Liberal Race Porn: Yes, This Election Is About You

For background, a lengthier discussion of these issues, and links to many related essays, I refer you to, "Silenced: Barack Obama and the End of Struggle Toward Truth and Freedom."

A new article captures many of the dynamics involved in the Obama candidacy in a very perceptive and arresting manner:

Long before the end of the Democratic National Convention, commentators and African-American civil rights activists were situating Obama's nomination in the long trajectory of Black political struggles. Surely Obama's address would ... claim this history--after all, he was to give his speech on the very anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech.

Obama had barely spoken when some commentators like Cornel West on Tavis Smiley's talk show expressed astonishment at the veiling of blackness. Indeed, the convention was virtually shorn of any possible contamination by blackness.

Watching the official video about Obama, one might think black was simply a variety of white, an odd variant, perhaps, resulting from the mixing of Hawaiians and Kansans. ... [E]very fleeting scene showed the Illinois Senator shaking hands with white constituencies that, according to conventional wisdom, might not be trusted to vote for a black man: the blue-collar workers, old white men, old white women, white farmers. Were it not for the occasional black person, one would think Obama was running for President of Idaho.

...

Obama's race is not about Obama. In his video, he was either putting white people at ease, or alone, gazing pensively, sitting studiously, almost unable or unwilling to look at the political world around him. The real focus, instead, was on you, the non-black viewers and voters, who were granted the freedom to revel in their own transcendence of race without painful and annoying reminders of unresolved racial problems. MLK became "the preacher" of long ago, his color and cause unmentioned. Obama's race became an "unlikely characteristic," a statistical improbability. Chicago's South Side became a marker of public service, not a disastrous failure of US racism.

It's not surprising then that the cameras repeatedly gave us earnest white faces gazing at Obama. "This isn't about me, it's about you." It's not about where Obama came from, but about the satisfaction that whites might take in voting for a black man. If the final speech, a tour de force of rhetorical blending, to be sure, has been praised to the rafters, it is because it was liberal race-porn. It was the spectacle of tens of thousands watching themselves overcome their own discomforts about race. White voters' love for Obama is really a love for themselves. A love for their own liberalism which has transcended race and evident in their voting for an African-American. A reassurance to them that America isn't racist any more, while voting for Obama means that they don't have to think about racial injustice. They don't have to think about the one million African-Americans incarcerated because of laws that favor the privileged or the crime of driving while black. To a generation of young white voters who can rebel against their overtly racist parents, it is an embodiment of living in a post-racist society.

I think there are additional factors driving the selection and appeal of Palin, but this is surely one of the dynamics involved:

Liberal commentators have been quick to condemn McCain's pick as a cynical ploy to draw disaffected Clinton supporters to the Republican camp. Such criticism naively misunderstands the new racial code of this election. McCain is not assuming, in devious Rovian fashion, that he can trick unthinking voters into voting for a woman. Rather, he is offering an escape for cynical non-blacks resentful of their historical situation. They were about to face an election in which they had to finally admit they would not vote for a black man. But now McCain has offered them a palatable way out: now voters do not have to say they prefer McCain to Obama, they can say that they are actively supporting a woman.

So Palin is the logical answer to Obama's performance.

I emphasize that last sentence: "So Palin is the logical answer to Obama's performance." Be sure to appreciate where these dynamics originated.

I will continue to highlight articles of this kind for one major reason. The Obama campaign began in the sacred glow of celebratory, analysis- and thought-free euphoria. The euphoria continued through Obama's nomination, but it has already predictably deteriorated into the standard "whatever he does, there's a good or at least understandable reason for it even if we don't know what it is, besides which the other guy is a crazy old man, and honestly, how can any decent person even consider voting for McCain," an approach that combines crude propaganda, groundless exercises in fantasy and the manufacture of endless excuses, and repugnant moral intimidation -- all without reference to what is actually going on here.

Even though I have a very small readership, I will continue to hammer on the actual nature and effects of Obama's candidacy, because the immense gulf between the self-generated illusions, fantasies and outright lies eagerly gobbled up and spat out by Obama's supporters and the actual nature of what he stands for should be the cause of deep, shameful embarrassment to those who trumpet the glories of Obama, and even to those who offer softer versions of the "you must vote for Obama if you wish to be moral and decent" approach. At this point, and given the repeatedly declared positions of both Obama and Biden and thus the very probable actions of an Obama administration, I understand very well that most of these people are incapable of embarrassment of this kind. That would require an understanding of the relevant facts and history, intellectual honesty, and a minimal amount of self-awareness. Obama's defenders have demonstrated none of these qualities in any measurable amount.

The fact remains that they damn well should be embarrassed, to the extent that if they grasped any of this, they would significantly alter their arguments or, failing that, shut the hell up. So consult the earlier post, and expect more in this vein.