Does Rudy Giuliani Love America?

The absurd question of whether a man who has run for president twice and who lives with his family under the watchful eye of the Secret Service for the privilege of doing a very particular job actually loves his country strikes me as gallingly stupid, and as a blogger who tries to be level-headed, I really didn't want to respond, but since failed 2008 GOP primary candidate Rudolph Giuliani wanted to go there, and since he wanted to stay there, I feel like I can't help but address how enormously huge an asshole a person would have to be to put things in just the way he did and then insist he didn't mean anything by it. I'm also going to point out how ignorant it is and why, once we start talking about people in just that way, no SOB who ever entered politics escapes whipping.

What Giuliani said was:

"I do not believe -- and I know this is a horrible thing to say -- but I do not believe that the president loves America," said Giuliani, the former New York City mayor and one-time presidential contender, according to Politico. "He doesn't love you. And he doesn't love me. He wasn't brought up the way you were brought up and I was brought up through love of this country."  

Giuliani made the remarks Wednesday during a private dinner event at the upscale 21 Club in Manhattan that featured Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who is closely considering a presidential bid.

I think Giuliani might just be so old-school he never thought that would get out of the Club. But let me tell you a little about the phrase "I know this is a horrible thing to say--but".  That is sort of like saying "I am not a racist, but." It's a "tell" that something awful is actually coming. But no, he doesn't want you to look at it as awful. Why, he is telling you it is awful so you can marvel at his truth-telling blunt son-of-a-bitchness. What a truth-telling SOB! he imagines you will say. And no--he is not.

"He wasn't brought up the way you were brought up and I was brought up". Fuck, no. He was brought up mostly in a US state by white people. Wait. I was brought up in Pennsylvania by sort-of Christian white people. Giuliani was brought up in New York by Christian white people. Obama was brought up in Hawai-i by sort-of Christian white people. "He doesn't love you." I bet he would think I have a fine writing style and very good taste in presidential candidates, so speak for yourself, Rudes. "He doesn't love me" (I don't love Rudy Giuliani, among my other moments of good taste...nor do I know why Obama should have personal feeling about him.)

Yeah--no. There was no big truth-telling moment there.

Giuliani's characterization of President Obama is white-hot resentment with a racist chaser. (Don't act shocked, I've pretty much called Giuliani a racist asshole before. And pretty recently, too.)

Now, I won't go to the trouble of reading Giuliani's bio for filth because Wayne Barrett already did that pretty well, although I will have to ask whether supporting Mujahedin-e- Khalq is one of those examples of Giuliani showing superior ability to further the US' goals. It's just nonsense to say there is a "right way" to have been brought up as an American citizen--what about people brought up at US military bases abroad? Or the children of ex-pats who work or study abroad--which includes international businessmen and diplomats and many fine citizens. 

My actual point here is knocking down the bullshit pins Giuliani is setting up--does Obama believe in US exceptionalism--mostly.  Is he supposedly apologetic for our mixed history of high and low points? No--he just has these little old things called historical perspective and humility. In antique Christian terms, humility was an accurate self-assessment of one's temptations and transgressions which was a necessary audit in order to improve, and without which, one was subject to the inordinate sin of pride. (Hubris, if you're feeling Greek-y.)

But for the benefit of anyone who doesn't feel like Obama ever said anything positive about the country that he is currently serving in his second term as president of--here's an excerpt from the speech in 2004 that put him on the political map:

Tonight, we gather to affirm the greatness of our Nation -- not because of the height of our skyscrapers, or the power of our military, or the size of our economy. Our pride is based on a very simple premise, summed up in a declaration made over two hundred years ago:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

 

 That is the true genius of America, a faith -- a faith in simple dreams, an insistence on small miracles; that we can tuck in our children at night and know that they are fed and clothed and safe from harm; that we can say what we think, write what we think, without hearing a sudden knock on the door; that we can have an idea and start our own business without paying a bribe; that we can participate in the political process without fear of retribution, and that our votes will be counted -- at least most of the time.

 And you can find exactly that kind of extolling of our Founders and their way of seeing America's promise, and also some cant about how there isn't Red States and Blue States, but United States, and lots of other patriotic flourishes in all of his speeches. Any of them. If he ever seems to be badmouthing the US, it's because he views it as part of his Christian duty to do so. Unless a problem is claimed and named, it can not be properly addressed. And not any president who ever tried to be a reformer, ever assumed office without a statement of what it was they believed needed reforming, and the sacred Constitution itself admits it was written in order to form "a more perfect union", with the Enlightened understanding that perfection was a process not to be achieved in human matters all at once. Well was it said that the claim if "my country right or wrong", is a bit like saying "my mother, drunk or sober". (Of course, as a part-time lush myself, I would understand if my mother ever needed to get smashed off her ass--only I might prefer her sober as a general rule. And so it goes--my country can get smashed off its ass from time to time, but I'd prefer a sober-sided leadership.)

Anyway, it is to be noted that somehow, Barack Obama was elected popularly to serve two terms as president, even while Giuliani, although once very popular and assumed to be able to walk away with the 2008 GOP nom, utterly proved unlikeable. Something something, Bernie Kerik, something something, shallow and self-centered.

Hey Rudy--who loves you?

But what makes it worse is the odd idea that Obama's white mother makes what Giuliani said less racist.  As if being half-white made what he said only 50% offensive, and unless it is 51%> , what was said isn't really racially offensive. For what it is worth, I wear the same color makeup foundation as Giuliani, and my name also ends in a vowel, but I would not be surprised if he knocked my block off for talking about his mobbed-up daddy. What does it really have to do with things--meh. The bare point I mean to stick Giuliani's ass with is that ad hom is for shit when a man's record is so obviously anti-terrorism. You find a way Bush, for example, did more to defeat terror, and you only get a relevant point. But a statement like "Obama does not love America" is an absolute. And it looks to me like he absolutely does.