Spencer Ackerman: Years From Now, Right-Wing Will Congratulate America/Itself For Electing Obama

[Hissyspit]

http://attackerman.firedoglake.com/2008/07/24/with-or-without-you

With Or Without You

By: Spencer Ackerman Thursday July 24, 2008 5:30 pm

Obama gives a speech in Berlin and gets possibly two hundred thousand foreigners to wave tiny American flags. What's the take of the jingosphere? "If Obama could go to Germany and give a speech in English and be not only understood but well-received, why does he say we all need to learn another language?" quoth K-Lo. "Obama has yet to see a Berlin bounce," said someone named Amy Holmes barely half an hour after the speech ended. "(W)hat's the real reason for Obama's last-minute decision to snub the troops in Germany?," demanded the Weekly Standard's John McCormack. (He must be a terrorist!!!!1!!)

A prediction. Years from now -- decades from now -- the right will congratulate America for being such a great country as to elect Barack Obama president, and use its self-congratulation to pretend that the country has transcended its race problems. It will conveniently ignore that an older generation of conservative preferred power to hope; avarice to vision; and imperialism to decency. Why do I feel so confident in predicting this? Because the right did it once before:

http://toohotfortnr.blogspot.com/2008/04/showed-me-how-to-be-man.html

Showed Me How To Be A Man

Spencer Ackerman

David Brooks does what conservatives feel they need to do: pretends he would have supported Martin Luther King Jr when it mattered. But I'm reading Rick Perlstein's masterpiece Nixonland, and he proves it just ain't so. Were Brooks -- the social-climber tribune of safe opinion -- writing in the 50s and 60s, he would have wrung his hands at the radicalism of King's challenge to white America, and fretted over how "divisive" he was. At least Bill Kristol has the honesty -- it's Bull Connor's honesty, but still -- to say we shouldn't ever discuss race in America.

Brooks writes, "If Barack Obama's presidential campaign represents anything, it is the triumph of King's early-60s style of activism over the angry and reckless late-60s style." Weasel words. King became angry. He should have been angry, because to not be angry in late-60s America was to be unaware. His truth was too powerful for the David Brookses. Consider:

Forty years ago today, a madman from David Brooks' America murdered our prophet.

MORE AT MLK VIDEO AT LINK

[SalmonChantedEvening]

1. Our crimes were so vast

Our destruction of the constitution so complete, that we had to be voted out of power in record numbers.


Re-writing history in advance. What a concept.

Thankee Hissy :hi: :hug: