Dear Editor,

I read Sir Ronald Sanders’ column ‘Anti-Obama forces cloud global stability’ and I consider it a great obituary for Obama.

The real question is why are the Republicans (and even many Democrats) so antagonistic towards him?

Simple: He is not of the old boys’ club. That patriarchy which, amongst other things, chews and spits tobacco, drinks bourbons, and cuts deals in smoke-filled rooms. Obama is an outsider of mixed-race progeny. He does not represent anything like the culture of the ‘Southern white gentleman’ with their notion of honour.

These American ‘gentlemen’, descendants from the stocks of European aggressive and fun-loving men, believe and practise what they see as ‘courage and strength’. This means showing aggression towards outsiders whom they feel want to come and take away all that they have painstakingly accumulated by grit and hard work (legal or illegal, moral or immoral) over centuries.

This ‘gentleman class of warriors’ are also antagonistic towards outsiders whom they feel want to dilute their way of life. These are the realities that Obama battles; and so will all other outsiders. They will face this same stonewalling from these political and propertied old-boy networks that wrap themselves in a shield of honour.

George S Garwood, PhD

Florida, USA

merleneg@yahoo.com