Racism, sexism, and elitism – My thoughts on the 2008 election soap opera

As a tax paying permanent resident of the United States with no right to vote, I am watching this election with a lot of disgust and a little bit of amusement. I think this election is really turning into a giant soap opera and I’m not sure how it will turn out, but the prevailing themes have been racism, sexism, and elitism. These are my opinions on what I have seen so far. Feel free to stop reading if you are not interested in my political commentary.

Now on the issue of racism, I’m pretty sick of hearing the rhetoric that if you don’t like Obama you are a racist. I was also pretty sickened by the fact that Obama and the democrats attempted to draw parallels between Obama and Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement. Historically, the Democratic party was the party of the slave owners and the Republican party was formed in opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act which would have expanded slavery into Kansas and expanded the power of the slave owners. Eventually, Abraham Lincoln became the first Republican president and the slaves were freed. During the Civil Rights Movement, the democrats were mostly against the desegregation and civil rights laws. It was Republicans who pushed through the The Civil Rights Act of 1964, a key piece of legislation that outlawed segregation and also created equal employment opportunities for women. One of the Democrats who voted against the Act is Senator Robert Byrd of West Virgina and he is still in office at the age of 91. He is a former member of the Ku Klux Klan and said the following in a letter, “I shall never fight in the armed forces with a Negro by my side… Rather I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds.” He now says that he made a mistake by joining the Ku Klux Klan and endorses Barack Obama. He may be reformed, but it doesn’t change the fact that he supported racism for decades and the democrats have pursued racist agendas for hundreds of years. In a way, I feel that the Democrats are simply using Obama as a tool in the current moment. They are attempting to shed their racist past by using Obama as a symbol of change and I think it definitely worked. Apparently many people now believe that Republicans are the intolerant and racist party because they do not say nice things about Obama. I think that is pretty hypocritical because I am sure many of those old Democrats have nothing nice to say about Obama in their private letters.

The next big theme of this election is sexism. The hatred poured out against Hillary Clinton has pretty much divided the Democrats. There are allegations of caucus fraud by the Obama campaign and one female Clinton-supporting statistician has compiled a 98 page book about what happened during the caucuses. There are a lot of stories of fraud and intimidation conducted by the Obama campaign. The most serious and comical group that sprang out of the Hillary bashing by the Democrats is P.U.M.A, which stands for Party Unity My Ass. They are really serious about supporting Hillary, and there are hundreds of groups of these democrats who believe that the proverbial “old boys club” have shunned their candidate Hillary. Now McCain has picked Sarah Palin in response to the treatment Hillary received. I think it was a brilliant move even though Sarah Palin is the polar opposite of Hillary Clinton on pretty much every issue. Is Palin being used as a gimmick? I believe so, but the response of the Republican party towards Sarah Palin has been extremely enthusiastic, and in a way they are using the sexism of the Democrats against them. So far, the more liberal media has bashed Palin for having kids and having a high powered career at the same time. And just today I read a ridiculous comment by South Carolina Democratic chairwoman Carol Fowler that said Palin’s “primary qualification seems to be that she hasn’t had an abortion.” The funny thing about all of this is that the more they trash Sarah Palin, the more backlash they will receive. There are so many women in America that juggle being a mom and having a career, and I think when the media and rabid Democrats make comments that insinuate Palin isn’t qualified to do her job because she is a mom of five, they are inherently insulting many working woman across the nation.

The final -ism of the election is elitism. In the last election the Republicans painted John Kerry as an elitist that lived in a giant mansion with his ketchup heiress wife, and Kerry lost. This time, it is McCain who has the heiress wife and 8 or 10 homes, but somehow Obama is still more elitist. From where I am standing, both McCain and Obama are pretty far removed from the average American. However, Obama seems more elitist because he is a well spoken and well educated black man and Rev. Jesse Jackson actually said that Obama “talks down to black people” and that he wanted to “cut his nuts off”. Obama did make a lot of critical comments about the African American community including “I don’t know who taught them that reading and writing and conjugating your verbs was acting white, we’ve got to get over that mentality.” With these comments, it’s understandable that some people feel that Obama is elitist, but I think Obama is just being himself and being honest. Technically, you want to have the more educated and wise people in public office, but being humble and likable is also very important because the common man and woman do the voting. So in a way it makes sense that elitism is an undesirable trait, but I don’t think Obama or McCain should act dumb or poor just to be more likable. They are who they are, and there is nothing wrong with being well educated and wealthy as long as they govern with integrity and wisdom.

In the 16 years I have lived in America, it seems that Americans rarely vote on the important issues such as the economy and healthcare. Most of the time we have a personality contest filled with personal attacks. This election is definitely the most heated and divisive election I have seen thus far. It is also by far the most entertaining. I think whatever happens, this election will start a grand social experiment. We will either have the first African American president or the first female Vice President. As demonstrated by this election, racism and sexism are still alive and well in America and if either Palin or Obama fails miserably in their administration they could set back the group they represent. No matter what happens, I just hope things do not get worse than they already are. As the Chinese proverb says, “It’s better to be a dog in a peaceful time than be a human in a chaotic world”.

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