“Why nepotism beneficiaries First Lady Michelle Obama and Vice President Joe Biden are Team Obama's biggest liberal hypocrites--bashing the corporate world and influence-peddling industries from which they and their relatives have benefited mightily. MICHELLE MALKIN
Exposing Liberals' 'Tiny Fraction' Lie
In a recent podcast, Michelle Obama, as she continues to shed her "no red state nor blue state America but just United States of America" skin to reveal a ruthless, myopic partisan looking to settle scores from fights unknown while making clear to those paying attention how America became so much more divided after the Obama presidency, complains that the opposition to the protesters is "once again patently false, morally wrong, and racist." After all, she insists, the violence is committed by just a "tiny fraction" of the protesters. This tiny fraction concept has become as virulent a propaganda tool as the selective edit. Those incidents fortunate enough to be deemed a "tiny fraction" are isolated incidents, outliers that can neither be enlarged to represent any other larger group nor be enlarged to foreshadow a growing trend. So when leftist groups advocating for causes that leftist leaders ardently support demonstrate, leaving destruction and mayhem in their wake, the left insulates itself from any responsibility by invoking the "tiny fraction" clause.
However, in those not so immortal words of Michelle Obama, the tiny fraction excuse is patently false, morally wrong, and even racist. First of all, the assertion of a tiny fraction is an absurdity. An estimated 570 riots were violent during the George Floyd protests, 19 people died during 14 days of those protests, and approximately 2 billion dollars of damage has accrued from all this peace. The magnitude of damage from a tiny fraction strains credulity, especially given the opportunity for live viewing of so many of these riots, in which looters and harassers are clearly more than small fractions, while the other participants, if any, cheerlead with venomous gusto. Furthermore, even if one accepts the assumption that big damage comes from tiny fractions, the groups involved still are far from blameless. The destruction from and the culpability of the involved groups are not binary. The damage incurred is on a continuum that ranges from verbal harassment to murder. Imagine if one were a member of a group that commits any of these acts with such brazen pride; the individual averse to criminality would either strenuously demand that such actions be condemned and prohibited or stray far from such a group and disassociate absolutely. Yet this is never done. Even though the destruction is far worse than the destruction, in terms of lives and livelihoods, during protests than what is being protested, the left takes little interest in the destruction of that alleged tiny fraction, failing to investigate or extirpate.
There is no moral purity, not at an individual level or at a societal level. Typically the presence of trace amounts of impurity fail to prevent societies and individuals from reaching extraordinary levels of inspiration and achievement. If we punish members of society for failing to achieve perfection or societies for failing to eliminate all criminal behaviors, nobody will be safe from persecution. The tiny fraction idea is therefore legitimate, but double standards are applied. The same malicious double standard that is transforming our legal system into two tiers based on political affiliation is hard at work here with a willful refusal to accurately determine and report the size and scope of any illicit act. The mindless propaganda that alchemizes the lawless lone wolf into menacing behemoths of right-wing hate somehow encompassing large, lawful, honorable segments of our population while metamorphosing unrestrained, unreflecting swelling masses of rage with tentacles reaching into upper echelons of leftist power into tiny fractions is a dangerous, divisive double standard.
Contrary to the Lewis Carroll misperceptions and machinations of the left, it is actually their grievances that are mostly if not all tiny fractions. Considering the overall population or even the numbers of members of subgroups such as political conservatives, there are very few racially motivated police killers, white supremacists, right-wing militia groups, neo-Nazis, Russians on social media influencing the votes of Americans, and serial sexual assaulters. Furthermore, these fractions continue to shrink over time, and the ties to any larger discernible political group are challenging to find even if we allow six degrees of separation, which will likely reach Kevin Bacon before reaching any veritable Republican.
In contrast, the threats from the left are anything but tiny fractions. The cancel culture is not a tiny fraction. The radicalized faculty at the university is not a tiny fraction. The indoctrination of socialist ideas and identity politics and white privilege in schools is not a tiny fraction. The falsehoods and half-truths spread by the media are not a tiny fraction. The high-tech crackdown on dissenting speech is not a tiny fraction. The division created by falsely accusing and demonizing one part of the population while exaggerating the malice and damage to provoke the rage of another heavily indoctrinated, hyper-sensitized part of the population is not a tiny fraction. And it is self-perpetuating, since the isolated outlier incident serves as the basis for rioting and the bottomless pit of grievance and recrimination, which in turn continue to be dismissed by adversaries as tiny fractions.
And so the cycle goes on endlessly, increasing in severity with each new cycle and enlarging the hairline cracks of division, growing so deeply and quickly that it may not be able to be halted, much less reversed, until the hairline cracks along gender and racial and class lines become a seismic fissure threatening to permanently tear the country asunder.
“Why nepotism beneficiaries
First Lady Michelle Obama and Vice President Joe Biden are Team Obama's biggest
liberal hypocrites--bashing the corporate world and influence-peddling
industries from which they and their relatives have benefited mightily.
MICHELLE MALKIN
Michelle
Deserves Pity, but the Rest of Us Deserve More
By Mark DeVine
The
equation "racial disparities = systemic racism" has achieved axiom
status in the science of social justice. Recently, Michelle Obama
upped the ante of racism's reach by lowering the bar for its detection even
farther. Her recent podcast interview detailing the many
racist blows and jabs she's absorbed and the pain inflicted thereby should
evoke pity for her — and also for all who must contend with the societal
fallout Michelle's particular brand of "suffering" portends.
Consider
the white racist attacks Michelle recounts. "Daily
slights. People talk over you." Buckle
up. There's more. "People will come up and pet my
dogs but will not look me in the eye." Then this: While waiting
in line for ice cream with her daughters, Michelle O. tells us, "a white
woman cut right in front of us." She reports that white
students assigned to room with her in college changed their dorm assignments
because they did not want to room with a black person.
With
eloquence and feeling, Michelle describes the devastating impact of the
"daily slights" received from white people — they "change the
shape of your soul." In the parlance of social justice ideology
and Critical Race Theory, the "soul change" Michelle undergoes is
called "inheriting the wound" of America's
systemic racism. Its effects are real in the sense that they may be
sincerely felt.
Michelle's
recounting of her experience of being a black woman in America is disturbing
and even moving. "When I'm just a black woman, white people
don't even see us. That is so telling of how white America views
people who are not like them. We don't exist. And when we
do exist, we exist as a threat. And that's
exhausting." Departing the White House for the last time, she
admits to Oprah, "when I got on the plane, I think I sobbed for like
thirty minutes."
Both
as FLOTUS and after settling into an 11-plus-million-dollar Martha's Vineyard
mansion, Michelle found neither final escape nor permanent relief from racism
and the pain it inflicts. How could she? She still
resides in permanently and systemically racist America. But she did
find strategies to help her cope. "It has been so important for
me to have black women in my crew, throughout my life, because there is such a
relief when you don't have to walk into your group and explain yourself."
Infantilization of a First Lady
Michelle
is a product of the "infantilization" of black Americans John McWhorter so incisively warns of. The
upshot of McWhorter's contention is that a victimhood culture flourishes among
blacks that inhibits the maturity of blacks or people of any color who
internalize a debilitating "blame others" and "depend upon
others" ethos. "White people don't even see
us!" What power over herself Michelle cedes to
whites. And what bitterness and blame she harbors and feeds within
her soul.
According
to McWhorter and other un-woke blacks, this infantilization was nurtured by the
post-MLK civil rights leadership in cahoots with a Democrat Party anxious to
win black votes by posing as their protectors and providers and by a nation of
whites desperate to dissociate from racism. Infantilization inhibits
the cultivation of that one adult psychic instinct Shelby Steele insists is
uniquely necessary to human flourishing in America — taking responsibility for
oneself.
Fueled
by Marxist Critical Race Theory, the rapid development of modern social justice
ideology since 2012 has expanded the scope and deepened the debilitating
consequences of post-MLK infantilization, giving rise to the concept of
micro-aggressions and the need for white-free safe spaces.
Experience + Sincerity =/= Truth
The
sincerity of Michelle's confessions of hurt over many years bears witness to
the tragic, soul-shaping power of the infantilization lamented by McWhorter and
Steele. Her pain also demonstrates that the reach of social justice
infantilization respects no socio-economic boundaries, penetrating and
punishing the heart and mind of one of the most beloved, wealthy, and powerful
women on the planet.
The
pity-evoking power of the former first lady's plight emerges not because the
slights and discourtesies identified warrant the level of suffering and
exhaustion experienced, but precisely because they do not. Michelle is a victim
indeed — but not so much of the racism, real or imagined, she
experiences. She suffers, rather, from the catastrophizing effect of
the heightened race-consciousness produced by infantilization. The
changed shape of Michelle's soul includes thin and ever thinning
outrage-triggering tripwires.
Much
of her suffering is unnecessary because its source resides far less in her
experiences than in the meanings the social justice movement has trained her
reflexively to draw from those experiences. The terror of the child
fresh from taking in a horror movie who truly believes that a monster lurks
under his bed is real even though the monster is not. Love pities
and comforts the child. But it does not validate child's unwarranted
fear; it debunks it.
Numerous
alternative, non-race-related interpretations of Michelle's reported averted
white eyes, the white queue-cutters, and even the white dorm room–changers are
readily available, but not to the infantilized Michelle. For her
non-racist readings are ruled out by social justice insistence that race
poisons every interracial encounter in America. For adults, even
where race plays a role in such encounters, the experience of micro-aggressions
does not trigger outrage or much of anything, because they are adults, not
children.
A National Pity Party
Pity
for Michelle? Absolutely. But pity a-plenty also for any
family, community, or nation increasingly populated by Michelle-like,
race-obsessed, infantilized sufferers.
Widespread
societal infantilization produces more like Michelle who seek shelter from the
racist storm and succor for their racist-inflicted wounds in little enclaves
inhabited by those similarly wounded who look and think like them.
Others,
however, seek release in collective tantrums bent on rock-throwing and
building-burning. They spit into the black and
brown faces of police, screaming, "You're a racist"; kick in
the skull of a white man
attempting to rescue a man from the mob; and assassinate a black American
life-long Democrat who decided he would vote Trump come
November. Michelle has no corner on pity these
days. Where infantilization takes hold, occasions for pity abound
indeed. But unlike Michelle and her husband, no island mansion
hideaway beckons to which the rest of us might repair.
Mark
DeVine teaches at the Beeson Divinity School in Birmingham,
Alabama and is the author of Bonhoeffer Speaks Today and Shalom Yesterday, Today, and Forever.
THE GREATEST TRANSFER OF
WEALTH TO THE BANKSTER CLASS AND THE RICH PRIOR TO TRUMP OCCURRED DURING THE
OBAMA-BIDEN BANKSTER REGIME. THEY SERVED THE 1% WELL AND THEY HAVE BEEN RICHLY
REWARDED WITH FRAUDULENT DERIVED BOOK DEALS AND BANISTER SPEECH FEE BRIBES.
But soon
enough, the reality of Barack Obama’s unpopularity, the reality
of the criminal abuse by his administration in trying to frame and otherwise
take down President Trump, and the reality of a booming economy helping all Americans,
would take the air out of her
balloon. Eric Georgatos
The Obamas quickly
became super rich. Vanity Fair celebrated these "Obamoguls" and
hailed Michelle Obama for her "saintly popularity." This so-called
saint doesn't spurn the finer things. Last August, TMZ reported the Obamas were
buying a $15 million mansion on the coast of Martha's Vineyard to match their
$8 million Washington, D.C., mansion.
TO BUILD AN OBAMA
MUSLIM-STYLE DICTATORSHIP THIRD TERM, FIRST OBOMB WOULD HAVE TO FINISH OFF THE
AMERICAN MIDDLE CLASS. HIS BANKSTERS HAVE DONE THAT. NEXT, SABOTAGE AMERICAN
BORDERS, VOTING AND JOBS FOR MEXICAN FLAG WAVERS. OBOMB, BIDEN AND HOLDER HAVE
ACHIEVED THAT WITH THE HELP OF GLOBALIST NANCY PELOSI.
“Why nepotism beneficiaries First Lady Michelle Obama and Vice
President Joe Biden are Team Obama's biggest liberal hypocrites--bashing the
corporate world and influence-peddling industries from which they and their
relatives have benefited mightily. MICHELLE MALKIN
The cheers are always
presumed to be unanimous. Dissent from this party line is ignored. And no one
asks about the profits. For the Obamas, greed is cast as just another inspiring
voyage of self-discovery.
Michelle
Obama, Saintly Buckraker?
The Hollywood Reporter
recently broke a scoop about the latest Netflix documentary from the Obamas,
designed to offer us an oasis of joy as we suffer through the coronavirus
pandemic. It's called "Becoming," and it will be available worldwide
on May 6. As the title suggests, it promotes Michelle Obama's memoir of the
same name, which has sold more than 10 million copies. So let's get this
straight. The Obamas were awarded a book deal worth an estimated $65 million
for their memoirs, hers and then his. They also struck an estimated $50 million
production deal with Netflix. (We don't have actual numbers. Could someone in
the media ask for a tax return?)
With this
self-aggrandizing documentary, their second deal is being used to accentuate
the profits of their first. The buckraking here is intense. President Donald
Trump surely admires their self-promotional moxie. The Obamas quickly
became super rich. Vanity Fair celebrated these "Obamoguls" and hailed
Michelle Obama for her "saintly popularity." This so-called saint
doesn't spurn the finer things. Last August, TMZ reported the Obamas were
buying a $15 million mansion on the coast of Martha's Vineyard to match their
$8 million Washington, D.C., mansion. Non-Fox network coverage? Zero.
In December, they actually bought said Martha's Vineyard mansion for $11.75
million. Non-Fox network coverage? Again, zero. There would be no denting
haloes by asking how much they're giving to charity. The documentary celebrates
Michelle Obama's "Becoming" book tour events at stadiums that charged
Obama superfans $300 or more a ticket, often with celebrities like Oprah
Winfrey along for the ride.
Media outlets repeated
Obama's self-puffery without rebuttal. "Those months I spent traveling --
meeting and connecting with people in cities across the globe -- drove home the
idea that what we have in common is deep and real and can't be messed
with," she said in a statement. She augmented her new status as a
self-help guru with a workbook of sorts: "Becoming: A Guided Journal for
Discovering Your Voice," complete with "an intimate and inspiring
introduction by the former First Lady and more than 150 inspiring questions and
quotes to help you discover -- and rediscover -- your story."
Not everyone famous is
praised for self-help books for women. The current president's daughter Ivanka
Trump wrote one in 2017, and The New York Times was brutal. "It reads more
like the scrambled Tumblr feed of a demented 12-year-old who just checked out a
copy of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations from the library," it wrote.
There are never
Republican critics of Obama in the "news" these days. In a Washington
Post story on the documentary, writer Sonia Rao quoted Anita McBride, chief of
staff to former first lady Laura Bush, who said Obama was "a reluctant
first lady" but then formed lasting public connections through her
"extraordinary use of media and pop culture and television."
Is that Michelle's gift
to the media? No, it's the media's gift to Michelle. The infatuated titans of
"news" and entertainment media appear to have granted her every
"extraordinary" wish in building this "billion-dollar
brand."
The cheers are always
presumed to be unanimous. Dissent from this party line is ignored. And no one asks
about the profits. For the Obamas, greed is cast as just another inspiring
voyage of self-discovery.
Tim Graham is
director of media analysis a
Culture of Corruption: Obama
and His
Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks,
and
Cronies
by Michelle Malkin
Editorial Reviews
In her shocking new book, Malkin digs deep into the records of
President Obama's staff, revealing corrupt dealings, questionable pasts, and
abuses of power throughout his administration.
From the Inside Flap
The era of hope and change is dead....and it only took six months
in office to kill it.
Never has an administration taken office with more inflated
expectations of turning Washington around. Never have a media-anointed American
Idol and his entourage fallen so fast and hard. In her latest investigative
tour de force, New York Times bestselling author Michelle Malkin delivers a
powerful, damning, and comprehensive indictment of the culture of corruption
that surrounds Team Obama's brazen tax evaders, Wall Street cronies, petty
crooks, slum lords, and business-as-usual influence peddlers. In Culture of
Corruption, Malkin reveals:
* Why
nepotism beneficiaries First Lady Michelle Obama and Vice President Joe Biden
are Team Obama's biggest liberal hypocrites--bashing the corporate world and
influence-peddling industries from which they and their relatives have
benefited mightily
* What secrets the ethics-deficient members of Obama's
cabinet--including Hillary Clinton--are trying to hide
* Why the Obama White House has more power-hungry, unaccountable
"czars" than any other administration
* How Team Obama's first one hundred days of appointments became a
litany of embarrassments as would-be appointee after would-be appointee was
exposed as a tax cheat or had to withdraw for other reasons
* How Obama's old ACORN and union cronies have squandered millions
of taxpayer dollars and dues money to enrich themselves and expand their power
* How
Obama's Wall Street money men and corporate lobbyists are ruining the economy
and helping their friends In Culture of Corruption, Michelle Malkin lays bare
the Obama administration's seamy underside that the liberal media would rather
keep hidden.
•
ISBN-10: 1596981091
•
ISBN-13: 978-1596981096
Michelle Malkin
No Shady Banking Buddy Left Behind
First Lady Michelle Obama's latest overseas jaunt is getting all
the headlines. But President Obama's money-grubbing junket to Chicago may cost
taxpayers far more in the long run. With his Gaultier-clad wife sashaying around
the Spanish seaside, the lonely fundraiser-in-chief returned to Illinois to
take care of some birthday-week business. Job One: Filling the Senate campaign
coffers of his corruption-tainted political protege Alexi Giannoulias.
Mission accomplished. Obama's Thursday afternoon campaign event
for Giannoulias, the beleaguered state treasurer of Illinois, reportedly raked
in $1 million. Lagging behind his GOP opponent, liberal Republican Rep. Mark
Kirk, Giannoulias has coveted one-on-one, grip-and-grin time with Obama for
months. In addition to the cash, photo-ops and video of the Obama fundraising
event that Giannoulias will milk from now until Election Day, the White House
has dispatched Vice President Joe Biden, White House senior adviser David
Axelrod and White House campaign management guru David Plouffe to boost
Giannoulias' bid. Plouffe proclaimed Democrats "all in" for
Giannoulias, whom he described as "a great progressive champion."
Obama gave his own personal seal of ethical approval,
telling deep-pocketed donors this week: "I appreciate his
strong sense of advocacy for ordinary Americans. You
can trust him -- you can count on him." Uh-huh. And
I've
got a bridge to Hope and Change to sell you.
What would Giannoulias know about "ordinary Americans"?
Giannoulias, 34, befriended Obama during pickup basketball games with an elite
group that also included Michelle Obama's brother, Craig; Chicago edu-crat Arne
Duncan (now Education Secretary); and hedge fund manager John Rogers (the
ex-husband of the Obamas' ex-White House social secretary, Desiree Rogers). He
spread his wealth and influence around early and often to support Obama's
fledgling political career. He pitched in $7,000 in 2003-2004 to Obama's
Illinois State Senate bids. He hosted fundraisers for Obama's U.S. Senate
campaign in 2004 and for his presidential campaign in 2007.
Where'd the cash come from? Giannoulias' Greek immigrant family
founded Chicago-based Broadway Bank, a now-defunct financial institution that
loaned tens of millions of dollars to convicted mafia felons and faced
bankruptcy after decades of engaging in risky, high-flying behavior. It's the
place where Obama parked his 2004 U.S. Senate campaign funds. And it's
the same place where a mutual friend of Obama and Giannoulias -- convicted
Obama fundraiser/slum lord Tony Rezko -- used to bounce nearly $500,000 in bad
checks written to Las Vegas casinos. This week, the Chicago Sun-Times
revealed an additional $22.75 million Broadway Bank loan to a Rezko-owned
business in 2006. Giannoulias held an ownership stake in the bank at the time.
Giannoulias served as Broadway Bank vice president and senior loan
officer for four years. According to the Chicago Tribune, during Giannoulias'
tenure, some $27 million of Broadway Bank's funny money went to mob crooks
Michael "Jaws" Giorango and Demitri Stavropoulos. Giorango is a
hustler who fronted a nationwide prostitution ring and was sentenced to six
months in prison; Stavropoulos is behind bars for operating a multistate
bookmaking ring. Giorango ran the $400-an-hour call girl operation out of
high-rise luxury apartments in Chicago with the infamous "Gold Coast
Madam," Rose Laws. Giorango and Stavropoulos used their Broadway Bank
loans to start their own risky lending business for nontraditional borrowers
unable to secure traditional bank financing.
Despite Giorango's criminal record exposed by the Tribune in 2004,
Broadway Bank approved massive mortgages for him. Giannoulias' brother,
Demetris, explained that as a "relationship bank," Broadway wouldn't
just throw someone under the bus because of a "bad article." Instead,
the bank went ahead and rubber-stamped a September 2005 loan for $3.4 million
to buy a 32-unit Los Angeles apartment complex. The application falsely stated
that the borrower, Giorango, had "not been convicted of a felony."
Giannoulias oversaw the servicing of such shady loans totaling $11 million.
Remember: He was no low-level staffer. He was, as he reminded supporters when
he needed to deflect attention away from his youth, top management at Broadway
Bank.
In January 2010, the bank entered a consent decree with federal
and Illinois state regulators. It required Broadway Bank "to raise tens of
millions in capital, stop paying dividends to the family without regulatory
approval, and hire an outside party to evaluate the bank's senior
management." The city's former inspector general blasted Giannoulias and
his family for tapping $70 million worth of dividends in 2007 and 2008 as the
real estate crash loomed. Broadway Bank was sitting on an estimated $250
million in bad loans. In late April, federal regulators shut it down. Cost to
taxpayers: an estimated $390 million. Giannoulias refused to drop out of the
race -- and instead used the company failure to argue that it made him (SET
ITAL) more (END ITAL) qualified to serve in office: "I have a renewed
vigor and a new perspective on just how horrible it is out there for so many
people."
Forget ‘Michelle for President’
Our betters in
the MSM, and related ruling-class mouthpieces, have set the narrative:
the lackluster, too-crazy pack of Democrat presidential candidates, even with a
few token billionaires, will ultimately give way to the entry of Michelle Obama
into the race. The former First Lady, author of an apparently
best-selling memoir, will inject palpable blue energy throughout the nation,
return black America to a 95+% Democrat voting bloc, consolidate the Obama
voting coalitions that won two presidential elections, and the evil interloper
Trump will be sent packing.
Don’t buy this
narrative.
In a country of
320+ million people, there is always a sizable segment who will not be willing
or able to discern or question anything beyond what they are told by the MSM,
and will follow the narrative. That segment is actually becoming smaller
every year; the reality of fake news has diluted the MSM’s influence to a far
greater degree than they understand. But that’s not why I’m not buying
the narrative.
Here’s why:
‘Obama’
is how we got Trump. For all the gigabytes devoted to
explaining how Donald Trump was elected President of the United States, the
simplest two-word explanation has always been: Barack Obama.
Most Americans
never agreed with the radical left-wing policies that President Obama
instituted, nor did they appreciate his subtle, persistent denigration of
America’s character, identity and place in the world. But Americans did salute
to the notion that we should be especially careful not to criticize America’s
first black President.
In short, the
absence of strong criticism of President Obama and his policies was not due to
their popularity, but rather due to a surrender to the political reality
enforced in great degree by the MSM that any such criticism would be labeled as
racist. His policies and view of America were in fact alarming to many
Americans, who silently bided their time until he was out of office.
The truth is
that Barack Obama was and is a radical leftist ideologue who in his own words
sought to fundamentally transform America. A few observers saw this
agenda from the beginning of Obama’s appearance on the national scene, but they
were voices in a wilderness dominated by a sycophantic media. The
American people never supported a fundamental transformation of their country
-- in leftist terms, a shredding of America’s Judeo-Christian heritage in favor
of a godless, George Soros-vision of an Open Society, directed and controlled
by almighty secular government -- and the more they understood the truth of who
Obama was and what he was trying to do, the angrier and more resentful they became.
Donald Trump was
the anti-Obama for one simple reason: he loves America.
And so…the
“Michelle Obama riding on the residual goodwill of the Obama name!” campaign
narrative, doesn’t resonate.
‘Blexit’
is real. Candace Owens deserves tremendous
credit for branding and building the “Blexit” movement, and for devoting her
amazing intelligence and energy to its articulate messages. Yet well
before Blexit was a thing, Donald Trump planted the seed with black Americans
when he said in August 2016: “What do you have to lose by trying something new, like Trump?”
Three-plus years
later, with black unemployment the lowest in recorded history, polls that show
roughly a third of likely voting black Americans supporting President Trump are
not an accident or a fluke. (And they may just mark the floor of
his support in 2020.) They reflect conscious recognition among black
Americans of simple truths: black lives generally did not get
better under eight years of Obama; black lives generally have gotten much
better under less than three years of President Trump.
And so…the
“Michelle Obama will bring back the good old days of black prosperity!”
campaign narrative falls flat.
Barack
Obama is the elephant in the room re Barr/Durham. Of all the names that engaged Americans
associate with the Russia Collusion hoax -- Brennan, Clapper, Comey, McCabe,
Strzok, Page, Ohr, Rosenstein, Simpson, Steele, etc. -- there is one that
is going to loom larger and larger in public thought as the Horowitz IG report
and Barr/Durham followup becomes public: Barack Obama.
Our own guess is
that when the truth finally comes out, Americans across the political spectrum
will be stunned at the level of criminality and corruption in the Obama
administration. It will shock the collective conscience of the
nation that all of this was directed to brazenly and arrogantly overturning the
will of the American people for the ugly but simple reason that Donald Trump
was an outsider who threatened the Obama/leftist/globalist hold on power.
If the Horowitz
report and Barr/Durham follow-up reveals, as seems increasingly likely, the
deliberate and nefarious concoction of the Russia Collusion Hoax by leaders in
the CIA, FBI, and DoJ, the vast majority of Americans, including millions who
have historically identified themselves politically as Democrats, will be
fiercely offended at this historic, unconscionable abuse. And who is at
the top of all the plotting and scheming and lying and weaponization of
government against the will of the people? Barack Obama.
And so…the
”Michelle Obama will bring back the days of the scandal-free Obama
administration!” campaign narrative reeks.
Michelle’s
heart isn’t in it… and may not be a happy heart anyway. Mrs. Obama is on record saying she has no
interest in running, and of course, those words by themselves mean nothing as
to whether she will enter the race. But we think they do signal that at
her core, her heart is not in it. And ‘it’ refers to the pressure, the
nastiness, the unrelenting spotlight, the every-word-and-every-smirk-on-video
scrutiny of an American presidential race.
Michelle Obama’s
eight years in a soft, adulatory spotlight as First Lady are not the same as
the brass tacks rough-and-tumble of a presidential campaign. And even if
the MSM did everything in its power to shield her (and it surely would), the
MSM is not the gatekeeper it once was. Plus, winners tend to be
happy warriors. There has always seemed to be an undercurrent of anger in
Michelle Obama’s countenance, and if it ever flared on the campaign trail, she
could quickly find herself in a big hole. Anger doesn’t win elections.
Michelle Obama
may or may not get into the race; it’s probably a 50/50 proposition at this point.
And if she does get in, she’ll have access to the best messaging talent the
left can buy. So she’d make waves for a while. But soon enough, the reality of Barack
Obama’s unpopularity, the reality of the criminal abuse by his
administration in trying to frame and otherwise take down President Trump, and
the reality of a booming economy helping all Americans,
would take the air out of her balloon. “Bring
Back Barack” is not a winning campaign theme. And if a tweet or two
happened to get under her skin, the result could be ugly.
“Michelle Obama
for President” is not inevitable or invincible.
Eric
Georgatos is a former corporate lawyer who operated the Brushfires of Freedom
blog from 2008-2016 (a book of top postings from the blog is available at America,
Can We Talk?).
///
Michelle
Deserves Pity, but the Rest of Us Deserve More
By Mark DeVine
The
equation "racial disparities = systemic racism" has achieved axiom
status in the science of social justice. Recently, Michelle Obama
upped the ante of racism's reach by lowering the bar for its detection even
farther. Her recent podcast interview detailing the many racist blows and jabs she's absorbed
and the pain inflicted thereby should evoke pity for her — and also for all who
must contend with the societal fallout Michelle's particular brand of
"suffering" portends.
Consider
the white racist attacks Michelle recounts. "Daily
slights. People talk over you." Buckle
up. There's more. "People will come up and pet my
dogs but will not look me in the eye." Then this: While waiting
in line for ice cream with her daughters, Michelle O. tells us, "a white
woman cut right in front of us." She reports that white
students assigned to room with her in college changed their dorm assignments
because they did not want to room with a black person.
With
eloquence and feeling, Michelle describes the devastating impact of the
"daily slights" received from white people — they "change the
shape of your soul." In the parlance of social justice ideology
and Critical Race Theory, the "soul change" Michelle undergoes is
called "inheriting the wound" of America's
systemic racism. Its effects are real in the sense that they may be
sincerely felt.
Michelle's
recounting of her experience of being a black woman in America is disturbing
and even moving. "When I'm just a black woman, white people
don't even see us. That is so telling of how white America views
people who are not like them. We don't exist. And when we
do exist, we exist as a threat. And that's
exhausting." Departing the White House for the last time, she
admits to Oprah, "when I got on the plane, I think I sobbed for like
thirty minutes."
Both
as FLOTUS and after settling into an 11-plus-million-dollar Martha's Vineyard
mansion, Michelle found neither final escape nor permanent relief from racism
and the pain it inflicts. How could she? She still
resides in permanently and systemically racist America. But she did
find strategies to help her cope. "It has been so important for
me to have black women in my crew, throughout my life, because there is such a
relief when you don't have to walk into your group and explain yourself."
Infantilization of a First Lady
Michelle
is a product of the "infantilization" of black Americans John McWhorter so incisively warns of. The
upshot of McWhorter's contention is that a victimhood culture flourishes among
blacks that inhibits the maturity of blacks or people of any color who
internalize a debilitating "blame others" and "depend upon others"
ethos. "White people don't even see us!" What
power over herself Michelle cedes to whites. And what bitterness and
blame she harbors and feeds within her soul.
According
to McWhorter and other un-woke blacks, this infantilization was nurtured by the
post-MLK civil rights leadership in cahoots with a Democrat Party anxious to
win black votes by posing as their protectors and providers and by a nation of
whites desperate to dissociate from racism. Infantilization inhibits
the cultivation of that one adult psychic instinct Shelby Steele insists is
uniquely necessary to human flourishing in America — taking responsibility for
oneself.
Fueled
by Marxist Critical Race Theory, the rapid development of modern social justice
ideology since 2012 has expanded the scope and deepened the debilitating
consequences of post-MLK infantilization, giving rise to the concept of
micro-aggressions and the need for white-free safe spaces.
Experience + Sincerity =/= Truth
The
sincerity of Michelle's confessions of hurt over many years bears witness to
the tragic, soul-shaping power of the infantilization lamented by McWhorter and
Steele. Her pain also demonstrates that the reach of social justice
infantilization respects no socio-economic boundaries, penetrating and
punishing the heart and mind of one of the most beloved, wealthy, and powerful
women on the planet.
The
pity-evoking power of the former first lady's plight emerges not because the
slights and discourtesies identified warrant the level of suffering and
exhaustion experienced, but precisely because they do not. Michelle is a victim
indeed — but not so much of the racism, real or imagined, she
experiences. She suffers, rather, from the catastrophizing effect of
the heightened race-consciousness produced by infantilization. The
changed shape of Michelle's soul includes thin and ever thinning
outrage-triggering tripwires.
Much
of her suffering is unnecessary because its source resides far less in her
experiences than in the meanings the social justice movement has trained her
reflexively to draw from those experiences. The terror of the child
fresh from taking in a horror movie who truly believes that a monster lurks
under his bed is real even though the monster is not. Love pities
and comforts the child. But it does not validate child's unwarranted
fear; it debunks it.
Numerous
alternative, non-race-related interpretations of Michelle's reported averted
white eyes, the white queue-cutters, and even the white dorm room–changers are
readily available, but not to the infantilized Michelle. For her non-racist
readings are ruled out by social justice insistence that race poisons every
interracial encounter in America. For adults, even where race plays
a role in such encounters, the experience of micro-aggressions does not trigger
outrage or much of anything, because they are adults, not children.
A National Pity Party
Pity
for Michelle? Absolutely. But pity a-plenty also for any
family, community, or nation increasingly populated by Michelle-like,
race-obsessed, infantilized sufferers.
Widespread
societal infantilization produces more like Michelle who seek shelter from the
racist storm and succor for their racist-inflicted wounds in little enclaves
inhabited by those similarly wounded who look and think like them.
Others,
however, seek release in collective tantrums bent on rock-throwing and
building-burning. They spit into the black and
brown faces of police, screaming, "You're a racist"; kick in
the skull of a white man
attempting to rescue a man from the mob; and assassinate a black American
life-long Democrat who decided he would vote Trump come
November. Michelle has no corner on pity these
days. Where infantilization takes hold, occasions for pity abound
indeed. But unlike Michelle and her husband, no island mansion
hideaway beckons to which the rest of us might repair.
Mark DeVine teaches at the Beeson Divinity School in Birmingham, Alabama and
is the author of Bonhoeffer Speaks Today and Shalom Yesterday, Today,
and Forever.
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