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14. OBAMA STRIVES TO "CHANGE" AMERICA

OBAMA'S PROGRAM OF DEEP SOCIAL AND CULTURAL CHANGE

CONTENTS

Supreme Court appointments:  "identity politics" in action

Obama's own assault on "homophobia"

"Change" now includes the bullying of Christians

Racial hostilities fire back up again

The Obama moral-spiritual legacy

Black lives do matter, greatly

The textual material on this webpage is drawn directly from my work
        America's Story – A Spiritual Journey © 2021, pages 433-439.
SUPREME COURT APPOINTMENTS: "IDENTITY POLITICS" IN ACTION

This move into a much more Secular world demonstrated itself clearly in two early and very important Supreme Court appointments that Obama made, ones that would aid considerably in Obama's determination to "change" America. Both appointments were of unmarried and childless women, pointing to the degree of support that the traditional American family was likely to get from the all-powerful Supreme Court.

The first appointment (May 2009), that of Sonia Sotomayor, was of a Puerto-Rican-born Hispanic militant who distinguished herself in her college years by leading a movement to force Princeton to hire more teachers of Hispanic background and to offer more courses on Hispanic culture. And her general outlook on life did not change much over the years, offering a comment on things in 2001: "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life." This was the kind of minority mentality that Obama found so appealing.

A year later Obama was able to make his second appointment, that of Elena Kagan, who had never served as a judge, but had been called out of academia as Dean of the Harvard Law School to first become Obama's Solicitor General – before receiving the Supreme Court appointment (May 2010). She was a strong opponent of "homophobia" and as Harvard Dean had opposed the military's recruiting efforts on campus because of the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy concerning homosexuality. This too pointed to where the Supreme Court was likely to head things. And she would be the third Jewish member of the nine-member Supreme Court (which at this point included not a single White Protestant male!). Middle America was in for some changes, deep changes.

OBAMA'S OWN ASSAULT ON "HOMOPHOBIA"

In October of his first year in office, Obama was able to sign into law (thanks to the Democrat-controlled Congress) the Hate Crimes Prevention Act, making any act motivated by a person's antipathy towards homosexuality a "hate crime," and thus subject to a doubling of the penalty for such a crime.

It was at first simply the belief that this law merely protected homosexuals from abuse, not itself authorizing the pro-homosexual world to go on the offensive politically against those who still held the view that homosexual behavior was a serious social problem (as America and most other societies traditionally had viewed things almost eternally). But indeed, this step of the president and Congress would be the first in exactly that direction. And in very short order, from that point forward, any opposition to homosexual activity (even just holding such a "homophobic" opinion) would now be considered the truly serious "social problem."

A year later, Obama took the next step down this same path, but only after the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives had been overturned by that November's Congressional vote (2010). He was quick in response to the Democratic Party setback to run through what was at that point a "lame duck" Congress an amendment to the Small Business Act (?!!) repealing the military's "don't ask; don't tell" policy. It passed, not surprisingly, largely along party lines in both houses (it would have failed passage if it had been put before the new incoming Congress a month later). So this was how Obama was going to "change" America.

Then also in February of the new year (2011) Obama had his Attorney General send a letter to Congress announcing that the Department of Justice would no longer enforce the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). So much for the president's inaugural vow to faithfully enforce the laws of the land! So, "change" thus also now meant that the president could enforce whichever laws he himself personally decided to enforce, and could ignore the others if he chose to do so.

But ultimately it was the Supreme Court, not Congress or the president, that in two steps overturned DOMA as law. In United States v. Windsor (June 2013) and Obergefell v. Hodges (June 2015), by a 5-against-4 decision, Supreme Court politics first cut down one of the provisions of DOMA and then finally dismissed the whole thing. Thus five lawyers in black robes decided for America what constituted marriage and what did not.[1] And there was no known way for Congress to get its law back as the law of the land, because those five (which of course included Obama's two court appointees) had made the final decision as to what was national law and what was not. And there exists no known way for Congress, through its own legislative power assigned by the Constitution, to counter the Supreme Court's greater legislative power, one simply assumed by the Court itself.

[1]DOMA had been approved in 1996 with a huge majority vote of 342-65 in the House and 84-14 in the Senate. But, with the encouragement of the Obama administration, it would take only a 5-4 Supreme Court decision to overturn that socially strategic law.

CHANGE NOW INCLUDES THE BULLYING OF CHRISTIANS

It did not take long for the new attitude of Obama's Washington to make its way to the nation's streets. When the president of Chick-fil-A, Dan Cathy, commented in an interview by the Baptist Press in July of 2012 that he held a traditional view on marriage (being ordained by God himself as only between a man and a woman), the attacks against him and his restaurant business were fierce. Chicago mayor (and former Obama chief of staff) Rahm Emmanuel and Chicago Alderman, Proco "Joe" Moreno" announced that they would block the opening of any new Chick-fil-A restaurants in the city. This position was also immediately taken up by Boston mayor Thomas Menino. But this violation of Cathy's right to express an opinion was even too much for the very Liberal ACLU, which joined the voices protesting against such political bullying. Both the Chicago and Boston mayors backtracked from their announcements. But from that point on, Chick-fil-A would find itself constantly in the middle of controversy over this issue of marriage.

Then things ramped up even more the following year (early 2013) when a young couple, the Kleins, owning a small bakery, told one of their customers that they would not be able to bake a wedding cake for her because their Christian beliefs would not allow them to support a lesbian wedding. She would have to go elsewhere for a wedding cake. So hurt was the lesbian couple that they turned the hurt back on the Kleins, filing a complaint with Oregon's Bureau of Labor and Industries. This soon hit the news, which brought protesters stationed outside their bakery, finally forcing the couple to close down their bakery and try to continue their work from their home. But the countering hurt did not end there. In 2015 Oregon authorities hit them with a $135,000 fine (but the Kleins in turn received considerable financial support through the Go Fund Me website – which then got shut down when those managing the website discovered the purpose of the funding!). The decision against the Kleins was appealed in 2017, but went against them – as well as did the appeal all the way to Oregon's Supreme Court (June 2018). Christian "homophobia" was going to be eliminated, by force if necessary.

RACIAL HOSTILITIES FIRE BACK UP AGAIN

An incident that occurred in Florida in early 2012 pointed to how a local event was once again going to become a national matter – and a revival of bitter "identity politics" – especially when the President and his Department of Justice signed onto the matter. A man (of mixed race) George Zimmerman, who was undertaking nighttime community watch (the neighborhood had been hit by a number of burglaries), got into a fight with a young Black, Trayvon Martin, and Martin was shot and killed.

Zimmerman was of enough "whiteness" that the incident, pushed heavily by the national media, was slanted into a new example of White v. Black racism, supported even by Obama, who went on record stating that "if I had a son, he would look like Trayvon" (Obama had only two daughters). Others, such as sports figures and celebrity stars, also signed in on the event, including (naturally) the Reverend Al Sharpton. An online campaign run by "Change.org" gathered over two million signatures calling for Zimmerman's arrest for murder, even before the full evidence in the matter was assembled. It simply had become Black v. White, with Obama himself part of the chorus demanding "justice" – also, even before the matter had been put under the scrutiny of a court trial.

But interestingly, leaders in the Black organization NAACP came out against this very racial hyping – convinced that such heightening of racial tensions served no very good purpose in improving the nation's race relations. Ultimately a jury also found that under the circumstances, Zimmerman, in the struggle, had acted fully within the law and thus was guilty of no crime. Even when Obama's Department of Justice looked into the matter, try as it might, it could not find any grounds for Zimmerman's arrest either. And the effort to cast mixed-race Zimmerman as a racist just could not stand up to the facts of the matter, though it did nothing to satisfy those determined to depict this event as nothing more than White racism in action.

Ultimately, Zimmerman and his family had to leave their homes and go into seclusion as the threats against them mounted (and still continue to this day). Overall, the whole incident heated up the nation to the point that it would take months for America to get past this tragedy.

But that was mild in comparison to what happened across the nation as a result of an event in Ferguson Missouri in August of 2014, when a White policeman, Darren Wilson, shot a Black youth, Michael Brown, in a conflict between the two. Once again, even before the facts of the matter were in, Americans began to take action against "police brutality," especially when undertaken by a White policeman. Protests broke out immediately once the event hit the national news, and soon local pillaging and torching began to take place across the nation. Naturally, the Reverend Sharpton was quick on the scene to cultivate the outrage of Blacks, registered in the refrain "hands up; don't shoot" which Brown's friend had (falsely) claimed Brown had uttered just before being shot.

Most ironically the main theme of the protests that hit the country (including in many college campuses) was "Black Lives Matter." Certainly they do. The death toll of young Blacks in America is a huge national tragedy. But it only seems to matter when a White is involved, which is actually only a small percentage of the time. And why does it not seem to matter when it is a case of Black-on-Black? Those deaths are just as tragic. And yes, their lives matter too.

But that is not how this incident was being developed. Again, this was simply identity politics in action. And also, once again, President Obama quickly signed on to the event, identifying with the young man who died so tragically (Obama certifying that he too had felt the racism that Brown had experienced) , and once again promising to send the Department of Justice, even its Attorney General Eric Holder himself, to look into the matter, to make sure that the local police investigation did not just sweep the matter under the rug (implying that this was what could easily be expected in such events).

However, little by little the actual facts in the case began to come out, though it did not seem to matter much to those committed to defending the "Black Lives Matter" crusade. It seems that Brown was hyped up on PCP, the huge youth had just pushed aside a store clerk who was contesting him over some cigars that Brown was determined to walk out with (caught on a security camera), and then was walking down the middle of the street with his friend Dorian Johnson when officer Wilson pulled up alongside them and told them to move to the curb, an order that Brown was in no mood to obey. A struggle ensued when Brown reached into the car in an attempt to grab Wilson's gun, shots were fired inside the police car, Brown and Johnson then ran off, with Wilson in pursuit – until Brown turned and charged Wilson, and got shot and killed in the process. The "hands up; don't shoot" statement coming from Johnson was countered by observers at the scene who said that Brown had said no such thing, and that officer Wilson was under full assault when Brown was shot and killed. Forensics confirmed the latter account.

And although cleared by the evidence in the case, here too officer Wilson had to leave Ferguson under death threats. And again, try as he might, Holder's Department of Justice also could find no basis for further action against Wilson – although Holder could not pass up the opportunity to deliver a sermon about the deep racial injustice that governed American society, and, being a minority himself, he could feel the pain of America's minorities. In short, Holder was inviting America to pursue its cultural animosities through bitter identity politics, rather than find higher ground to come together over. But that seemed to be the theme of the times, or at least the theme of the Obama Administration (and many of the Congressional Democrats).

THE OBAMA MORAL-SPIRITUAL LEGACY

Eight years of Obama's "change" indeed left the country just that: deeply changed. In attacking and bringing down Middle or "White" America at every opportunity, he left Middle America bewildered, and Blacks and other self-identified "minorities" very vigilant against any effort of Middle America to reassert itself. Obama (along with the federal courts and the lawsuit-happy ACLU and its associates) had succeeded in branding Middle American social-moral standards as racist, homophobic, sexist, etc., in other words, prohibited by law on every front.  But worst of all for America, this same group had finalized the understanding that the Christian religion was prohibited in public everywhere. Religion could be touched on publicly, but only as long as it was non-specific ("spiritually generic") in nature.

Worse, the legacy was to live on (supported strongly by Obama even out of office) in the form of the refusal of professional athletes to stand in respect during the playing of the national anthem, but to kneel as a sign of protest against all these "isms" that caused minorities to suffer so. This included very well-paid and highly popular football players, who just could not get enough of a social payoff to make them loyal supporters of the very idea of the American nation.

BLACK LIVES DO MATTER, GREATLY

Racism in any form, Black as well as White, serves no one honorably or even profitably. It's a sign of insecurity rather than any serious understanding of life and its challenges. Racism, just like nationalism (English and French killing Germans because, well they're just Germans and need to be killed, or so went the thinking of World War One), simply finds some great source of evil that, in being brought down, will supposedly make life much, much better. So racism in the 1950s and 1960s not only gave Southern poor Whites some sense that fighting the "Black peril" brought some logic to their difficult lives, it in no ways improved the picture, for anyone. Well, anyone except the segregationist politicians who promoted such racism in order to get themselves elected and reelected. And Joe McCarthy did the same thing with the Red Scare, until the shallowness of what he was up to finally got exposed.

There's much the same problem in the way Blacks explode easily over the difficulties they are having gaining the social standing that any person naturally craves. No one can claim that there are no serious problems confronting Black life. That just isn't so. But the problem is very complex, with all kinds of causes behind this issue. Blaming Whites is, of course, the easiest explanation, one that hustling Black politicians at all levels of American society have been exploiting for their own political purposes. But as with all racist responses, this is not likely to bring serious solutions to the social problems facing the Black community.*

The Black murder rate is most disheartening. A government report that came out in 2011, early in the Obama Administration, pointed out that murder constitutes the biggest cause of death of Blacks in the 15-34 age group, almost 40 percent of those deaths (compared to 3.8 percent in the same age group of Whites). Most all of that is Black-on-Black action, though the police are sometimes involved. Actually, police shooting of Whites is twice the number involving Blacks, a tragedy for everyone involved. But nearly all of even those incidents show that the police were doing exactly what they were hired to do, in the line of duty in often very violent neighborhoods. There were tragic exceptions of course, but quite few considering the hundreds of thousands of police serving the country.
In any case, this very serious problem facing America is just not getting the serious attention it needs and deserves, because it has become much too politicized. Again, easy racist answers do not ever offer wisdom in the search for a solution to major social problems.

But thankfully a number of Black public figures have been speaking out about how racism is the wrong approach to the problem, something that racist politicians do not want to hear. But at least this former group is trying to get some serious action underway to improve the lives of young Black males – and Black neighborhoods – caught in a serious social crisis.



Go on to the next section:  The Obama Economy

  Miles H. Hodges