Washington D.C.--I so want to like this man, I really do. The idea of a Black American president is something that just seemed impossible in my lifetime, and I'm at least glad for that part of his successful election into office.
Richard Pryor used to joke that the first Black president would be dead very quickly, and similar talk is going on right now. Certainly, there are some reasons to be concerned, but it's already a given that the Secret Service is going to be augmented for him, and plots have been uncovered before they could get anywhere.
The rapidly vanishing OpEd News has had a poll conducted on the likelihood of an assassination attempt on President-elect Barack Obama--and granted that any asshole can post their pusgutted blatherskiting rumors there--but it really should be removed as inappropriate.
The notion of there being any real attempt on the President-elect isn't even very realistic.
"But Matt," you're saying, "Alex Jones and Naomi Klein have told me there's a lot of talk about it out there in the public. Why couldn't it be some wacky Ku Klux Klan members or some kind of extremists from a white hate group?" The most obvious problem with this logic is that the vast majority of these people are more of a threat to themselves than anyone else.
"But Matt, it would only take one person to pull-it-off."
This isn't Serbia, 1914. This kind of logic assumes that any of them would even make it past the planning stage without being caught, yet we have examples from the national elections already that show the Secret Service is getting very proactive in their defense of the President-elect, which is appropriate in a democracy with a history of violence like our own. It would take a lot of people to pull-off something as daring as that, and the assassins would probably have to be willing to die in-the-process of completing their objective.
This narrows the playing field considerably, and the chances of success start becoming virtually nil. Again, security is going to be considerably augmented with a Black president in office--it's a given--and again, most of these white hate members are screw-ups and methamphetamine addicts, people who are generally powerless and do a lot of very loud and stupid talking when they're high or drunk. If many of them get-up before 1 PM every day, it's a minor miracle.
Sure-sure, there's going to be some "rogue" element of white supremacists who've infiltrated the Special Forces, the Navy Seals, or some other branch or section of the military or government, but they're not going to get very far or close either. It's not as if this is news, let alone a good tactic on anyone's part, and it's not as if the government bureaucracy hasn't take it into account and acted on it proactively, shutting it down. Someone's always watching for these things, it's what Military Intelligence and Counterintelligence is for. None of this matters.
There are some very simple and obvious reasons why the President-elect will never even get close to being endangered: Barack Obama is part of the establishment and isn't challenging the system in any fundamental way, and isn't likely to ever do so. He's not a Malcolm X, he's not a Frederick Douglass, he's not a Nat Turner (thank God!), he's not a Stokely Carmichael or a Assata Shakur or even a Medgar Evers. He's not a Fred Hampton anymore than he's a Thomas Paine, and he's certainly not Jesus, as he's said on a few occasions himself.
No, if anything, Barack Obama is extremely conservative in the sense that he wants to preserve American dominance and power throughout the world. Besides someone from the Middle East, why the hell would anyone in America want to kill him? Yet, the talk continues, the fear that "some nut's going to shoot him, you watch." Watch all you want--it isn't going to happen, mark my word.
Dynamic Black men in America are murdered when they confront the system directly and effectively, with sincerity. That's not ever going to happen under Barack Obama, the public will have to carry that load, and carry it we will when the shit hits, there won't be any choice. Obama's wisdom will be in getting out of the way. If that's what all these people mean, then they might be right, but we're talking about unknowns, hypotheticals, and those don't count.
But everyone's forgetting something important--the FISA revision legislation that Obama voted for, a power he'll wield as president allowing him to authorize widespread domestic surveillance of American citizens if he wants to. Frankly, the rednecks planning to do anything to him had better reconsider. They're the ones who should be watching their asses. Enough talk about assassination, we have a country to fix. If President-elect Barack Obama wants to be another FDR, it's up to him.
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