Olbermann: Divisive politics is anti-American. GOP ticket’s willingness to say anything to win ultimately damages America.

In a Special Comment, Keith Olbermann lists examples of hateful, divisive politics from the right that actually do more to undermine America than the bogus accusations of anti-Americanism being leveled against Barack Obama.

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 Columnist - John Sammon
You’ve heard of a Freudian slip. This is where you accidentally reveal some hidden thing in which you believe. Time and again, Republicans have revealed, sometimes outright, while at the same time attempting to pander to the American people as working class heroes, that they consider Americans to be superior to other peoples. Especially white Americans.

Do you? Because you’re American, do you feel you’re better? One of the chosen people?

During the first debate, McCain wouldn’t look at Obama. This is because McCain thinks of Obama as an upstart nigger.

McCain’s handlers told him about this gaff, and in their last debate, McCain literally hugged Obama (a theatrical ploy to gain votes by trying to show he’s friendly to blacks).

The reason for the original snub is also the reason McCain is against any dialog (communication) with countries we’ve decided we don’t like, like Syria. Syria might use its influence in the region to help control terrorism.

I’m only saying it’s a possibility.

Instead, turn your back. Because hostility and non-communication are better, despite the fact that in the past we’ve befriended some ruthless dictatorships, while selectively condemning others. We originally befriended Saddam Hussein, and only turned on him when he wouldn’t act like the good puppet we thought we had in our pocket.

Why do Republicans constantly talk about God and America as though we’re the only country in the world whom God favors? As though we’re the only country that matters?

Here’s the way they (Republicans) word it.

• “I’m fearful his America is not my America” (implies ownership of America).

• “Our troops are on a mission from God” (implies God is a four-star American general).

“Bomb bomb bomb…bomb bomb Iran” (sung to the tune of the Beach Boys’ Barbara Ann). Meant as a joke by McCain, it trivializes, dismisses as nothing, the violent deaths of thousands of innocent people, including women and children.

There are three main dysfunctional reasons to think we’re better.

1. We’re more powerful militarily.

2. We’re richer.

3. We know God. Others don’t.

To Republicans, there are niggers here in this country, that we (whites) are better than. But there are others. Many others.

Here is a partial list of countries, who, according to the right wing, could also be considered niggers:

Canada – A bunch of displaced French frogs and faggots in Mountie suits up in the north woods. Even though they’re socialistic and soft on terror, at least, they stay where they are.

Unlike –

Mexico – Cactus niggers. Ruining the United States by coming here, illegally populating huge tracts of land of which they used to own that we illegally but patriotically stole from them. I don’t like ‘em, but I’ll let ‘em landscape my yard.

Arabs – Sand niggers. A worthless bunch of stinking, sheep-stealing, turban-wearing Sabu-fetch-my-slippers assbites…..except the Saudis (the springboard for Al-Qaeda), whom, even though they’re inferior…we can tolerate because of their oil. Their royal family act a lot like we do.

The British – They support every war we engage in. They’re faggy and weak looking but at least they’re white, and they gave us the Beatles.

Japan – They’re still just Japs. We’ve watched too many old World War Two movies to change that.

The Russians – Godless, communistic-inclined Bolsheviks who attacked Georgia. Only the United States has the right to attack other countries (Palin said we might attack Russia).

China – A bunch of modernizing Chinks whom we as yet have no problem with.

South America – All those countries down there, a bunch of stupid looking, weak-coffee-colored Indians walking around like they don’t have a clue. Sandals on their feet. No shopping malls. They’re lucky we tolerate them.

All of Africa – If God didn’t intend them to be unlucky, he wouldn’t have put them in huts as ignorant, disease-ridden savages. If you want the true story of Africa, watch Tarzan movies.

Pakistan – More turban heads. We’re going to violate their sovereignty without their permission to go after terrorists. We can fight a war with them since we have two other wars we haven’t won. We’ll have ourselves in a war with those ignorant bastards and we’ll make it look like they started it.

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 Columnist - John Sammon
Why is all this happening? Iraq? Hurricane Katrina and then Ike? Sarah Palin? And now the economy?

Why?

I think it’s simple. It’s God.

God doesn’t like America.

If the Republicans can invoke the name of God constantly in literally everything they do, God bless America. God bless our troops. This is a mission from God. God is with us. God is Right Wing. If the Republicans can talk about God like he’s (assuming he’s a male gender) our own personally owned piece of high-rent property instead of the God of all people, even those who reside in countries we label as “rogue states.”

If Republicans can do this, I have the right to invoke the name of God in a different way. I think God has had it with us and our arrogance. While some of our people starve and go without basic care, we have corporate lying, cheating, conniving, double-dealing no-good bastard fat pig executives riding around in limousines as the system collapses around them. You know. The kind of person who would steal $50 off his mother’s bureau while her back was turned.

God doesn’t like him. That him is us.

Why would God bless a man-made border whose origins were created by annihilating the native inhabitants (Indians) after conquering Mexico, and a political system (that once included slavery and then segregation) that often makes mistakes (Iraq), and then is too arrogant to admit the mistakes?

Does God endorse political systems?

Does God back everything we do despite the cost?

I think God is fed up with us. We launched a war based on Bush’s lies that there were weapons of mass destruction when there weren’t, and killed 500,000 Iraqis when it could and should have been handled in a different manner. We didn’t try hard enough to find a less costly solution.

God doesn’t like that. He doesn’t care about politics. But he does about lives lost. We were wrong. God knows it. We don’t, some of us, or won’t admit we’re capable of the same kind of hubris all people throughout history have exhibited. We just let this war drag on and on forever as lives continue to be lost without even an attempt to settle it somehow.

God doesn’t like it.

You see, it works like this. When you use God’s name to sanctify whatever agenda you’re trying to push…..it makes it easy, all SO EASY!. You don’t have to demonstrate what you’re doing is right. After all, God’s for it (Nazi soldiers in World War Two had emblazoned on their belt buckles, GOTT MITT UNS, God is With US)..

I never hear any other country use God’s name as much, or in the endless variations that we do. Have you ever heard a Frenchman say, God bless France, or God bless the Eiffel Tower? Do you ever see a bumper sticker on a Peugeot (French car) that reads, God bless duck l’ orange? What about China? God bless my bowl of rice?

God bless our enslaving (Chinese) troops in Tibet?

God bless this new ballistic missile with Chinese writing on it?

If God isn’t upset with us, then why all this recent news? Bush stumbles from one disaster to the next. I guarantee you, when they go to build his Presidential Library to commemorate his presidency after his term is up, there will be a building accident and the roof will collapse.

It’s obvious. Somebody up there isn’t pleased with what we’ve done, with and to our country.

Copyright 2008 Sammonsays.

Popularity: 7% [?]

By Ali Mazrui

Prof. Ali Mazrui
Barack Obama, the US Democratic presidential aspirant, has philosophised about a new post-racial America. In his campaign, he has emphasised not merely Martin Luther King’s dream of racial equality, but a more advanced dream of post-raciality.

If Obama were elected the first Black President of the United States, that would of course not be the end of race-consciousness in America, let alone the end of racism. But it would be a major step towards a future post-racial America.

Africa gave birth to the human race; Europe cultivated racism millennia later. What has now arisen is whether America will be the final resting place of racism and race-consciousness. If Africa was the garden of Eden that gave birth to the human race, will America be the garden of Eden that inaugurates a world beyond racism?

In tracing the transition from that first African Eden cradling homo sapiens to the last American Eden cradling the post-racial age, let us briefly stop at the well-trodden path of Francis Fukuyama’s thesis about the end of history.

Fukuyama saw the end of history in ideological terms. He characterised liberal capitalism as the climax of the ideological biography of homo sapiens. He regarded political culture as being at its most triumphant when in pursuit of life, liberty and profit.

Our thesis here is a different kind of ‘end of history.’ We are seeking to trace, not the end of ideological history, but the end of racial history; not soon but hopefully before the end of this 21st century. Perhaps this is what Senator Barack Obama had in mind when he started dreaming about a post-racial America.

Ethnicity in its ‘tribal forms’ started where the human species originated: that is, in Africa. Indeed, Africa invented the human family and therefore the human clan as a unit of biological kinship. But if Africa was the cradle of the human race, the human family and the human clan, Europe eventually perfected colour-prejudice and elaborate racial discrimination.

Is the United States, under the egalitarian leadership of Americans of colour? Is the United States destined to become the final resting place of ethno-racial stratifications?

Francis Fukuyama is almost definitely wrong about the end of ideological history worldwide. But is there better evidence for the proposition that the end of racial history is on the horizon – and its final culmination will occur in the United States of America, led by the struggle of African-Americans?

The United States is still one of the most racist societies in the world. Four policemen can shoot an innocent black man 41 times in front of his own house and be acquitted of all charges.

It is inconceivable that if the policemen had shot a white man 41 times they would have gotten off scot-free. Subsequently in 2007, a black man was shot 50 times on his wedding day by three New York policemen. The victim was unarmed. The policemen have also been acquitted of all charges.

But although the United States is still so steeped in racism, most indications seem to single out this country as the most promising theatre for a racial and ethnic compromise before the end of the 21st century. This is so provided that all Americans join hands and are converted to the dream of a post-racial age.

We might call this entire odyssey from the birth of the clan in Africa to the end of racial history in the United States ‘A Tale of Two Edens’-the African Eden of human genesis, on one side, and the American Eden of human egalitarian dispersal, on the other.

Historical times

There is a sense in which all Americans, of any race, are part of the African Diaspora — since their ancestors all originated in Africa. But there is the other sense of ‘African Diaspora’ when the Diaspora refers to people of colour whose ancestors came from the African continent in more clearly defined historical times.

The generic African Diaspora is the one which makes Bill Clinton an ‘African President’ of the United States. The specific African Diaspora is the one which makes Martin Kilson, Toni Morrison, and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., African-Americans.

Africa is where the human species began. A persistent question in world history is whether the United States will become the final post-racial Garden of Eden before the end of the 21st century. Will it evolve into the nearest approximation of a genuine post-ethnic role model for the world? It will need African-Americans to achieve such a moral stature.

The Christian doctrine has had two Adams: the Adam who fathered the human species and the Adam who finally saved the human species. In the words of the 15th chapter of the First Corinthians: “Thus it is written: There was made the first man, Adam, living soul, the last Adam life-giving Spirit.”

In our more secular imagery, the first Adam was Africa-the cradle of human kind. Will the last Adam be the United States, a potential secular savior of the human race? We need to see the Edenisation of the United States as the beginning of post-raciality.

At the moment the United States is far from being a collective secular savior of the human race!

On the contrary, there are times when the United States displays the symptoms of evolving into a collective anti-Christ. Is that what Barack Obama’s pastor, Jeremiah Wright, meant when he said “God damn America”?

But, in reality, the twenty-first century brings the United States to the critical crossroads. Will this country evolve into a collective savior (the second Adam) or a collective anti-Christ? Will the United States realize its potential of becoming humankind’s post-racial Garden of Eden, completing the odyssey from Africa as the first Garden of Eden? Or will this country waste that opportunity through bigotry, prejudice, and conflict?

Our children and grandchildren as homo sapiens are burdened by the gravity of that responsibility, by the weight of that momentous choice.

Popularity: 26% [?]

“The Post-American World,” examines how the world will change as the U.S. slips further from its decades-long position of dominance. In The Post-American World, Fareed Zakaria argues that the “rise of the rest” is the great story of our time.

Editorial Reviews

From The Washington Post’s Book World/washingtonpost.com: After the Iraq war, Fareed Zakaria argued in his Newsweek column that the world’s new organizing principle was pro-or anti-Americanism. But as the Iraq muddle drags on and China rises, the larger story of the post-Cold War era has come into sharp relief: We are not the center of the universe. It matters less that particular countries are pro- or anti-American than that the world is increasingly non-American. We need to get over ourselves.

Zakaria’s The Post-American World is about the “rise of the rest,” a catchy phrase from one of the most widely cited writers on foreign affairs. His prism is correct: We should focus more on the “rest,” even if America is still the premier superpower. But within this broad approach, Zakaria leaves policy-makers to figure out how to rank challenges and restore U.S. legitimacy.

Zakaria zooms in on Asia, especially India and China, which he uses as proxies for “the rest.” The first third of the book sets out his thesis — “For the first time ever, we are witnessing genuinely global growth” — and the next third describes how China’s economy has doubled every eight years and how India may have the world’s third largest economy by 2040.

This year has brought a flood of books on Asia’s rise, including Bill Emmott’s Rivals and Kishore Mahbubani’s The New Asian Hemisphere. For the most part, they embody the “world is flat” thesis — lots of economic statistics, little geography. But geopolitics is about more than growth rates. It matters that China borders a dozen more countries than India does, isn’t hemmed in by a vast ocean and the world’s tallest mountains, has a loyal diaspora twice the size of India’s and enjoys a head start in Asian and African marketplaces. Zakaria’s chapters on China and India, though of equal length, should not connote equivalency, and all “the rest” cannot be happily lumped together. Does China’s example tell us what has gone wrong in Venezuela and Pakistan, and could go wrong in Egypt and Indonesia?

Ironically, the final third of The Post-American World, which focuses on us rather than on “the rest,” is the strongest. Zakaria argues that America’s world-beating economic vibrancy co-exists with a dysfunctional political system. “A ‘can-do’ country is now saddled with a ‘do-nothing’ political process, designed for partisan battle rather than problem solving,” he writes. That makes it hard to devise a grand strategy, and Zakaria offers just a few “simple guidelines” on the need to set priorities, build global rules and be flexible. But in this non-American world, it may be too late to restore U.S. leadership. “The rest” is moving on…Copyright 2008, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

Product Description: One of our most distinguished thinkers argues that the “rise of the rest” is the great story of our time.

“This is not a book about the decline of America, but rather about the rise of everyone else.” So begins Fareed Zakaria’s important new work on the era we are now entering. Following on the success of his best-selling The Future of Freedom, Zakaria describes with equal prescience a world in which the United States will no longer dominate the global economy, orchestrate geopolitics, or overwhelm cultures. He sees the “rise of the rest”—the growth of countries like China, India, Brazil, Russia, and many others—as the great story of our time, and one that will reshape the world.

The tallest buildings, biggest dams, largest-selling movies, and most advanced cell phones are all being built outside the United States. This economic growth is producing political confidence, national pride, and potentially international problems. How should the United States understand and thrive in this rapidly changing international climate? What does it mean to live in a truly global era? Zakaria answers these questions with his customary lucidity, insight, and imagination.

See all Editorial Reviews

Notes: The Roots of Anti-Americanism

   Barack Obama Likes Farid’s Book Too!

….and, Barack Obama Dialed My Number - And I am Not Even An American

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