One additional thought on Obama’s victory Tuesday night.
The efforts to unseat the President began much earlier than
the night Mitt Romney was chosen by Republicans to run for America’s highest
office on their behalf. It began the moment Obama was declared the winner in
the 2008 election. On that night, someone at FOX News went to the basement and
turned a key, and the hate machine sputtered to life. Fueled by the Right Wing media,
the Tea Party, Christian Evangelicals, panicky billionaires, cranky old racist white
guys, the Supreme Court, the NRA, conservative politicians, and an ill
informed, easily manipulated slice of the electorate, and abetted by the
mainstream media, the machine began cranking out bile and bunk by the
truckload, painting Obama as a socialist, Kenyan, Muslim, American apologist,
liar, ineffective leader, communist, Manchurian Candidate, racist, radical and
enemy of true Americans.
Billions of dollars, hours and words were spent on spreading
Obama hatred throughout every corner of the country. It was organized and
incessant, without a day going by when we didn’t hear a new incendiary charge
from Limbaugh or Beck or Brooks or Trump. Anti-Obama movies and documentaries
were made. Books were written. The Right Wing megaphone gave us hour by hour
headlines — fake birth certificate, born in Kenya, apology tour, pals around
with socialists, Benghazi, hates American values, sympathizes with Muslims,
wants our enemies to win — the list was endless. And the mainstream media,
instead of repudiating the vile stream of lies, obliged its corporate masters
by either burying its head in the sand or playing the
“one-side-says-this-the-other-side-says-that” game, so as not to alienate any
particular demographic. The news, after all, is a profit-driven venture.
And what do they have to show for what has to be the
longest, most expensive ongoing propaganda campaign in the history of a
democracy? Nothing. Zip. It didn’t work. Obama won reelection despite their
best efforts. The merchants of hate are now shaking their heads in disbelief.
How could this happen? How can we have failed? One reason was that as time went
on, conservatives started to believe that the fantasy world they had created
was, in fact, reality. They believed their own lies and ended up conning
themselves.
Obama’s victory was noteworthy on many levels, but none is
as important as the national repudiation of the power of America’s hate
mongers, racists, misogynists, bigots and liars. Obama not only won reelection,
but they lost. Big time.
