by ISHMAEL REED
Appearing on Ms. Goodman’s show, The Nation’s John Nichols suggested that President Obama make a Roosevelt-styled speech about Us, the masses of people, against Them, the moneyed interests. What Mr. Nichols doesn’t understand is that millions of whites identify with the Them. Why else would they join faux populist groups bankrolled by billionaires who get them drunk on the cheap draft beer of white supremacy. (Carrying racist signs. One of them showed Barack Obama laying in a coffin. I couldn’t believe it! I put the TV set on pause and took a picture of it.) These Tea Partiers are loyal to the 14,000 families who own one quarter of the country’s wealth as long as members of the one percent use their media to flatter them at the expense of scapegoats, blacks, Hispanics, Muslims. The mental illness of white supremacy, an infectious super bug, is evident when you consider that the young black president ,who is hated by these media coached rabid howling mobs, saved them from a depression. The majority of economists agree about that.
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