Democrat congressman: Tea Party wants blacks ‘hanging on a tree’

By David McElroy · September 1, 2011

Almost all politicians exaggerate from time to time, but U.S. Rep. Andre Carson moved straight into flat-out lying territory Tuesday when he told fellow blacks that members of Congress allied with the Tea Party movement “would love to see you and me … hanging on a tree.”

In an age of more and more demagoguery, it’s one of the most blatant lies I’ve seen — and it’s clearly designed to push political buttons.

I’ve talked a lot about the need to get past the political hatred that’s so much a part of our system today. I’ve said we need to quit ranting at each other and learn to understand where other people are coming from. I can’t add much to what I’ve already said about that, but I want to review — again — why this is happening.

My conservative Republican friends tell me that progressive liberal Democrats are liars and idiots, but the reverse tends to be true, too. Just about every group is angry at every other group. They’re all convinced that the ones who oppose them aren’t just wrong, but stupid and dishonest and probably the cause of cancer, too. In fact, in response to one of the pieces I wrote earlier this week about this, a conservative friend said this:

“David, you’re way off. Conservatives discuss things logically. Liberals get emotional, and it takes no time until they are using vile words to attack and label anyone who disagrees with them. You should get around more.”

My friend is an intelligent and educated man, and he honestly believes that people who agree with him are logical, but the people who don’t are illogical. The truth is that most groups are reasonable and rational part of the time and emotional and irrational at others. It’s part of being human.

We do this about politics because we have a “winner take all” system. If you get the majority on your side, you have the power to force other groups to do what you please. If Carson and his group get power, they would be just as happy to impose their views on the rest of the population as he claims the Tea Party types want to do. He’s simply taking a step further to claim that he knows the Tea Party’s real motivation — which he claims is to lynch blacks. This is no more honest than when conservatives make up bizarro claims about Barack Obama. (No, Obama isn’t planning to round us all up and send us to secret FEMA camps. Obama also hasn’t “admitted” that he’s a Muslim.)

As long as other groups have the right to live the way they want to — and agree that we have the same right — we have no reason to care what they believe or how they live. If we lived in a world like that, we would have no reason to have these political battles. The only reason we have to care now (and the only reason they care what we think) is that our system forces us to put up with whatever the majority wants.

I believe that Andre Carson and people like him are dangerous — regardless of which party they claim or what race they are. Even the people who might politically agree with me are dangerous if they claim a right to control others. Andre Carson isn’t the problem. The system is the problem.

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I have no use for the theocratic and repressive government of Iran. The people who run the country are cruel at best and evil at worst. The Iranian people deserve freedom. But I have no personal quarrel with anybody in Iran. While I’m not thrilled about a future Iranian government having nuclear weapons, I’m just as concerned about nukes in the hands of politicians in Israel, Pakistan, India, China and Russia. I’m not even thrilled with the U.S., Britain and France having them, either, because I don’t trust any politicians to be responsible with such terrible weapons. All I can say with certainty is that American taxpayers have no business attacking Iran, especially since we’re being forced to pay for this attack in order to benefit the politicians of Israel — and nobody else. If Middle Eastern countries want to fight among themselves, that’s none of my business. It’s not the business of the U.S. government, either. I have no quarrel with anybody in Iran — and having the government which claims to represent me launch an unprovoked attack against a sovereign country will only make all Americans less safe in the near future. This attack is poorly conceived and morally unjustified. Remember that when the Iranians launch attacks that we will then condemn as “terrorism.” What the U.S. is doing right now looks like terrorism to me. And let’s not forget that the attack is the latest in a long line of unconstitutional wars by various U.S. presidents — who have no legal power to declare war on their own, according to the U.S. Constitution.

A child having a tantrum understands only one thing: Did I get my way or not? He doesn’t understand the issues involved. He doesn’t understand the reasons that went into a decision. He doesn’t understand any of the things that mature and reasonable adults have to understand in order to live healthy lives. By his reaction to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling to strike down his disastrous tariff scheme, Donald Trump shows himself to be — once more — a screaming child having a tantrum. Outside the world of mob bosses who expect to get their way every time, normal adults don’t act this way, but Trump isn’t normal. He’s an angry and vengeful man who has narcissistic personality disorder. And we are in danger as a result. Trump doesn’t understand the legal issues involved in this ruling. He doesn’t understand economics. He doesn’t understand rule of law. He doesn’t understand that he can ever be wrong. All he understands is that he didn’t get his way. And he is now a narcissistic and raging little boy who also happens to hold life-and-death power over most humans on this planet. He’s dangerous — and the system which gives him that power is even more dangerous.

Is it an attempt to blur the gender line between men and women? Or is it some weird tribute to the traditional Scottish kilt? It’s hard to say, but fashion designers keep pushing for men to wear skirts in the last few years. Both men and women in modern fashion seem oddly androgynous, as though it would be offensive for a man to look manly or for a woman to look feminine. A CNN article about the latest fashions from Paris caught my attention Monday and left me wondering about the ugly clothes the designers are hawking. If a man wants to wear a skirt — or a kilt — that’s OK with me, but I’ll stick with a traditional dark suit with a white shirt and tie. (Well, when I’m not wearing t-shirts and sweats, of course.) I always wonder who actually buys the outlandish garb from fashion designers anyway. I would be humiliated to be seen in any of this stuff, but I obviously have no sense of high fashion.

If you have problems with high blood pressure, I’d like to encourage you to consider making serious changes to your diet. There might be some people who don’t have any choice but to start taking prescription medications for high blood pressure, but I’d like to tell you that I have completely eliminated my issue by eliminating all sugar and almost all carbohydrates. (A couple of months ago, my blood pressure hit 185/144, which was dangerously high — considered stage 3 hypertension.) By completely changing my eating habits, I’m down 22 pounds and my blood pressure is now in the “ideal” range — without taking any medication. In addition, I sleep better and I have more energy. Getting away from the sugar-laden mess that we generally refer to as “highly processed food” has been a life-changer for me. Now my challenge is to avoid slipping back into old habits — by eating in the dangerous ways that almost everyone in our society has come to see as normal.

When I first heard about this, I thought it must be satire. When I discovered it was real, I was appalled, but I still thought it must be a one-time thing from some nutty activist. But it turns out it’s the latest bit of pandering to a bunch of far-left activists who believe that a man can become a woman if he decides to claim he’s a woman. As everybody knows, men have prostate glands. Women do not. Period. End of story. Men can get prostate cancer. Women cannot. But political activists are so eager to pretend that a man claiming to be a “trans woman” is really a woman that they are insisting that “women” be included in public health messages about the issue. This is nothing but political virtue-signaling. If you’re a man, you know which parts you have. You know that you ought to be screened. Nobody is made any safer by dragging far-left gender ideology into simple medical reality.

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