Obama on MTP: 'Let's just say it: The Republicans are the problem'

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48. Welcome to DU, jinx1!

Glad you're here! Good question! We all need that help! The only time I can even vaguely remember that the answer would have been "yes" is some commemorative thing upon the passing of some public figure or other. Completely non-essential, and utterly irrelevant regarding the hard realities of policy-making and law-making.

What I remember in detail is this wall of "No" that we kept banging into, with untold numbers of attempts to break through that wall, or at least bore a hole in it. These assholes were HORRIBLE. Just take a moment to imagine what kind of nay-saying the enemy would say if OUR side did nothing but turn up its collective nose at ANYTHING the President wanted.

And we all know why, don't we? Because the republi-CONS are being led around by their own noses by the teabaggers. And what pumps through their veins, in far greater numbers and proportions, is racism.

It seems there's one really remarkable thing about racism: its staying power. We supposedly declared it over and done with about - how long ago? From somewhere in the middle of the 19th Century? Isn't that somewhere around 150 years ago? Haven't we been able to get over it by now, as a country? Why is this still a problem? Why is it still an issue in this country? What's been done to perpetuate, or even reinforce it so effectively? And what HASN'T been done to bring it to a complete, stale, closed-and-locked, body's-gone-cold, end-of-discussion END? What HASN'T been done to make sure this is SECURELY and in TOTAL FINALITY over and done with? Dead and buried and just a bad memory? Why has racism been allowed to continue? Actively? Passively? Both, probably?

We need to look at this seriously, and ask ourselves some pretty serious self-examining questions, seems to me. WHY is racism still a problem? Why have we not been able to conquer it? If a generation is about 20 - 25 years, how many generations is that since Abraham Lincoln's day? One hundred and 47 years works out to five to seven generations. Give or take. I mean, it just seems to me that it's time we grew up as a nation.

All I see when I observe teabaggerism - whether it's what they're saying on radio/tv/cable or writing in editorials, books, and blogs, or shouting and stamping their li'l feet at rallies, protests, and town hall meetings and hoisting their poorly spelled protest signs - is a bunch of adult-size three-year-olds throwing temper tantrums, because mom or dad didn't take them to Kiddie Land today. I see a bunch of spoiled brats yelling and screaming in the cereal aisle at the store, because mom wouldn't buy them all the Count Chocula they demanded. They embarrass me as an American, and humiliate themselves. These people has insisted they're not growing up at all, stuck on a world view that extends no farther out from them than the tips of their noses (or pot-bellies, whichever is larger).

We weren't born yesterday, as a nation, or as a reunited nation. We should be asking ourselves seriously, as a nation, isn't it time we grew up?