In the South, you hear this saying a lot.
“Bless his heart.”
Usually, it’s said in a calm, easy tone with a gentle smile. It offers care and compassion for someone who has had something go wrong and they need some extra help that can only come from God above.
But if you live here long enough, you realize it doesn’t mean that at all – even when spoken with a gentle demeanor.
Translated “Bless his heart” really means “You’re a freaking idiot.”
I say “Bless his heart” a lot now.
It’s directed at the racists that our politics, the Internet, and cable news have spawned.
It’s hard to get outwardly angry at them. These folks are in the throes of the end of the America they knew.
Let me explain my view of today’s racism. We are all racists. That includes me.
Most of us are latent racists. Our racism is usually covert. It becomes overt when we’re threatened. For instance, you’re driving and someone cuts you off. Your tongue fires off that racial slur before your Christian heart knows it.
Here’s what I am receiving online too often:
A friend sends me an email about Obama. It concludes, “He can take his Obamacare and shove it up his black ass.”
Another friend who writes me refers to Obama as a monkey.
Still, another friend uses the term “homey” to describe him.
And then just today, another friend sends me an email with a video interview with an alleged psychiatrist/psychoanalyst saying that Obama is a clinical narcissist.
Bless their hearts.
I had been planning on writing about racism anyway. But the last racist email made me realize how this racism is now moving from the easy anonymity of the Internet to the loutish techniques of cable news.
Here’s how my email discourse with my friend went down.
After questioning the validity of the person psychoanalyzing Obama from a distance, I received a torrent of accusations.
I had, in my friend’s opinion, abandoned my own advice of being journalistically sound for not finding credible links or websites that discredited this person. You can Google the guy’s name and the term “discredited” and find plenty of sites. But why spend the time? Anyone who would psychoanalyze someone from a distance as an expert is not credible.
Plus, the so-called interviewer/journalist on the video was not offering questions to challenge the alleged faux analyst. She was goading him on. That’s not journalism. It’s shilling and promoting.
Then the friend accused me of being a typical liberal who always cries racism. Red flag: this is the standard argument from someone caught in a racist moment to get them off the hook.
Plus, as you know from posts here, I am not crazy about using labels. They’re imprecise; they fail to really describe someone’s beliefs that are usually more complex. Sure, I am probably a social liberal but you would also consider me a fiscal conservative.
Next, the friend justified sending me the email with this video with the subject line “Interesting.” He explained he wasn’t saying Obama was a narcissist. He was only saying this is an interesting view from someone who does think it.
That’s when it hit me.
The cable news tricks have now gone viral. This is what you would see on Fox News.
“I am not saying he’s a narcissist. It’s this guy who said it, not me. So don’t impugn me. I’m just bringing it up for discussion.”
Yes that is a made up quote. And yes, MSNBC shows do similar things on issues such as race, the economy, and entitlements.
Just by sending this kind of email you imply a political agenda. Are you still beating your wife?
The implied argument is this: Obama is a narcissist because he came from a black father who abandoned his single white mother which means he is socially unstable or unfit.
These arguments are made because it’s hard to make the arguments of corruption or mismanagement that does not blanket everyone in Washington.
I have documented in previous posts what experts are saying about the problems we will all have in governing and running businesses in this new communication world.
I have also shown how money in politics is fueling this behavior. The political parties use these massive funds to distort facts to win elections. As a result, the political parties create followers to spread these simple distortions that really only help special interests.
That is corruption. It’s using money to control power. It’s a legal form of bribery. As a result, it is difficult for one side to show corruption – when both parties, all political candidates, are just as guilty of this corruption.
We are all trapped in a corrupt political system.
Yes, there is probably corruption within the departments and agencies overseen by the Obama Administration. But look at all the recent so-called scandals. Whatever went wrong can be blamed on factors created by both parties and from past Administrations. Still, both parties use these arguments, not to make government better, but to raise money for political campaigns.
So, to increase the money-making hype, we the people are subjected to claims of innuendo and pseudo psychoanalysis. Like George W. Bush’s ducking the draft, alcoholism, and brutish behavior in college wasn’t implied as a behavioral disorder. And yes, we heard arguments of John Boehner’s mental instability due to his bouts of public tears.
This is like arguing over who used the toaster most often while the house is burning down.
Still, I have compassion for these friends who are sending out these political broadsides. They’re actually good people in other parts of their lives. Their emails and comments are the knee-jerk reactions from just being cut off by the new world traffic.
The real problem is these friends of mine are seeing the end of their hold on this fast-moving world.
Three things are happening:
- New technology is eliminating many traditional jobs.
- New technology is allowing developing countries to compete with us on the world economy.
- We are an aging society that has not come to terms with the fiscal disaster we’re facing that hinders us from investing in the new economy.
That’s why tragically we’re seeing so many suicides by baby-boomers. We’re also seeing a different electorate of young and disenfranchised voters who are clearly rejecting the world we baby-boomers created and we lived in — only a few years ago.
So, they can either join the new world or hear this a lot — “Bless their hearts.”
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