by Walter
Brasch
Rep. Randy
Weber (R-Texas), like many Americans, was upset that President Obama did not go
to Paris to personally show his solidarity with France, and publicly mourn the
12 journalists and the four French citizens killed in terrorist attacks.
Like many Americans,
both liberal and conservative, Rep. Weber made his views publicly known.
However, he crossed the line of decency when he tweeted, “Even Adolph Hitler
thought it more important than Obama to get to Paris. (For all the wrong
reasons.) Obama couldn’t do it for the right reasons.”
The response to
the tweet led Weber to issue a retraction and apology. “I now realize that the
use of Hitler invokes pain and emotional trauma for those affected by the
atrocities of the Holocaust and victims of anti-Semitism and hate,” he said in
his official apology.
As comparison
attacks go, Weber’s was not the most offensive. Six years into Barack Obama’s
eight-year presidency, others have directly linked him to Hitler. In Tea Party
rallies, it isn’t unusual to find pictures of the President with a Hitler-like
mustache. On uncountable messages and rants posted in social media or written
for online and print media, the reactionary right wing call the President a
dictator, a fascist, and a Nazi.
When they’re
not comparing the President to Hitler, they say he isn’t a citizen. Apparently,
they believe Hawaii is a foreign country. They fail to recognize that his
mother was a U.S. citizen, making Obama an American. They called for his birth
certificate. And so he showed a birth announcement from a Hawaiian newspaper
and a long-form birth certificate—which they promptly dismissed as fraudulent. But,
the only fabrication was a fake Kenyan birth certificate, widely accepted by
the right-wing but easily proven to be a fraud. Nevertheless, with flimsy
evidence, they filed suits to get his election victories thrown out, claiming
he was really born in Kenya. However, every court has thrown out the suits filed
by the “birthers.”
When not
challenging his birth, they have called him a Muslim, stressing his middle name
“Hussein” as evidence and slyly trying to tie him to the now-deceased Iraqi
dictator. But, the right-wing, clinging to the flag and the Constitution,
desecrate the former by not understanding the latter. Even if President Obama
is a Muslim, he could be president. He could also be a Jew, a Hindi, a Heathen,
or an atheist. The Constitution specifically allows anyone who is an American
citizen, over the age of 35, and who lived in the U.S. for at least 14 years to
be president. A person’s religion—or lack of one—has no basis to deny a person
the Constitutional right of the presidency.
Many, with no
proof other than what they hear on right-wing talk radio, have called him an
Arab, stupidly believing that the worst thing is to be an Arab Muslim born in
Kenya. Believing that also deflects criticism that they are attacking the
President for being Black.
Even being an
Arab Muslim Kenyan dictator isn’t good enough. And so, they dig into the Cold
War era, toss in “Commie” and “Pinko,” and then sprinkle it with “socialist.” Of
course, that would make him the only Muslim socialist in the world, a distinction
so ludicrous that would bring tears of laughter to the terrorists of al-Qaeda
and ISIS.
When not
attacking the President, the right-wing attacks liberals, who are believed to
be the earthly incarnation of the Devil. To the extreme right-wing, liberals
are DemocRATS, DIMocrats, and libtards. The left-wing merely shakes their heads
at such juvenile terminology.
President Obama
and his party aren’t the only ones who have been attacked in history.
During the
first decades after the Revolutionary War, the Federalists and Anti-Federalists
were vicious in their attacks upon each other. “If ever a nation was debauched
by a man, the American nation has been debauched by Washington,” wrote Benjamin
Franklin Bache editor of the widely-read Aurora.
In retaliation, Federalists destroyed the Aurora
office and beat Bache, Franklin’s grandson. The Federalists, uniting behind Alexander
Hamilton and John Adams, and the Anti-Federalists, uniting behind Thomas
Jefferson, spewed lies and hate, often through newspapers.
The 1828
presidential election put incumbent John Quincy Adams against Andrew
Jackson. Mudslinging by supporters of
each candidate continued to drag the four-decade old country into a deeper campaign
war of name-calling and personalities rather than ideas.
Abraham
Lincoln—another tall skinny president—was called a monkey, and portrayed in
numerous editorial cartoons as an ape. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, born into a
WASP culture, was demonized as a “secret Jew,” with his critics emphasizing his
name as “Roo-sevelt.” Protestant candidates vilified Catholic opponents;
Catholics maligned Protestants. And everyone despised the Jews and other minorities.
The hatred and
disrespect shown by the Tea Party wing of the Republican party may not be
unique or unusual. But it emphasizes that when you can’t argue on principles
and policies, you resort to name calling.
[Dr. Brasch is an award-winning social
issues journalist and the author of 20 books. His current book is Fracking Pennsylvania, an in-depth look
at the effects of horizontal fracturing throughout the country.]
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