There is enough in the U.S. Constitution for Everybody

On August 28, 1963, my parents, my brother and three sisters and me walked several dozen Washington, DC city blocks as participants in the March on Washington. I was 14years old and the oldest.

That day has many memories, many of them embedded in a large poster in my office of Martin Luther King, Jr. waving to the crowd in what I think is the moment immediately after he had just delivered his now famous oratory, “I Have a Dream.” I like to point out to colleagues when they notice the poster (it is kind of hard not to—it is approximately 36” x 48”) that my brother and I are somewhere in the trees in the background where much to the consternation of my mother we had climbed upon our family claiming that particular spot on the mall.

So, this Sunday marks the 47th anniversary of that day. The occasion, however, will be marked by an orator of a decidedly different stripe standing at the foot of the memorial’s steps: Glenn Beck, front man of the populist conservative Tea Party movement.

The event is a rally for Beck and his supporters, dubbed “Restoring Honor,” where the talk show host will present his “100 Year Plan for America” and which will include an address by former Alaska governor and lipstick wearing pit bull, Sarah Palin.

It requires extreme blindness or extreme dishonesty to deny that our politics today is more racially and ethnically polarized than it has been in a long time. Virtually every Fox TV News and right wing, talk-radio broadcast relies on scaring economically anxious white Americans into ignoring the prime cause of their economic insecurity—plundering by Wall Street bankers, and focusing instead on some contrived menace from racial and ethnic minorities: New Black Panthers preventing them from voting, ACORN stealing their elections, black women like Shirley Sherrod treating them unfairly, Eric Holder’s Department of Justice persecuting them, Muslims who want to conquer their country and then celebrate over their Christian corpses while simultaneously building a mosque on hallow ground and don’t forget those invading, marauding Latinos coming to steal their property and kill them while their socialist allies in the U.S. Government led by a Muslim President disarm white victims all over the country.

OK, maybe that is a little over the top—but man do I feel better. I encourage comments to these postings it is just that when folks disagree—and they do disagree—their narrative is so visceral that I decided to try it on for size. Don’t worry, it doesn’t fit me.

Anyway, my real disappointment is with weak-kneed Democratic politicians who have given the field to these rabble rousers. When the desperate Harry Reid isn’t feeding the paranoia by demanding that the Park 51 Community Center move, some other noted Democrat like the Governor of New York is trying to give away state land in an effort to have the Muslims build their community center elsewhere.

From the beginning of this administration, the American right decided to play hardball. Masterfully exploiting ethnic and racial resentments, the most telling example of this strategy was last year’s pronouncement by Glenn Beck on national TV that President Obama is a “racist” who “has a deep seated hatred for white people or the white culture.”

The Republican Party which had presided over an extreme economic failing had little to offer other than stoking the flames of fear. Of course, the real problem is that much of the anxiety and anger being exploited by the Right are actually very real and justifiable. The Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson, one of the more partisan Democratic pundits around, explained in his column today that he “feels sorry for many of the people who will be at Glenn Beck’s rally” on Sunday. He points out very correctly that the very growth of the Tea Party movement clearly demonstrates that millions of us feel “alienated from their government, distressed about the economy and frightened of the future.” Unfortunately however, instead of honest and productive discourse, we have hucksters who exploit their alienation and see their fear and anger as marketing tools.

As hard as this is for me to say, this is the great failing of the Obama presidency which was proven most recently by the way the White House conducted itself in the immediate aftermath of the release of the Sherrod video. What that sorrowful episode did was make it possible for the growing accusation that it is his administration to blame for the intensifying economic crisis, despite the real historical and undeniable fact that the unraveling began under the Bush administration. It seems as though it was years ago, but it was only October of 2008 when the economic crisis was so severe that candidate John McCain suspended his own campaign for President so that he could attend to the crisis. That is the very same crisis that had its initial explosion during the Bush presidency, and it is an explosion that we have yet to recover from.

It is heartbreaking for me to come to the realization that this country is poised to return to power the very same Republican Party—in an even more warped and primitive form—that almost destroyed us over the last decade. But nothing is more foolish, as I have learned these past two years, than underestimating the danger that come from this potent mix of economic sleight of hand and aggressive fanning of racial and ethnic resentment.

Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin want to address the nation from the very same steps that Martin Luther King, Jr. stood on 47 years ago as he delivered his now famous “I Have a Dream” speech. Let them, they have the constitutional right to assemble and to speak freely. But as we listen to them rant and rave, it should only remind us of how much work still needs to be done.