Memories of 2012 Election Season: "Atlas had better NOT . . . 'Shrug'"

Here is the first in a series of writings of mine from Facebook and other blogs and threads that I'm 'memorializing' here, to look back at a truly historic election season . . . and an unbelievable, blessed, 'effed-up' year that was 2012.

So read, enjoy and reminisce . . .

Atlas had better NOT . . . 'Shrug' . . .!

Written after the first debate I try to address and possibly explain Obama's mannerism's and behavior to the, then panicking, Left . . .

For those still miffed at Obama's debate performance last time please let us Try to Get It Correct:

He battles, even within this pinnacle of sought after jobs(The Presidency) and the prestige that comes with it, . . . He battles with a sometimes energy-sapping 'duality' . . .

DuBois knew and wrote about such . . .

"It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness,--an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder."-Souls of Black Folk

Remember he has to expend so much more energy to manage the 'acceptable', expectant image most of 'Mainstream America' want to see 'worn' by someone from his 'background' -read 'Race'- . . . and the natural impulse of an honorable, good Man . . . who would love to express with reasonable, measured vituperism the disgust at the craven opponent who would blatantly LIE to the entire country just to 'say' he was President . . . but not to BE President!

He cannot express the Latter openly(and in the Biden-esque way Liberals were clamoring for) lest it 'invalidate' and make impossible the Former (which he 'wore' so well in 2008).

Why?

Romney looks and 'sounds' like all the other 'acceptable' President's we've ever had - White and Privileged.

Obama didn't and still doesn't look like his predecessors . . . nor does his name or his unique American, 'ethnic' accent(they made such a fuss of a 2007 speech, just before the last debate, and pointedly one of the 'problems' was that they didn't know Obama could 'talk like that!?').

And some of the 'old rules' of how brown folks deal with Whites seem to be still etched into the collective, 'mainstream' mind . . .

"Beware how you address Them . . . Know your place . . .!"

 

Some of you might say 'Whoa!' . . . But Yes I'm saying it because it is still in effect:

 

1) He's been called uppity

2) Been depicted as witch doctor with a bone through his nose

3) Joe Wilson felt he needed to 'straighten him out' by the unprecedented extremely disrespectful outburst of 'You Lie!'

4) Something about the man's win was so galling the GOP made the decision to thwart him when the man hadn't even done anything yet - the night of his inauguration - again a breathtakingly, unprecedented, action by an opposition party.

The above list is hardly exhaustive . . .

How else to explain the intransigent opposition to ONLY HIM(not Democrats generally per se; taking them out seems to be a much lower prize for these folks) and anything he might 'touch'?

Think about it . . . and if I'm wrong please tell me . . . Because I'm out of explanations now.

So as you watch the debate Tomorrow . . . remember Obama carries not just the heavy fate of his campaign and the country . . . but the persistent, dogged legacy of racism over the ages as well. A legacy put on his shoulders by the not quite post racial public . . .

For example: 

Why all the talk of 'white working class' as THE votes that swing things . . . If their racial 'preferences' weren't still an issue? Why does it fall to Biden, why was Hillary better . . . Why is Romney seen as having defacto 'connectivity to this group . . . ALL of them OVER Obama, whose message, was frankly THE farthest from being ANY kind of 'controversial' over the decades?

 

This is the huge elephant in the Room . . . Or more appropriately on the last Debate Stage and we need to acknowledge it and stop sticking our heads in the sand on this issue.

Fact: Biden, Clinton, Romney are free to be as emotional and confrontational, bellicose or visibly passionate all they want when politicking . . . it's a political boon. A fount of empathy that goes a long way . . . But if and when Obama or Michelle, for that matter, exhibit any combative, boisterous energy . . . the merits of what they said get lost in the public and media obsession with a very famous and negative, highly politically poisonous set of stereotypes about blacks that ALWAYS rise to the surface.
 

As long as a candidate of color is boxed in by these very real constraints that are not a consideration for their Caucasian counterpart or opponent . . . there is HUGE problem.

America still has the blue and black bruisings of the black eye she gave herself when she instituted slavery, and the insidious racial politics that were enshrined within all her institutions to 'protect', propagate and insulate the intended beneficiaries, financially and socially, of this macabre type of human exploitative economics.

And there are powerful forces that don't want that wound healed.

Obama, and many like him, are balancing two 'worlds' . . . Similar to Atlas . . . But double his infamous 'load'.

This is no hat tip to Ayn Rand but . . . let us hope this Atlas of a man can truly balance these entire separate but irrevocably joined universes ably . . . and not 'shrug' . . . Or we're all doomed.

"The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife,--this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. He would not Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa. He would not bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face."- W. E. B. Dubois from 'Souls of Black Folks'