Folks,
I told you the reaction my madras pants evoked last winter at
Friday night Happy Hour in Central Florida, but just to emphasize the
point I'm going to make, let me tell you again. As I arrived at
our regular table, one of the men seated there said, "What
N.....did you steal those from?" My wife, ready to fight,
glared and hissed, "I can't believe you said that.” The offender
shrugged, grinned and went mute.
What I didn't tell you, a week or so later, my wife was at her
usual north-south table position at the weekly duplicate bridge
game in a room whose walls had just been repainted the color of--as she
describes it--"spicy mustard." A seventy-year-old woman
sitting east-west, her mouth twisted in disgust, spoke loudly enough
for everyone in the room to hear,” That’s an N....color!"
I know my Friday night table mate loathes Obama and still expresses his
feelings in an unexpurgated stream of malicious anti-Obama cartoons and
far-right lies, the birther canard being only one of many. He
also considers himself "sympathetic to the Tea Party."
So are the others at the table.
I can only guess, of course, what the bridge lady's politics are but
chances are they are similar; an overwhelming number of far
right-wingers live where I live in Central Florida. They outnumber Democrats and
independents well in excess of a hundred-to-one. How they all
migrated to the same place I cannot say with certainty, but I can be
certain when I say the ones I know are enthusiastic about the Tea
Party. Recently, one of them got so angry when I criticized his
party that he now refuses to talk to me. You'd think I was
attacking his religion, and you'd be right; religion and
politics are treated on the right with similar fervor.
I did say that the Happy Hour fellow now expresses his high regard for
Herman Cain.
I wasn't surprised that in this age of political correctness a guy
like him would pay lip service to a Cain candidacy in an effort to
convince others [and maybe himself] that he is not a bigot.
He reminds me of those anti-Semites who used to say, mostly among
themselves, "He's okay for a Jew," or, worse, say to
Jews, Y'know, my best friend is a Jew."
The irony is that the
reactionaries who hold sway within Republican ranks consider themselves
the friends of Israel. In fact, they are. That's because
they and Israel share the Arabs as a common enemy.
But trustworthy Jew-lovers they
are not.
Today, it's popular among right-wingers to blame the media and the
bankers for our ills, because "the Jews control the
New York Times and Wall Street." The hate signs crop up at Tea
Party rallies and on what I choose to believe are strictly the
fanatical fringes of the Occupy Wall Street movement whose loose structure
accommodates protesters of all stripes.
This ingrained mistrust of things they have always hated in my
lifetime lies barely dormant today. Should Herman Cain become the
Republican choice to face off against Barack Obama in 2012, I
doubt that voters on the extreme right will remain enamored of Cain.
I doubt they will vote for Obama. I doubt they'll vote at all.
It's the Republicans of the center right who will conscientiously go to
the polls a year from now, but given a choice between a very black Cain
and not-so-black Obama, they will opt for bitter coffee that is
lightened with a teaspoon of cream.
David Allen Tree
[Thanks so much for your submission - ed]
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