Home » Looking back: how Obama used race in a way that’s become very familiar

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Looking back: how Obama used race in a way that’s become very familiar — 44 Comments

  1. Black racism of the sort used by Obama seems to be more prevalent among light skinned blacks. It is almost as if they resent being “almost white” and yet see themselves as victims. I have also noticed that many black conservatives are dark skinned. Clarence Thomas is only one example.

  2. Two of the most interesting questions regarding Obama are the genesis of the claim that he was born in Kenya (usually attributed by leftists to right-wing “racists”, but actually deriving from the promotional material produced by his first literary agent thirty years ago and surely checked by Barack himself), and the authorship of his first book, which may well (according to the careful research of the literary scholar Jack Cashill) have been, to judge by certain elements of style and vocabulary, largely the work of Bill Ayers, Obama’s terrorist friend from Hyde Park. Curiously, although he has recently been forced to scale back the lavishness of his birthday festivities, his pal Valerie Jarrett is encouraging Obama’s admirers to donate funds for the construction of his “library”, monumental in rather pharaonic manner, to be built in Chicago.

  3. You make a strong argument neo for the proposition that Obama, if not the anti-Christ is at least one of his lieutenants. As who, other than Muhammad has done more to advance evil’s cause?

    Mike+K,

    This is an interesting anomaly, offhand I can only think of one exception; Candace Owens. The exception that proves the rule?

    “his pal Valerie Jarrett is encouraging Obama’s admirers to donate funds for the construction of his “library”, monumental in rather pharaonic manner, to be built in Chicago.” j e

    Well, they’ve never lacked for Chutzpah.

    A rather macabre thought sprang to mind reading that last sentence; it will the most tragic of ironies for conservative Chicagoans; for if the left gets its way, the day will almost certainly come when China conducts a kinetic strike* upon Chicago and his pharonic monument of a library will then have been all for naught.

    Besides DC and NYC, why Chicago? The CCP is not going to tolerate competition.

    Karma would be if on that day, he and Michelle were visiting. Of course that would result in his further deification.

    *the CCP is working on weaponizing space in high orbit according to recent testimony to a Congressional subcommittee by an Admiral(?)

  4. Neo, fortuitous insight. Obama’s blurring of criticism of him with racism is what started and led to our current problems with CRT and “whiteness”.

    It all started with Obama and many white people voted for him because he seemed reasonable, intelligent, and fair minded.

  5. Likely the worst outcome of the Obama presidency is that he spent 8 years eloquently and subtly giving legitimacy to the notion that every problem faced by any minority, real, perceived, or imagined was a direct result of racism, leading the obvious conclusion by every Democrat in the country that white American is provably racist.

    And I sincerely fear we’ll never recover.

  6. amazing how Obama’s bloodline is closer to George Wallace, Karl von Battenberg, Heinrich Himmler and Robert Müller than to Ben Carson of MLK.
    Far closer

  7. Mike+K,

    This is an interesting anomaly, offhand I can only think of one exception; Candace Owens. The exception that proves the rule?

    I think she supports my theory. Look at the two impersonators for examples; Shawn King (Talcum X) and the girl in Washington, Dolezel.

  8. Jonah Goldberg, much reviled by some in these parts, still had his moments. He once posed the rhetorical question, probably not original but nonetheless potent, to progressives. I’m paraphrasing:

    If you could have everything you want from society, what would that be and when would we be done?

    Goldberg posited, and I’m sure he was correct, that for progressives there never is an endpoint. There is always the next hill to climb, the next set of non-negotiable demands to require.

    For many white Americans I believe that pulling the lever for Obama in 2008 was to prove America wasn’t racist. OK, we made a black man President. What more do you want?

    Turns out — quite a lot more and … you’ll never pay it off.

  9. Obama and Holder made race relations much worse in their tenure. Whoever is running the Biden administration is making it the most overtly, intentionally racist administration of my lifetime.

  10. @huxley:

    I’d like to ask Jonah Goldberg how many Holocaust Memorials would be enough. Perhaps he might suggest a number beyond which we could stop building them.

    Not sure what the Black position would be. Maybe a billion dollars each, free diamond dental grills, and everyone forced to watch a movie where the Tuskegee Airmen single-handedly won WWII.

    The grievance and guilt industry is such a bore. Give me the Irgun, Stern Gang, Black Panthers and Nation of Islam any day instead. There’s something almost clean and decent about fighting for what you believe in even if you fight a bit dirty. But whining and wheedling and nurturing old grudges and hatreds until the cows come home. No thanks. And that is why Obama is creepy and disgusting.

    If he was half a man he’d go steal a black homeland from the Zetas 🙂 And I for one would cheer him on.

  11. Zaphod:

    Goldberg comes from a Jewish family, but he doesn’t put much emphasis on faith or even a belief in God. I’ve never noticed him weighing in on Holocaust Memorials.

    Seems to me Holocaust Memorials have reached steady-state. Meanwhile, black commemorations are growing at a linear or better rate.

    Goldberg IMO is like the fictional Zaphod Beeblebrox described by his “brain-care specialist,” Gag Halfrunt (there’s a name to unpack!):
    ____________________________________

    Vell, Zaphod’s just zis guy, you know?

  12. Nobody stops asking for more unless others laugh and/or slap them down. It’s human nature. Until very recently the Irish were still whining and bitching about the British — especially the diaspora. go figure 🙂

    Too Much (NB) Good Manners and Tolerance will be the death of us all.

  13. @Huxley:

    Still, it’s a question I’d like to put to Goldberg given that he’d lose all his cushy gigs faster than you could say Cream Cheese Bagel if he dared to suggest that enough had been built and enough had been said. Similarly I doubt Obama would be on Martha’s Vineyard living it up had he said ‘Go Clean your Room, Bucko!’ to the Blacks. (You can only make serious money saying that to Whites).

    It’s a truth universally acknowledged that Two Heads are Better than One.

    And so say we all.

    Now excuse me, I’ve got my jackboots to shine and it’s past 9am already.

  14. Too Much (NB) Good Manners and Tolerance will be the death of us all.

    Zaphod:

    OTOH, I recall Grandmaster Robert Heinlein observing that you can tell violent cultures by their careful good manners, because things can get terribly out of hand so quickly.

    Maybe.

    Nullius in verba.

  15. Zaphod:

    But why should Goldberg (or anyone) be responsible for what you (or anyone) should like him to say?

    As W.F. Buckley once responded, “Cancel your own Goddamn subscription!”

  16. @Huxley:

    One Riot, One Ranger. I like this.

    When the host legacy culture loses much of its taste for righteous (NB) violence, things go awry.

    Tokugawa Japan at its height was just about the perfect society. Great beauty, order, and culture with explosive corrective violence a known, well-studied and treasured quantity. Perry smashed it all to #$@%.

  17. @Huxley:

    I’m making the point that everyone has something about which they will (if permitted) whine, wheedle, and agitate for more about. Including you and me and your neighbor’s dog. It’s human nature to push the envelope.

    The only way to handle group grievances is one round of justice/reparation and then after that draw a line and any more try ons get met by mockery and derision.

    Goldberg strikes me as a bit of a midwit.. but so am I, so if I can think of this then so can he. I think that if he were serious about taking on Obama’s guilt-tripping and wanted to make a point about letting bygones be bygones, he might have enough self-awareness to risk some opprobrium by setting an example and making the point I’ve just made.

    PS: Faith is a canard here. Group Identity is not.

  18. Zaphod:

    I’m losing track. So violence is a good thing?

    Seems like the Capitol Police popped Ashli Babbitt in the back of the neck and put a few hundred citizens in solitary forthwith for months.

    Strikes me as a good example of explosive corrective violence. The right-wing has been pretty quiet since then.

  19. @Huxley:

    The affirmative action Black (but I repeat myself) who popped a cap in Babbitt probably cannot compose Haiku and Waka… or even pour tea properly. There’s an etiquette to these things, you know.

    We’re talking about very differently constituted societies. I was agreeing with Heinlein that honour/shame cultures with some version of the Code Duello tend to be pretty stable and smooth running. We live in an age of dishonor and zero shame… so a social order like that of Tokugawa Japan is unthinkable. What we get is random ugly somewhat slovenly violence instead of beautiful corrective explosive violence.

    I do not condone the popping of caps by Blacks into the flabby bodies of the White Yeomanry (no matter how dilapidated a state they are now in). I *do* agree with the Left and you and anyone with more than a smear of grey matter that Violence Works.. and that beyond some nebulous point Violence is the only thing that works.

    When it’s the only thing that works then it’s a Good Thing. Unless you’re a fakir who affects to do his own spinning 🙂 And we’re back to Who? Whom? I didn’t write the manual. Just born into the Sim like the rest of us.

  20. huxley,

    “Goldberg posited, and I’m sure he was correct, that for progressives there never is an endpoint. There is always the next hill to climb, the next set of non-negotiable demands to require.”

    Given the inherently flawed human material they have to work with and the ‘obstacle’ of existential objective reality itself… constructing utopia (their ‘religious/ideological imperative) is a never ending quest. Having rejected even the possibility of an afterlife, their lives can only have had meaning if they are seen by history to have left a legacy of a path toward how to ‘construct’ a better world. By definition, the left rejects the possiblity of a soul, there being no measurable evidence of its existence. Yet in perhaps the greatest and saddest of ironies, it’s their soul to which they seek to bring contentment. Lost children, eternally pitching temper tantrums against reality.

  21. Zaphod,

    “Nobody stops asking for more unless others laugh and/or slap them down. It’s human nature.”

    No. That’s ego driven immaturity. Mature individuals do not expect more than they’ve earned. That’s the human nature grownups exhibit.

  22. huxley,

    I remember it somewhat differently. Here’s the quote; “An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life.”

    That’s not a violent society, that’s a society that neither suffers evil or fools gladly.

  23. @GB:

    Well put.

    Clearly it’s the religious impulse injected the wrong way.

    I don’t have a religious bone in my body — although I am very much in favor of everybody else in the room being an Orthodox Christian or Jew for that matter. Hell, I’d settle for a great many flavors of Islam (most of them in fact) before a Progressive Woke Fanatic.

    What I find surprising is just how universal the religious impulse is. I would have expected there to be more cynical grumpy autistic-realistic misanthropes out there. But that’s just the Misanthropic Principle at work, I guess.

  24. Zaphod,

    Did Tokugawa Japan allow women to use the full range of their abilities?

  25. @GB:

    “Mature individuals do not expect more than they’ve earned. That’s the human nature grownups exhibit.“

    You are describing a minuscule fraction of the electorate in any democracy in the current year.

    You are also describing an Ideal more honored in theory than in fact even at the best of times. Which these are not.

    I like Ideals. I really do.

    But look around you. Legislate accordingly.

  26. Zaphod,

    “everyone has something about which they will (if permitted) whine, wheedle, and agitate for more about.”

    If that were true of everyone, everyone would vote. Voting consists of just two desires; keep things the way they are or change for what the individual is persuaded will be a better state of affairs.

    Some people just want to be left alone to fish, paint, etc. Those are the people who accept the world as it is, knowing “you’ll never change it”.

  27. Zaphod:

    No question that violence works. But I was curious how you bracket it.

    I don’t know much about Tokugawa Japan beyond reading “Shogun.” (BTW did you know that Clavell wrote the screenplay for “The Fly”?) I never reached a conclusion about that world.

    I admired Toranaga’s discipline and cunning, but past a certain point how does one distinguish him from, say, Johnny Torrio, Al Capone’s mentor and the mastermind who put together the Chicago Outfit?

    Or from the Biden people? I don’t like them either, but from a Machiavellian viewpoint Jan 6 was a brilliant, swift, subtle stroke. If things are as we say and Democrats stole the election and Biden is near-senile, they know their survival is tenuous and they must be willing to resort to extreme measures, even violence.

    So…Kto, Kogo indeed. I didn’t write the manual either.

  28. @GB:

    Re: Tokugawa Japan and Permission for Women to ‘Be Themselves’.

    The fact of your asking that question in a serious manner means that we ought not take this aspect of the debate any further. On this point our fundamental axioms are likely so far apart that no meeting of minds is likely. Suffice it to say that I believe that permitting Women free range in the public sphere has been an unmitigated societal disaster. I’m sure you differ. That’s OK. But unlikely that we’re going to change each other’s opinions. Let’s focus on the many things we do agree on.

  29. That “minuscule fraction of the electorate” is much greater than you credit.

    Without ideals there are no principles beyond might makes right.

    If you accept the possiblity of a soul and you accept the possibility of a creator and “beneficent providence” then a universal religious impulse is not surprising at all. In fact, its the only ‘solution’ that fit the facts of a universe so exactly put together in its basic physical constants. One to an astonishing degree that defies the credibility of a random occurance. The evidence surrounds us but many are too blind to accept it.

  30. @huxley:

    Tokugawa Japan was the resolution of some centuries of terrible social upheaval and internecine warfare which wracked Japan. The somewhat fanciful stuff in Clavell’s novel is set at the very beginning of the Tokugawa Shogunate with the Toranaga character being based on Tokugawa Ieyasu. The amount of chicanery and lucky escapes Ieyasu has to go through to get to the top would defy description if it hadn’t in fact been described in countless historiographies, novels, movies, TV dramas. And he was just one of many of his generation and the culmination of the chicaneries and bloodletting’s of several generations leading up to his eventual victory at Sekigahara.

    So it’s not surprising that the Tokugawas having gotten control of all of Japan and having subdued the various provincial warlords were keen on Stability with a Capital S. To the extent of course that it eventually stagnated by early C19. But what they did for a long time was the best they could. And smart. They had a pretty good idea of what was happening in the rest of the world via Rangaku (Dutch Studies), set great store by Credentials and instituted the world’s first and strictest Gun Control Laws — What’s not to like? 😛

    Eventually they got laid low by two more pragmatic and piratical Southern Domains who used foreign incursions and their own seagoing foreign knowledge to throw off the Tokugawa yoke and ruled Japan for a generation with Emperor Meiji as figurehead, defeated the Qing in naval battles and on land and sent the Romanovs on their way to perdition. But that’s another story.

    PS: Had no idea about the Fly. But there’s gotta be a whole thread’s worth of entertainment in movies you had no idea your favorite author worked on.

  31. I’m not blind to women’s flaws, which regardless of how common, leaves no other recourse to full equality of rights for the feminine sex. Justice does not lie in denying half the human race equality before the law.

  32. Another of the mask comes off, more than melanin after all. Shoked, I’m sure. But some after, all are born to be in the saddle. That philosophy left this country in 1783, hail Brittania, long live Hong Kong.

    As you were.

  33. Zaphod,

    Was there equality of opportunity based in merit in that perfect society?

    Not perfectly but in the main?

  34. @GB:

    Have you considered I might be a Deist like many of your sainted Founders? A kind of very debased Cod Jefferson, lacking in slaves (alas) and deficient in Latin and Greek. Not even good at architecture or interior design. But never short of an opinion – so something aligns.

    Never said I was a Materialist. Just said I was a Realist.

  35. @Geoffrey Britain:

    I’m all for equality of opportunity — filtered through the sand trap of multi-generational social mobility — both upward and downward.

    I’m OK for the Peasant’s gifted son to become a Kulak and the Kulak’s gifted and relatively privileged son to become a Merchant and the Merchant’s expensively educated second son to become a Professor of Greek. And so on.

    I am not OK for the Peasant to get too many ideas all at once and strap on the Icarus Wings. Too many people get hurt when it happens. Thomas Hardy wrote a novel about that: Jude the Obscure.

    And this from myself being pretty low born.

    I’m also more than OK for the Merchant’s stupid son to go semi-bankrupt and retire from trade and be a Loser Kulak. In fact genetic research shows that most people alive today including people of low social status are the descendants of people who were wealthy and successful many generations back. Obvious when you think about it. Too much infant mortality and malnutrition for the hopeless loser poor to have succeeded in reproducing generation to generation over a thousand years — at least in the West where cold winters and disease could knock off the poor at the drop of a hat.

    Ideals are nice up to a point. Beyond that they get too many people killed.

    Female emancipation another topic. Prefer we don’t discuss as said before. But to get idea of where I’m coming from could read Sir John Glubb on cycles of civs.

  36. Zaphod,

    I can’t recall ever asserting you to be a materialist. Did I imply it somehow or is that a strawman deflection?

    As you no doubt know, a deist believes there is a God, just thinks it likely that he/she/it is too elevated/busy to be concerned with mankind’s affairs.

    Yet a belief in deism in no way precludes the belief in an afterlife with an accounting for one’s behavior in life or in God being mankind’s creator with whom God has certain expectations.

    Nor does it preclude the existence of ideals being summerizational encapsulations of actual operative principles, rather than simply romantic fantasies. Certainly Greek philosophic geniuses did not think so. Nor do baby’s strong preference for facial symmetry argue against ideals having actual substance.

    We appear to be in agreement about merit based opportunity. However you didn’t answer my question; “Was there equality of opportunity based in merit in that perfect society?”

    If not, Tokugawa Japan may have excelled in some areas but
    was far from a “perfect” society. Which as far as the historical record shows, has never existed.

  37. @GB:

    I’ll grant that you didn’t make an outright assertion that I’m a Godless Materialist. Possibly your insertion of comments on implication of existence of Souls into the broader debate on what Man does to Man (Politics) prompted my retort that I do factor such things into my admittedly sophomoric cogitations even if I do not always refer directly to them.

    IIRC I stated that Tokugawa Japan was a nearly or almost perfect society — implying some location along an asymptote rather than outside the entrance of Plato’s Cave. I’m not sure that I’d fare too well if transplanted magically back into Edo Period Tokyo myself. But that’s neither here nor there. You had to be born into it, no? It was 200 years of peace, stability, with occasional excitements like the 47 Ronin to spice things up.

    It was such an idyll that the Japanese couldn’t help spending the subsequent 90 years punishing the world for dragging them out of their paradise and into Sordid Reality. Yeah… I’ve read too much Chesterton or something 🙂

    To this day, the Japanese while far from perfect and being only human know how to give more dignity and self-respect to a Janitor or a Road Worker than any other race/nation/culture — provided he puts his heart and soul into it. So much for Equality. It’s a distraction. Great Chain of Being, anyone?

    We’re not really here to debate the finer points of Japanese history and culture… let’s remember that we got here because I was disputing the standard assumptions that freedom and self-actualisation are anywhere near remotely close to Absolute Goods. I disagree. Your Christian Ideals cannot hope to flourish without the occasional burnings and brandings, because without them it’s just a hop and a skip to Blue Haired Trannies defecating on your altars. Which they are now doing with Gay Abandon.

  38. @ Nancy B – “This has probably been posted somewhere here before, but Thomas Sowell in 2010 on Obama is pretty jaw-dropping:”

    I haven’t listened to the interview yet, but scanned the comments – all of them complimentary – and thought these were particularly astute. Dates in () are my calculations from YouTube’s inane dating paradigm, that thinks we can’t figure out how long ago something occurred if they just give us the date it was posted.

    Favorite quote by a large margin:
    “It doesn’t matter how smart you are unless you stop and think.”

    “And now, 10 years later (2020), we understand exactly the end game that these early moves were designed to create.”

    “4 months ago (in 2019) I was a Bernie Sanders supporter. Then I found Thomas Sowell.”

    “Imagine a person so dangerous to the left that it’s better to totally ignore their entire existence than to criticize them, because the mere mention of his name might cause someone to look him up and have their entire ideology destroyed in an instant. That’s how dangerous Thomas Sowell is to the left.” (2021)

    ” “People moving to the left rapidly under Democrats, and slowly under Republicans.” America in a nutshell.” (2017)

    “I regret I haven’t found this video before voting for Obama, which I regret to these days. By the time of the first term of Obama, I wasn’t a registered voter. To me was very strange that he was awarded with the Peace Nobel Prize without any merit. Then, he started to drone civilians, women and children in the Middle-East. Such was exposed by Wikileaks and Bradley Manning (now Chelsea Manning), so it’s a fact. When I became I registered voter, I chose to remain independent, but voted for Obama instead of Mitt Romney, a sort of the least worse choice. In 2016 I voted for Trump and am pleased with the results he brought to the country. I could see that most people benefit from his achievements, lower taxes, jobs, lower cost of living. |’m still an independent voter, but can tell, will never join the democrat party.” (2021)

    “5 years after the this interview (2015), Obama has placed America in Hell.”

    “(age) 24 here, heard your message loud and clear Dr Sowell, it ain’t over ’till it’s over” (2014)

  39. I warned people that he was going to call anybody a RACIST if they disagreed with him, and I got laughed at. I was right. He divided the country, and he still chimes in when he thinks we need to kick it up a notch. I can NOT wait for Karma to kick his ass.

  40. He addicted the entire Democrat Party to claiming their opponents were racist.

  41. Zaphod, i was a deist until i class changed to prophet and magus. Got a lot more skills and power out of it.

  42. Obama’s tactic was excellent shielding against the reign of criminality that was his administration. Back then, any accusation of racism served to silence most of his white critics.

    I tried to give my readers some tools against the accusation, but received mostly a lot of whining and more silence.

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