On getting attacked for telling the truth
Now that our Coalition for a Better Oakland is gaining traction in the media, the people who don’t want us to succeed are coming out of the woodwork, spewing their special brand of hate.
It’s mainly the “defund the police” crowd. Since they can’t attack us (or me) on the merits, they resort to the usual ad hominem insults. In the last week or so, I’ve repeatedly been called a rightwing old white guy, just because I support the police.
Well, I have a thick skin, so that doesn’t bother me at all. But I do want to get my political beliefs on the record. I may be “old” and “white” (nothing I can do about that!), but I’m sure no rightwinger!
The truth:
I was born into a household where my parents worshipped Franklin D. Roosevelt and Adlai Stevenson. I had just turned 13 when John F. Kennedy ran in the Democratic primaries, and I was so enamored of him that I made a “JFK” sign and went to a hotel where he was giving a speech. He looked at me and my sign, smiled, nodded, and disappeared into the hotel.
I took the Sixties off from politics : > but in ’76 I saw Carter announce for President and became an ardent supporter. I voted for Jesse Jackson in the 1984 California primary, and when I saw Bill Clinton interviewed on CSPAN in 1988, when he was still Governor of Arkansas, I wrote him a letter in Little Rock, which he was kind enough to answer (I still have it, framed). I was a huge Clinton supporter and still am. He kept the flame of liberalism alive when the winds of evangelical conservatism were trying to snuff it out.
I voted for Gore in 2000 and Kerry in 2004. In 2008, I was a gigantic Hillary supporter, but when she lost the nomination, I hopped on the Obama train, and when he won (on that famous night in Chicago) and came onstage with Michelle and the kids, I stood in front of my T.V. and cried. I supported Hillary again in 2016, strongly, and almost threw up when the orange fascist won. And now, I’m a Biden guy.
So don’t hand me none of your “rightwinger” crap!
Now, on to the “old white” stuff. Look, if you hate on someone because they’re “old,” you’re an ageist, pure and simple. And if you hate on someone because they’re “White,” then you’re a racist, pure and simple. Can a Black person be a racist? Of course!
Republicans currently are waging a war on “wokeism,” and while I deplore much of the nonsense we get from the woke crowd (such as “defund the police”), I support their essential goal: to eliminate all hatred of groups based on characteristics they cannot control. And it is the rightwing that does most of the hating in this country: hating on queer people, on Muslims and Mexicans and Asians and Black people and educated people and everybody else they hate and try to cancel.
But to those “woke” people calling me an old white rightwing guy, I say, STFU. You know in your heart that “defunding the police” is not going to happen, because every time police budgets are cut, crime goes up, and We the People will not allow that. You know that the Americans will not tolerate your program of slashing police budgets. You know you’re on the wrong side of History. You know you cannot debate the facts; all you have are your insults and smears. If you’re Black and you’re trying to impugn me by calling me “White,” you are the exact kind of person Dr. King called “a vicious racist,” with your “lips dripping with words of nullification” or (a more contemporary word), cancellation. Stop hiding behind your Blackness and thinking you can get away with being a racist and an ageist and not getting called out. Those days are over.
In conclusion, then, it’s the extremes on both sides that have screwed this country up. The woke crowd on the left, and the Insurrectionist crazies on the right. That’s why I’m such a big Biden fan: he’s solidly in the center lane, same as all the Democrats I’ve supported all my life. And he’s got a heart of gold. Is there a Republican left in this country with a heart?
