Obama: The Sad Relevance of Race

The president as a young man, about 1980.
Though he's repeatedly been called a "radical" or "Marxist" by Tea Partiers, anyone who studies Barack Obama's policy initiatives these past years would have to conclude that our president is actually a centrist. The fact is that Obama has done nothing out of the ordinary for a mainstream leader of a modern Western nation. In Europe, he would even be considered well right of center. American conservatives who now bitterly attack Obama for his "leftist agenda" would, I believe, have to start scratching their heads in confusion if they were forced to read actual leftist writers on Obama. Take political thinker Thomas Frank for instance. Interviewed last month in Salon, Frank communicated clearly the befuddled sense of despair progressives now feel when they survey Obama's repeated failure to push leftward. In particular, they say, the president has had many opportunities to hold Wall Street accountable for our economic woes, could have garnered enormous public support for a stricter regime of regulation on the financiers, but never did so. He never even clearly told the American public the true story of what happened--how their whole way of life had been nearly shattered by the deregulatory idiocy of the American right. In 2009 and '10 our president could have pointed fingers, named names, called for prosecutions, laid out a new and saner financial order. Most Americans would have been behind him. But he did none of these things, instead choosing to waste his substantial political capital trying to reach across the aisle to a party dedicated--as was obvious from the start--to nothing but his destruction. As the disgruntled Frank puts it: "What Barack Obama has saved is a bankrupt elite that by all means should have met its end back in 2009. He came to the White House amid circumstances similar to 1933, but proceeded to rule like Herbert Hoover." Frank further points out that many of Obama's policies have in large measure been continuations of Bush policies. "Marxist radical" indeed.

If Frank is right, and I believe there's much truth behind his despair, we now need to ask: Why indeed did Barack Obama choose the route he did--to bring Wall Street insiders into his administration and let them call the shots, to push for the bailouts without doing the necessary house-cleaning, to let the bankers continue on largely as before?

One of the most depressing facts of being an American during these years has been watching the degree to which race has been used to fire up the Republican agenda. It started early on with birtherism, which many of us assumed would go away after a few months. We were disappointed. Now, years later, the birther nonsense seems strong as ever: even the GOP candidate apparently felt it was acceptable to say that "nobody ever asked me to show my birth certificate." I find this situation not merely disappointing. No, the bland lack of respect these people show for evidence is enough to provoke rage. I still wouldn't say, however, that this is so much a matter of the majority of white Republicans being overtly racist. This crowd was comfortable enough with Herman Cain, weren't they? Rather, what we see in the birther strain is a subtler kind of racism, one harder to call out as such and harder to ascribe to purely racist motives. For many of the wingnuts, I think it is not so much that they can't imagine a black man being president per se. Rather, it is that if an actual black man becomes president and if they disagree with that man's policies, then the racism might come into play in various forms--in this case, in the form of a bizarre willingness to believe (or to pretend to believe) almost any slander told against him. In fact the slanders being spread are beyond ridiculous: the birther slander in itself, for starters; the slander that he is hiding his true religion (Islam); the implication that his education was paid for by an enemy of America and that he is really a kind of sleeper agent now performing a mission to bring the country down. Certainly these slanders can take hold in the paranoid mind because the president is of mixed race and spent part of his youth in a Southeast Asian country. That the slanders flourish, however, should be attributed to the fact that the purveyors can use them as a weapon against the president's (supposedly leftist) policies.

But once racism is kindled, it risks becoming ever more poisonous. And this is obviously what has happened thanks to the willingness of the right to raise these birther-related issues. We can imagine Hillary in the White House pushing the exact same policy initiatives our president has pushed, but we can't imagine the same level of distrust or anger directed against her. Yes, the GOP faithful would have criticized her initiatives, they would have evoked the specter of Bloated Government, but this wouldn't have led to a discourse which painted Hillary as somehow evil, untrustworthy, alien or un-American in essence--a kind of foreign body made to appear ever more foreign and sinister with each passing month. A second Clinton administration wouldn't have led to the crazed fear I see in the right-wingers around me at present--a fear that America is somehow being permanently undone. But since our current president is of mixed race, since he has a partly foreign background, his policies aren't seen as merely the old "tax and spend liberalism"--no, instead they constitute a sneaking crypto-Islamic Marxist plot. Never mind that there is nothing in what he has done to indicate either Marxism or Islam. And never mind, again, that much of what he has done is simply a continuation of policies begun under that noted Islamist communist George W. Bush.

That the GOP's leaders have allowed this to develop as it has is despicable. They should be tarred and feathered for it in our press, but instead it is only noted: "Romney Campaign Goes Birther". That large swaths of the populace fall into such racist hysteria is regrettable, but then it has always been regrettable to me that such large swaths of the populace are uneducated. We have enormous resources of knowledge at our fingertips, we have some of the best universities in the world, but somehow millions still get through our education system while remaining unable to find England, much less Iran, on a map. And being uneducated, they are more likely to feel the world as such, especially non-whites, are somehow essentially other than Americans.

But enough of the sad spectacle of my compatriots drinking the right's racist Koolaid. What concerns me here is rather the question I raised above: namely, why has our president, a man who developed in the progressive crucible of community organizing, a brilliant man besides--why has he not employed more of his progressive fire during his first term?

On the left many people believe it's because he simply sold out. That once he got in his current high office, he found it more appealing to hobnob with Wall Street criminals than to subpoena them. These criminals, so the argument goes, have an insider professionalism that something in Obama appreciates. Now at the top himself, it is expedient simply to become one of them. I don't espouse this theory of the sell-out.

Still, Obama in some measure remains a mystery--not to the Tea Partiers who think they know him after watching Obama 2016--but rather to us on the left who wonder why he isn't more of the radical he is accused of being. In The Audacity of Hope Obama expressed his strong belief in working together and in compromise, and this no doubt explains much of his non-confrontational manner of governing. But many feel this isn't the only reason, that in itself it can't justify what they see as the president's overly conciliatory cool.

I believe the most compelling explanation for Obama's painstaking centrism may also, sadly, be related to race. Our president knows himself to be in an unprecedented American position: he recognizes he is playing a historical role that has never been played before. He is, after all, the first non-white president; he is the first black president. Thus Barack Obama steps back from the more aggressive reforms he'd otherwise push because he fears that if these reforms fail, the failure will not simply be chalked up to mistaken policy--no, it will be seen as vindication of the racist argument that a black man cannot be trusted in the highest office. His burden is thus unique. If a George W. Bush or a Jimmy Carter makes a mess of his years in office, that is a matter of poor policy or personal failure. If, however, Barack Obama makes a mess of his years in office, it is something else entirely: it has a different historical weight altogether; it will have repercussions for his race, his people.

What's more, Obama's wisdom tells him that given the vicissitudes of the world economy, it wouldn't be necessary for his policies to be wrong to still be judged to have failed. No, under such circumstances as we're now in, circumstances we might call nearly impossible, even the best policies could conceivably "fail"--which is to say, they might not lead to the wealth and success hoped for. Our president knows he is living in a time where the world capitalist system may itself be coming to crisis, and that any year now might see a downturn no one will really "recover" from in the old 20th-century sense of that word. If there is such a meltdown or partial meltdown on his watch, at least an Obama administration that had followed roughly the same policies as other recent US administrations could not be blamed for "doing something radical" and so being "instrumental in the end of the American way of life". This, I think, gives Obama further reason not to push truly leftward.

And so, as we listen to Thomas Frank complain that Obama walks a walk far too similar to that of his right-wing predecessor, we might ask ourselves if he isn't maybe doing this precisely because, as a black man in a unique historical role, he has too heavy a burden on his shoulders to walk in a more forthright way. Because to trip up would only confirm the suspicions of those millions of bigots and half-bigots who, no matter what happens, must never be given any such comfort. Would Hillary have had such a burden as the first woman president? I believe there would have been some of this. But given that the West has already had successful woman heads of state, the pressure not to fail would not have been nearly as great. Is Obama's burden, the sadly persistent burden of race, perhaps the real explanation for our "radical" president's surprising lack of radical initiatives? This to me seems likelier than that the former community organizer has sold out.

I don't want to be misunderstood with these remarks. Though I think Hillary would make a fine president, I am certainly not saying that I wish she'd been nominated instead of Obama. There may be some truth to my suspicion that Obama's unique historical position has hobbled his leftism, causing him to miss striking hard enough when the iron was hot, as it surely was in 2009. But even so, I can see he has accomplished much, and I am giving him my wholehearted support for the coming years. If he wins his second term, as I believe he will, there will be new opportunities to reform our oligarchical tax code and new chances to impose regulatory oversight on Wall Street. I can only hope that he will not waste his energies trying to reach across the aisle to that gaggle of Ayn Randian morons that still dares call itself the "Grand Old Party".

In conclusion, I should point out that I'm somewhat uncomfortable speculating on the sad relevance of race and how it might relate to Obama's centrism. There are others who make academic careers studying race relations in America, and compared to them I'm hardly qualified to write on these things. What's more, I'm a white man from rural Wisconsin, so my life experience can give me little cred on the issue of how a black man might deal with holding the most powerful office in a society long dominated by whites. My words here should be taken with a grain of salt, and I welcome any help in identifying my blind spots.

The Political Conventions and my Prostate Exam

The mind works in strange ways. I don't know why, but something about watching these two recent political conventions got to me thinking about my first prostrate exam last year. Maybe it was all the talk about medical policy and seniors (which I'll be soon enough). But maybe it was something else too: some more subtle link between the memory of getting my prostrate roughly fondled in that fluorescently lit room and the experience of listening to politicians talk about what they were planning to do if elected. Anyhow, last year I wrote up that unpleasant medical experience in my journal, but never thought to post it on my blog. Now that we're in full campaign swing, however, and what with me thinking about that day again, now might be just the time. My prostate seems somehow mysteriously linked to these national questions, or at least linked to the convention speeches I've heard. I noticed the feeling especially while listening to Paul Ryan. So here it is, my brief study in mid-life male vulnerability, with still unexplained political overtones. --E.M.

MY PROSTATE EXAM
July 26, 2011

So you're a man in your forties and you notice that recently you have to urinate more often than before. You're getting up four or five times a night to empty your bladder, and the problem seems to be getting worse.

This was happening to me. Of course I knew what needed to be done. I needed a prostate exam.

But did I really? The morning of the exam I saw that I was by far the youngest of the six men who sat in the urologist's waiting room. I read my Hemingway novel, THE GARDEN OF EDEN, as the girl called in senior after senior. Did Hemingway have prostate problems along with all his others?

The six men waiting with me were so decrepit that only one of them looked up when, soon after my arrival, a gorgeous brunette, about 6'2" and wearing a teensy black dress, entered the clinic and strode straight across the room on her long, ivory legs. She headed directly back to the doctor's office.

What the hell? Did she work in the clinic? Not likely. Probably she was the doctor's wife or girlfriend.

When she left a few minutes later, telling one of the office staff she was going out to get donuts and swinging her car keys in the same hand as held her little red Chanel purse, my suspicion was confirmed. She was not clinic staff.

I went back to my novel and got a handful more pages read before they called me in.

At a small motel on the Côte d'Azur, the impossible Catherine, who really deserved to be strangled, had just told David she'd burned his stories, including the story about Africa that was possibly the most important thing he'd ever written.

I had to give them a urine sample, then was led into a private room. I expected the doctor, but it was a nurse who came in--tall, but with a slight mustache. Very professionally, she began explaining to me why men in their late thirties start to get problems with the prostate. She showed me a little diagram of the whole works, indicating where the prostate was, where the bladder, how it swelled with age, etc. Then she said: "Today I'm going to insert my finger in your anus and feel around the surface of your prostate."

Huh? Wasn't the doctor supposed to do that?

She explained some more about the prostate, and about medicines that could be used, and then said: "As for the exam, I can do it myself, as I said, or you may want the doctor to do it."

This was a question of scruples. Did I want a man to put his fingers up my ass or this slightly mustached woman?

"It's fine if you do it," I said.

Then she instructed me to stand and drop my pants. That was fine with me. I didn't need any of the silliness of having to undress completely and put on a hospital gown.

"First I'm going to check you out in front," she said.

She knelt down and checked me out in front, holding her fingers firmly under my scrotum and making me cough. I thought of Dustin Powers and the fur-coated dice hanging from his rear-view mirror.

"You're fine there," she said. "Now you need to turn around."

Alright, I thought, the moment of truth.

"You need to bend your knees," she said.

I did.

"Not like that, but like you're skiing."

No problem. I'm a good skier.

Then she quickly inserted her lubed finger up my anus, pressing in directly up to the prostate. Whoah! I felt her fingers roughly probing left and right, up and down. As I stood there, half bent over, I realized I hadn't had anything that far up my ass since I was in Young Republicans in high school.

It wasn't really painful, in fact she was decisive and quick, but I could feel the pressure on my bladder and came near to urinating on the floor in spite of myself.

But before I did, she stood up, pulled the latex glove off her hand, tossed it in the trash, and announced: "Your prostate is smooth."

"Like you, babe," I almost said.

With the exam over, I felt oddly closer to this mustached woman, like we'd known each other for years. I wanted to ask her about the plaque on the wall with her name on it, some kind of award or other, but before I had the chance she said the doctor would be with me shortly and stepped out of the room.

What was there left for the doctor to do? I'd already been examined.

I waited about a minute when she came back in with a worried look I didn't like one bit.

"I just got the readout on your urine sample," she said, biting her lower lip. "And, uh. . . . It appears you have some blood in your urine."

I felt my chest begin to tighten. "What does that mean?"

"Well, we can't be certain," she said, "but blood in the urine can indicate cancer of the bladder. And since you ARE a smoker . . . . Well, we may need to have you get some X-rays."

"Alright," I said, the tightness moving up to my throat. "I'll have to get some X-rays then."

"We'll wait until the doctor talks with you."

Then she left again.

I sat there under the fluorescent light of the examination room and felt a faint nausea take hold of me as I took it in. I began to perspire and wondered if I was going to be sick--sick as in nauseous. Bach's Fugue #3, pumped through ceiling speakers, started to annoy me. Was that a volume button on the wall? I tried it, but the music stayed the same. I will quit smoking cigars today, I told myself. I hope I can beat the cancer. I Will beat it, I told myself.

I waited another three minutes, but no doctor. Then another five minutes.

Finally the doctor entered. Around fifty, only slightly overweight, quite handsome. So the beauty in the black dress--now there was no doubt about it, she was his.

The doctor began to explain to me all over again how the prostate normally starts to swell in men in their late thirties, how it constricts the urine passage, and how it can be treated with medication, etc., etc. I didn't give half a damn about that. Why didn't he get to the blood in the urine part?

"As for the slight trace of blood in your urine," he said, "it could be caused by various things, even by the fact that your bladder is being stressed by the swollen prostate."

Then: "I'm going to have them take another urine sample, and if it comes back with blood in it again, I'd recommend you have further testing, just to be sure."

I appreciated that "just to be sure." It meant: "just to be sure it's not cancer," which of course implied it was unlikely it was cancer.

So I went back to do another urine sample, which wasn't difficult in the least, since the nurse had prodded me so thoroughly down there and the mention of cancer had nearly scared the piss out of me besides.

I gave them the little plastic cup with my urine in it and chatted with the office staff while I waited for the results. The woman in the black dress still wasn't back with the donuts. But I shouldn't be thinking about that, I told myself, this was serious.

I watched the nurse with the mustache across the room as she waited eagerly for the computer to print out the stats on my second cup of urine. It was almost like she really cared about the results. I appreciated this. Then I saw a little tape slowly printing out, feeding into her hand. She looked over at me and gave a delighted thumbs up sign.

"Alright," I said aloud. "Good news."

"Yes," she said, coming over. "There's no blood this time. You can go right home and we'll see you in a year."

I left the clinic, my Hemingway novel clutched in my sweaty right hand. In fact the donuts had never shown up. No matter. I walked a bit down the sidewalk to a bench and sat down. I put on my sunglasses and took a little cardboard box from my bag--the box that still held three cigars. I took out one of the cigars and lighted it as I watched the traffic go by.

Stupid, I know, but nothing takes the edge off like a good smoke.

My Wingnut Family

Debating politics with Republicans is like debating marine biology with someone who gets all their information from the movie Finding Nemo. Or rather: That's what it used to be like. Now it's worse. Under the blinding glare of anti-Obama rage, facts have become dangerously irrelevant. Many Republicans' bone-deep discomfort that this man is president has pushed them into a near psychosis. This is no longer just a matter of party affiliation or "conservative thinking". There's no thinking involved here, and certainly no conservative thinking. Their discourse is driven by one thing only: a frantic urge to purge from our body politic something that can no longer be tolerated: that perceived foreigner and Marxist Muslim socialist in the White House.

Too bad for them that he's very likely to remain in the White House. At least I hope. We need Obama's policies to help our country's middle class out of the deep pit the GOP has shoved them into.



For years I've been corresponding with my now 71-year-old mother regarding these issues--me a 46-year-old Democrat living overseas, her a retired Republican living in Florida. Well, I've finally vowed to call it quits on such correspondence. At least it's quits as regards debating her. Why? Consider our recent correspondence, typical in most respects except for its markedly higher temperature. 



My mother started it by forwarding me this instructive link on 8/5/12: 



Subject: Fwd: Pulled Fox News Sunday-Obama Muslim 



Subject: Pulled Fox News Sunday 



Remember all the notices we kept getting to watch Fox News on Sunday at 9PM?  What Happened? 



This is the clip that got pulled due to pressure from the Administration. 



Obama Puts Heat on Fox News to Prevent Sean Hannity airing this piece. 



This is a video that Sean Hannity of FOX News has been trying to show that we are told has consistently been blocked by the Obama Administration for several weeks. 



Watch it now before it gets pulled from the internet! 



http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=tCAffMSWSzY#t=28 



Note how the clip is hyped, as if the Obama administration can dictate to Fox News or delete things from youtube. Apparently Sean Hannity has been personally censored by the executive branch. Do the people composing these emails forget First Amendment rights? 



I replied to this "breaking news" video simply by sending my mother a snopes link that lays out the misrepresentations: 



http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/muslimfaith.asp 



Mom replied to my snopes link like this: 



Forget the Snopes thing on Obama and his Muslim faith. It is so obvious that he is a Muslim. It's even on the film with his big mouth forming the words, bowing to the King of Saudi Arabia, and placating and fawning over the Muslim world. He has made a sham of our country. Most of his voting base are those wanting handouts. He canceled the national prayer breakfast: the first president in history to do so, but he allowed a huge Muslim demonstration with speeches to go on just blocks from the White House. Come on, you have to be aware of this obvious stuff. I can't even type about him anymore. I so detest him and his crooked values. His campaign promised, "Change you can count on!" Who said that Americans wanted our country turned into Socialism? Who said we wanted to have our Christian faith wiped from public places? Who said we wanted gay marriage shoved down our throats? Who said we would be willing to approve of 60 million abortions? Who said, in this day and age, that we should severely cut our military budget while he pours our tax money on all of his supporters? Who said we wanted to be taxed for other people's health care? Who said we wanted illegal aliens flooding into our country just so he could get votes? He ought to be forced to live in the midst of all the people he has illegally welcomed here. He is a pompous self serving arrogant ass! And on and on and on! It is all absolutely nauseating!!!!! Nough said! 



I am now too riled up to type more now. I'm going to try to cool off in the pool. 



Mom 



I didn't bother to reply to this letter, which repeated the same handful of charges I'd read in at least two dozen letters from her since Obama was elected. Then on 8/12 I got forwarded the following photo: 



Subj: In Savannah