Polarity of Sound

Doom and gloom!

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s resident nutjob (well, one of several), Z. Dwight Billingsley, has weighed in with “A Plan to Survive the Obama Years.”  Let’s take a look, shall we?

“As Jack Buck once said, ‘I don’t believe what I just saw!’ Americans on Nov. 4 turned over control of the United States of America to a management team possessing no executive experience, having never run, as I liked to put it, nothing.

Well, Americans usually get the government they deserve, and I urge you all to get ready for this 21st century version of amateur hour. It’s going to be an embarrassing and dangerous time for America and American ideals. There won’t be much, I’m afraid, to be thankful for.”

An embarrassing and dangerous time for America?  Well, I’m certainly glad we haven’t had an embarrassing leader for the past eight years who’s made the world less safe!  And someone who successfully ran a great campaign in one of the most grueling elections seasons certainly doesn’t have any experience!  It’s hard to believe the conservatives are still beating this drum, actually.  “He’s unprepared!  Oogedy-boogedy-boogedy!”

“Bill Kristol, writing in The Weekly Standard, reminded me that every 16 years we get a Democrat president with no experience in national security or international affairs who’s elected after Republican presidents have made and kept America safe: After Eisenhower, we got Kennedy; after Nixon/Ford, we got Carter; after Reagan/Bush, we got Clinton. And after Bush II, we get Barack Obama.”

Because, as we all remember, there were no wars during the Reagan/Bush years, and absolutely no terrorist attacks.  The Nixon presidency was a bed of roses, too.  Yup, those Republicans sure know how to maintain the Pax Americana!

“Every strong Republican president who succeeded in protecting America has allowed Americans to become complacent about national security, thereby opening the door for weak Democrats who allowed enemies to threaten and attack America without penalty. Obama will be no different, and Americans will have to learn again that there can be no economic security without national security.

That’s not to say that Obama’s election doesn’t come with a couple of interesting side effects. For example, henceforth no black man in America may be called unqualified for any job that he might seek, no matter his prior education or experience level. Want to be a nuclear scientist but lack a Ph.D. in physics? If the applicant is a black man, it’s no problem. Just offer hope to the profession and promise change from all those stuffy theorems that have given the discipline its structure over the years, and you’re in.”

Okay, this is just bullshit.  Obama didn’t get where he was before the campaign because he simply “offered hope” to the professors at Columbia and Harvard Law.  He worked hard, he studied, and he’s fucking smart.  He listens to differing points of view, is able to construct a sentence that doesn’t collapse in on itself like a piece of taffy, and was able to lead a coalition of wildly disparate supporters to a decisive victory in the election.  He ain’t perfect, but he certainly didn’t coast to where he is now.

“That’s on a par with throwing out the fact that tax cuts lead to more investment, job creation and increasing government revenues, just because the black man, that transcendent agent of change, says it’s OK.”

Mr. Billingsley, how exactly do tax cuts lead to more government revenue?  What great investment have we seen in the Bush years?  An investment in derivatives, securities, and unregulated market entities that have collapsed in on themselves and brought the economy down with them.  And you conveniently ignore the Obama proposal to use government funds to invest in repairing our failing infrastructure, therefore creating sorely needed jobs.  Can this be accomplished with tax cuts?  No, because the government needs money to fund public works projects.  We pay our taxes, we get paved roads, bridges that don’t crumble, firefighters, police, health insurance, and an investment in the economy that starts from the ground up.

“Another side effect has been white people contacting me to say that I should be proud to see a black man become president. Could there be a comment that is more condescending, more insulting, than that?”

He actually has a point here.

“If I believed that in America a black man could not be president, then I would be proud to see any black man elected president. But because I always have believed that nothing in America prevents a black man from becoming president or anything else he wants to be, I can be embarrassed, not proud, to see someone as unqualified and inexperienced as Obama become president.”

And he blows it with some Dinesh D’Souza Horatio Alger bullshit.  You think white people don’t have privilege?  You think black men and women aren’t kept out of the highest positions by societal pressures, but instead choose to take lower-paying jobs with less power and recognition?  If you haven’t encountered this in your life, then I am truly happy for you.  But that would put you in the tiniest minority of people of color, who have to work harder and be better just to get half the recognition white people do.  And it’s insulting to Obama to continue to insinuate that he only got where he is because he’s “the transcendant black man” and to ignore his obvious intellect and political savvy.

“Jackie Robinson, the first black man in modern-day major league baseball, illustrates my point. He was the right man with the right combination of talent, temperament and character at the right time to be successful for that important ‘first.’ Obama? An empty suit who will fail.”

And as we all know, Robinson didn’t encounter any barriers at all to his success.  Nope, there was not a single societal barrier to his becoming a baseball star.  After all, when he was drafted into the army after attending UCLA, “Robinson learned that white men with his level of education were allowed to go to Officer Candidate School, but blacks could not.”  And even though “During his first season with the Dodgers, Robinson encountered racism from fans and players, which included his own teammates,” that certainly was no deterrent he had to overcome.  Nope, he just had to work just as hard as any of his white teammates, and he could do whatever he wanted–even become president in an era of Jim Crow!  Yup, any black man anywhere can be whatever he wants, and the only reason we haven’t had a black president until now is because . . . why again?  Black men just couldn’t be bothered?

“I’m going to approach the Obama years the same way liberals handled the Iraq war. Just as they claimed to support our troops while opposing the war, I’m going to support my country while opposing Obama and what he stands for in every way that I can.”

If you agree with Bush’s policies of cutting health benefits for veterans, discharging veterans with PTSD to make sure to deny them mental health coverage, sending soldiers into battle underarmed, unprepared, and overwhelmed, then you have a very funny definition of “supporting the troops.”  And it is possible to love your country and disagree vehemently with your president.  In fact, I encourage it–whether the president is Bush, Obama, or Lincoln, they should always be questioned.  Blind patriotism is what led us to the sorry state we’re in now.

“It’s only four years and with the astute Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky as Senate minority leader, Republicans can stop the Obama extremists for two years until mid-term elections in 2010 give Republicans the boost in Congress that inevitably will come.”

I mean, come on, look at how they stuck it to the Democratic Congress in 2008!  Oh, wait.

And in 2012, we’ll have Sarah Palin to clean up Obama’s mess [are you fucking kidding me?] and remind us again of America’s exceptionalism.”

Ah yes, American Exceptionalism.  Mr. Billingsley wrote another blinkered, jingoistic column on that very subject not long before the election, which basically said, “Obama doesn’t think America’s perfect!”  I’m glad you think America is perfect, Mr. Billingsley, and I hope that at some point you can take your fingers out of your ears, your head out of your ass, and the blinders off your eyes, and join the rest of us in the real world.