Results tagged “Democrats” from Friendly Fire

My new book is finally here, and it's available right over here. I'll share more information about it in coming days. But in a nutshell, it discusses my background in both conservative Islam and conservative Christianity--with an eye on how both religions have been compromised by their roles within contemporary politics and nationalism.

Passionate hatreds can give meaning and purpose to an empty life. These people haunted by the purposelessness of their lives try to find a new content not only by dedicating themselves to a holy cause but also by nursing a fanatical grievance. A mass movement offers them unlimited opportunies for battle. -- Eric Hoffer, The True Believer

Earl offers some valid concerns about Obama's potential to be a failed, one-term president, and Jonathan laments an unexceptional State of the Union address by an exceptional orator. But I think the theater of the Obama era could be more surprising than many would guess.

I can see Obama having a mixed record after four years, just as he had a mixed record after his first year. "Mixed?" ask his critics in disbelief. "It's not mixed, it's catastrophic."

Perhaps. But then these critics will have figure out how to position themselves for 2012, and that's when things will get even more intriguing. Just as the Tea Party begins to flex its muscles, the social right will begin to clash with the GOP's libertarian types, and the moderates with the extremists. The GOP, as the paradoxical party of governance that even doesn't like government, has just as many dysfunctions as the Dems who loved government too much. The GOP of today is united only by its contempt for Dems, not by any unified Republican vision for the future. Obama-hating is a nice way to stall the civil war within the GOP, but it cannot postpone it forever.

Then, in 2016, an Obama may ride back in, claiming to be ready to seize back a mantle that had been blackened by the efforts of birthers and other opponents. Hardly a farfetched scenario, given how the Republicans are united today only by shared grievances rather than shared values.

And yes, the Dems will unify in hatreds and grievances against whichever Republican wins in 2012. If we're to advance as a society, however, we as followers will somehow need to escape our tendency to slaughter our own leaders for sport.

Being a born and bred Chicagoan, I seldom get scared. After all, we are the ones whose city has been synonymous with the mob for years, we are the ones who have lived through rugged winters, the Daley Dynasty, and we are the ones from the city where the dead once voted and often.

But now I am getting scared. It isn't the kind of fear you get from walking down the street at night, but the kind you get when you see a funnel cloud inching ahead in the distance.

It's the kind of fear over what will happen should Barack Obama become president. It's not because of his race because I am not a racist. It's because of his politics and the fact that he leans so far to the left that I am waiting for him to fall into the Pacific Ocean one fine day.

I am afraid of his affiliations and the paltry excuses he uses to cover them up. First there was the Reverend Jeremiah Wright debacle. It is almost impossible to believe that one person can associate with one another for twenty years and have no idea of his politics. Yet Obama said he knew nothing about it. What did they talk about all those years, carburetors and the weather?

As a Jewish person and the daughter, granddaughter and niece of Holocaust survivors, I am afraid of his politics as well. Earlier this year, he said that "Nobody is suffering more than the Palestinian people," which is hard to believe coming from a group that settles their grievances with others by blowing up and murdering civilians and children. I am afraid that even they want him to become president.

I am also afraid for the economy. Some may say that the housing market and all those forfeited loans, which nearly caused the world economy to collapse was because of the Republicans. What most people don't realize is that it was President Clinton who pressured the banks to give loans to those who could barely scrape together the month-to-month rent on an apartment let alone a mortgage.

Barack Obama's campaign slogan is "Change we need." With a Democratic Congress and a Democratic President with questionable affiliations and politics including a bill he sponsored making it illegal for a person to defend himself in his own home with a gun that is not registered, the concern is that they may be the wrong changes.

Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi loudly claims that the Democrats should get no blame for the Wall Street financial mess. That's laughable. Democratic president Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton and Congressional Democrats just as eagerly as the GOP cut sweetheart deals with financial industry lobbyists to gut lending and stock trading regulations, winked and nodded at the banks and brokerage houses as they engaged in an orgy of dubious stock swapping, buys, and trading, conned millions of homeowners into taking out catastrophic sub prime loans, and watered down the oversight powers of government regulatory agencies.

In 2005, Senate Democrats killed a bill to give regulators the power to require companies to shed their investments in risky assets. Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Banking Committee Chair Christopher Dodd and other Congressional Democrats have been on the Wall Street dole to the tune of millions.

Make no mistake, when the phony Bush bailout swindle passes, Pelosi, Dodd and other Congressional Democrats will be its biggest cheerleaders.