Even If He's Re-Elected, the Right Will Do Everything They Can to Destroy Barack Obama and the American Dream He Represents

The right wing is already devising a plot to destroy President Obama in the likely event that he is re-elected next week. Increasingly, they are throwing around the prospect of impeaching him over the attacks in Benghazi. 

What happened in Libya was a tragedy, but the right wing, aided by Fox News' dishonest coverage of a ginned-up "scandal," have attempted to turn it into a winning political strategy. 

In a secret video from a private Romney fundraiser in May, an attendee asked Romney how he could duplicate the scenario that essentially ended any hopes that Jimmy Carter would be re-elected—the Iranian Hostage Crisis. Romney responded, "If something of that nature presents itself, I will work to find a way to take advantage of the opportunity."

Romney thought he had found that opportunity in September when Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans were killed in an attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya. But when tried to attack Obama on the Libya issue in the second presidential debate, he found himself quivering and retreating in the face of an impassioned President Obama, cowering under the weight of accusations he was politicizing a tragedy.

The Governor chose not to proceed with that line of argument.

But the right wing didn't give up. Instead, they doubled down, with Fox News devoting nearly its entire lineup in the weeks following to "reporting" on the "scandal," imagining and fantasizing about a coverup that never happened. Republicans like John McCain and Newt Gingrich haven't bothered to even attempt to draw a comparison between the hostage crisis, instead opting to compare the Benghazi attacks to Watergate—except it's worse than Watergate, they say.

There is no evidence that Libya was anything more than an American tragedy, an attack by bloodthirsty terrorists bent on America's destruction. But even after George W. Bush's Secretary of State, Condoleeza Rice went on Fox News and threw cold water on the notion that any real scandal exists, conservatives have relentlessly pursued the line of attack.

In the era of Rice and the Bush administration, the kind of political response to Libya evident in the right wing attacks on president Obama would be tantamount to blaming America for the actions of terrorists. It would be grounds for questioning the patriotism of the critic. But today, the very people who considered anyone who questioned the decisions of the Bush administration to be unAmerican is, with no real facts to back them up, attacking President Obama and the American government for the actions of murderers.

That's because, in the era of Obama, truth doesn't matter to the conservative elite. What's best for America doesn't matter. What matters is destroying Barack Obama at all costs.

With things looking more and more dire for Republican chances at reclaiming the White House, conservatives are starting to rally around the idea that, if they can't defeat Obama at the ballot box, it is time to impeach him. Just today on my persona Facebook, I saw a conservative post a status calling for the impeachment of President Obama for "treason" in the case of Libya, with no explanation for how the tragedy constituted treason on the part of the president or the administration. One of his friends responded in agreement, simply adding, "Treason is punishable by death."

The fact that they are already preparing to impeach President Obama should he win re-elected proves their desperation. But it proves something far worse than that.

For the past year, I've described the current political environment by commenting on the sad notion that there is a significant number of people in this country who truly hate President Obama more than they love America. Maybe it's not that simple. Maybe it's not just that they hate Obama, but that they hate America, too. At least, they hate the America that Obama represents.

It's an America where the land of diversity thrives. It's the America of equal opportunity where all, not just a select few, can dream big dreams and have a shot at a future regardless of what they believe, whom they love,  what they look like, how much money they have, or who their parents are. In other words, it's everything they fight against in their policies and everything they find suspicious, vulgar, and undesirable. It's everything they hate.

For the people intent on reverting to a pre-1960s America, "the good ole days when everything was right," their greatest threat isn't just a liberal Democratic president.

They think their greatest threat comes from a skinny black kid with a funny name, born to biracial parents, raised in a cluster of cultures, exposed to the Bible, the Quran, and the Bhagavad-Gita alike, who, through hard work and determination, rose to become the most powerful man in the world.

That's not supposed to happen. Such positions are supposed to be reserved for the next in line, the carefully groomed offspring of the rich, the powerful, and the privileged. It's supposed to be held for the social elite, the ones who, by virtue of birth and parentage, deserve it. Someone like Mitt Romney, someone like George W. Bush. Even someone like John Kennedy. But the idea that a biracial child with a funny name should rise to usurp that role is anathema to the carefully established social order that was supposed to endure even the hollow, noblesse oblige inspired puffery for the notion of the "American Dream."

They never really believed in that notion, no matter how much they've flattered and praised it. It was just supposed to be a phrase they could use to make the peasants and the lowlings feel better about not being as rich, as powerful, as privileged as they are—how else could they convince so much of the "peasantry" to accept, glorify, and even defend a structure that was built against their own interests? The dream was supposed to be a ruse and nothing more. It wasn't supposed to actually be realized--certainly not on a scale as grand as Barack Obama's 2008 ascendency to the presidency of the United States.

And then, what was supposed to never happen actually happened.

Now, they will do everything they can to destroy Barack Obama. No length is too great. If it means impeachment on charges of treason, so be it.

They will do anything and everything they can to destroy that dream and that vision of America. They will do anything and everything they can to stop some other little boy or girl who is different from ever thinking they are worthy of doing what Barack Obama did. 

Barack Obama alone isn't their greatest threat. They already know that, on the whole, he's been, at the very least, a decent president. Their greatest threat is the rising generation of dreamers that might come after him. Their greatest fear is that the rest of us might come to share in the world that was supposed to be theirs.

Hateful Passages in the Bible? Just Ignore Them.

For far too long, men have quite successfully used the Bible to justify all kinds of evils.

They have equipped Exodus 22:18 to justify the murderous Salem Witch trials. They have called upon verses like 1 Samuel 15:3 to justify every war and genocide from the Crusades to the Holocaust. They have used Titus 2:9 and 1 Peter 2:18-25 to justify the institution of American slavery. They have called upon 1 Timothy 2:12 to justify male dominance and the subjugation of women. They have smiled gleefully while reading Psalm 137:9 to justify the cruelest forms of revenge their dark hearts could imagine.

And, of course, they have used the Bible to justify hatred of gay people in the name of Jesus. Take your pick among choices like Romans 1:26-27, Leviticus 20:13, and 1 Corinthians 6:9; all roads lead to bigotry.

Well-intentioned Christians, on the other hand, have done a juggling act attempting to reconcile some of these passages with their faith, though often allowing at least several to stand "as is." Still, it's been tough trying to force the aforementioned passages to harmonize with "love thy neighbor."

But here's a radical idea: What if we all simply, I dunno, ignored these parts of the Bible?

We could ignore Exodus and 1 Samuel when they justify war and murder. Instead, we could pay more attention to Jesus when he said "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God." (Matthew 5:9)

We could ignore Titus and 1 Peter when they order slaves to be obedient to cruel masters. Instead, we could become like Isaiah, who said he was sent by God "to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from the darkness for the prisoners." (Isaiah 61:1)

We could toss aside that passage from 1 Timothy and recognize that, throughout the Bible, God elevated women to positions of power, influence, and prominence that override anything Paul could ever have said about women being silent and obedient.

We could completely discard Pslam 137:9, preferring Mark 11:25, in which Jesus says, "And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive him."

Speaking of forgiveness, if anyone has read to this point and found herself horrified at the notion of simply ignoring biblical passages we don't like, just remember that Jesus did it, too.

Exodus 21:22-25 records that God himself recommended that we respond to crimes, insults, and offenses by returning the same: "You shall give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe."

Yet Jesus, who preferred a message of peace, tolerance, love, and forgiveness, told his followers something different:

"You have heard that it was said, 'Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth,' but I say to you now, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles." (Matthew 5:38-41)

Jesus' message was so radically different from the one supposedly given by 'God' that he quoted it and preceded to tell his followers to ignore it and follow a bolder, better way.

In the same way, Christians and non-Christians alike who disapprove of anti-gay language in the Bible don't have to jump through hoops to dispel unkind words in Leviticus, Romans, and 1 Corinthians. It's not necessary to, as many have done, scour ancient texts in order to prove that the Greek word arsenokoites in 1 Corinthians 6:9 doesn't actually mean "homosexuals." We can just ignore everything Paul said in that passage, relegating it to the dustbin of history, while still upholding his beautiful prose four chapters later, in 1 Corinthians 13, in which he asserts that, of all virtues, love is the greatest.

The truth is, Christianity already ignores passages that have been deemed unacceptable to the modern world. Most Christians ignore the verses that justify slavery. Most, too, have chosen to ignore biblical assertions of male superiority over women, recognizing that such thought is a relic of history. Christians too, can do the same with passages that demean, brutalize, terrorize, and dehumanize gay people.

In the end, the parts of the Bible that withstand history and the onward march of mankind will be the ones that speak of forgiveness as the answer to war, justice as the antidote to oppression, and love as the most powerful thing of all. That's because those are the things that do not age, that do not fall victim to progress, that do not end with the fall of frail human institutions. They are the messages that most ring true. That's because they are.