The Four-Day Campaign Commercial
by Shannon Joyce Prince
"Obama capitalizes off King's name while condemning King's revolutionary ethos."
As I watched the Democratic National Convention I found myself looking upon the Obama campaign with waxing dismay. It is a campaign where P.T. Barnum showmanship is more important that cogent explanations of posited legislation, where being a powerful orator (and masterfully performing a speechwriter's words) is more important than the actions taken in one's political past, and where one becomes exponentially more desirable each time one says "hope," "dreams," "change," "audacity," or whatever other positive words one has encountered while flipping through the dictionary. The Democratic National Convention shows that democracy is no longer a responsibility but a form of entertainment. Citizens don't have to research candidates' voting records, funding sources, or issue consistencies and flip flops on their own - they only have to sit back and enjoy candidates' advertising. Being moved to have warm feelings or erupt in hearty laughter or hearing applause-worthy one-liners means that a candidate merits one's votes.
This was a convention blessed by sham benedictions. Obama dared to hold his convention on the forty-fifth anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech after castigating his former pastor for echoing King's sentiments about America's unequaled role in purveying violence. Obama capitalizes off King's name while condemning King's revolutionary ethos. Jimmy Carter has cheerfully belied his commitment to "peace, not apartheid" in Israel and Palestine to support Obama and Biden who have vowed to unequivocally support Israel's pseudo-religious human rights abusive oppression of Palestine.
"The Democratic National Convention shows that democracy is no longer a responsibility but a form of entertainment."
Hillary Clinton, who claimed Obama was inexperienced, has magically converted into his biggest cheerleader. Bill Clinton, now repackaged as a global health advocate, promises that Obama will continue his legacy. I think that's supposed to be a good thing despite the fact that Clinton imprisoned more blacks than any other president, ignored the genocide in Rwanda, passed trade laws that destroyed the Haitian economy to the extent that the island's hunger continues to this day, and selected Lawrence Summers, advocate of the policy that the First World should dump toxic waste in poor countries, (so much for global health) to be Secretary of Treasury.
Furthermore, while Obama has constantly chastised blacks for their supposed lack of responsibility, whites who complain of suffering are told by Democrat after Democrat at the convention not to exhibit personal responsibility, not to stop being absentee fathers or to turn off the television and focus on education, but that their problems aren't their fault - that their suffering is due to greedy corporate leaders, Republicans, war hawks - anybody but they themselves. They are wooed with promises of healthcare, college scholarships, and retirement aid, yet no one accuses them of asking for handouts.
Behind the Democratic politics of hope, is the politics of contempt. Democrat after Democrat has lamented about how the working and middle classes have suffered and about the growing wealth gap and claimed that this election is the most important one of our time. What they fail to realize is that the squeeze whites feel is only a smidgen of what non-whites have always suffered. "Mainstream" Americans would know what a recession was if they were operating with only one eleventh of their current assets the way black families are. This disproportionate wealth isn't because blacks work one eleventh as hard, but because of countless acts of racism, just some of which are the New Deal benefiting whites almost exclusively, unions being historically allowed to exclude blacks, and FHA loans that allowed whites almost exclusively to buy homes as well as the legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, and eras of unequal pay that continues to this day which mean that whites inherit more to such an extent that white poor families are more likely to own homes than black middle class families.
"Behind the Democratic politics of hope, is the politics of contempt."
If mainstream America thinks the educational system is failing, they should imagine their school systems operating on half their current budgets the way many, if not most, black schools currently do. Whether we are discussing healthcare, housing, education, or economics, it disturbs me that the nation is suddenly considered to be in crisis because whites are beginning to experience what has always been acceptable for non-whites. Let me reiterate, the nation wasn't in crisis when, for years, the majority of drug users have been white but the majority of those locked up for drug crimes have been non-white. The nation wasn't in crisis when, for years, the life expectancy of Lakota Indians has only been in the forties. Only now that white people are beginning to suffer is the nation in trouble. To Democrats, problems aren't problems until they are mainstream - that is, until they effect whites. Or as Obama claimed in his "A More Perfect Union" speech, addressing problems faced by non-whites focuses on what divides us at a time when we need to come together and fight the problems that unite us, i.e. the problems whites face as well. When Reverend Wright condemned act after terrible act the United States had committed against non-whites here and abroad Obama disowned him for focusing on what was wrong with the country as opposed to what was right. Yet Democrats spent the entire convention discussing the destruction of the American Dream, the war-mongering and cupidity of America's leaders, the betrayal of the middle and lower classes, and the incompetence of the Bush administration because it's laudable to focus on a litany of American wrongs that result in white suffering.
Obama and Democrats use and abuse people at will. First poor whites were xenophobic hicks who clung to guns and religion because they didn't have enough sense to know what really ailed them. Now the convention touts the value of rural traditions and has a southern accented white woman in a seemingly homespun dress speaking passionately about the promise an Obama presidency holds for people like her. And after using every opportunity to stereotype and demonize the black community, the Obamas, suddenly needing to claim a noble working class heritage in the face of accusations of elitism, use the convention to tell the inspiring story of how Michelle Obama's father labored unceasingly despite multiple sclerosis. Obama could have used Father's Day to salute black men like his father-in-law - instead he rendered them invisible and chose to attack black men as shiftless and trifling. Now, needing an example of a dignified working class relative, Mrs. Obama's father is highlighted while before Obama never acknowledged the presence of such black men.
"To Democrats, problems aren't problems until they are mainstream - that is, until they effect whites."
After watching the convention I mentioned to other viewers that I could use a little less rhetoric about hope and a little more discussion about legislation, only to be told that people need hope as though hope can stand on its own without legislation, as though hope won't be betrayed without legislation, as though hope can be employed instead of legislation. Let me put it this way: Was it hope or policies such as the Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth Amendment that abolished slavery? Conversely, President Hoover invoked the hope that America would enter a period of unending prosperity under his administration, but because he didn't have the economic policies to back up that hope, during his term the nation entered the Great Depression. Just as faith without works is dead so is hope without legislation and policy.
We are not voting on whether or not hope and change are good things - we are voting on whether or not Obama's legislation will engender hope and change. Furthermore, we are not voting on whether the cast of characters the Democratic campaign conjures - students working their way through college, blue collar workers who can't afford health insurance, etc. are worthy of aid. We are voting on whether or not Obama's policies will truly serve them. Obama inspires hope, but so do ersatz businessmen who tell us we'll get fifteen million dollars if we send them ten thousand. Are the people who send such emails good because they inspire hope? Does it not matter whether or not they follow through as long as they inspire hope? Is it a good thing to put our hope in such people without doing in-depth research?
How do we know whether or not someone is worthy of our hope? We have to research and analyze the likelihood of them following through. In politics, the way you decide if someone is worthy of hope is by researching their policies. For example, Obama claims he cares about our troops yet he is willing not only to continue the war in Iraq for years but also to start a new war in Afghanistan. Is that change you can believe in - not one disastrous war in the Middle East but two? Since 2005 he has voted in favor of every Republican bill for increased war funding - over 300 billion dollars worth. He also wants to expand the military by adding 100,000 troops. If I hope for a better day for American troops how does Obama merit my hopes? If I want a change in the incompetent war in Iraq, does it make sense to support Obama when his efforts and policies heretofore have directly opposed such change? If we really, really hope for fifteen million dollars, it's easy not to listen to the voice in our heads that says that maybe we should do some research before sending ten thousand dollars to the guy who emailed us. If we really, really hope for a black president it's easy to shush any nagging whisper that maybe we should check out his policies before we give him our support.
"Obama inspires hope, but so do ersatz businessmen who tell us we'll get fifteen million dollars if we send them ten thousand."
What I know is this. Obama claims he cares about workers yet he has selected Wal-Mart supporter Jason Furman to direct his economic policy despite Wal-Mart's abysmal record on racism, sexism, fair-pay, worker's benefits, the right to unionize, and outsourcing of product manufacturing. What matters more - that Obama shouts at his convention that he will fight for equal pay for women so that his daughters won't suffer in the workplace or that the person guiding his economic policy supports corporations that don't pay women fairly or promote them equally? Furthermore, Obama approves Nafta-style trade laws that reward corporations for outsourcing labor and leave American workers without jobs. I know that Obama says he cares about my well-being, yet he is so blind that even after seeing countless images of black bodies floating dead in dirty water on a scale unknown since the era of the Middle Passage, Obama claims the Hurricane Katrina efforts were not racist. I know that Obama says he cares about my health, yet if I, as a young non-white woman, am shot fifty times by the police while I am unarmed and innocent and the court decides the police will face no punishment, Obama will condone the judge's decision.
I take issue with the campaign slogan "change you can believe in" because change in the political arena isn't supposed to be based on belief or faith as defined as "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen." We have to stop treating Obama like Jesus Christ, Superstar and realize that Obama isn't God, and we need to see evidence - and if we open our eyes there's plenty of evidence to see, but none is so blind as he who will not see, especially the voters who believe Obama holds values that are, in fact, diametrically opposite to his policies. Americans have to decide if they're going to base their votes on research or on candidates' slick four day commercials. I think it makes more sense to be unconventional.
Shannon Joyce Prince is a student a Dartmouth. She can be contacted at [email protected]