US President Barack Obama finally made it to the Twitter-verse yesterday with the hash-tag @potus which stands for President Of The United States.
It only took twenty minutes for someone to tweet a response calling the President of the USA a “nigger”. That was the least of it. Others hoped he would get cancer. And even worse: Someone posted an illustration of Obama hanging from a rope.
There is much more and you can read a large extent of it HERE, if you have the stomach for it.
It is enough to make intelligent, thinking, caring, fair-minded Americans ashamed to be called American. At its very best, it is abhorrently disgusting.
President Obama is the first African-American elected to the presidency of the United States. That happened in November 2008, and was repeated in November 2012.
The hard-core racists in this country, ALL of which are most likely right-wing red-neck bible-thumping republicans, were absolutely horrified when a member of a different biological human race, one which THEIR ANCESTORS kidnapped from its native African lands in the 17th,18th and 19th centuries to be forced into brutal slavery in the “new world”, somehow cheated and shot his way into the highest office in America.
Is this a demonstration of “American Exceptionalism“??? REALLY????
The anger that this horrific behavior on the part of some Americans elicits in thoughtful, fair-minded, non-racist citizens of this country is nothing short of nauseating. After all, it is one thing to not like a president for his policies and behaviors. It is another one completely to exhibit total disrespect, hatred and utter loathing toward the Office of the President of the United States. And that is EXACTLY what these low-life, uneducated, unsophisticated, moronic, extremist-right-wing hate-mongers do.
It is repulsive. it is disgusting. It is below the “Christian Values” these sub-human animals claim to believe in…
And it is the same behaviors exhibited by hate groups such as Al-Qaeda and ISIS.
The Constitution of the United States, Bill of Rights, First Amendment allows and even promotes freedom of speech and expression, as defined by the US Supreme Court case law over the years. That means that even Nazi supporters can march peacefully in Skokie, Illinois, even though their message is one of hatred, brutality and antisemitism.
However, even with First Amendment rights of freedom of speech, there are still consequences to what one actually says or writes. For instance, one cannot scream “Fire!” in a crowded theater just for fun. The resulting damage and injuries will ensure that the screamer is arrested and charged, and will also subjected to private lawsuits by anyone injured or otherwise impacted. This sort of behavior has already been defined by the US Supreme Court as not in the public interest.
So it finally does come down to who we, as Americans, really are. What do WE REALLY stand for? Why do we tolerate hateful lies, hateful radio hosts, hateful emails and hateful attempts by hateful racists, whose only goal to to foment more hatred?
It’s a very appropriate question that may never be adequately answered because so many Americans, while condemning racial discrimination and intolerance, are, deep inside, intolerant racists themselves.
All of this begs the question of who we Americans truly are. Based upon a truthful answer (if that is even possible), what is our true moral stature on the planet?
Of course, compared to ISIS or other brutal Islamist extremist groups, Americans have done practically NOTHING compared to them. But the occasional lynching of black people, the murdering of black civil rights workers in the 1960’s, the police brutality (though not nationwide) against the greater Black community, all of this speaks to an insidious undercurrent of racial discrimination which still, ILLEGALLY, exists in the “exceptional” USA.
As an American born in New York City, a veteran who served in the US Navy during the Vietnam conflict, a life-long employee of the US Government who retired under honorable conditions, this writer is utterly ashamed of those fellow country-men and women who feel compelled to display such utter hatred for dissimilar people, simply because of the color of their skin, or their country of origin, or any other logistical or physically explainable characteristic.
Of course, the morons who spout all of this hatred on social media are not thinking of the global and/or time critical impact of their horribly hate-filled right-wing tea-bagger views.
And that is sad, because many of them are so misinformed and uneducated regarding even the most basic high school education.
As a result, to all minorities everywhere…to the advanced and civilized international community of nations on this planet…
This writer apologizes for the actions of those countryman and women…who just do not, and never will, get it.
Ed. note: There are only two more articles which will be written in June and July, before this blog passes into history in July 2015.