The title of Will Bunch’s just released book is almost self-explanatory: THE BACKLASH: RIGHT-WING RADICALS, HIGH-DEF HUCKSTERS AND PARANOID POLITICS IN THE AGE OF OBAMA, Based on documentary reporting at “tea party rallies, John Birch Society dinners, Oath Keeper gatherings, gun shows, and other ports of call where those harboring Obama paranoia congregate” mostly in Pennsylvania and Arizona, it attempts to understand the motivations of those who from the very outset of Obama’s ascendancy have been part of an aggressive movement to demonize him.
Perhaps all presidents suffer this fate to some extent, but Obama seems to have been victim even before his record had a chance to earn him any real reputation. And it seems like his actual performance rarely matches what his accusers say about his performance when you actually start to look at the facts.
The book review serving as my source of information provides a memorable quote from Bunch’s book that seems to summarize an important aspect of his conclusions, and is worth remembering when hearing angry diatribes about Obama:
Specifically, it is unknown how much of this fury directed toward Washington was really concern over big government or federal deficits or the specifics of health-care legislation and how much was just simply discomfort or even raw hatred that a black man was in the White House, coupled with anxiety over the economy that translated into rage against the powerless who were even lower down the ladder, illegal immigrants supposedly sopping up the legal residents' tax dollars or - up North - the "handout people" in black neighborhoods. (Read more)