Letter to a Conservative Friend...

Sometimes it is best among friends not to discuss politics.

But to be clear, I just want my conservative friends to know that I stand polar opposite to those who choose to unfairly criticize or worse to marginalize President Obama from the political right.

Those who do so clearly do not understand the damage done to this country by the Bush presidency. Like may Americans capable of agitating their craniums, I know it, saw it and witnessed it first hand.

Much of this criticism is nonsense of course but it does have a particular racial component that can not go unnoticed. Conservatives accuse Obama who served two terms in the Illinois Legislature and was elected to US Senate as well as being a scholar and lecturer on constitutional law of being inexperienced yet they swoon at the thought of Sarah Palin who was mayor of a town of 5000 people and who served three years of her four year term as Governor of Alaska (the population of which is smaller than the island of Manhattan). These same people often question Obama's intellect (Occidental, Columbia, Harvard Law Review) while ignoring Palin's academic credentials (four colleges in six years to finish an undergraduate degree).

Conservatives charge Obama with arrogance but ignore the disastrous arrogance that marked the Bush Cheney years with their faux Cowboy diplomacy when America was universally disliked around the world. Nothing like two cowards (both men supported the Viet Nam war but found ways NOT to serve) playing GI Joe with real men and women...

9/11 happened on their watch and they were warned but they did nothing. They were warned twice: by the Hart-Rudman report and the August 6. 2001 National Security briefing.

Tax cuts for the rich and deregulation of the financial markets led to an economic shift in wealth away from the middle class towards the rich. Republicans are very good at winning elections claiming government is the problem, then they get elected and prove go about proving it.

And if this is a Christian nation why are so many acting in such a decidely unChristian-like way with the demonizing of immigrants, loyalty oaths and the irrational antagonism of health care reform which plays into the hands of insurance companies and pharmaceuticals?

We have a separation of church and state. It is in the Constitution. Unfortunately a lot of folks on the right side of the political aisle haven't bothered reading it. In fact Congressman Boehner of Ohio can't distinguish between it and the Bill of Rights.

I voted for Obama and I have to admit I'm a bit disappointed because I don't think he has gone FAR enough to erase the ugliness of the Bush years. The pendulum in my view needs to swing back even further.

The US is a great experiment in democracy but the pace is slow. Three steps forward; two steps back. And to be clear, the right wing of this country has never led the movement toward democracy in this country. Rather it always interferes whether it be on civil rights, women's rights, worker's rights, voter's rights, health care or whatever. I remind you that it was the political right that never supported social security, medicare, medicaid, voter's rights or integration.

America's demagogues have always come from the political right, whether it be Father Joseph Coughlin or Sen Joseph McCarthy. These clowns often cited the wonders of American democracy, then went about denying Americans the very rights and liberties that they supposedly hold so dearly.

Now we have the junior college failure Rush Limbaugh, the intellectually dishonest Sean Hannity (he who has to use fake footage on his newscast to make a point) and a host of other jackals attacking this administration before they even took office.

Your side, the political right, always stands opposed to these fundamental improvements in our democracy.

Look around you on your side of the political aisle. The disloyal opposition is a broad range of people, many of whom hold extreme positions on things like religion or race or are birthers or whatever. They threaten and berate.

They are also recipients of what Tim Wise called "white privilege". If you can find that essay I suggest you read it. For example, white privilege is being able to have a husband who was a member of an extremist political party that wants your state to secede from the Union, and whose motto was "Alaska first," and no one questions your patriotism or that of your family, while if you're black and you forget to wear an American flag on your lapel or your spouse fails to come to a 9/11 memorial so she can be home with her kids on the first day of school, people immediately think that both of you are being disrespectful.

When I watch tea baggers or those attending anti health care reform rallies struggling to explain themselves, it is sad. For what I see in many cases is a triumph of ignorance and stupidity masking their own racism. When I hear a women crying that she wants her country back, I KNOW what she is really saying.

I should not be surprised. I look at the emergence of the laughably inept Sarah Palin, the continued criticism from the coward Dick Cheney and wonder what these people are thinking.

They aren't.

That is the biggest threat to our democracy: The celebration of stupidity. There is a lot of that going on over on your side of the political aisle.

I look forward to the day when the GOP has some real leadership: not a token black man, a closeted self-loathing Senator from Kentucky, the evangelical Jew from Virginia or the perpetually tanned Congressman from Ohio who doesn't know the difference between the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

This country needs a strong two party system. This GOP is a disaster.

One last thing: it was the political right who ran this country into the ground. Pardon me if I don't take their criticism of Obama too seriously. And pardon me if I give Obama the benefit of the doubt as he goes about trying to undo the damage leveled by the incompetent Bush/Cheney years.