from NY to Israel Sultan Reveals
The Stories Behind the News

Posted: 16 Sep 2009 08:08 PM PDT

It is the ninth month of the year 2009 of the reign of what was
supposed to be our post-racial administration, and racism is a more common
topic than ever. Where before racism applied to individuals, now opposing
government policies has itself become a racist act.

Politicians and pundits spend enormous amounts of time
analyzing the racial implications of Obama posters at rallies, and former
President and active bigot, Jimmy Carter crawled out of his cage to
proclaim that Congressman Joe Wilson's famous shout of "You Lie" was
motivated by racism. Which is frankly quite obvious. "You Lie", is there
any phrase more obviously racist than that?

At the New York Times,
Maureen Dowd wrote, "what I heard was an unspoken word in the air: You
lie, boy!" Which is a lot like the patient who studies a series of
Rorschach ink blots and comes up with increasingly racist interpretations
of them. When the psychiatrist finally calls him on it, he exclaims, "I'm
prejudiced? You're the one with all the racist cartoons!"

When the
collective wisdom of the liberal media finds racism where there isn't any,
it's fair to ask whether the racism they're finding is imaginary or in
their own heads. And by fair, of course I mean it's unacceptably racist.
But that's the kind of polarization that living in a black and white world
gets you. You're either racist or you're not. And the only way to not be a
racist is to be a visibly condescending liberal who makes a point of
talking about how much of a racist he or she isn't.

Political
correctness has spent a long time defining liberalism, and the attitudes
that go with it, as the opposite of racism. The result is a thermometer
that instead of running from -40 to 50 degrees Celsius, instead runs from
liberal to racist. The more liberal you are, the less racist you can be
judged as. The less liberal you are, the more likely you are to be
considered a racist. Actual racist content has very little to do with it,
or an ex-President from Georgia who called Obama a "black boy" would not
be trotted out to denounce an Obama opponent as a racist in the first
place. Nor would a Klansman on the Democratic side of the aisle still be
sitting in the Senate.

So Maureen Dowd who couldn't hear Jimmy
Carter say "black boy" when he did, heard Joe Wilson say, "boy", when he
didn't. Because it's not what you actually say that counts, but what the
New York Times columnists and op ed writers decide you really meant.
Accordingly Ex-Klansman Senator Byrd's use of a racial slur was completely
harmless, while a Tea Party protester condemning deficit spending is a
bigot. It's not the crime of bigotry that we're dealing with here, but the
thoughtcrime. The thing which your opponents, who conveniently enough
happened to be the New York Times columnists and op ed writers, think you
really meant.

What we are talking about then is actual prejudice
and bigotry vs political racism or the race card. Actual bigots spout
racial slurs, discriminate against, abuse and assault people for their
race or national or religious background. Political bigotry by contrast is
the modern day version of the witchhunt that involves denouncing someone
you don't like as a racist or a witch.

When denouncing someone for
political bigotry, you don't actually need to get your facts straight. You
don't even need any facts. All you need is a vague feeling that he
probably might and could very well be bigoted, as proven by your
politically correct seventh sense tingling with the warning that there's a
"boy" at the end of his sentence. It was the classic Soviet way of doing
things. And it still works.

Why bother debating whether Joe Wilson's claim was true or not
true, when instead you can trot out a man who rejected a Christian
professor for the board of the Holocaust Memorial Council because his name
"sounded too Jewish" to condemn Joe Wilson as a racist. Now the debate
becomes is Joe Wilson a racist, and when you haven't actually made any
racist statements, the only way to defend yourself is by going on the
defensive, which easily comes across like an admission of guilt.

Before Democrats had been forced to subsist on borrowed
Mau-Mauing. Today with Obama in the White House it has become childishly
easy to condemn anyone in the opposition for racism. After all they're in
the opposition, and why would they be in the opposition... unless they had
problems with a black man in the White House? This kind of reductio ad
absurdum racial argument has become the default party line when dealing
with political opponents. "There's only one possible reason they could
oppose our wholly reasonable political program, because they're
racists."

Democrats had spent eight years calling Bush a liar.
Eight years. But calling Obama a liar is now a hate crime. Drawing a
cartoon of him is a hate crime. Attending a rally protesting his policies
is of course a hate crime. Voting while Republican is also naturally a
hate crime. Essentially being on the opposite side of Obama has become a
hate crime, by the convenient logical trick of presuming that Obama is
equivalent to all black people, and that therefore opposition to him is
equivalent to opposing all black people.

Taking that argument to
the next level, since Obama is also half-white, anyone black or white who
opposes him, is a bigot. And FDR's opponents probably just hated disabled
people. JFK's opponents hated the Irish. And Al Gore lost the election,
because Joe Lieberman was Jewish. While there's humor in that absurdity,
there is also the ominous stench of dictatorship.

It's Un-American
to ban political dissent, unless you define all political dissent as
bigotry. And next thing you know, your secret ballot has been determined
to make you a statistically probable candidate for domestic terrorism.
After all it's just a small hop from not wanting a government boondoggle
of a health care program to being a racist to blowing up FBI buildings.
That's the way liberal logic runs and that's who runs the Justice
Department now.

We have now entered the golden post-racial age in
which it is proof positive of racism to call a politician a liar. So long
as the politician is a democrat and of a race different than yours. Yet if
anything 2008 proved that Americans were willing and even eager to vote
for a black man. But 2008 did not birth the post-racial society, it was
there for a long time already.

That isn't to say that prejudice is dead. Most human
beings have their prejudices, acknowledged and unacknowledged, which is
what gives liberal accusations of racism such power. But most people also
have long ago put aside those prejudices when it comes to working, going
to school, living side by side with, and yes voting into office. We have
been living in a post-racial country for some time now. The old divisions
have the most power when interested parties begin playing them like an
organ, because for all their talk about overcoming prejudice they are
determined that we go on living in a black and white world, because it
suits them. Because it gives them power.

The opposition to Obama
has not come over racial issues, with only the exception in the Gates
case. It has come over political issues, over the key question of how much
power government can wield over people. It is in the interests of those
wielding that power to frame the question as a racial one, rather than a
political one, in order to delegitimize those daring to ask the question.
It is in their interest to play the race card, because then instead of
being forced to explain their misconduct, they can successfully force
their critics to account for that invisible "boy" at the end of a
sentence.

Criticizing the government is not a hate crime, being
suspicious of politicians is a great American tradition and the essence of
democracy, and opposing Obama is not a hate crime. Much as the talking
heads and the op ed writers may try to spin dissent as racism, dissent is
not racism, it is simply dissent. Without the right to dissent, there
would be no civil rights movement. Without the right to dissent, there
will be no America.