The comments so far on my
most recent piece (“Despair Inside the Beltway”), which
ran here yesterday, have usually fit a familiar pattern: tear
down the writer who voted for Mr. Obama even though he has now seen
the error of his ways and is working for change. In my humble
opinion, little progress toward change is made by tearing down
those on your side — rather than by seeking to find ways of calmly
and politely working together to defeat the president and his
allies. Each opponent should seek to work in his or her own way
toward a change in direction for our precious country.
My way of working for change has meant that shortly after Mr.
Obama was elected I spoke out publicly about my despair over his
policies. I also wrote numerous essays that explained my
disappointment in detail. Those essays were published on the
Internet in this magazine and in others, including PJ Media. One
essay was published as a formal statement for the record of the
hearing by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights regarding the New
Black Panther Party litigation. My statement was quite critical of
the failure of the U.S. Department of Justice, under Mr. Obama and
Mr. Holder, to properly prosecute the Black Panthers for voter
intimidation during the 2008 election. Soon after submitting that
statement, I was appointed by the Commission as a member of the
Maryland State Advisory Committee to that Commission. I served on
the committee for two years and listed my political affiliation as
an Independent. Generally, I took a conservative posture in
deliberations.
While I am critical of many of Mr. Obama’s policies, because of
my background in the civil rights arena, I tend to focus on my deep
disappointment about his policies, and those of other black
leaders, in race relations. For many months, I have been working on
a book that chronicles that disappointment. A draft copy of the
title page and the foreword will be found below. Soon I will be
looking for a publisher.
I should have mentioned how I voted in the last election. For
the first time in a long life, I voted almost exclusively for
Republicans, including Mitt Romney for President. He was clearly
the best qualified and most honorable candidate for the top
position. A major part of my despair for the country is the manner
in which our president and the Democratic Party openly worked to
destroy the reputation of that kind, decent, honest man. That
action was truly despicable. What makes it even worse was that it
worked.
THE BETRAYAL OF THE DREAM
Racial Absurdities in the Obama Era
Arnold S. Trebach
FOREWORD
The dream of course was that believed in by those of us who were
involved in the original civil rights movement of the Fifties and
Sixties. We naïve idealists really thought that when we beat those
miserable segregationist bigots we would all be living in an era of
brotherly and sisterly love and equality. We naïve idealists also
thought that black leaders and officials — indeed all minority
folks — would never go back and support racial bias and a racial
spoils system that discriminated against white people or against
anyone not quite like them.
Also we never had nightmares that any criticism of a black
official — say one like President Barack Obama or Attorney General
Eric Holder — would be labeled racist just because the official was
black. It was, we thought, the same as saying that we just got a
black quarterback on our football team; be gentle when you tackle
him.
We idealist dummies were wrong. Some of us, including me, are
royally outraged at the black and other minority leaders who are
destroying the dreams we had every right to have. Such biased
behavior on the part of black leaders, especially those in the
Obama Administration, has been a prominent part of the Obama Era.
That has made this book very difficult for me to write because when
I started to get down a story about something awful that had
happened on the racial front, the Obama-Holder gang did something
even worse. I keep writing you can’t make this stuff up and perhaps
that ought to be the title of this collection of essays and
reflections about how far we have come since my days on the streets
of Knoxville as a protester — and how wrong we have been.
These essays cover a lot of years and areas on the racial front.
They reflect anger and dismay and at the same time hope for the
future. My hope is that they are read now — and also after Mr.
Obama has left the Oval Office. I also hope that we remember the
good things he did and move beyond the bad.
Bottom line here: many of my heroes were black civil right
leaders who believed in the dream and lived it and in some cases,
like Martin Luther King, Jr., died for it. I still believe in those
heroes and in the dream that this country has the internal ethical
strength and moral courage to be that shining city on a hill of
true equality and compassion for all of our people.
