A Major Difference between Obama and me: Anger

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Fri Mar-21-08 12:12 AM
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A Major Difference between Obama and me: Anger

If Barack Obama had my temperament there is no way that he, as a black man, could be a serious candidate for President of the United States.

All my life I’ve had moderate issues with anger. I say “issues” rather than “problems” because I’m not certain that it’s done me more harm than good. Yes, it has ruined some personal relationships for me. Yes, it has sometimes strained my relationships with my parents, wife, and children. Yes, I once nearly lost a job that I could not afford to lose because I told off my boss (The only reason I didn’t get fired was because I luckily found another job before she found someone to replace me). Well, ok, it probably has overall done me more harm than good. But I have never physically hurt anyone out of anger, nor got into trouble with the law because of it.

My latest incident occurred a couple of months ago, as my 31 year old daughter was getting screwed over a major medical bill for treatment of a thyroid disorder. The insurance company refused to pay the bill because they said that they didn’t cover preventive treatment, which my daughter’s doctor had miscoded her treatment as. The doctor’s office was demanding payment and threatening to make trouble for her if she refused, despite the fact that they repeatedly refused to correct the coding of her disease in response to her repeated requests. Finally, I called the doctor’s office and asked to speak with the doctor, which the administrative assistant refused to let me do. So I discussed the coding issue with the administrative assistant, who explained to me that my daughter’s treatment was “preventive”. She also told me that I was not authorized to speak on behalf of my daughter (though my daughter had authorized me to do so). To make a long story short, I totally lost it. I screamed at her that, as a physician, I was well aware that her boss was perpetrating fraud upon my daughter, and that if they didn’t correct the miscode and stop harassing my daughter immediately I would make sure that he was prosecuted for fraud. I thought I had gone too far, having totally lost my cool, but it worked. The matter was cleared up by the next day. Sometimes anger is helpful.

My anger over political issues

Anyone who has read many of my DU journal posts knows that, though I try to write as objectively and coolly as I can, many of my OPs are filled with anger towards the Bush administration and towards many actions that my country has taken over the course of its history. In that respect, my political temperament is much closer to that of Barack Obama’s minister, Jeremiah Wright, than it is to Obama himself.

My greatest political pet peeve is the propensity of so many Americans to “patriotically” boast about how great their country is, while ignoring or arrogantly disclaiming its numerous moral transgressions. I believe very deeply that our country has many serious problems, historical and current, and that problems such as these cannot be addressed, let alone solved, unless and until we fully acknowledge them. This philosophy is perhaps best expressed in my OP titled “Unmentionable Things in U.S. Politics”, which I end with:

When stolen presidential elections are unmentionable, the impetus to do something to prevent elections from being stolen is diminished; when a nation fails to admit to its immoral wars, the likelihood that U.S. presidents will continue to push us into those wars, in the absence of substantial resistance, is increased; and as long as it is taboo to attribute impure motives to our presidents or other top powerful leaders, the necessity of removing them from office will seldom seem to be urgent.

But I guess that’s the whole point.

The politics of race and anger in the U.S.

I have to admit that if someone had asked me in 2007 or earlier if I thought a black man had a chance of becoming President of our country, I would have said no, I don’t. But Barack Obama’s meteoric political rise has convinced me otherwise. Some people have criticized me for putting too much stock in polls. But I do believe that polls over a period of several months that consistently indicated Obama leading over every Republican Presidential candidate have proven that he is a very serious contender for the U.S. Presidency. That made me feel that, in some sense at least, I had overestimated the magnitude of racism in our country.

This is the way I see it: Racism has many components to it. Two of the major components are 1) an arrogant need to feel superior to other people; and, 2) fear of those who are different from us.

I believe that Obama’s political rise made it clear that the need of white Americans to feel superior to black Americans is no longer so great that it precludes the electing of a black U.S. president. That leaves the fear issue, which is definitely a potential deal breaker for any black person running for President of our country.

There has been no paucity of angry Republican white men elected to the U.S. Congress in recent years. Anger is not necessarily a major barrier to political success in our country if you’re white – especially if you run on a Republican ticket. But an angry black man, or even a black man who is slightly perceived as being angry, has little chance of being elected President in our country today. Such a man would stir up latent fears in the white majority of our country, and his presidential viability would be quickly snuffed out.

Barack Obama’s lack of anger

Obama exhibits very little anger. I do not know him well enough to know exactly why that is. I have at times, given my personality and political philosophy, felt quite irritated at his lack of expressed anger, or his pleas for “unity”, especially with respect to Republicans, who mostly infuriate me. It could be that he represses his anger, or that he transcends it, or simply that he feels very little of it.

I agree with many other DUers that Obama’s recent http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/hisownwords">37 minute speech in response to all the media flack about Reverend Wright was a great and courageous speech, for many reasons. He showed that he could praise people and criticize them at the same time, without showing any anger towards them. He magnanimously referred to the uproar over Geraldine Ferraro’s recent comments as merely a gaffe. He addressed racism and corporate irresponsibility as major problems that need to be solved, again expressing little if any anger. One of his main points was that it is much more important to understand people for their faults rather than be angry at them.

It’s difficult for me to fully relate to his almost total lack of expressed anger with regard to the injustices that he discussed. Yet at the same time I very much admired his ability to address them while remaining so focused, cool and calm.

As I said before, a black man would not be a viable candidate for President of the United States if he could not address these issues without expressing anger. I recognize that there was at least some element of political calculation in his speech. One would have to be an utter fool to think that anyone on the verge of becoming President of the United States would make a speech to the nation totally void of political calculation. But I also believe that the many views he expressed were sincere and came from his heart – and that more than anything else is what made it such a great speech.

The Republican game plan

With Obama’s charisma, eloquence, large following, and fundraising capabilities (as well as his delegate lead in the Democratic primaries), and with our nation leaning so heavily Democratic, it is quite clear to me that there is only one thing at this point that is likely to derail his quest for the Presidency: racism, or more specifically, the fears of white people of an angry black man becoming President.

Consequently, the almost total absence of anger as a part of Barack Obama’s personality presents a major problem for Republicans. Hence their strategy of trying to impute anger and racism to him upon the thin thread of his friendship with Reverend Wright. I believe that Reverend Wright’s speech for which he has been so maligned was an excellent speech. Yes, it was incendiary and divisive, yet he spoke a lot of truths that Americans need to hear, in my opinion.

But he was highly critical of our country, and that is one thing that does not play well in American politics. It was an angry speech that emphasized our country’s history of racism, and many Americans don’t want to hear that. So the strategy is to reduce Reverend Wright to nothing but an angry black man. Then, by emphasizing the fact that he is Obama’s friend and the pastor of his church, given the latent white fears of angry black men, that makes Barack Obama an angry black man too.

The idea is preposterous and highly cynical. If people could reasonably be imputed to have negative characteristics merely on the basis of every friend, pastor, or associate who had those negative characteristics, the potential for defaming people would be unlimited, and every person in the world could be painted as a nefarious character.

But this is the Republicans’ only hope. And with the assistance of whatever racism they can drum up, they just might get away with this. They will certainly use every opportunity to do so. Reverend Wright’s speech will be played over and over again by our corporate news media, all the way up to Election Day, as long as it appears to make white people afraid. Let us pray that they don’t get away with this.