OPINION:
In the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, former President Barack Obama took to social media to post the following: “Our current president … [and] his aides … have a history of calling political opponents ‘vermin’ [and] enemies. … I will say that those extreme views were not in my White House. I wasn’t embracing them. I wasn’t empowering them. I wasn’t putting the weight of the United States government behind extremist views.”
The following is an open letter in response to Mr. Obama’s comments.
Dear Mr. Obama,
With all due respect, sir, your claim that you and your administration did not embrace or empower extreme views is nonsense. Frankly, millions of Americans find such a statement to be either one of the most stunning examples of psychological projection that we’ve ever seen or simply a shameless, bald-faced lie.
Not in your White House? Mr. President, you can’t be serious.
You are the one who chose to focus on the color of our skin rather than the content of our character. It was you who pushed your neo-Marxist agenda of “equity” rather than equality, of diversity rather than unity, of intersectionality rather than personal responsibility. It was you, Mr. Obama, who chose to foment racial animus and resentment rather than personal forgiveness and reconciliation. It was you who pitted Blacks against Whites and Whites against Blacks.
You are the one who stoked the flames of class conflict. You are the one who rallied gays against straights, the working class against the educated, traditionalists against progressives and rural voters against those more urbane.
You are the one who chose to divide when you could have united.
You are the one who mocked us for our God and our guns. You are the one who “fundamentally changed” our nation. You bowed to Islam while disparaging Christendom. You tore down our country’s borders and tore out our country’s soul. You are the one who constantly inferred that America is evil rather than exceptional.
It is your party, Mr. President, that calls its opponents fascists, Nazis, racists, and says we are “full of sh—.” Yours is the tribe that claims half of the electorate lacks “gray matter.” You are the ones who scorn us as rubes and accuse us of supporting genocide. You are the ones who claim we are destroying the planet.
Your party mocks our religion and boos our God. It smirks at our prayers and refuses to even honor a moment of silence for Charlie Kirk’s widow and children.
It was you who sued Christians for just being Christian. It was you who used the IRS to target conservatives. It was your White House that put us on your terrorist watch list. It was you who stood silent while your attorney general labeled Bible-believing moms and dads a “security threat.”
Yours is the tribe that brands anyone defending a woman’s right to her own bathroom a science-denying loon. You are the one who sued a bunch of nuns to include abortifacient drugs and condoms in their health insurance. You are the one who tried to force Christian colleges to establish transgender dorms on our campuses.
It was you, sir, who elevated criminals like George Floyd and Michael Brown to sainthood while villainizing our nation’s police. Yours is the party that continues to champion defunding law enforcement while justifying violent mobs that pillage, loot and destroy our nation’s cities from coast to coast.
The list goes on and on.
It’s your party that has spent the past 10 years calling Donald Trump “Hitler.” It is your team that continues to suggest that anyone voting for him is a tacit racist, sexist, rape sympathizer, xenophobe and homophobe.
Yours is the side that calls simple patriotic Christians theocratic “nationalists.” You are the ones who have advocated “getting in the face” of all those with whom you disagree. It was your FBI director who openly suggested that we “86” a sitting president of the United States.
It’s your party that continues to call all those with whom they disagree “a basket of deplorables.” It’s your last sitting president who boasted that he would like to take his opponent out “behind the gym and beat the hell out of him.”
You’ve called us an “angry mob.” You’ve constantly accused us of “misinformation.” You said our voices are “shrill.” You’ve laughed at us, belittled us and maligned us. Please tell me you’re kidding when you say these extreme views were not in your White House.
Please spare us your smug platitudes, Mr. President. You’re the one who set the stage for all this. As your former pastor once said, you are the one who put the birds in the air, and now the “chickens are coming home to roost.”
• Everett Piper (dreverettpiper.com, @dreverettpiper), a columnist for The Washington Times, is a former university president and radio host. He is the author of “Not a Day Care: The Devastating Consequences of Abandoning Truth” (Regnery). He can be reached at epiper@dreverettpiper.com.
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