THE POLITICS OF FEAR

[col. writ. 10/30/10]

(c) '10 Mumia Abu-Jamal

As the mid-term elections approach, the candidates running on the fuel of fear are so high octane that they seem like cartoons.

They are either witches or Nazis, rednecks or confederates, but despite their rhetoric, they are running on first and foremost, fear: fear of a Black president.

Oh, they may talk budgets, or taxes, or even big guv'ment', but what they really mean is Obama.

That's the impetus for their opposition -- and there it ends.

They have never reconciled with the election of a Black man to the presidency of the Unites States - and they never will.

That's why, from Day One, they called him socialist; some called him Muslim; some called him Kenyan, denied his citizenship and even demanded his (original ) birth certificate. One woman, during a John McCain presidential rally, famously said, amidst fear and trembling, that he was "an Arab." (McCain comforted her by assuring her that he was a 'fine American', as if the two were incompatible.)

That's the fuel that has turbo-charged the so-called 'Tea Party' groupings -- not economics.

This is clear from their relative silence during the 2 terms held by George W. Bush, who borrowed almost a trillion bucks from China (of all places) to prosecute the disastrous war in Iraq, and built the biggest government agency in U.S. history; the Dept. of Homeland Security, an amalgamation of over a dozen federal agencies into one vast, powerful whole.

No protests over wasted money, massive borrowing from a foreign power, or against big government -- for years.

And now this.

It certainly didn't help that President Obama embarked on a dream of bipartisanship that has proven to be a nightmare, or that over a year was lost trying to rustle up GOP votes that never came.

We are witnessing the politics of fear; what sour fruits will they bear?



--(c) '10 maj

===================