One of the stealth-racist attacks on Barack Obama before he became President of the United States, was that he didn't have an "American world view". I'm not sure where I first heard it, but it cycled around on Fox "News" for a long, long time. Like a wildebeest's leg at a lion's dinner table. I don't think I EVER heard another presidential candidate be attacked in quite that way before. I mean, no one ever said that Michael Dukakis had an alien POV. They might not have liked him or his views, or maybe they did. Point is there is plenty to debate in a presidential contest. But "world view"? That's some sublime shit. Real untouchable hate-mongering. Sure, there were overtly racist attacks against Obama, but those were easily dismissed as such. Having the wrong "world view" has been used lately to describe a host of the Right's enemies: evolutionary scientists, Muslim extremists, gay people, in fact ANYone that they don't agree with or deem anti-American, undesirable or godless. How can an American gay person, born in America, be anti-American by the fact of their "gayness", unless they are working for as a Russian spy? Obama's "world view" is code for his otherness, his blackness. It has nothing to do with his ACTUAL feelings, philosophy, cultural influences. It's straight up saying, "Here's a man with a funny name and a dark complexion- he MUST be an alien inside, too!" During the settling of the North American continent by European decent Americans in the nineteenth century the native people were categorized as backward and having a view of the world that was alien and "savage". This concept of the western world, and specifically America, as at odds with the savage, heathens, whatever they call "those other people", has it's roots in why America exists at all. We have to discount these third world, and fourth world (indigenous) peoples. Otherwise our own claim to legitimacy is so much more flimsy.
If someone has a disagreement with how the President has run the country, or not, in the last three and a half years- and I'm one of those people-let them not attack Obama's "Americaness". His administration has been nothing but. I'll give you an example of an American world view at odds with another that has echoes with the past I just mentioned. Lately you may have heard that Obama vetoed plans to connect a pipeline from the Gulf of Mexico to Canadian oil refineries. What you didn't hear, probably, that the administration has APPROVED parts of the pipeline, called the Keystone, through much of Oklahoma and other heartland states, rerouting the pipeline through sparsely populated areas. Funny thing is that these areas are largely "Indian Country" and home to many scared sites, grave sites, spiritual centers of the disenfranchised Oklahoma Indian population that lost most of their land when the "sooner state" became, well, a state. The pipeline will also go through the Dakotas, and threaten the traditional land and sites of the Lakota and other tribes on its way to Canada. This is a clash of world views, plan and simple. Obama is a typical American here, people! Not some tribal citizen from Kenya, or Indonesian school lad. "A few angry Indians... whatever!" That's an American attitude! What's notable here, is that the Administration has acted with disregard for the Native community, alienating perhaps as much as much as 30% of the people in some of these counties. This is especially foolish in an election year as Arizona, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, New Mexico and Oklahoma all have large Native populations and last time I checked they could vote.
I still support Obama, just not with the zeal I once did. Take this from the descendant of some cowboys, bootleggers, and yes, a few Indians as well. Not all of them would have got along had they been in the same room, I can tell you! I've had to be able to navigate a world where people are coming from some other frame of reference. It's who I am. If American's look around they are like that too, most seem not to notice their twist-tied roots. Me and the President, we have a lot in common, we just don't always share the same world view, but maybe in the new America, we all shouldn't. I have to take the good with the... well, American. We can't let Romney be the next face of unrestricted bank fraud, war and an even more aggressive "drill, baby, drill" policy. Obama has screwed up a lot. He's not Left enough for a lot of us. Never mind what the Right thinks of him, we just covered that. He stopped the war in Iraq. Probably saved the economy. Did a lot of good, quiet stuff under the cover of his first term. Let's hope he's just waiting to get really radical in his second. He might just change my world view if he does.
