Presidential hopeful, Mitt Romney’s condemnation of Obama’s “mixed messages” and “sympathizing with those who breached our embassy in Egypt instead of condemning their actions” feeds into the rhetoric of right-wing racists.
With a growing number of Americans falsely believing President is a Muslim, and with Romney trailing Obama in favorability, there is little wonder why Romney would court the mis-informed voters.
Mike the Mad Biologist states an obvious three-part explanation for Romney’s statement.
- Reinforce the belief that Obama is a Muslim (not that there would be anything wrong if he were). One would think a Mormon might want to stray away from the religious approach.
- Based on #1, imply that Obamas can’t be trusted since he is “sympathetic” to militant Islamic radicals. This would neutralize Obama’s greatest foreign policy asset, killing the mass murderer of nearly 3,000 civilians (that would be Bin Laden)
- Rally his slavering Uruk-hai base”
Mike concludes:
“It’s vile, reprehensible and like most everything uttered by Team Romney, ultimately founded on a lie. But it is pretty straightforward what he’s trying to do here. It’s just the foreign policy version of the dog whistle”
Romney has already falsely stated that President Obama and other Democrats are hoping to take “In God We Trust” off of our currency. This plays into the false notion from the Tea Party that Democrats are godless. Thus if Republican efforts to suppress minority, student, and elderly votes fail to secure Romney’s chance for election, they will fall back on the false notion of the Socialist, Communist, Kenyan, Muslim, who hates America and hates Christians.
As I sat on my couch watching the Packer v Bears game in front of my picture window, my bloodshot hungover eyes spied two dark suited individuals park their bicycles on my front lawn and lo and behold, they rang my doorbell.
“We are your ward teachers, Brother Belville, and we would like to talk to you about your immortal soul and the Mormon Gospel.”
Who could deny that? I hadn’t discussed my immortal soul with anyone and figured it was about time. So, I cracked open a Budweiser, lit a Marlboro, asked if they would like one of either [answer no, of course] and invited them to have a seat.
These two reminded me of Mutt and Jeff. One tall and gangly the other weighed in at 260 Lbs and stood a stunning 5’4″.
The Five-foot-plus said, “Your body is a temple, Brother and I notice you drink the poison we know as alcohol and smoke nasty cigarettes. We Mormons abhor anything that destroys your temple.”
I replied, with respect of course, “So, being morbidly obese and stuffing your face with Twinkies all day is okay, right?”
They left. I cracked another Budweiser, pounded out another ciggy and continued watching the Packers destroy the Bears. To hell with my immortal soul.
omg!!! then there must be a lot of sinners .. gee we poor blacks can’t get a break… even Noah’s son Shem got threw under the bus..
I don’t care what religion or choice of nonreligion anyone cares to choose. The problem comes when we try to dictate our personal beliefs upon others. When we attack the sacred ideas of others it says to me we are unsure or weak in our own sacred beliefs. Why would it be so necessary to keep creating ‘New Religions’ if we were just content to worship the sacred that is within our selves and each other. That spark of “God” that exists in all of creation seems to not be enough to satisfy our need of expressing the sacred. I find religion very troubling. Does an all powerful entity really need all of this chaos and divisiveness to still be all powerful. I think the Great Spirit just weeps at all of our foolishness in the name of religion. But since it is here what do we gain by denigrating someone of another path. I have met people of numerous religions and we all had one thing in common. Our humanity and love of others. Our desire to see a better world. Yes maybe it is foolish to think we could all get along if we got back to the simplicity of worshiping and respecting the sacred in all and everything. Gee… that would cover everything from each other to our environment. Just being respectful of the least would elevate us all beyond the need to say my religion is better than yours. Because if any of you are paying attention to whatever scripture you are reading you might find a central message to it being to respect the sacred in all and to LOVE one another as yourself. Maybe greed and hate could then be a distant memory. It seems to me that all religion has achieved overall is to create violence and hate and give someone else control.