basically been a conduit for white rage. Conservative outlets have garnered super normal profits simply because they oppose Obama and fuel the meme that Obama is doing damage to the country. In the process, the number of hate groups grows in leaps and bounds. Many Americans are now preparing for a revolution – and you will even hear rumors that blacks are taking over everything. Lastly, the hopes and dreams of a post racial society following Obama’s presidency have been pushed into the background. Simply, America is more racist than ever.

Editorial Board
The Habari Network
May 5, 2013