http://prospect.org/cs/articles?article=stuff_some_white_people_dont_likeStuff Some White People Don't Like
The right's animosity toward Obama isn't about fascism or socialism -- it's about racism.
Paul Waldman | September 15, 2009 | web only
Citizens protest against taxation and government spending at a "Tea Party" rally. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
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It is plain that a great many people simply do not believe Barack Obama legitimately occupies the office of president of the United States. Some -- the "birthers" -- think he was really born in Kenya, and benefited from an elaborate conspiracy to falsify documents demonstrating otherwise -- in other words, not American at all. Some have reacted to policies they oppose by reviving a neo-Confederate claim that states don't have to abide by laws passed by the federal government if they don't like them. These are the "tenthers," who believe that the tenth amendment makes virtually everything the federal government does unconstitutional, from Medicare to building interstate highways to regulating airlines. So long as the wrong man's in the White House, that is.
It goes on. When George W. Bush was president, wearing a T-shirt simply saying "Protect our civil liberties" could get you thrown out of a rally and threatened with arrest;
today, conservatives come to see the president toting firearms. Talk-show hosts warn darkly that government actions they don't like aren't merely bad policy -- they're totalitarianism. Extremists begin stockpiling weapons in preparation for an imagined government crackdown. When the president plans to tell kids to work hard and stay in school, people on the right complain to school officials and keep their children home, lest the impressionable young ones have to listen to Obama's "socialist indoctrination." And members of Congress decide that shouting out insults during presidential addresses is now within the bounds of decorum.What all of this has in common is a rejection of the mores of American democracy. There were some things that people on the left and right used to agree on. You might not like it if Congress passes the president's agenda, but the law is the law. You might not like the president himself, but you're not going to make a big stink about it when he does things like pardon turkeys on Thanksgiving or tell kids to study hard and stay in school. You might not want to vote for what the president is arguing for, but if you're a member of Congress you don't heckle him like you're a drunken frat boy in a comedy club.
For all the passion and, at times, anger in our politics, those things used to be true. But not anymore.
It isn't just a random protester here or an obscure blogger there who are showing this rejectionism. T
he branches of the conservative crazy tree reach much farther into the establishment than anything comparable on the left. There are leftists who think weird things, but they are treated with scorn by Democrats. In contrast, there are members of the United States Congress who believe that President Obama may have forged his birth certificate. Probable 2012 presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty, the governor of Minnesota -- heretofore known as a modern, moderate Republican -- recently started talking about "asserting our tenth amendment rights" to nullify federal laws. Pawlenty was lining up behind a series of Republican politicians, including Texas governor Rick Perry, South Carolina senator Jim DeMint, and Congresswoman Michele Bachmann of Minnesota. And does anyone think it's an accident that the now-famous Congressman Joe Wilson is a former aide to segregationist Strom Thurmond and a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans who supported keeping the Confederate flag flying over the South Carolina statehouse? And is anyone surprised that what really had Wilson so mad was the prospect that somewhere, an undocumented immigrant might get health coverage? One of Wilson's constituents who recently lost her own coverage explained her misgivings about health reform by saying, "We're without insurance, and I do think some folks should get government health care. But they have to be American."
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There is nothing we can do to escape tribalism; it is written on every page of human history. As our own society grows more complex and diverse, we become members of multiple overlapping tribes that we use to differentiate ourselves from others. We define "us" and "them" by our age, the place we live, our religious beliefs, our favorite sports, the kind of music we favor, and our taste in various consumer goods, to name but a few.
But there are some things we're all supposed to share, including a willingness to submit to the results of democracy even when we don't like those results. For a growing number of Americans, the presence of a certain kind of person in the White House calls that willingness into question.
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