I'm exhausted too

Yes, I too am exhausted of defending President Obama and the Democratic administration.  Like Velma Hart (who famously chastised the president at a town hall meeting in September) I am running out of patience waiting for campaign promises to be fulfilled, for financial maneuvers to benefit my family budget, and for some of the political party angst to dissipate.  I don't place all the blame for my exhaustion on the president though.  There is more than enough blame to go around.

The past two years have been a testament to how our governmental structure often gets in its own way.  If toeing party lines replaces serving the best interest of constituents as the priority of elected representatives there is nothing corrective inherent in the system.  The biggest flaw in our system of government and politics is that it relies on the good sense and conscience of humans - which we know for sure every one does not have in ample dose.  When Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell can state without impunity that his party's main objective over the next two years is to make sure President Obama is not re-elected you have to wonder if the people of Kentucky don't have pressing bread and butter issues Mr. McConnell should be putting above party politics.

The president is being lambasted in the media and by Democrats for his compromise on the 'Bush tax cuts'.  I don't know if he did the right thing, but I know it could not have been an easy one.  President Obama faced trying to maintain the tax cuts for embattled middle income Americans like me, while making the highest income earners pay their due.  He had to do this with the vacillating support of his own party and against uncompromising opposition.  He doesn't bend and the tax breaks expire for middle-income workers, many of those who can least afford it will feel the economic pinch - which will result in his losing much of his political base.  He bends to Republicans who want to keep the pockets of the wealthy lined, then he is accused of being weak and ineffective, thus frustrating his party and losing face.  I'm glad I wasn't the one that had to make that decision.

The constituents that created the groundswell that catapulted President Obama into office seemed to collectively step back after his swearing-in and start waiting for a miracle.  Of course with no miracles forthcoming disappointment was inevitable. The Republican communications machinery has manipulated that widespread disappointment with effectiveness and alacrity worthy of academic study.  The ability and willingness of the American populace to be manipulated has been the most tiring thing for me. At every opportunity to show ourselves true social leaders of the Free World - health care, immigration, education - we allow ourselves to be whipped into a frenetic tornado of non-issues, non-facts, and nonsense.

Sense and reason are not breaking through, and the market place is devoid of equal counter to ulterior dissent and acrimonious drivel. President Obama, the Democrats and their communications staffs seem to be willing to let the American people decipher for themselves fact from fiction, and to give them the benefit of the doubt - just because.  They have lacked a consistent and effective message; all the more tragic because candidate Obama won election largely on message.  The connection with the people that was his ace going into office has been amputated.  If he has  a plan, if his plans are being thwarted by his own party or the opposition, if he doesn't have the stomach for the fight or he does, we don't know.

We have an ill-informed electorate, politicians who put party above people, a castrated president and a system that doesn't self-correct. We should all be tired.

Show your privates, pay your taxes and stop whining

Lately I've felt like a haughty onlooker watching someone else's child throwing a nasty temper tantrum, and waiting for the scolding or whack to the butt from a responsible parent.  Who is going to tell these spoiled children that they can't have everything they want just as soon as they want it; that difficulties are inevitable and with patience it all passes; that we can't clamor for something then whine when we get it?

No one seems to disagree that the economy is cyclical.  No one seems to disagree that these cycles start years before they are evident, or that turnarounds are usually almost over by the time they are felt.  Yet reason seems to have been shoved through the window, forced out by whining and blame.  A president in office for less than two years has been vilified for problems he could not have created; his efforts to address those problems met only with impatience and criticism.  The fickle and overindulged attitudes of many have made them fodder for the moneyed who's latest business is to stir political turmoil.

Those who say they are "taxed enough already," conveniently ignore the fact that government is non-profit.  Taxes pay for public infrastructure and social services.  It may be that many who decry taxes and support tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans are those who can afford to pay for their own 'social services.'  They don't require unemployment benefits, Medicare, or food stamps; they don't use public libraries or send their children to public schools.  They have no interest in the services government provides with our tax dollars.

Since September 11, 2001 Americans have demanded to feel secure against terrorist attacks.  Politicians have been penalized at the ballot for not appearing fervent enough in pursuing ways to protect the country's residents, even as air travelers bitch and moan about long security lines and other inconveniences. The Transportation Security Administration's latest security implementations - full body scan machines and the alternate pat downs - have been lambasted as intrusive.  Where would you hide an explosive device?  Drug smugglers use every body orifice to transport drugs.  Why wouldn't potential bombers avail themselves of the same hiding places? 

Come on children. Open your eyes to the big picture, recognize who is pulling your strings and why, and quit all the bitching and moaning.

Today's colored folks

Jamaicans have a saying: tideh fi yu, tomorrow fi mi.  We all eventually have the same experiences.  The Muslim community in America is having their just-short-of strange-fruit 'tideh' right now.

The on-air conversation between Juan Williams and Bill O'Reilly that got Williams fired from National Public Radio would have been unfortunate even in the privacy of their own homes.  It was absolutely unacceptable on national television.  Unfortunately, such hate speech is not uncommon on The O'Reilly Factor.  Bill O'Reilly has built his success at Fox News largely on racial provocation.  He has over the years prostituted his own bigotry to great success.  He has bemoaned immigration and its 'browning' of America, said lives were lost in Hurricane Katrina because New Orleans were largely junkies, and once expressed surprise that eating at a restaurant in Harlem was a similarly pleasant experience as eating in a white suburban restaurant of New York.  These days Muslims are his favorite target - after Democrats.  After he blamed Muslims for the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 on the ABC talk show The View, upsetting two of the hosts enough for them to walk off camera, O'Reilly says people on the street supported him. Sadly, I have no doubt many people do.

Juan Williams says he was only being honest on the show when he said he feels nervous about flying on a plane with people who identify as Muslims in their dress.  Mr. Williams, who is Black and who has written about the civil rights movement, would be understanding I guess if someone on national television said they were nervous around African-Americans.  I am willing to bet, though, that most viewers would not be.

Anti-immigrant sentiment in this country has ballooned in ferocity and scope in recent years.  It is more accurately, anti-different.  Blacks, Jews, homosexuals, and other groups, however, have been brought in under the umbrella of hate protection over the years.  Muslims are still standing out in the hail storm of intolerance. Practicing Muslims become easy targets for their dress, for their unfamiliar religious practices and for their perceived alien status,l and extremists in their midst give prejudice a ready excuse.

It has, in fact, become acceptable to vilify Muslims.  No one bothers to make the distinction between the fanatical elements of Islam and the Muslim faith.  Recently, amidst the dust-up about the plans for an Islamic center blocks from the 9-11 site in New York, a friend of mine (Someone in whom I have never before seen an ounce of racism) posted to her Facebook page "let them build it...but across the street put a topless bar named You Mecca Me Hot..." One of the comments she got was a suggestion to let the building go up and then bomb it.  When I asked who is 'they/them', she responded, "The Muslims who were part of the terrorists attack."   That the New York Muslims trying to build a community center had nothing to do with the terrorist attacks does not seem to enter her, or her commenting friends' minds.  Is there any other group who is so maligned and assailed upon for the actions of a few?  Americans for the near-eradication of the Native Americans? Europeans for slavery? Germans for the Holocaust? Christians for the Oklahoma City bombing?

Before we dismiss anti-Muslim sentiments as not our problem, before we choose to be quiet for fear of castigation from our neighbors, before we place the responsibility for change on the victims, ask yourself: Today for them, tomorrow for who?