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March 25, 2008 at 09:43:47     Permalink Why I can't get excited about Obama's Race Speech Diary Entry by Josh Mitteldorf (about the author)

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I don't think it's possible to move beyond the Bush legacy until we debunk the picture of reality that they created with the classical Orwellian tactic of repeating the Big Lie, and infiltrating the major news organs. It is essential that a new Democratic Administration investigate and exhibit for the nation the extravagant criminality of the Bush regime.

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Why wasn't I enthused about Obama's eloquence in Philadelphia last week? I think what it comes down to is this: I fear we're not going to make progress until we acknowledge the criminality and mendacity of the present administration. Working within their definition of reality, we are at a tremendous disadvantage, and we give up a big piece of what we might gain before we've even begun.

The area of race hasn't been the worst record of this Administration, but that doesn"t mean their record isn't horrific — it just means that their other crimes are even worse. While using a few key black people as cover — Condi Rice, Clarence Thomas, Ken Blackwell of Ohio — they have cynically exacerbated racism in this country by turning the whole country against Arabs and Muslims. In reality, the 'terrorist threat' is a tiny thorn in our side, but it has been blown up to create the kind of fear and suspicion that demagogues thrive on. Indians, Hindus and other Asians have caught the tail end of this hatred, and the Middle Easterners among us — Turks and Egyptians and Arabians — live their lives under a shadow. Just look at the way Obama's middle name is being used when his enemies refer to him.

My area of activism has been election integrity. I helped analyze and report on the election thefts of 2004 and 2006, and disenfranchisement of blacks was a key element in both these heists. Tactics ranged from caging to felons' lists to voting machine shortages in black neighborhoods to outright reprogramming of the voting machines. Now they're pushing 'voter ID' laws, and you know that the losers will be, once again, overwhelmingly black people. Vote suppression by every diabolically conceivable means has been and is being used to disenfranchise blacks as the easiest way to lower the Democratic count.

Obama didn't say a word about this in his speech. Our movement has reached out to the Obama campaign, warning him of the fact that already he is losing substantial chunks of the vote to Clinton because of these same tactics. (How does this happen? The favorite theory among my colleagues is that the Republicans are tilting the primaries toward Clinton in order to create a bitter primary contest that will weaken the Dems. I don't have any evidence who is behind it, but there is considerable evidence of dishonesty in the primary so far. In every state, Obama has done worse in the official vote count than he did in either the pre-election media polls or the election-day exit polls. In some states, the difference has been 10 points. Did you read about the many precincts in Manhattan and Brooklyn where the precinct count for Obama was zero?)

Obama's unwillingness to talk about the fact that votes are being stolen from him reminds us painfully of Kerry, who stashed away a $20 million war chest for a post-election fight in case there was evidence of dishonesty in the polls, only to concede the election early Wednesday morning and to publicly oppose those of us who compiled the evidence that he was the rightful winner.

On the day next November when there is a mysterious last-minute reversal and McCain stages a historic upset, Obama will have already conceded the issue of election integrity, and will be in no position to fight.

You know about the other crimes of the Bush administration. It's difficult to say that these are 'even worse' than racism – they are all so far from being acceptable, and they are inter-related. Racism is one of the keys by which Bush is able to maintain his power.

But I weep for the Iraq War, with its 1 million civilian victims and multi-trillion dollar cost. Hundreds of thousands of veterans with PTSD are being dumped back into the US, without psychiatric support or even decent medical services. They are becoming violent husbands and fathers, petty criminals, addicts, drunks, angry, bitter, haunted citizens.

The reputation of the United States as a force for good in the world will take many generations to recover. There is so much less that we can do for human rights and peace now that we are aggressors and torturers ourselves. And the plundering of the economy has been beyond comprehension. Many trillions of dollars have disappeared. The world wants and needs a standard of exchange, and we Americans have been privileged and enriched by the fact that our currency is relied upon worldwide. No more. We have printed dollars and amassed debt at a rate so far above historic norms that the markets are being dragged almost against their will to safeguard value in Euros and Yen.

Can we hope to recover from this pit without ever naming the crimes or their perpetrators? I am sad to think that Obama's politics of inclusion and cooperation may be trounced by the neocon slander machine.

 

Josh Mitteldorf, a senior editor at OpEdNews, was educated to be an astrophysicist, and has branched out from there to mathematical modeling in a variety of areas. He has taught mathematics, statistics, and physics at several universities. He is an (more...)
 

 

 
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