As Rating America’s Presidents shows, Obama did nothing to heal America’s racial divisions, and a great deal to make them worse. Bob Woodward is claiming that Trump called Obama “overrated.” That’s a generous assessment.
Obama's tribalism and divisiveness broke America. His routine of playing destroyer and healer is what is truly cynical here.
ALL REVOLUTIONS START OUT MESSY AND UNFOCUSED. THE BEST IS YET TO COME!
The Party of Antifa Fascists?
https://townhall.com/columnists/pauldriessen/2018/10/20/the-party-of-antifa-fascists-n2530342?utm_campaign=rightrailsticky2
Who are the “Antifa” mobs? What are they doing to our country? How long will we tolerate them?
The Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings were their latest excuse for tantrums and intolerance. Dismissing fairness, propriety and due process, they screamed that mere allegations of misconduct were enough to bar him from the Supreme Court, despite no corroborating evidence or witnesses.
Vicious harassment of senators and White House officials in restaurants, streets, grocery stores, and Senate offices and elevators was matched by ambush tactics and despicable behavior by Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats. If Justice Clarence Thomas’s confirmation hearings were “an electronic lynching,” those hearings were an electronic assault on a respected jurist, his wife and young daughters.
When Kavanaugh fought back, the same Senators and their media friends said he “lacked the proper temperament” to be on the Court. (Apparently, he should have just tried to enjoy the experience.)
The fact is, Democrats and their allies had said in lockstep and from the outset that they intended to keep any Trump nominee off our highest court. The Women’s March mistakenly released a statement saying it opposed the “nomination of XX” to the Court. (They forgot to fill in the blank.) They view the Court as their supreme state and national legislature: it’s far easier to get 5 votes than 5 million or 50 million.
In reality, this ongoing attempted rule by mob (with Portland, Oregon a prime example) goes back to the 2016 elections that put Donald Trump in the White House. The mobs weren’t just disappointed that Hillary Clinton had not won. They were enraged. And they’ve remained so ever since.
In fact, their furor goes back even further – to mounds of excrement they left behind in North Dakota, for instance, where they tried to block the Dakota Access Pipeline, by burning and bombing bridges, threatening local residents and killing cattle. One “peaceful protester” tried to shoot a deputy sheriff.
In another example, they enlisted state attorneys general, universities, wealthy leftwing foundations and private law firms (on a contingency fee basis) to bring RICO and other actions against scientists and think tanks that voice skepticism about “cataclysmic manmade climate change.” On college campuses they have banned, disinvited, mobbed, harassed or just plain screamed over 300 conservative speakers into silence. Being a Republican or wearing a Trump MAGA hat can get you beaten, or worse.
They forget President Obama’s dictum: “Elections have consequences.” One is the President’s right to nominate Federal judges. But from their perspective, “consequences” must never apply when they lose – and the Electoral College must be abolished when it works as our Founding Fathers intended: to keep populous urban areas from dominating presidential elections and imposing a tyranny of the majority. (The fact that 85% of all US counties voted for Donald Trump illustrates this principle in action.)
In most of these cases, “they” are the Antifa mobs. Antifa being short for “anti-fascist.” Don’t be conned.
The Antifa mobs are fascists! And they have become the ski-masked thug wing of the Democratic Party.
They (and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Kyrsten Sinema, Andrew Gillum, Bernie Sanders and other favored candidates) certainly espouse socialism as their vehicle for wealth redistribution. However, in almost every other respect, their philosophies and actions reflect fascism, which is generally defined as:
A political system in which an authoritarian government does not own businesses and industries, but strictly regulates and controls their actions, output and rights – while forcibly controlling and suppressing citizens and their thought and speech via stringent laws, intimidation and even violence.
Sadly, the Democratic Party is slipping further into these tendencies, becoming ever more closely aligned with these radicals. It relies on Antifa thugs to “rally the base,” intimidate and abuse Republican voters and candidates, and get Democrat (and “undocumented”) voters to the polls. Like too many in the “mainstream” news media, Democrats refuse to condemn the mob behavior – and say it’s wrong to even call them mobs. They’re just concerned citizens, peaceably assembling and seeking redress of their grievances. Right. (Hint: You don’t like being called fascist mobs? Stop behaving like fascist mobs.)
“You cannot be civil with a political party that wants to destroy what you stand for, what you care about,” Hillary Clinton said recently. So instead of civil debates we’re to have civil war over whose vision and agenda will rule? Is there something wrong, antiquated or “threatening” about debating issues?
Former Attorney General Eric Holder said, when Republicans “go low” with their rhetoric, “we kick them.” Rep. Maxine Waters (R-CA) incites Antifa mobs by ranting, “If you see anybody from the Trump Administration in a restaurant, in a department store, tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere.”
Now on top of the speech codes, trigger warnings, boycotts, censorship, groupthink and identity politics, Google, Facebook and Twitter control and restrict access to conservative views; crowd funding sites prevent conservative groups from raising money; and the Obama IRS prevented Tea Party groups from getting the tax status needed to operate. When all that fails, we’re supposed to tolerate mobs and riots.
On campuses, LGBTQ diversity is virtuous. Diversity of viewpoints or political affiliation is intolerable. Some say Republicans want to control what you do in your bedroom. But Democrats want to control everything you do anywhere outside your bedroom. And Antifa mobs will keep you quiet and in line.
Antifa thugs fire-bombed a North Carolina Republican office and trashed another one in New York City, where they left a note that said, “This is just the beginning.”Others knocked a 71-year-old female congressional staffer unconscious! It even reached the point where a rabid Bernie Sanders supporter tried to gun down Republican legislatorsand staffers who were practicing for a charity baseball event.
Indeed, death on a large scale, to serve state or other “higher interests,” is another aspect of fascism. We see that with millions of people dying every year in Africa and Asia, because pressure groups deny them access to energy, insect control, water purification, agricultural and other modern technologies, in the name of protecting the environment from dangerous climate change, chemicals and biotechnology.
There are crazy ironies, too. Google helps the Chinese Communist Government prevent its citizens from accessing “forbidden” knowledge and ideas – but then claims helping the US Defense Department with Cloud computing or artificial intelligence surveillance would “violate its principles.”
Around many neighborhoods, signs proclaim “Hate has no home here,” in multiple languages, with an American flag heart logo reminiscent of the Obama campaign logo – in liberals’ yards. The signs are part of a project that “promotes just and inclusive communities.” Trump supporters need not apply.
Democrats appear to be depending on all of this to counter a possible “red wave” – and regain control of the House of Representatives and maybe even the Senate. If they succeed even with just the House, Democrat congressional committees will investigate, interrogate and try to impeach Trump, Kavanaugh and other officials. They will impede and obstruct everything the Trump Administration tries to do.
They’ll also try to abolish ICE, block the Wall, pack the Supreme Court, take our guns, bash Israel – and replace the fossil fuels that provide 80% of our energy with “100% renewable energy” that is so expensive and unreliable it will bring our industries, economy and nation to its knees, while blanketing rural and habitat land, damaging people’s health and property rights, and butchering birds and bats by the millions.
Our rebounding energy, employment, economy, markets and living standards would get rolled back.
Victorious Democrats would also end congressional investigations into the Hillary-Deep State-DNC-Russian-Clinton Foundation collusion and corruption. All the players in these massive, sordid affairs will be deemed “too big to jail” – and too closely tied to the Democratic Party to be investigated further.
Some say the Antifa-Schumer-Pelosi-Clinton-Holder-Waters strategy will backfire. I hope that happens, because it would be disastrous if these people run Congress, America and our lives. But I won’t bank on it.
If you’re worried too (and you should be), get inspired and involved. Above all, VOTE! Vote to preserve our democratic Republic, our freedoms, our booming economy, reliable and affordable energy for all Americans – and equal justice for all, based on the presumption of innocence until proven guilty.
Paul Driessen writes books and articles on energy, environmental, human rights and political issues.
Support for BLM and BDS is Support for Hate and Violence
Robert A. Heinlein wrote that "The man who eats meat cannot sneer at the butcher." While it's legal to eat meat, it's illegal to attend dog fights. If people who attend dog fights didn't pay admission fees or place bets, the hands-on perpetrators would have no incentive to abuse the dogs.
We contend similarly that any organization that supports the Black Lives Matter Global Network is vicariously (if not legally) complicit in looting, rioting, anti-Semitism, support for Hamas, and incitement of violence against law enforcement professionals and others. Support for the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement is similarly tacit support for synagogue and church shootings similar to those at the Tree of Life Synagogue (Robert Bowers), bombings of pizza shops and Seders, rocket attacks, eradication of Israel "from the river to the sea," and violent abuse of Jews, Christians, and Arabs whom Hamas deems to be the wrong kinds of Muslims, women, and LGBT people.
We Don't Need Nazis for Animal Rights, or BLM for Civil Rights
We know animal abuse is wrong without input from the Nazi Party. We also know that Derek Chauvin should not have knelt on George Floyd's neck, and that three yahoos should not have chased Ahmaud Arbery and then provoked a deadly confrontation, without input from an organization that promotes the following behavior.
· BLM has incited looting similar to the Night of the Broken Glass, the only difference being that those on the receiving end come in all colors and religions, as opposed to only Jews. Police in Democrat-run cities have meanwhile been told to stand down the way German police stood aside during the Night of the Broken Glass.
· Patrisse Cullors, while speaking in her capacity as a BLM leader, denied the right of Israel to exist. This is anti-Semitic per the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) and also supports the agenda of Hamas which includes genocide or ethnic cleansing of Jews. BLM rallies have also featured anti-Israel and even anti-Semitic hate speech such as "Israel, we know you, you murder children too."
· The BLM website published the libelous accusation that Kyle Rittenhouse murdered two people, thus suggesting that it is okay to attempt strong-arm robbery (Joseph Rosenbaum), attempt armed robbery and aggravated assault (Anthony Huber), and chase somebody with a drawn firearm (Gaige Grosskreutz), and that the victims of these actions had better not fight back.
· BLM and its associates have also made it clear that they think it is okay to point a gun at a cop's head and menace a teenage girl while armed (or unarmed per Joe Biden) with a knife -- and then they wonder why violent criminals of all races get shot by police and armed citizens of all races.
· Advocacy of arson, a felony that can create the same use of deadly force situations the organization protests.
· A (Caucasian) woman in a BLM hat gave an online tutorial about how to "remove" drivers from their cars, i.e. how to commit a violent felony good for a very long stay in prison, and of course for the lawful deployment of deadly force by the driver.
· Misuse 501(c)(3) tax exempt resources to influence the 2020 election.
· "Pigs in a blanket, fry 'em like bacon," relates to police officers in body bags, as does "Oink your last, pig," and "What do we want? Dead cops." These are the same so-called "pigs" who arrested Dylan Roof who was convicted of shooting up a Black church, and also the three yahoos who were convicted of murdering Ahmaud Arbery.
If we return to Robert Heinlein's original statement, any organization that stands behind BLM -- whether it's Cornell Law School faculty and graduates denouncing a professor for condemning it, Dean Eduardo Peñalver saying on behalf of Cornell's Law School that denunciation of BLM is contrary to the school's values, or Hardin-Simmons University forcing out a student for a video that points out accurately that BLM does not say the names of anybody but Black people who are killed by white people -- is supporting, in the long run, the behavior depicted above regardless of intention.
My only criticism of the Hardin-Simmons student is her omission of BLM's silence when violent criminals of any race kill police officers of any race. BLM is not saying David Dorn's name, whose Black life ceased to matter the instant he put on a blue uniform. The roughly eighteen Cornell Law faculty who denounced the attack on BLM also wrote that a police officer, who is identifiable from the context, "murdered" Breonna Taylor. Cornell's Black Law Student Association also said Taylor had been "murdered" and, if Cornell's Law School does not teach its students that a false public accusation of a crime is libel per se, this might not be the best place to study this profession.
If on the other hand these faculty members and the BLSA wanted to do something useful about civil rights, they could have published widely the fact that many attorneys will take false arrest cases on a contingency basis. This would help deter the small handful of police who still stop people for driving while Black; a practice once encouraged in Democrat-run New Jersey. In addition, "Portland [a solid Blue city] police data from 2011 shows blacks are more likely to be pulled over for equipment and license violations than white drivers."
Support for BDS is Support for Hamas
It is a felony (material support for a foreign terrorist organization) to send money to Hamas but it is legal to aid Hamas by harming Israel instead, and this is the agenda of the BDS movement. The American Studies Association joined an academic boycott of Israel, the Seattle Education Association joined the BDS movement, and Jewish Voice for Peace has openly promoted BDS for quite some time. This is also the agenda of Students for Justice in Palestine (justice in Palestine would require Israel to do with Hamas what the Allies did with the Nazis in 1945), the Muslim Students Association, the Council on American Islamic Relations, Rashida Tlaib, and Ilhan Omar.
Few if any of these organizations and people even criticize the behavior of "Palestinian civil society," including education of children to be suicide bombers, "pay to slay" compensation to the families of so-called martyrs, and a long litany of rocket attacks, the least of which would have drawn overwhelming retaliation from any country other than Israel. They certainly do not call for boycotts of Gaza, so it is very clear to me where they really stand.
Those who attend dog fights are partners to the organizers, those who purchase "crush videos" pay animal abusers to create them, those who download and share child pornography are partners to the hands-on exploiters of children, and those who import non-antique ivory support elephant poachers. Those who support BDS are similarly vicarious partners in the overall agenda of bombings, rocket attacks, massacres, and making the Middle East Judenrein.
Civis Americanus is the pen name of a contributor who remembers the lessons of history, and wants to ensure that our country never needs to learn those lessons again the hard way. He or she is remaining anonymous due to the likely prospect of being subjected to "cancel culture" for exposing the Big Lie behind Black Lives Matter.
Image: John Wayne Lucia III
Barack Obama Calls Outcry over Loudoun County Rape Coverup ‘Phony, Trumped-Up Culture War’
Mean Divisive Obama Accuses Republicans of "Meanness and Division"
Sun Oct 24, 2021
Biden's collapse and the implosion of the Democrats has been good news for Obama who is suddenly in demand again. From California and now to Virginia, the savior of hope and change has left off golfing to go back on the campaign trail for a series of weak candidates.
And all Obama has to offer is the same old weak gaslighting.
"We’re at a turning point right now, both here in America and around the world," Obama told a crowd of about 2,000 gathered outdoors on the campus of Virginia Commonwealth University. "Because there's a mood out there. There's a politics of meanness and division and conflict, of tribalism and cynicism."
Meanness, division, conflict, tribalism, and cynicism?
I wonder which prominent 21st-century occupant of the Oval Office helped normalize that kind of thing while breaking America?
Barack "We're gonna punish our enemies" Obama spent his national career pivoting from complaining about meanness and tribalism to practicing it. After building his occupation of the White House around tribal politics, cynical lies, and dividing Americans, he's back to pretending to deplore it.
As always the striking thing about ex-presidents is how tiresome their shtick has gotten over the years. Especially those we've had to endure for a full two terms.
In the years since, Obama has learned no new tricks and his routine has grown paler and weak. Everything is a turning point. The other side is mean and divisive, while his side is just trying to solve the big problems... with critical race theory, race riots, and funding their special interests.
Obama's tribalism and divisiveness broke America. His routine of playing destroyer and healer is what is truly cynical here.
The Obama Years Sowed the Seeds for the Current Societal Chaos
By Steve McCann
The election of Barack Obama in 2008 and the unfathomable defeat of his hand-picked successor Hillary Clinton in 2016 rendered inevitable the societal chaos and attempted cultural revolution presently roiling the country. This entire wretched spectacle comes with a label of origin: Manufactured by Obama and Associates.
After nearly 40 years of gradual infiltration and eventual domination of the Democrat party, as well as the media, entertainment and education establishments, the radicalized American left in 2008 achieved a major objective.
BLOG EDITOR: NO ONE CAN REMEMBER A SINGLE THING BARACK OBAMA DID FOR BLACK AMERICA AS HE AND HOLDER SABOTAGED AMERICAN LAWS, VOTING AND BORDERS TO FLOOD AMERICA WITH DEM VOTING MEXICANS.
They found their ideal stealth candidate, Barack Obama. Not only was he, beneath the façade of glibness and conviviality, a fellow Marxist/socialist, but more importantly, he was able to take advantage of decades of inculcated racial guilt among the populace.
Thus began the final stages of the grand strategy to fundamentally transform the nation, following the installation of the most radical administration in the history of the country. Revealingly, the victors were unabashedly shameless in their triumph. In their myopic belief that they and their fellow travelers were permanently ensconced in government, the Obama administration and their sycophants in the media did not hesitate to openly advocate and implement policies not wanted by the electorate. Whether health care reform, amnesty for illegal aliens, unfettered and unrestrained voting and attendant fraud, gun control or packing the judiciary with likeminded leftists, their primary purpose was not, as they proclaimed, to improve the lives of the citizenry but to make certain the radical left would be permanent occupants in the corridors of power.
Additionally, and for the same overall objective, Barack Obama and his henchmen deliberately fanned the flames of race and identity politics to further divide the populace and foment riots that would dramatically enhance the power of the central government. Obama never missed an opportunity to pour gasoline on the flames of violence and racial animosity, whether it was justifying voter intimidation by the Black Panthers in Philadelphia, the Trayvon Martin incident in Florida, the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson, Missouri or the Freddie Gray episode in Baltimore, among others. Thus, Obama gave his tacit imprimatur to the formation of the Marxist Black Lives Matter Organization and wordlessly sanctioned violence and looting in any racially charged incident in the future.
Therefore, every action, policy and pronouncement made during the eight years of the Obama Administration must be viewed through the prism of Marxist/socialist megalomania and self-aggrandizement.
The destructive political/economic philosophies of Marxism and socialism are embraced by modern day self-absorbed supremacists not to improve the lot of the proletariat but to achieve permanent political power. The governing end-product of Marxist thought is the same as monarchies and oligarchies -- the domination of a state by a select class or individual. Today’s progressives or Marxists/socialists are no different than those other rulers throughout the history of mankind who fervently believed they were pre-ordained as a class to rule the masses.
As modern democratic societies will not accept the concept of an authoritarian dictator or monarch, a powerful central government dominated by true believers, with its trappings of legitimacy, serves as a substitute. For this strategy to succeed, the public must, over time, be manipulated and intimidated by the unrelenting provocation of class animosity, and unique to America, insoluble racial conflict.
In due course, a progressively larger swath of an intentionally ill-educated populace is gulled into accepting the premise that only government -- and not the individual -- can provide societal peace and the guarantee of economic security for everyone. This cannot be accomplished in a country such as the United States in an era of adversity but rather one of overwhelming peace and prosperity when the public is quiescent and content.
The last period of true national hardship was the 1930s and the Great Depression. In the intervening eighty years, as the United States evolved into the most powerful economic and military force the world has ever seen and its citizens the most prosperous, there has been an inexorable and near irreversible march to government domination of the citizenry. Parallel to this track has been the rise of an ever-increasingly radicalized American Left.
Over this same period, the bulk of the electorate, reveling in their prosperity and international status, assumed the nation was in reasonably good hands with the two political parties whose motives and agenda were rarely, if ever, questioned. Most did not realize that by the mid 2000’s the increasingly radicalized left had a stranglehold on the Democratic Party.
Equally culpable for this nation being in its current predicament is the feckless Republican Party. It was, and remains, the only viable opposition, due to fact that the governmental structure of the United States can only function with just two major political parties. Over the recent decades the Republican party establishment was more concerned about civility and status and were unwilling to fully warn the populace of the consequences of an all-powerful central government and the pitfalls inherent in the takeover of the education and entertainment establishment by the left.
The majority of elected and establishment Republicans were content to merely slow down the march to socialism, which eventuated in Barack Obama and his fellow travelers assuming the reins of power -- a man who will be remembered in the annals of American history as the most destabilizing and least patriotic president ever elected.
The unfathomable loss to Donald Trump in 2016 was the first major setback to the American left since the election of Ronald Reagan. Their giddiness during the Obama years over implementing their plans for permanent hegemony in American politics was replaced with uncontrolled anger, pettiness and an insatiable determination to exact revenge on those who dared deny them their birthright.
The left would have reluctantly accepted a loss to a Mitt Romney clone, viewing it a setback, albeit a minor one, that would simply delay the inevitable. But Donald Trump together with all the factions that voted for him, as well as the conservative media, represented an existential threat to their grandiose plans for themselves. Their mortal enemies must not only be annihilated by any means possible but their ashes strewn across the desert regardless of the consequences to the nation as a whole.
Thus, the Russian collusion hoax, the unremitting vilification of Donald Trump and anyone connected to him, incessant and adolescent name calling, the Ukraine impeachment debacle, never-ending lies and wholesale fabrications in the media, the deliberate and ongoing attempt to prolong the unnecessary anxiety over the Wuhan Virus pandemic, and now utilizing their militant army of mind-numbed and oblivious automatons to promulgate violence and destruction throughout the nation.
The actual target of this treasonous and juvenile temper tantrum, aided and abetted by the credulous buffoons in the media, is not Donald Trump. It is the citizenry and everything this nation stands for and has accomplished in 244 years, so that never again will the people insolently reject the Marxist/socialists as they did after Obama, when the left stood on the brink of permanent domination.
To that end, instead of nominating a stealth candidate, as in 2008, the nominee will be a ventriloquist’s dummy in Joe Biden who will do and say whatever he is told. All the while they are counting on the voting public to blame Trump for the four years of carnage inflicted by the radical left. Accordingly, the citizenry having learned their lesson about electing an irredeemable and loutish outsider will overwhelmingly vote for Biden and the Democrats. Or so these narcissistic cretins have convinced themselves.
Photo credit: Pete Souza official White House Photo
Pollak: Barack Obama Wrote the Playbook on Political Division
Left-wing pundits have accused President Donald Trump of using his tweets last weekend to launch a divisive re-election campaign.
David Axelrod, former adviser to President Barack Obama, tweeted: “With his deliberate, racist outburst, @realDonaldTrump wants to raise the profile of his targets, drive Dems to defend them and make them emblematic of the entire party. It’s a cold, hard strategy.”
That is debatable — but if so, Axelrod should know; Obama did it first.
By 2011, Obama knew that re-election would be difficult. The Tea Party had just led the Republicans to a historic victory in the 2010 midterm elections, winning the House and nearly taking the Senate. The economy was only growing sluggishly, and Obama’s stimulus had failed to keep unemployment below eight percent, as projected. Moreover, the passage of Obamacare had provoked a backlash against Obama’s state-centered model of American society.
Facing a similar situation in the mid-1990s, President Bill Clinton had “triangulated,” moving back toward the middle, frustrating the GOP by taking up their issues, such as welfare reform.
But Obama rejected that approach. Having watched his icon, Chicago mayor Harold Washington, settle for an incremental approach when faced with opposition in the 1980s, only to die of a sudden heart attack before fulfilling his potential, Obama chose the path of hard-left policy — and divide-and-rule politics.
The first hint of his strategy emerged during the debt ceiling negotiations in the summer of August 2011. As Bob Woodward recounted in his book about the crisis, The Price of Politics, then-Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) had wanted to reach a “grand bargain” with the president on long-term spending cuts. But Obama blew up that agreement by demanding $400 billion in new taxes, to his aides’ surprise. Obama wanted an opponent, not a deal. (Last week, Boehner told Breitbart News Tonight that Obama’s decision was his worst disappointment in 35 years of politics.)
In the fall of 2011, a new left-wing movement, Occupy Wall Street, was launched. A mix of communists, anarchists, and digital pranksters, the Occupy movement cast American society as a struggle between the “99 percent” and the “one percent.”
Obama and then-House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) embraced the movement — and failed to distance themselves from it even as it collapsed into violence, sexual assault, and confrontations with police.
Instead, Obama picked up on Occupy’s themes and used them to shape his campaign.
In December 2011, Obama gave a speech at Osawatomie, Kansas — a place steeped in radical symbolism — at which he doubled down on his left-wing policies. He focused on the issue of economic inequality, and attacked the idea that the free market could lift the middle class to prosperity. “This isn’t about class warfare. This is about the nation’s welfare,” he insisted.
Then, in the spring of 2012, Obama made a controversial play on race. When a black teen, Trayvon Martin, was killed in Florida during a scuffle with neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman, Al Sharprton — who was serving as an informal adviser to Obama at the time — made the local crime story into a national racial controversy. Obama, following Sharpton’s lead, weighed in: “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon,” Obama said at the time.
Poll numbers suggest that race relations, which had been improving, dropped precipitously after that. But to Obama, it was worth it: the campaign needed to find a way to motivate minority voters. (Vice President Joe Biden did his part, telling black voters that GOP nominee Mitt Romney was “gonna put y’all in chains.”)
Trump is pushing a non-racial, nationalist message. But if he actually wanted to divide America for political gain, he could learn from the master.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He earned an A.B. in Social Studies and Environmental Science and Public Policy from Harvard. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
DIVIDING AMERICA WAS OBOMB’S AGENDA FROM DAY ONE. IT WAS ALL REQUIRED TO PREPARE AMERICA FOR AN OBAMA THIRD TERM FOR LIFE.
OBAMA DID ABSOLUTELY NOTHING FOR BLACK AMERICA FOR 8 YEARS.
As Rating America’s Presidents shows, Obama did nothing to heal America’s racial divisions, and a great deal to make them worse. Bob Woodward is claiming that Trump called Obama “overrated.” That’s a generous assessment.
Obama is Responsible for Racial Tensions in America Today
Racism is America’s original sin, and despite a century and a half and more of efforts to put it behind us, it is more of an issue than ever. A great deal of this is the responsibility of a man whose election to the presidency was hailed as the beginning of a new, post-racial era in American society, a man who was supposed to embody America’s rejection of racism: Barack Hussein Obama.
There were many people who opposed Obama who nonetheless hailed his election to the presidency for what it showed about the United States. There are vanishingly few countries that have ever elected as their head of state someone from a minority group that previously faced discrimination. Obama’s election was supposed to herald the end of racism and the beginning of an era in which human beings truly were judged by the content of their character rather than by the color of their skin.
Things didn’t work out that way. As Rating America’s Presidents: An America-First Look at Who Is Best, Who Is Overrated, and Who Was An Absolute Disaster demonstrates, throughout his tenure, Obama stoked racial tensions rather than calming them. When he took office, the Justice Department was pursuing a case against the New Black Panther Party for voter intimidation in Philadelphia. Obama’s attorney general, Eric Holder, abruptly dropped the case in May 2009 and refused to cooperate with further investigations, giving the impression that the Black Panthers were getting away with voter intimidation because of their race.
Even worse, Obama’s response to several widely publicized incidents also exacerbated racial tensions. On July 16, 2009, black intellectual Henry Louis Gates found himself locked out of his Massachusetts home and began trying to force his way in. An officer arrived to investigate a possible break-in; Gates began berating him and was arrested for disorderly conduct. Obama claimed that the police “acted stupidly” and noted the “long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by police disproportionately,” although there was no indication of racial bias in the case. He invited Gates and the police officer to the White House for a “beer summit,” which the media hailed as a manifestation of his determination to heal racial divisions, when in fact it was just the opposite: he was taking a case of misunderstanding and disorderly conduct and portraying it as a racial incident requiring presidential reconciliation.
Obama also made matters worse yet again when a young Hispanic, George Zimmerman, on February 26, 2012, shot dead a young black man, Trayvon Martin, in what was widely reported as a racial hate crime. NBC edited a recording of Zimmerman’s call to the police to give the false impression that Zimmerman was suspicious of Martin solely because he was black. Instead of trying to calm the situation, Obama stoked the idea that Zimmerman acted out of racial hatred and said, “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.” Yet Zimmerman was acquitted of murder and the Justice Department declined to prosecute him for a hate crime.
Obama made a similar rush to judgment in the case of Ahmed Mohamed, a Muslim high school student who was arrested in September 2015 after bringing what appeared to be a suitcase bomb to his Texas high school. Mohamed claimed it was a homemade clock and that he was a victim of “Islamophobic” bigotry. Obama invited him to the White House, making the boy a symbol of the nation’s “Islamophobia” and the need to overcome it. Mohamed’s father filed a lawsuit against the school district, which was dismissed when he failed to establish that the school had engaged in any prejudice or discrimination.
In line with all this, shortly after taking office, Obama embarked upon two world tours that critics quickly dubbed the “apology tours,” as at every stop the President of the United States had some negative words for the country he governed. He had little to say about America being the most generous, and most free, nation on earth.
As Rating America’s Presidents shows, Obama did nothing to heal America’s racial divisions, and a great deal to make them worse. Bob Woodward is claiming that Trump called Obama “overrated.” That’s a generous assessment.
Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is author of 19 books, including the New York Times bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad. His latest book is The Palestinian Delusion: The Catastrophic History of the Middle East Peace Process. Follow him on Twitter here. Like him on Facebook here.
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