Fear, Fear, Fear

Our country is faced with enormous challenges. Based on what I've learned about many Presidents, George W. Bush can arguably go down as the worst President ever. He has served with the utmost incompetence and arrogance. Now, Joe Biden delivered a very powerful statement a few years ago at a breakfast held somewhere in New England (might've been New Hampshire but can't remember): "When George Bush fails, my country fails."

People around me with varying opinions have expressed their fear about an upcoming Obama administration. It doesn't help they're Republicans, but that's not an excuse to end our friendships. Here are samples of what I've heard: "He's just going to give handouts to other blacks." "How is he going to help homeowners? You had too many sorry people who bought homes and couldn't afford them." "There are still too many racists out there. If someone shoots him, you better get ready to buy a gun."

I'll try my best to convey exactly how I responded to colleagues and friends who shared the aforementioned sentiments. Let's start with the first statement about handouts and welfare. NAFTA was an unpopular policy passed during the Clinton administration. This wasn't the main problem though. During his final years, corporate welfare continued to take a front seat, as Clinton pandered more and more to the Republicans. More and more jobs were getting shipped overseas and unions increasingly lost their memberships. I still pull out the Noam Chomsky line: "The wealthy elite are always first in line for public services." Look at how much we recently spent on corporate welfare.

In Augusta, the consolidated government is divided half black and half white. They answer to their churches and communities first and Augusta as a whole last. This is dysfunctionality at its worse. On this first point, I kept reiterating how Barack will reward teachers with higher pay for performance. He's also asking for self-reliance similar to John F. Kennedy. Government can't solve all the problems. His ad nauseum stump speeches reiterated this when he continued saying parents (or guardians) are going to have to put away the T.V., computer, and video games and get their children to do their homework.

The mortgage meltdown is the second concern. Barack pledged he will go back to the recent economic bailout bill and revise it so taxpayers will be given breaks. Also, he's proposing to have a 90 day moratorium on those facing foreclosures.

Yes, the economic bailout was widely unpopular. We've still seen CEOs and top executives spending lavish amounts of money through their pensions on our dime. And yes, part of the blame can go to some who were in over their heads and reckless with their finances. The blame also goes to many unscrupulous lenders who deliberately juxtaposed the language in the contracts to obtain higher commissions.

Finally, I'm scared to death something tragic might happen just like the next person. Ronald Wilson Reagan -- 666. Six leters in each name. Some nut thought he was the antichrist and tried to take Reagan's life. There were plenty of poor decisions made during Reagan's administration: Failing to acknowledge how AIDS is contracted and informing what the virus was for nearly three years that led to mass hysteria for people thinking it could be contracted by simply touching someone who had it, war on drugs and giving users outrageous prison sentences when it was spread to the streets by corporate titans and other influential people, enormous tax dollars spent on the military industrial complex, and empowering the Religious Right who continue to defy Jefferson's vision of our Democracy.

I was told Barack will side with the likes of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. Barack is much more sympathetic for gay rights and rights for all than Jackson and Sharpton. I spoke with Jackson and interviewed one of Sharpton's chief surrogates. They don't represent Martin Luther King's vision. Sorry. Include the late Coretta Scott King. MLK and Coretta believed in equal rights for all. Unfortunately, Sharpton's chief surrogate was reluctant to acknowledge rights for the gay community when I spoke to him. This was an event for Social and Economic Equality and how the Bush administration used gay discrimination as a distraction. I quickly learned this man was also indifferent to gay rights. Finally, he gave a politically correct answer by saying he doesn't fully adhere to the Holy Bible. I asked a few minutes later for a business card in case I wanted to follow up with him. Nope. Hmm.

There's lots to fear, but Franklin Delanor Roosevelt lifted a nation before we headed into another World War. I'm sure you're familiar by now, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." We can just hole ourselves up for the remainder of our lives. That would be easy, right? I'm confident we've turned another page in our history, and the vast majority of us have risen above petty prejudices and discrimination. Who knows? My outlook is no matter how bad things are around me, there's always someone else out there who has it worse.