UNDER THE SKIN OF A RACIST

IS FEAR IN THE DISGUISE OF JUSTIFIABLE BELIEFS

Not all racists think it is wrong to believe they are better than other groups of people based on their fears. Okay, they also probably don't believe it is their fears that are at the root of their racist comments or underpinning philosophy. But if you could remove vision from all of us, probably this racist stuff would be about as weak as the economy right now. And just how would we be able to give our fears a way to judge people different from us if we couldn't see them?

Racism is just a way to lift up how you feel about your weak opinion of yourself. It fills a need to put someone down to pretend you are better than you are.

The Star of Canada

TheStar.com | World | A nation's underbelly is exposed

AMERICAN SCENE

McCain Exposes America's Underbelly

David Olive posted online Oct 11, 2008

This is the week, Joe Biden said, that John McCain decided to take the low road to the White House. A partisan observation, certainly. But true just the same.

With increasing desperation, McCain and his presidential running mate, Sarah Palin, have depicted Barack Obama as a naive, untrustworthy, Manchurian candidate who "pals around with terrorists."

Irony is not given to Republicans. McCain attacked Obama this week as the cause of the global financial crisis, when it was the Republicans' sustained effort to remove the bars from the Wall Street zoo that culminated in the current spectacular mess.

McCain's proof of Obama's doubtful patriotism is the Illinoisan's vote against an Iraq-war funding bill that McCain also voted against because it was too pork-laden. But the ugliest and most potent McCain-Palin charge is that the Democratic Party's presidential nominee is not one of us.

"This is not a man who sees America as you see it and how I see America," Palin told a rally this week – an allusion to Obama's skin colour, foreign-born father, and "exotic" upbringing, in Indonesia and mostly Hawaii.

McCain, as it happens, was born in the Panama Canal Zone, a quasi-sovereign but U.S.-administered jurisdiction at the time. The latter status negated objections earlier this year that McCain is foreign-born and thus disqualified for the presidency under the Constitution.

But Obama is blessed with the quality of growing on people the more they see of him – pretty much the opposite effect that Stephen Harper has. Thus Obama's improbable triumph over Hillary Clinton, and success in winning the first two presidential debates.

With victory prospects dimming – Obama has a commanding electoral college edge in states already in his column and others leaning that way – McCain has gone heavily negative, not on Obama's policies but the rival himself.

Even Karl Rove has said McCain steps outside the bounds of truth. So it wasn't a surprise this week that, with the GOP character-assassination machine in high gear, The New York Times editorialized that McCain and Palin "have been running one of the most appalling campaigns we can remember, (entering) the dark territory of race-baiting and xenophobia."

What McCain has been doing this week is inadvertently exposing the underside of the country he professes to love. As Palin has inveighed against Obama's supposed intellectual snobbery, his fleeting affiliations with Weather Underground co-founder Bill Ayers, and his supposed disdain for the troops (elaborate praise for whom figures into most Obama speeches), crowds in Ohio, Florida and elsewhere this week have shouted, "Traitor!" and "Kill him!"

Palin has made no effort to restrain these animal spirits. This is the part of America that time forgot. Where an angry white McCain supporter approached an African-American TV technician this week and yelled: "Sit down, boy!"

With his appeal to suspicion of "the other," McCain has identified that part of America not ready for the challenges of the 21st century – the very people Obama's policies, and especially his commitment to education reforms, are meant to help. These are the past and future victims of outsourcing, few with better than a high school certificate, who will be left behind in a global, knowledge-based economy. Obama grasps the implications, proposing steps to revive U.S. competitiveness. McCain exploits them as a wedge issue.

In the twilight of his career in presidential politics, McCain is shaping a legacy for himself not as a problem-solver, but one hopes as the last White House candidate determined to showcase for the world the worst of America.

David Olive's American Scene appears Saturdays in World & Comment.

Included here is one comment to the above article that makes a substantial point:

Blowback

My fortune cookie yesterday said "Do not release tigers if you live in the forest" a sort of "Glass houses" admonition. For every attack McCain has sent he is many times more vulnerable to worse stories. Obama knows old extremists, McCain and Palin are on stage with current ones. Obama has a crazy pastor. McCain & Palin are one stage with several who are very much worse, while they are there. It goes on and on.

Posted by FreeDem at 9:51 AM Saturday, October 11 2008

Below is a link to an interesting article from Australia's Sydney Morning Herald

The Weight Is Behind McCain, But Obama Has the Votes
written by Dr Lesley Russell is the Menzies Foundation Fellow at the Menzies Centre for Health Policy, University of Sydney / Australian National University and a research associate at the US Studies Centre. Dr. Russell talks about the weight of the voter and how it is parallel to living-in-poverty or not-living-in-poverty and how the pounds of the voter give a clue who citizens will vote for.

Australian Daily Telegraph
'Hate'claim fires up John McCain in US presidential race
There is a video with this article that shows Australians about the racism that has come out of the closet in campaign.

The above article and links are from the website Watching America.com ~ which gives links to articles from around the planet and how the USA is viewed from without. If you go to the bottom of the page, the articles are listed by regions and countries. If it is not in English and you want to translate it, you may try this google language tool.

Link to Watching America's collected articles and posts about the USA Presidential campaign

June through August 2008 articles from Watching America.com on Racism:
Racism is the Biggest Obstacle Obama Faces Kenya
Obama and the Question of American Racism Germany
Obama Support Riding on Racism Uganda

Recommended read by a South African blogging acquaintance and internet friend:
Message to America Where I Come From

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Barack Obama

Senator Obama's Economic Rescue Plan for the Middle Class

Senator Obama delivered a major economic policy address to lay out his economic rescue plan for the middle class in Toledo, Ohio this afternoon. He unveiled his Economic Rescue Plan for The Middle Class . This is a comprehensive four-part plan to deal with the immediate crisis that builds on proposals he has previously announced and includes several major new ideas. We can’t wait to help workers and families and communities who are struggling…

CONTINUE READING

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