The Forlorn Hope Of Michelle Obama

It’s good to have hope for the holidays. What’s harder to define is what is meant by hope.

There is the theological hope in the trinity of faith, hope and charity— associated with salvation resulting from the Christian grace of God. There is the very human hope of “Hope I get a puppy for Christmas.”

Then there’s the more ambiguous hope employed by soon-to-be-former First Lady Michelle Obama when she shoots the breeze with Oprah Winfrey. As in, “‘See, now we are feeling what not having hope feels like, you know. Hope is necessary. It is a necessary concept. What do you give your kids if you can’t give them hope?’’ 

The cause for this despond is, of course, the election of Donald Trump and the imminent dismantling of much what her husband had wrought the past eight years. Mrs. Obama’s loyalty to the principles her husband stood for is both understandable and admirable. Loyalty is a noble quality, and you’d expect nothing less from her.

But this après nous la deluge comes from Mrs. Obama’s less noble impulses. Those would be the ones expressed when she sourly said that her husband’s election as president in 2008 was the “first time in my adult life I am proud of my country, because it feels like hope is finally making a comeback.” 

It’s a prettied-up version of this entitlement rant from this Wisconsin Trump protestor about “My America”.  (http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/12/19/woman_snaps_after_ohio_certifies_electoral_college_votes_for_trump_this_is_my_america.html). It’s the denial that Obama sanctimony is a direct cause of the Trump phenomenon. That pitting people against each other has left many exhausted in America. 

That her side has lost the argument in 2016, and maybe a little reflection is in order.

Mrs. Obama (whose ancestors were once slaves in the South) appears to be a terrific mother and family person. But her obsession with the BLM narrative won’t let her recognize how many Americans voted for her husband’s brand of a hopeful future— only to be flung back to litigating a divisive past. As she explained to Oprah, the one true hope was her husband, the philosopher king of income redistribution. 

Like Hillary Clinton’s use of “deplorables”, the Oprah lamentation was get-back for those who made Trump president. If you can’t get into line with her ”hope” you are beyond salvation, a figure to be mocked for “religion and guns”.

What she and Oprah were really lamenting was not the loss of hope. What they’ll miss is the Guilt Card they’ve played in the media to get their way politically and socially since 2008, Just play the race/ gender card to your media buddies and win a prize. Rub your neighbour’s nose in a history that he/ she can do nothing to change. Because most of the Obama disciples are ahistoric beyond six months, the torturing of history was low-hanging fruit. 

Need a refresher on how the media lapped up her progressive scolds? Chew on this bilious MTV video (now pulled down) instructing whites how to be… er, less white and as such way cooler. (http://www.breitbart.com/big-hollywood/2016/12/19/mtvs-new-years-resolutions-for-white-guys-stop-mansplaining-stop-saying-woke-blue-lives-matter-isnt-a-thing/)

As a result, progressives and the media that supported them so ardently are in disrepute with the public. (http://www.mediaite.com/online/poll-shows-only-16-of-americans-have-large-amount-of-confidence-in-national-news-media/ ) Still, Mrs. Obama— and MTV it seems— would like to believe that only they can arbitrate race in America. It’s not hope she’s describing. 

And it buries the lede on the real problem for blacks in America. America’s black community has made a tragic pact with Obama’s Democratic party and its social-democratic notions. After being subjugated for almost a century by the southern Jim Crow Democrats, blacks then embraced Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society concept in the 1960s.

It has been a disastrous deal for urban black populations, who find themselves mired in the tragic trap of dependancy. Still they continue to vote for Democrats like her husband and Hillary Clinton the way Russians vote for Vlad Putin.

The same issues afflict the British lower-class white community created by the Labour Party’s . The earmarks of black impoverishment on America— no education, an aversion to conventional work, criminality, dependence on one political party— are all present in Britain’s poor whites (one in five adults has never held a job in their lives).

Like Michelle Obama, the Labour squishes have an excuse: the problem is class. In America, Michelle Obama will tell you that it’s all about race. (Remember how she turned a nice story on David Letterman about helping a little white lady get a package off a shelf? Two years later she’d made it into a bitter tale of how whites expect blacks to serve them.)

It’s like the old joke about the boy who says, “Dads, I keep hitting my head everyone I go there”. To which the father says, “Then stop going there”. 

If Mrs. Obama really wanted to give her followers hope she’d tell them to stop going there, to stop voting for progressive policies that condemn them to perpetual misery. As Donald Trump said in the election, “What have you got to lose?” 

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy. Bruce is the host of podcast The Full Count with Bruce Dowbiggin on anticanetwork.com. His career includes successful stints in television, radio and print. A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, he is also the publisher of Not The Public Broadcaster.