Why the Anti-Obama Anger?

It would be nice to start speaking of something other than the violence that is currently shaking the United States. Unfortunately, that’s impossible. The level of hatred and the recent outbursts recall the era that preceded the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which established equality of civil rights among all Americans. But the fact that a law, which is going to help 32 million people to be better cared for, provokes this much outrage proves that something else is going on.

In his New York Times column this Sunday, Frank Rich brings up the fact that death threats, coffins left on the doorsteps of certain representatives who voted for health reform, spitting, insults to certain black elected officials and nauseating epithets toward the gay chairman of an important Congressional committee are curious practices for people who regularly compare Barack Obama to Hitler. Rich remarks that these violent actions resemble a “small-scale mimicry of Kristallnacht.”

The strongest evidence, as noted by the very conservative Wall Street Journal, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch and cannot be suspected of complicity with the Democrats, is that this reform is exactly the one that Republican Mitt Romney put in place when he was governor of Massachusetts. “It contains what used to be considered Republican ideas,” concludes Rich.

And so, the truth is elsewhere. Health reform was never the problem — just an excuse. The climate of violence began during the presidential campaign. During certain meetings held by Sarah Palin, we started to hear the cries of “traitor” and “Off with his head!” and even “Kill him” (A formulation that Palin, always subtly, is using again in recent days with “Kill the bill!”).

The combination of a black president, a Speaker of the House who is, for the first time, a woman, a Latina in the Supreme Court, and Barney Frank, the gay chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, is a lot for conservatives to handle. The cries over last weekend were revelatory: “Take our country back!” as if these elected officials were illegitimate. In reality, it is a question of taking back the country that they, a group of minor whites who feel they are owners of the country, deem was stolen from them.

This group of supporters for the small-scale Kristallnacht knows that the numbers are not in its favor. During the next presidential election, in 2012, non-Hispanic whites will be a minority. The supporters of the Tea Party, this ridiculous movement that proclaims to be the heir of the American Revolution, do not have a single black contingent among them. The Republicans have not had a single black elected representative in Congress since 2003 (and only three since 1935). Their anxiety when confronted with these profound changes in the country is understandable. But the most serious fact is that not a single voice is raised among the respected elected officials of the Republican camp — Olympia Snowe, Mitt Romney, Lindsey Graham — to condemn these acts of violence that are no longer isolated. After the passage of the law on civil equality, Richard Russell, the segregationist senator from Georgia, declared: “The law was now on the books.” We are waiting for a voice among the Republicans to declare that the “law is now on the books.” Need I say more?