IS THIS THE QUALITY EXPERIENCED LEADERSHIP AND JUDGMENT
THE COUNTRY WANTS TO FOLLOW?
Leaders- who generate an atmosphere where crowd members join you in showing contempt for your opponent and yell out "Kill him!" and answering
Who is the real Barack Obama?" with "Terrorist!" - are showing who they really are.
What a way to lead the country.
Character assassination could turn into assassination.
The following is taken from another's post linked to here:
Words do make a difference.
"Cut the grass." A seemingly innocuous message to most people. But when the message came over Kenyan airwaves, the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights became concerned.
The independent rights organization had been monitoring local radio for hate speech in the run-up to the election on Dec. 27, 2007. And when callers to one Kalenjin-language station said the people of the milk needed to cut the grass, the agency was paying attention. Instead of a simple note about trimming the landscape, the obscure message was calling for the forceful removal of the ethnic Kikuyu from traditional Kalenjin homelands in the Rift Valley.
With the memory of Rwanda's genocide still vivid, the message served as an eerie reminder of the role media might take in inciting violence. In Rwanda's case, radio broadcasts marked the beginning of an ethnic cleansing campaign that saw over 800,000 Tutsis dead in 100 days.
Could the hate-filled messages sent across Kenyan airwaves have provoked something similar? Reports coming out of the country in the aftermath to post-election violence that left 1,200 dead and over 350,000 displaced suggest that it did, although on a much smaller scale. Locals there speak of text messages sent via mobile phone, stirring people to kill their neighbors. In the violence, the messages noted, the perpetrators would not be caught and persecuted.
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A blogging friend AngryAfrican wrote today about racism that is in us without our permission or desire. I have written about racism many times. Sometimes personal stories. Sometimes because we have a Presidential candidate - who appears to be all black, though he had a white mother and a black father. The main point from AngryAfrican was that it is possible to have racist behavior or a thought of racism, even though we don't consider that we are in any way a racist. And furthermore, that covert racism is the more insidious. I couldn't agree more. To be frank, I consider myself to be open-minded and don't want to have any racism as a part of myself. But have I ever caught myself with an awareness or reason to think in a given moment that I was racist? Yes.
I hate it. I don't want it. And I admit it to myself when it happens. It is rare. And could I not have had some of this ignorance passed on from the white environment, community and the under-enlightened parenting that I lived "under"? But this I know also about myself... Once I get to know someone, skin color has nothing to do with what I think of the person. What is needed is more interaction with cultures other than our own and education of the spirit which can get us past our conditioned social ills.
“I AM PAINFULLY CONSCIOUS OF MY IMPERFECTIONS,
THEREIN LIES ALL THE STRENGTH I POSSESS.”
Mahatma Gandhi
From my post - Imus Exposes Us-Content of Character -
I request to broaden the discussion. And specifically to include the Native American Indian societal and institutionalized racism. And let's lose the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" requirement of gays in the military. For goodness' sake, they are over in Iraq putting their bodies in death's way and we can't stomach letting the gay service people live their lives in truth. What are we, if not bigots?
If we have cancer, we think of removing it. If we have a sickness, we make a move to be healed of the illness and feel better. If we spew hatred cloaked in the claimed right of freedom of speech, it still affects not only those who it is directed toward, but it affects the one who owns the words. In the movie “Amazing Grace” the minister says to William Wilberforce’s question “In what way are you trying to make the world better”, with “When you make the world better in one way, it becomes better in all ways.” What is thrown out into the universe affects the world as a whole. We make the world what it is. We color the world with our words, behavior and silence. If we hurt someone else, we can’t help but hurt ourselves. It may not be visible hurt or even apparent to the receiver as well as the giver, but we live with who we are. And you can’t say crap and not have it be part of your life.
'The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit.
The second is to look things in the face and know them for what they are.'
Marcus Aurelius
The claim that “political correctness” is encouraged by firing Imus and the-like, misses the point. Claiming pretentious “political correctness” results when “We the People” speak out and say this kind of speech is anything but freeing dismisses Right for what sounds right. We must address wrongs, injustices and expose indecent behavior. This sick language and behavior that doesn’t have the light shone on it will simply find roots and continue to grow like weeds. This kind of language strangles the truth from all of us regardless of who the language is directed toward. It keeps us all down and from being free. Also, the point isn’t that having “freedom of speech” gives us the right to be condescending and dehumanizing to another of the human race. Not being denigrated is a civil rights issue. We have the inalienable right to be treated with decency. And I so agree with the mindset that says this is not a black woman’s issue, or even just a woman’s issue. This behavior and “talk” belittles all humankind, regardless of race or gender.
We have put up with this kind of behavior and language for too long. Let us look at ourselves and face who and what we are. We have a country built on racism. And it started even before the first African black slaves were shipped here as human cargo. The nation was built on land lived on by other societies before Europeans arrived on its shores. Even in the Declaration of Independence, the description of the Native North Americans, dubbed by the immigrants as “Indians” because they thought they were in India, comes from a place of ignorance, pomposity and illustrates dehumanizing language. The Declaration of Independence states “the inhabitants of our Frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known Rule of Warfare, is an indistinguished Destruction of all Ages, Sexes and Conditions” indelibly imposes this unjustifiable description on the Native Americans, who were forced to fight to protect their established ways of life AND their land.
Genocide of the Indians was authorized by those that came to this land as immigrants. Do you suppose the Indians wished they had united and built a fence to keep out immigrants? Injustice is a one-word sum total of the treatment of the Indians by the government.
... When I was considering moving to Indian Country in New Mexico, my partner was black and I asked the real estate agent if there was racism in the area and his answer was “No. Except for the Indians.” I found this to be true as I was in a shop one day that I thought sold Indians' art work. The white man behind the counter, brazenly and ignorantly told me the people ruining the sale of the goods in his store were the Indians. I was confounded. Here I was in his store because I wanted to buy Indian-made jewelry and pots and he said if Indian jewelry and pots were made by the Indians it was no good. He told me his things were made by white people.
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"Racism is ungodly; it is a lack of brotherly love towards others of a different race or culture." from No Prejudice At The Cross If this is true, then all Muslims are not terrorists. And all people with the name Hussein are not terrorists. And those who infer things based on people's fears and biases are agents of destruction to our humanity.
In There's No Racism Anymore a mother is concerned that her son thinks that there is no racism anymore even though his teacher treats him differently simply based on his race. This is what she writes:
My generation has to bear some of the blame for the situation we are in. We black GenXers, born roughly 1965 to 1975, are the heirs of the civil rights movement. We thought our parents and grandparents risked their lives and reputations, faced hoses and dogs, shouldered indignities and limitations, so we wouldn’t have to. And for the most part, we don’t have to. We are free to go to prestigious law schools that our parents would never have been allowed into. We can frequent restaurants that would have forbidden service to our grandparents. We can freely exercise our right to vote; hell, some folks are talking about NOT voting in the November election. You know you are free when you can toss away a privilege your ancestors would have died for, that some in fact did die for.
But that’s the point isn’t it. One of my dad’s favorite admonishments to my siblings and I is: “That’s the problem with you all. You think you’re already free.” Now, my dad is not trying to limit my sister, brother and I. He and my mom raised us to believe that we could achieve anything we wanted to. What he is trying to remind us is that while we are enjoying the considerable fruits of his labor, and the labor of others who were involved in civil rights, we shouldn’t falsely believe the battle is won and be lulled into complacency.
And my generation has been far too complacent.
We have failed to take the reins of the civil rights movement, leaving it in the hands of men like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, and organizations like the NAACP that have failed to adequately address new challenges faced by the black community. We have allowed the old voices to be the only voices heard.
We have failed to fight for our history to be accepted as American history, so that slavery and egregious racism and their continued affect on black Americans is not forgotten.
We have failed to speak up about overt and covert racism and its impact on the lives of African Americans, and we have too often let both “isms” be seen as anomalies in a largely-colorblind world. End of borrowed text.
I believe the KKK overt racism, even though being anonymous with the "armor" of a white colored sheet is much more easily dealt with than the covert behaviors...or statements made when the speaker thinks she or he is in the company of racist comrades. Statements made by Sarah Palin inferring Senator Obama has friends who are terrorists is irresponsible. The Lee County Sheriff Mike Scott said:
“On Nov. 4, let’s leave Barack Hussein Obama wondering what happened,” the law enforcement officer said.
Many of the thousands of people in attendance roared their approval at Sheriff Scott’s dig at the Senator Obama.
After Sheriff Scott left the podium, local radio host Mandy Connell took the stage next. She too drew a loud ovation when she said Obama “hangs around with terrorists.”
And yet there are people peppered all over the internet claiming this is innocence personified. Claiming it means nothing. And yet, calling John (Sydney) McCain (the Third) erratic is comparable to these implications using words delivered with demeaning tones and mimicking body language. And the crowd reaction shows the divisiveness that is being stoked and homegrown. What an undermining way "to reach across the aisle" and bring the country together in the time of such vulnerability. If this is the proud USA behavior that we want to teach our children, then I am in the wrong country. I highly doubt the use of the word "erratic" has inspired audience members to shout out "Kill him!" and "Terrorrist!" - highly charged words.
Tonight I heard McCain representatives compare the word "erratic" to the words used by McCain's people. Why say a man's middle name making it louder, with * derisive tone? Because an emotional link is being inferred to Sadam Hussein. Why is Sarah Palin using the phrase "hangs around with terrorists" when it is obvious that Barack Obama does not hang around with terrorists. This is a game. The crap being thrown may come back in your face. (* Derisive means showing contempt or ridicule - I believe this is precisely what is going on from McCain's campaign.)
Sarah Palin and John McCain's odious stump comments about Barack Obama are the warm-up act for audience members who then feel it acceptable to freely yell out "Kill him!! and "Terrorist!". The land of the free is sliding into shackles choking our social morality. McCain and Palin are setting the tone with their leadership and the morally numb are following them.
If someone does kill Barack Obama - I will remember you, Senator McCain and Governor Palin. We all do our part to create the social environment we live in.
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The John McCain Leadership
Labels: Acceptable, Campaign, Florida, HIDING YOUR COMTEMPT, ilovemylife, John McCain, Kill, Lee County Sheriff Mike Scott, OBAMA - BIDEN, President, Sandra Hammel, Sarah Palin, Terrorist, USA
