Recently, Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO) lamented the situation of the nation, and specifically the inaction of the White House. Cleaver candidly told The Miami Herald:
If [former President] Bill Clinton had been in the White House and had failed to address this problem, we probably would be marching on the White House…There is a less-volatile reaction in the CBC (Congressional Black Caucus) because nobody wants to do anything that would empower the people who hate the president.
Intellectual dishonesty is a disease. It rots the mind; it rots the soul. Cleaver’s quip reminded me of Evan Sayet’s 2007 Heritage Foundation speech, “Regurgitating The Apple: How the Modern Liberal Thinks.” Sayet speaks brilliantly, offering tangible examples of the rot that intellectual dishonesty brings the purveyor. At one moment, (paraphrasing) he refers to the fact that liberals, in an effort not to be bigoted (for what could be worse than bigotry) will purposefully dumb themselves down so as not to acknowledge reality. How else, Sayet posits, can you explain the TSA’s decisions on whom to screen at the airport?
Cleaver’s comments are not new to the CBC or its members. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA,) who recently declared the Tea Party can go to hell and she’ll help them get there, voiced the CBC’s impatience with the Obama White House:
We’re supportive of the president, but we getting tired, y’all…We want to give [Obama] every opportunity, but our people are hurting. The unemployment is unconscionable. We don’t know what the strategy is.
Cleaver and Waters reflect America’s frustration: Obama isn’t doing anything right. No one knows what his strategy is. He needs a wake up call. America is tired of waiting.
America has had enough. Enough of Obama’s failings on the economy, his blundering in the Middle East ahead of the UN vote for so-called Palestinian statehood, his overall ignorant foreign policy, the continual push for increased taxes, his constant politicking instead of leadership.
The Congressional Black Caucus, however, won’t allow themselves to take the next logical step – call Obama’s time in office a failure, and back a new candidate. If that is too extreme for the CBC, certainly they could march on the White House, they could send their demands to the President on what must come next to secure a better tomorrow for our children. The CBC could, should, (must?) engage the President, and point out his consistent failures so that they no longer plague the American citizens.
But because the President is black, the CBC turns the other way. They admit they’re angry and frustrated. They admit that things aren’t going right. They admit that there is no strategy. At least some admit, according to Cleaver, that the president is a “failure.” But rather than tell the president what they really think, they choose the path Sayet described almost five years ago, to intentionally dumb themselves down.
The CBC simply cannot bring themselves to chastise the first Black President. They cannot allow themselves to be honest, because the color of their skin matches the color of his skin. The CBC has chosen color over character. They chose to be intellectually dishonest, because it sounds a lot better than what they really are. Racist.
