From time to time I'll read an opinion by E.J. Dionne, and each time I do I seem to find him even more pathetic than the last. True to form, his offering today on Real Clear Politics is pathetic. Dionne is fixated on race. Although he's willing at last to concede that there may be other causes, racism continues to be his fallback explanation for the opposition that has built up to Obama's policies, and because of those policies, to Obama himself.
There is no doubt that some of the anger is fueled by racial feeling, which is not the same as saying that all opposition to Obama is explained by racism. Most Obama opponents are simply conservative Republicans who disagree with him. But there are too many racist signs at rallies and too many overtly racial pronouncements in the fever swamps of the right-wing media to deny that racism is part of the anti-Obama mix.
It's disappointing, but not unexpected, to see Dionne's unabashed dishonesty on display. Sorry, but I've been to some rallies and they were not in any way racist. If there were racist signs, I didn't see them, and I looked. Unfortunately media elites like Dionne parade their own bigotry in the guise of thoughtful analysis, in a deliberate slander of anybody with an idea that doesn't conform to liberal ideology.
After taking his moment to assure readers that racism is behind much of Obama's rising opposition, Dionne does manage to concede that there may just be legitimate reasons for typical (assumed by Dionne to be racist) "angry white men" to be upset about the current state of affairs.
Gillard, a leader of Australia's center-left Labor Party, argues that high unemployment, particularly the displacement of men from previously well-paying jobs, helped unleash Hansonism and "the politics of the ordinary guy versus these elites, the opera-watching, latte-sipping elites."
Hansonism collapsed, partly because the Australian economy boomed. Gillard argued that the key to battling the politics of rage is to acknowledge that it is driven by "real problems" and not simply raw feelings.
No doubt some who despise Obama will see the judges in Norway as part of that latte-sipping crowd and hold their esteem for the president against him. He can't do much about this. What he can do -- and perhaps then deserve the domestic equivalent of a peace prize -- is reach out to the angry white men with policies that address their grievances, and do so with an understanding that what matters to them is not status but simply a chance to make a decent living again.
What Dionne doesn't acknowledge, or maybe even realize, is that Obama's policies aren't intended to solve problems for ordinary people. Obama's policies are supposed to solve a problem for Democrats and media elites, who understand that their lousy, socialist ideas could very well shut them out of power if enough people come to understand what they really are. Since their lousy, socialist ideas don't fly all that well on their own, they hope to force feed them onto a reluctant public by stifling debate, demonizing the opposition, and ramming them through before anybody has the chance to know what they are. Obama's policies are all about getting and retaining power.
So when people start to wonder how we can expand health care coverage to millions who are not now covered without adding to the cost, then we get this kind of thoughtful analysis from bigots like Dionne. We get it when anybody questions how we can still maintain a high level of care for the elderly when we cut $500 billion from Medicare. If you should wonder how this is all going to work, expect to see some enlightened analysis into possible underlying racist tendencies.
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