I was seething when I saw my former US senator decry Blacks receiving food stamps from the government. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania told an Iowa audience this week that he would tackle this “race problem” if elected president, thus echoing the sentiments of his old congressional colleague, Newt Gingrich, who suggested poor students in city schools clean the bathrooms for their more affluent ones, rather than grow up to be pimps or prostitutes.
It turns out, that African-Americans make up only 9 percent of those receiving assistance in the great state of Iowa. The rest are mostly unemployed Whites from single family homes. (More than half of those are children under 18, the elderly and the disabled.) But, facts don’t seem to matter to some seeking high office in my country. They want votes no matter what distortions they have to create in order to get them.
They’re appealing to an all-White, non-college educated group of social conservatives who increase their own self-esteem by looking down on persons they’re convinced are beneath them. They elevate themselves over Mexicans working labor-intense jobs only the unskilled will perform, cheering for electrically charged fences to kill any who dare to cross our precious borders seeking such work. They see minorities as lazy, good-for-nothing leaches on the rest of a society they believe their families built single-handedly with no handouts or help from the government.
They make me sick.
And then I look at myself and ask: what’s the difference between them and me? Aren’t I placing them all in the same class, decrying their hatred for another race, stating that “they” are all alike? How broad of a brush am I using to paint them in such an ugly way? Am I trying to elevate myself over someone else to somehow feel “better”?
It’s a scary thought. Just goes to show, you can’t solve a nation’s woes by attacking a problem by name-calling or pitting one group against another.
Thank God the Almighty has never had to vote in a Republican Primary. He’d make sure that “none of the above” would win throughout eternity.
Contoveros 
One thing keeps crossing my mind as I watch the Republicans doing their war dance for nomination… How will the winner of the nomination fare after all the mud slinging? After covering each other with mud, do they think the winner will come out clean?
I don’t know which party you are associated with, so I hope I don’t offend, but I have noticed over past several years that the Republicans play way dirtier than the Democrats. I hope that is an honest and fair observation and not just because I am Democrat. I think what I wish people would remember is to stop looking at the candidates like they will be some kind of savior because NOBODY will fill the bill. They are all human with human failings. Mostly I wish that after elections, they stop the nonsense, roll up their sleeves and work together. Our politics have become a stumbling block in our nation. It sickens me…
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https://contoveros.wordpress.com/2011/10/12/why-i-am-a-democrat/
I’m a progressive Democrat, after retiring the label of “liberal” Democrat when supporting Howard Dean several years ago. Most of my old peer group is now made up of those Reagan Democrats who shifted their allegiance, if they ever had any, and feel comfortable in voting against their own economic interests just so they can feel a little superior.
Welcome. my kindred political friend. Let’s hope we can stay above the fray as the general election gets closer and the president runs against the GOP standard bearer and the “do-nothing” Republican Congress.
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