“Crab in the Barrel" 2013

I was watching what I thought was the Cartoon Network on my cell phone while going to meet with some clients. I couldn't stop laughing at what I was witnessing. There were people, sharply dressed and speaking gibberish, buffoonery, and just plain silliness. But as I was enjoying the show, someone leaned over me and said, "That's not the Cartoon Network; that's the CPAC event."

In March, extremists were the toast of the CPAC event where they united and voiced their disdain for the beltway media, President Obama, and all that's democratic and progressive. They sent an urgent message that America is going in the wrong direction.

The CPAC debacle was a cornucopia of incohesive, incoherent, and a divisive group of incapable people, who are incomplete opposition to where the nation and its citizenry is moving.

How can we take a political party seriously when it attempts to bludgeon the rest of us with racist, fear mongering, bigotry, anti-women, anti-Latino, anti-LGBT, anti-American, and secessionist rhetoric?

One of the speakers in attendance was Dr. Ben Carson, one of the most brilliant surgeons of any century, who took the opportunity to label President Obama as one who is dividing the nation. What was ghastly apparent to me was that the good doctor is drinking the same Kool-Aid as his extremist colleagues. After his rant...uh...speech, I learned that I've taught 5th graders with a vastly superior knowledge of politics and Presidential history than Dr. Carson.

I guess when Reagan was calling women "Welfare Queens," Black women in particular, Reagan was in no way dividing America. When Bush, Sr., allowed Lee Atwater to pull a Willie Horton to inspire fear in Caucasians against Black people, I guess Bush was in no way creating division in America. When Bush 2 moved slower than molasses to help the poor people during Katrina, Bush 2 was in noooo way dividing Americans.

I find it interesting that a Black man is in the White House and he is transformed from Hitler to Mao, from Stalin to Marx, to the Anti-Christ. I'm curious as to where was Dr. Carson when those former Presidents were destroying and dividing the nation?

My father used to say, "Anthony, even the most educated and brilliant African American is not immune to being fed the "crab in the barrel" philosophy.