President Obama's First Year, Pt 1: From The Bottom of the Pit, The Spirit of South Carolina's Zombie Racism (Red Shirt Vigilantes) Rides Again

Mr Obama's First year was a rocky ride. Racism surfaced, to put it mildly. Town meetings were clouded by gun-carrying, political paramilitary types and some of the the former Dixie states threatened secession. 

The economic collapse was revealed to be far worse than imagined and Wall street behaved as if it is not even part of American soil. 

An overdue proposal to reform American health care was met with outrageous distortions and even bald lying issuing from opposition media and pols. 

And then it appeared the President earned good points on the promise to make his administration a transparent one, but the machinations of Wall Street big banks and moguls were so distasteful and tricky and greedy, that it was almost too much for the mind to bear. 

All in all, one imagined that most new Presidents might rue being elected in such times. But Mr Obama keeps at his goals with diligence, endurance and a kind of Spartan doggedness and grind that shows promise of successfully meeting and overcoming these challenges. 

Personally, while dismayed by the above events and especially the extremes of hate, I can only hope that they allowed America to vent and finally scour clean the last remnants of racial animosity and leftover Civil War resentment. It would seem, hopefully, that such spewing can't occur again after being so exposed. 

I will offer some analyses and opinions on each of the above topics in future blogs. First, with regard to racism, this blogger wants to convey his disgust at the hateful and sometimes extreme utterances from some of the political and media opponents of President Obama during his first year. What was dismaying was that those utterances sometimes received a kind of chuckling support from the media corporations and opposition politicians. 

Along with the racial slurs, there emerged from the swampy muck of the old South, the South Carolina brand of post-reconstruction, vicious prejudice, and hate that peaked almost a century ago in the racially demeaning "Jim Crow" era: discrimination, segregation, and lynchings. Sadly, this hate was also given open and tacit support by some American religious groups and ministers...as is happening against Mr. Obama.

From these and other sources, this first year of Mr. Obama's administration was a time of America showing a racist face that surely frightened and dismayed other countries who have been 'told' about the American dream society of everyone being equal under the Constitution. But, in the light of such regressive cant, how could America hope to maintain an international image of fairness, hope, and democratic success. 

 The hateful speech from some right-wing media persons and politicians was/is apparently a new national buy-in to the media's profits-rationalized argument that hate speech is just entertainment. 

The key to this deception apparently derives from the speakers of such hate pasting on their faces a goofy, lopsided smile and an open-eyed, fake innocence - ala Limbaugh, Beck, Michelle Bachmann, Hannity, Savage, etc - as they spew their poison. 

These personages and their comrades directed such raw, hate-filled utterances on mainstream media, directed personally at the president and sometimes even at his family, that it seemed America had retreated 100 years to the rhetoric of Jim Crow lynch mobs. These racist utterances were deliberately scripted to slander the President and intended to incite a mob reaction. To claim otherwise is grossly cynical. 

Give credit to President Obama, however, that he did not show a reaction and seek revenge or engage in trading insults.

To some of his supporters, the President's patience was seen as too much turning of the cheek. But, one has to remember that a President sits for all citizens, so Mr Obama's patience has been appropriate and shows wisdom. 

Sadly, the hateful utterances undeniably 'call' for killing innocent people. To argue against this conclusion is Satanic. But note well: although the fake-smile routine seems to have stymied American good taste and defied slander laws, several European countries appeared to have learned painful lessons from past demagogues and showed an ability to see through the faked smiles. The big example was that the UK showed no hesitation in seeing Savage, Limbaugh, Beck and company for what they are - callously unconcerned and deliberate wreckers of civil stability - and denied an entry visa to Michael Savage and Fred Phelps, an extremist right-wing minister. 

From these two and others in their group, we hear shouts of "secession" and "states' rights" ... which exposes "States' Rights" for what it really means - a shrill call to the wearing of robes and hoods, and circling the lynching tree. 

Also, the wearing of guns at the President's town meetings and the shouting of "Liar" by the South Carolina Congressman (Joe Wilson) is a strategy first laid down in print in post-Civil War Dixie in 1870 by the Dixie states in their efforts to squelch the voting of newly freed African-Americans by intimidation (showing of guns at town meetings and political rallies) and murder, if intimidation was not effective. Here is an excerpt from a 1876 South Carolina poster giving instructions to the white supremacist vigilante group, the South Carolina Red Shirts, how to intimidate and disrupt town meetings - the similarity with tactics used recently to disrupt Mr Obama's town meeting can't be denied:

2. That a Roster must be made of every white and of every Negro in the Townships and returned immediately to the County Executive Committee. 3. .... be armed with rifles and pistols and such other arms as they may command..... . . . 13. "... soon as their leaders or speakers begin to speak ..., tell them then and there to their faces, that they are liars, thieves and rascals, and are only trying to mislead the ignorant Negroes and if you get a chance get upon the platform and address the Negroes. 14. In speeches to Negroes you must remember that argument has no effect upon them; they can only be influenced by their fears, superstitions and cupidity. . . . Treat them so as to show them, you are the superior race, and that their natural position is that of subordination to the white man. . . . 16. Never threaten a man individually. If he deserves to be threatened, the necessities of the times require that he should die. . . . 29. Every club must be uniformed in a RED SHIRT and they must be sure and wear it upon all public meetings and particularly on the day of election. 30. Secrecy should shroud all of our transactions. Let not your left hand know what your right hand does.

(Source: William A. Sheppard, editor, Red Shirts Remembered: Southern Brigadiers of the Reconstruction Period (Ruralist Press, 1940), pp. 46-50, reprinted in Paul D. Escott, et al, eds., Major Problems in the History of the American South, vol. 2, second ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999), pp. 37-38.) 

 A final comment on this sub-subject: the opponents of Mr. Obama are well-protected by their Constitutional rights to challenge, debate, and strongly criticize the policies and political philosophies of the election winner; however, it has been crystal clear that Mr. Obama's opponents haven't anything substantial to offer by themselves, and don't want to expose to close scrutiny their shabbily constructed, obsolete, dangerous laissez-faire "economics" and 1840's style States Rights' laments. 

We were offered, jnstead, quick glimpses of shrouds and tatters, dangling in broken windows of Tara, with ghosts of night riders with smoking torches astride skeletal steeds.