Donald Trump's Vision of Race-Baiting Patriotism Disgusts Me

HopeTracker| I endorse today’s NYTimes op ed A Certificate of Embarrassment, concerning the forces that led President Obama to release his long form birth certificate yesterday, for all the world to see. This episode — galvanized by Donald Trump who grabbed the microphone and took full credit for his noble crusade — is a low point in American life.

Hearing the birthers move now to questioning President Obama’s grades at Harvard tells us that the crusade against the President — because of his race — is not over.

It is time for people like myself to call the political activism among the birthers what it is — and that is racism. It is modern-day Ku Klux Klan activism based on a vision of white racial superiority.

I was never a strong supporter of President Obama, because I am a Hillary Clinton woman. Nevertheless, I was proud of the election results and never questioned President Obama’s intellectual competence or his heritage.

Personally, I wanted a decisive, experienced person at the helm in these turbulent economic and military times. Under no circumstances would I have voted Republican after the Bush years.

Wondering About George W Bush’s Academic Scores

When George W Bush became president of the United States, I used to scream at the TV, hearing him speak. I found his vocabulary, vision and communication abilities very limited.

Under no circumstances would I ever have supported a movement to demand that his transcripts be released, even though I seriously doubt that the former president is any kind of intellectual genius.

Americans elected George W Bush president — well not the majority of Americans in the Gore-Bush election that gave him his first term. I accepted that result also, trudging on for eight years with Sept. 11 and two mighty military wars run off the books out of a mysterious, fiscal slush fund now known as the federal deficit.

Racism in America

Today I hang my head in genuine shame over what I have witnessed in America, understanding that the hatred against President Obama is a reflection of just how far large numbers of Americans haven’t come in cleansing our souls and psyches of racism.

I’ve written several times that as a young woman I cried when I heard ‘America the Beautiful’. I was as patriotic as they came, a real misty-eyed flag waver.  At age 16 I worked 13 days out of 14 until 10 pm each night and still graduated 20th out of 2200 in my class. The pursuit of excellence and self-reliance is in my DNA.

While my life was very challenging as a young woman, I didn’t face off against the challenges of racism.

Racism in Action at Our House

I only remember one black man in our middle America town of about 30,000. He was a veterinarian and came to the pharmacy to refill prescriptions. He would chat me up later in the evening, because I worked in the cosmetic department next to the pharmacy.

One night he told me that he was buying the house across the street from ours.

My mother and I were not close, but I obviously told her about the conversation.  I remember thinking it was kinda cool that a black vet would be living across the street — a reflection of my always progressive attitudes about race and an intense interest in global cultures.

I have never discussed with my mother that a day or two later, I came home to hear her on the phone talking to the developer/builder of our house and also the one across the street. Readers know that I am a hell-raiser, so imagine me telling the builder of the house across the street what would happen to him if he sold the house to the African American man.

My mother’s threats were blistering, represented also our other neighbors she had organized, and carried key words like lawsuits over construction problems that suddenly appeared in our new house and those of our neighbors.

In five short minutes America’s racism and the civil rights movement came bulls eye into my own home.

Republican Donald Trump’s Racism Disgusts Me

Until yesterday, my mother’s racist actions in organizing our neighborhood against the African American professional man who wanted to live on our street — and didn’t — were my most guilt-ridden moments on racial matters in America.

Yesterday, Donald Trump took out my mother in an action of race-baiting that fills me with sadness and also disgust.

If this is how Donald Trump defines heroism in America — and he does, based on his own words that dominated TV last night and for the last several weeks — I must consider moving out of this country. Anne