Debt Deadlock: It’s About Race, Stupid

I’ve heard lots of people complaining about “these congressional Republicans that have hijacked our government” and I only have one thing to tell them: get over it! Let me clarify my statement. The entire debt ceiling debate that held the country’s and the world’s attention recently was simply about one thing that has nothing to do with the economy and everything to do with who is elected to office nationally.

That one thing that irks many ultra-conservatives is: a black, mixed race man, won the presidency of our great country and is the face that represents us internationally.  This is reflected in the name calling President Barack Obama has recently suffered at the hands of extremist leaders. And, the Tea Partiers cannot stand this dramatic change occurring throughout our country.

Extreme conservatives don’t want to face the music and realize that America is changing. The population of the United States is growing more and more diverse everyday. As a result, it just makes common sense that the face of our nation’s leaders and that of our private sector must change also; the days of old white guys (my apologies to my friends that are) are going quickly and all of us — including Tea Partiers — need to get over that fact and move forward.

The other issue that Tea Partiers cannot seem to understand is that there is no such thing as a “national economy” — this is particularly true for the United States.  All economies are global, one goes down and the entire global community and the well being of all people suffer. Narcotrafficing in Mexico, starvation in Somalia, and environmental destruction in Nigeria will go unchecked because the United States leads the world community in trying to thwart these disasters.

Placing our government in jeopardy removes us from global leadership. Almost no other country in the world is capable taking this mantle on. Looking at the debt ceiling, which was really a law passed by congress and does not represent economic reality, as a national issue is both nearsighted and ignorant.

Again, the Tea Party just doesn’t get it. 

What the Tea Party is really all about is the attempt to construct a right wing front in order to support a broad array of legislation both at the national and state levels that are anti-individual freedoms (regardless of what they say), anti-minority group, anti-gay, anti-woman, anti-immigrant, anti-almost anything or any one who does not espouse their party-line. Sounds like the party of Nicolae Lenin!

Finally, I see the recent debacle in Washington as the result of a few, greedy extremists manipulating a larger group of thoroughly uninformed persons who, when they wake up, will become completely disillusioned by both our political system and society. This type of manipulation goes against our national interests and should be perceived as fundamentally unpatriotic and unAmerican.

As I said at the beginning, it’s time to take these bullies to task, wake the people up and take the country back from the iron grasp of this extremely small, myopic, narrow-minded group of little people.

Dr. Henry Flores is a professor of Political Science and Dean of the Graduate School at St. Mary’s University, in San Antonio, Texas.