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A Sad Certificate

By Farooque Chowdhury

28 April, 2011
Countercurrents.org

A sad certificate is now occupying a part of US politics. And, it resonate Martin Luther King’s dream, a dream for equality, a dream for dignity, a dream for dignified life for all. And, it reaffirms a deep disease, a chronic disease fed by a feeling that humanity does not own, a feeling of contempt and hatred.

Barack Obama had to face a relentless campaign, a ceaseless hunting question – his US citizenship – for more than the last two years. The motive: undermine the legitimacy of Obama presidency by selling the question among the general public. Obama broke his silence on the issue as the White House released his long-form birth certificate including a certificate of live birth, signed affidavits from people who viewed Obama's long-form birth certificate, etc. Now, all after these, birther leader Orly Taitz casts doubt on the authenticity of the certificate. Her argument: In 1961, Hawaiian officials would have classified Obama as “Negro” rather than using the designation “African”. The heart of the argument is exposed with the “N” word – a racial hatred. The birther conviction: an African-American cannot legitimately win the presidency; so, Obama’s entry in the White House is the result of a deep plot.

In essence, it, the campaign, is racism. Rev. Jesse Jackson told Politico that Donald Trump’s campaign to get Obama to release his birth certificate is deeply rooted in race. And, in essence, it is part of a politics that aims to engage people with non-issues so that people don’t have time to question failures of status quo.

Obama now faces other types of scrutiny including his academic transcripts: “He was not a good student”, “he has not authored his memoir”, and “he is secretly a Muslim”. Months ago, there was campaign: Obama is a socialist. A study from the University of Delaware finds that there are persons who view Obama as “less American”.

Has ever an American president faced similar questions? Johnson, who was escalating war in Vietnam? Nixon, who was busy with Watergate? Actually, this is part of a campaign to de-legitimate the Obama presidency. And, this de-legitimacy campaign is part of an effort to distract the American people from the burning issues of job, home, health care, tax, budget, debt, CEO bonus, bailout money, economic reform, and wars abroad.

The system is failing to address these problems while voters are increasingly getting frustrated with both the political parties. Politicians’ privileges are being questioned as people discuss the issue of budget deficit. The state of affairs signal a widening divide: prosperity increasingly concentrated in the pockets of a few while an increasing majority faces hard days.

In this situation, dividing people along race or religion or region is an easy trick for an arrangement that fails to resolve problems being faced by the people. This trick is being applied by a section of the dominating interests. It is campaigning against the section, symbolized by Obama, which is faithfully trying to renew the Empire’s declining supremacy with minimum losses, add credibility and acceptability, glorify image while reinvigorating acts of intervention and war. Hatred campaign against that section is a self-harming tact by a section of the dominating interests. It is a limitation of politics of the section, and as a whole, of the class.

The trick, however, tells of a deep disease of the Empire. It is a symptom, the symptom of a serious disease suffering by the system that ignores its burning problems and indulges with non-problems, gets engaged with dividing society along sectarian line, tries to drive people along the path of racial hatred. This signifies the system’s economic and political inability to resolve the burning issues.

The section of the class now finds it easier, a cheaper tool, to resort to color-mongering than to address the problems of increasing poverty, homeless children, jobless parents, ghost towns. The section will try to overwhelm psyche of the general masses with its hatred campaign in a social reality where a homeless mother, Tanya McDowell, faces a possible 20-year jail sentence for sending her child to a “wrong” school. Tanya having no fixed address “divides her time between an apartment, where she is not allowed to stay when the lease holder is away, the Norwalk Emergency Shelter and her minivan.” The homeless mother will also have to pay $15,000 for “stealing her son’s education.” She initially used the address of a babysitter to enroll her son in the school. This is the face of a system.

The hatred-mongering will be in the name of opposing either “powerful” unions or Muslims or blacks.

It, therefore, shows the need to pronounce:

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places shall be made plains, and the crooked places will be made straight… (Martin Luther King, Jr. I have a Dream, 1963)




 


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