[Want even more content from FPM? Sign up for FPM+ to unlock exclusive series, virtual town-halls with our authors, and more—now for just $3.99/month. Click here to sign up.]

Former president Obama has been commanding black men to vote for Kamala Harris as a matter of duty.  These embattled men might consider the experience of U.S. Army Sgt. Alonzo Lunsford when the African American was stationed at Fort Hood, where troops were shipping out for Afghanistan.

On November 5, 2009, Maj. Nidal Hasan, a self-proclaimed “Solider of Allah,” gunned down Michael Grant Cahill, John P. Gaffaney, Frederick Greene, Libardo Eduardo Caraveo, Justin Michael DeCrow, Jason Dean Hunt, Amy Sue Krueger, Aaron Thomas Nemelka, Michael S. Pearson, Russell Gilbert Seager, Francheska Velez, Juanita L. Warman, and Kham See Xiong. Velez, 21, was pregnant but her unborn baby was never counted among the fatalities.

The composite character president, formerly known as Barry Soetoro, called this massacre “workplace violence,” not even “gun violence.” This rendered Hasan’s victims ineligible for medals and other benefits related to combat.

Yelling “Allahu akbar” as he fired, Maj. Hasan (pictured above) wounded more than 30 others, including Sgt. Lunsford, who took seven bullets from the jihadist and survived. A civilian police officer wounded Hasan, who was kept on salary while his case proceeded. Sgt. Lunsford and other victims complained that Hasan got better medical care than they did. In 2014, Lunsford wrote to Obama’s chief of staff Denis McDonough:

“As you may know, the President and high-ranking members of the military promised me, my family and the other Fort Hood terror attack survivors that the federal government would ‘make them whole.’ After more than four and one-half years, however, the government has yet to make good on this promise. We believe that if the President could hear, first-hand, our plight and our mistreatment at the hands of his bureaucracy, that he would take the steps needed to set things right. Therefore, we ask for ten minutes of his time.”

On a visit to Fort Hood, Obama spoke of “old wounds” but mentioned not a single victim of the massacre and declined to meet with Sgt. Lunsford. If the soldier thought Obama didn’t care about black men – except for their votes – it would be hard to blame him. The composite character president now wants black men to vote for Kamala Harris, of Jamaican and Indian ancestry, portrayed as some kind of accomplishment.  Men of all skin shades might recall Kamala’s response to another terrorist massacre during her time as California’s attorney general.

On December 2, 2015 in San Bernardino, Islamic terrorists Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik gunned down Robert Adams, Isaac Amianos, Bennetta Betbadal, Harry Bowman, Sierra Clayborn, Juan Espinoza, Aurora Godoy, Shannon Johnson, Larry Daniel Kaufman, Damien Meins, Tin Nguyen, Nicholas Thalasinos, Yvette Velasco, and Michael Wetzel. The victims included blacks, Asians and Hispanics, but in a December 17 statement, attorney general Harris failed to name a single victim or condemn the terrorists.

In a statement one year later, attorney general Harris recalled “those who lost their lives and the loved ones they left behind,” but named not a single victim, not even black woman Sierra Clayborn. Only 27, Clayborn had a “blooming career” snuffed out by Muslim terrorists. The Democrat attorney general again failed to condemn the terrorists or call the massacre a case of gun violence.

Black men being bullied into voting for Harris might also consider Thomas Sowell of the Hoover Institution at Stanford, author of The Economics and Politics of Race, A Conflict of Visions and many other books. Back in the 1990s Clinton civil rights pick Lani Guinier charged that Sowell was not authentically black because he failed to support affirmative action. Harvard and Columbia grad Sowell, who earned a PhD in economics from the University of Chicago, shot back,  “I don’t need some half-white woman from Martha’s Vineyard telling me about being black.”

Black men might also recall Joe Biden’s claim that blacks who fail to support him “ain’t black.” Remember that Biden was a big fan of Democrat Senate boss Robert Byrd, a former Ku Klucker who voted against black justices Thurgood Marshall and Clarence Thomas. The Delaware Democrat Biden, forced into stepping aside for Harris, also made common cause with segregationists.

In similar style, Georgia Democrat Jimmy Carter was collegial with the segregationist Lester Maddox, but did not claim that whites had a duty to vote for Carter. That would not be acceptable at any time, and Obama’s bullying of black men to vote for Harris should be seen in that light. Black men and people of pallor are fully capable of making up their own mind. In 2024, as Thomas Sowell might say, nobody needs a half-white former president from Martha’s Vineyard telling them anything.