[img]583|left|Eric L. Wattree||no_popup[/img]Franklin Delano Roosevelt established the Democratic Party as the party of the people. Its primary mandate became protecting the average American from those who sought to do them harm. But the current Democratic Party is falling down in a big way.
When historians look back upon this period —with the election of the first Black President, it will be scrutinized like no other — they will see Democrats were more interested in their individual careers than in the American people during one of the most brutal internal assaults since the Civil War.
So I am going to do something I never have done in print: Speak strictly as a Black man.
Ever since Barack Obama appeared on the American scene, I feel as if I have been on a roller coaster. I have gone from being hopeful when he became a candidate, to ecstatic when it became clear that he was a viable candidate. But I went from disappointed when he backslid on FISA, to solemn when America elected him.
I became angry when he failed to adhere to the law and make Bush and Cheney answer for their “alleged” war crimes. Now the only suitable description is, I am embarrassed. While Americans are under one of the great threats from a domestic enemy in our history, the most persistent word coming from the mouth of the first Black President is “compromise.”
Remember the Chamberlain Lesson
In the days leading up to World War II, Neville Chamberlain demonstrated that you cannot compromise with a malevolent enemy. That is exactly what the GOP has become. They have demonstrated they have no regard for the American people. They are on a single-minded mission to destroy the middle class. Irrefutable evidence of that is that in less than six months they’ve tried to throw the unemployed under the bus, along with first responders, police, firefighters, teachers, nurses and poor and middle-class children while giving tax cuts, subsidies and preferential treatment to the most profitable multinational corporations in the world.
In terms of policy, I expect Presidents to be American and not cater to any racial, ethnic or special interest. I expect Presidents to bring the benefit of their life experience to the way they approach their job. That is why most Black people worked so hard to elect a Black president, so we would finally have someone in office who understood the Black experience. But President Obama is so afraid that Rush Limbaugh is going to accuse him of liking Black people that he is walking on eggshells. Not only is Obama not catering to Black people, he is overcompensating by going out of his way to negate his experience as a Black man. He isdoing a gross disservice to the American people as a whole.
Obama’s experience as a Black man would be invaluable in addressing the situation that the nation is facing. It has become the GOP is on a mission to destroy the middle class. To be graphically frank, the GOP leadership is on a fascist-inspired campaign to make all of the poor and middle class of every race the new niggas.
We Know Better
As the Tea Party clearly demonstrates, many White people can’t even visualize such a thing happening. Black people are under no illusions. While most White people can’t imagine a totalitarian situation being established in America. Black people not only know that it can, but that it’ has happened before on a selective basis. We have lived under Jim Crow.
By negating the benefit of his perspective and his unique source of knowledge, Obama is doing a grave disservice. He is not speaking out on a looming threat because he fears people will misinterpret his concern as a “Black thing” or Black paranoia.
Instead of saying “we should look forward and not back” with regard to Bush and Cheney’s war crimes in Iraq, as a Black man with a knowledge of the Black experience in America, Obama should have been in the forefront of the fight to initiate an investigation, then prosecuted both Bush, Cheney, and everyone in the administration involved in that atrocity.
By illegally instructing his attorney general to “not to look back,” Obama relegated Bush and Cheney to a class that is above the law.
Their Goal Is Undeniable
As a Black man, and a constitutional lawyer, Obama should have recognized that the failure to follow the rule of law led to Black people being lynched with impunity in the South.
Because of his failure to take decisive action, the Republican Congress, essentially, has an entire religion on trial as “Islamofascists,” a slippery slope. How far will it go? First, they rightly went after terrorists, but then it became all Muslims. Next it may be Black Muslims, then Black people as a whole, then liberals, then anyone who disagrees with them at all.
The GOP has a hidden agenda.
It has become clear by their concerted assault on middle-class workers across the country. They claim their primary concern is the deficit and the welfare of the people. Yet they held the survival of the families of unemployed Americans hostage to force a tax cut for the top 2 percent of the population that will exceed $4 trillion over the next 10 years.
While the GOP claims to be for smaller government, Gov. Rick Snyder of Michigan has hatched a plan to take over every town and city in the state by installing “emergency managers” with the authority to cancel labor agreements and overrule the people by firing elected officials. They say they are for a strict constructionist interpretation of the Constitution, yet the Republican Congress has passed a bill saying that it will become law even without being ratified by the Democratic Senate.
Each of these actions is grossly un-American, constituting totalitarianism. Even the Tea Party is beginning to see it. Where is the Democratic outrage?
It is time for the unengaged to wake up, turn off “Entertainment Tonight,” and read a history book. It is time for the Democrats, including Obama and his cheerleaders, to look past the next election. Think about America for a change. That would be a change we could believe in.
Eric L. Wattree is a writer, poet and musician, born in Los Angeles. A columnist for the Los Angeles Sentinel, the Black Star News, a staff writer for Veterans Today, he is a contributing writer to Your Black World, the Huffington Post, ePluribus Media and other online sites and publications. He also is the author of “A Message From the Hood.”
Mr. Wattree may be contacted at wattree.blogspot.com or Ewattree@Gmail.com
Religious bigotry: It’s not that I hate everyone who doesn’t look, think, and act like me – it’s just that God does.
