*** by Ed Brodow ***
Barack Obama came along at a time when Americans were anxious to show how tolerant they are. The impetus for their emotional outpouring at the polls was lingering white guilt left over from the Old South.
It has been 150 years since the abolition of slavery but feelings take time to heal. By the year 2008, many whites continued to harbor negative opinions about blacks. Some of those views were irrational hangovers from the past. Many were honest reactions to the violence and self-destructive behaviors rampant in the African-American community. Decent whites found themselves pulled apart by these competing attitudes. Their ambivalence was interpreted as evidence they were guilty of a moral crime. What were they supposed to do to make themselves feel okay about their own thoughts and emotions?
Abracadabra! The answer appeared out of thin air. An articulate, well-educated, light-skinned Negro—who was not even descended from slaves—was just what the doctor ordered to cure the ills of repressed racism and give white folks a sense of moral redemption. Obama was idolized and idealized by millions of whites who saw only what they wanted to see. Perfection. Obama could do no wrong. He was the savior who offered them forgiveness for their imagined sins. I remember how shocked I was when white acquaintances called me racist for suggesting that the emperor had no clothes. Yes, I saw through Obama from the very beginning, but it placed me in the moral penalty box for a long time.
Gradually more and more Obama supporters began to see through the baloney. The fog began to lift. Millions recognized that the man behind the curtain was anything but a wizard. The success of Donald Trump was the result. Donald’s contribution was his ability to cut through the lies spread by the Obama administration. However, we still have large pockets of voters who continue to adore the liberal playbook in spite of the obvious damage that Obama inflicted on the country. The progressive cadres in the Washington bureaucracy, academia, the media, and Hollywood have been desperate to find a replacement for their boy.
Voila! I give you her royal highness, Oprah Winfrey. Another black champion to help the poor white folks deal with their racial angst. A consummate communicator just like Obama, and—most of all—a woman. A woman in the year of the woman, the year of “me-too,” the year when it is acceptable to throw white men under the bus. I confess it drives me crazy when guilt drives our politics and white people support racist platforms like “white privilege,” Black Lives Matter, and “toxic masculinity.” But they do, in droves. You could see it clearly by following the cameras as they panned the audiences of Oprah’s daytime talk show. Mostly white women, they appeared to be mesmerized, their thoughts controlled by whatever high-and-mighty cause her highness was pushing that day. These are people who have neither the time nor the inclination to think for themselves. They would rather be told what to think, even when their thoughts are self-destructive. And now they have Oprah to pick up the reins relinquished by Obama. She will tell them what to think.
But does Oprah really offer anything better than Obama? Take another look behind the curtain. This is the same Oprah who said that old white people “just have to die” in order to put an end to racism. This is an angry woman who bears the scars of her brutal childhood. This is not a woman who wants to bring the country together, as her supporters allege. This is a woman who wants to get even. Her platform is “social justice,” a power play by minority special interests to impose their agenda on the white majority. By dividing Americans into competing groups based on color and ethnicity, social justice has been perverted by the Left into what Ilana Mercer has referred to as “a demand for redistribution and revenge.” And revenge is Oprah’s middle name.
Donald Trump offers an alternative to this divisive campaign of identity politics. “It’s refreshing how switched-off Trump is from the racial grievance industry,” says Ilana Mercer in The Trump Revolution. “The no-longer silent majority is exhausted,” she adds. “Americans are exhausted from being racially ramrodded. They’ve had enough of the pigment burden. The noisy-as-hell majority is sick-and-tired of being falsely accused of infractions it’s innocent of.”
Although some may suggest that the same dynamic that worked for Obama will put Oprah into the White House, the country has changed since 2008. White Americans are waking up from their nightmare. They are mad as hell and they are not going to take it anymore. White voters recognize that their racial guilt is a fiction. White men are pushing back against the male bashing industry. The country is pulling out of the moral stagnation caused by eight years of Obama. We are experiencing record growth at home and newfound respect abroad. That is why Donald Trump will beat Oprah Winfrey, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, or whomever the Democrats throw at him in 2020.
Ed Brodow is a political commentator, negotiation expert, and author of Tyranny of the Minority: How the Left is Destroying America.
Copyright © 2018 Ed Brodow. All rights reserved.
http://www.brodow.com
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