RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2024/01/31/hows-life-in-obamas-fundamentally-transformed-america-working-out-for-you-so-far/

It should be painfully obvious to everyone by now that we are living in the fast-hardening cement of what Barack Obama promised to wildly cheering crowds on the campaign trail in 2008—”a fundamental transformation of America.”

Anyone who can remember back to the decades before the Obama presidency will recall a country committed to fairness and common sense: judging a person based on the content of their character rather than the color of their skin; welcoming a person who came lawfully into this country who applied for citizenship through traditionally prescribed means; never giving a second thought about girls’ and women’s sports being reserved only for a person born female and without a speck of steroids, let alone testosterone, in their bodies; expecting that immensely immature men dressed as fat-slob, over-face-painted, faux women would remain hidden inside “special” bars and clubs and not held up as twerking examples to kindergarten children; acknowledging unequivocally that Marxism was a bad idea and not a glorified ideal; realizing that only a tyrant would actually jail their political opponents for simply questioning highly-suspicious presidential election results; and, generally, in a more fair-minded time: no one even considered ever gleefully calling “evil good and good evil.”

This, of course, is but a very short list of the slop that is being shoveled on a daily basis down the throats of ordinary, common-sense Americans. (We will leave it to the reader to shout out a few dozen more.)

All of this slow-boiling of the pot, with the American-citizen frog paddling lethargically within, began with the nomination of Barack Obama.

People so desperately wanted what Obama was peddling, “Hope and Change,” that they inserted into that second word whatever it was their hearts desired most. And certainly the color of the man’s skin was the huge selling point. Sure, the candidate had no track record, and, let’s face it, had he been white, Hillary Clinton would have been the Democrats’ candidate that election season. But the biracial aspect was seen, perhaps even symbolically, as a way of finally unifying this country after so much racial tension throughout the previous decades.

Many conservatives like to push back on the charge that America is “systemically racist” by pointing to the 2008 election. The basis of their argument: “Would a racist nation vote a black man into office?”

However, isn’t it more accurate to say that voting for someone based on their skin color is also racist? Racism goes both ways. That’s why anyone who says that Blacks cannot be racist is making a racist statement.

“It’s not about skin,” a friend once told me, “it’s about sin.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-do-black-pastors-oppose-israel-7d131f24?mod=opinion_lead_pos11

More than 1,000 black pastors are pressing President Biden to restrain Israel in its war with Hamas and threatening that if he doesn’t do so, it will cost him black support in November. “We see them as a part of us,” the Rev. Cynthia Hale of Decatur, Ga., told the

New York Times

, referring to Palestinians. “They are oppressed people. We are oppressed people.” Barbara Williams-Skinner of the National African American Clergy Network said: “Black clergy have seen war, militarism, poverty and racism all connected.”

Yet their focus on the Middle East is perplexing. “The Israel-Gaza war, unlike Iran and Afghanistan, has evoked the kind of deep-seated angst among black people that I have not seen since the civil-rights movement,” Ms. Williams-Skinner said. Why? The world is filled with victims of oppression—the Uyghurs of China, the Kurds of Iraq, the Ukrainians. The black citizens of Sudan have been subjected to mass killing and enslavement at the hands of Arabs. What makes the Palestinians more worthy of sympathy—especially since, unlike these other groups, they have turned down numerous offers of statehood and have made terrorism their tactic of choice?

Perhaps it is that their antagonists are Jews. In a 1992 article, the historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. pondered the causes of rising antisemitism in the black community. He considered the influence of “Christian anti-Semitism, given the historic importance of Christianity in the black community.” But he laid the primary blame on black demagogues who were vying for leadership in the new “Afrocentric” movement.

Mr. Gates noted that many Jews were surprised by the “recrudescence of black anti-Semitism, in view of the historic alliance between the two groups.” He cited the “brutal truth” that the “new anti-Semitism arises not in spite of the black-Jewish alliance, but because of it.” The alliance had been formed by a previous generation of black ministers, led by Martin Luther King Jr., who sought integration. The new generation of Afrocentric leaders, including pastors, needed to keep blacks isolated to establish their own power.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/brandon-johnson-chicago-cease-fire-resolution-gaza-israel-2e7cd658?mod=opinion_lead_pos4

The Chicago City Council on Wednesday passed a resolution calling for a cease-fire in Gaza, and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson cast the tie-breaking vote. Skeptics wonder when the mayor will support a cease-fire on the West Side.

The Council resolution calls for a “permanent ceasefire to end the ongoing violence in Gaza . . . for humanitarian assistance including medicine, food and water, to be sent into the impacted region; and the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages.”

In a statement last week, Mr. Johnson said he supports a cease-fire in Gaza because “the killing has to stop” and because he “want(s) to save lives.” He cited numbers from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry that the war has killed some 25,000 Palestinians.

The resolution created a flag-waving ruckus in Chicago City Hall Tuesday but has zero effect on Israel or Hamas. Its more proximate effect is to endear Mr. Johnson to the left and put Chicago in the same category as cities like San Francisco, Oakland, Atlanta and Detroit that have also aligned themselves with the Palestinian cause.