November 16 , 2012
Obama II
So, it is Obama again. His win reflects the changing demographics of America.
The most intensely contested $6 billion Presidential race has come to an end. It revealed fault lines of race, gender, generation, class, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and educational background.
Hovering over it, in effect, was the racial factor of white tribalism. This led Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, ex-chief of staff to Colin Powell, former US Secretary of State and Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff, to state that the “real reason” a lot of Republicans wanted Obama to lose “has nothing to do with the content of his character, nothing to do with his competence as commander-in-chief and president, and everything to do with the color of his skin, and that’s despicable.” According to the Washington Post of November 2: “Anti-black attitudes have increased among Americans since Obama took over.” Another example is the headline in the Washington Examiner of October 31: “Lack of white support could cost Obama his presidency.”
For the ‘moderates’, the Muslim ancestry of Obama offers a classic lesson. He is a regular church-goer and identifies himself as a Christian, but it still did not immunize him from being constantly vilified.
Slanders did not spare even Obama’s mother, who died in 1995 of cancer – she was apparently not forgiven for having Muslim husbands: one a Kenyan, the other, Indonesian. It confirms what my late mother told me so long ago: that, sometimes, the most prejudiced minds can be those who are formally well-educated. The late black leader Stokely Carmichael had termed America “politically primitive.”
Many voters got to view a DVD called “2016: Obama’s America” that pressed all the Islamophobic buttons. This movie, interestingly, was made by an Indian American with participation of prominent pro-Israel supporters.
What many Americans did not get to see was a new documentary called “The Prosecution of an American President,” which presents the case for a trial of George W. Bush for pursuing an illegal war against Iraq based on the deliberate falsifying of facts. So many knew what he was up to and still went along with him, including Hillary and Kerry.
Many voters confused the concept of political leadership by equating it with business acumen. The noted historian Robert S. McElvaine amply documented in his Washington Post article of October 21 that successful businessmen don’t necessarily make good presidents or good leaders.
Obama’s election win doesn’t signal Western resurgence.
A distinguished Columbia University cultural historian, Jacques Barzun, who recently died at the age of 104, concluded before his death that the West is on a downward slide of decline and decadence. But that doesn’t necessarily mean an upsurge in the fortunes in the Muslim world, which remains mired in its own maladies.
All the defeatist complaining about Western misdoings cannot disguise the fact that the vast 1.5 billion Muslim world has yet to present its case forthrightly on the world stage. The West will not change its course unless pressured to do so. It was the steadfast moral authority of one solitary prisoner, Nelson Mandela, that eventually compelled de Klerk to dismantle the crumbling edifice of apartheid.
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