TomP has a great post up at Dkos…White Racists Want Their America Back. and many others in the blogoshpere and even the TradMed! are commenting on the Screamer/Birther/Racists. Me too!
Becuase in my view, it is MUCH bigger than “just” racism that is driving all of this. Though racism is a huge component, and as Tom points out, it is the goad that is driving these folks.
Electing an African-American was the most progressive thing we could do. Until we deal with race in this nation, until the racism of white privilege is extinguished, progressive outcomes will always be difficult to obtain. And electing Obama is beginning of the end of white racism as way of life in this nation.
But this phenomenon is far bigge than “just” racism. It is about the very paradigm that has defined our world for the past 500 years or more. It is about Manifest Destiny. It is about Race, Religion, Money/Calvinism….it is about power.
It is about who rules the world and how they rule it. And I am not talking about ruling it physically, militarily, or even politically. It is about whose ideas rule the world.
It is about the paradigm that rules the world…and has ruled the world since Eurpean explorers set out in their tiny little ships with their muskets and crude cannon to conquer the world.
And conquer it they did! Killing millions and wiping out entire cultures in the process. All to gain control of (or loot, lol) the resources of the entire world. Gold, silver, food, and later timber and oil. And, of course….slaves.
They conquered it they looted it, they killed and ensleved the world so that they could rule it.
And ….they still do. The people that currently rule the world are the ancestors…in ideal and principle, if not in actual bloodline…of those original conquerors.
And now they face the end. The end of the paradigm of ‘conquering’ itself. Their is nothing left to conquer. The paradigm of taking and holding the world by force and oppression alone.
The cultures and populations that they destroyed are now coming back to….in their eyes….haunt them. To ….in their eyes….and in their fears and nightmares…to take revenge.
They are scared shitless.
The only problem is….only a tiny percentage of the people and cultures they have conquered and suppressed and oppressed for so long give a shit about revenge. They…WE….just want equality and justice. Nobody REALLY cares about revenge. We just want to live our lives without thier boot on our throat.
We don’t have the time or the energy for revenge. Not if we are going to fix the world that they have fucked up so badly, and save the human race from the REAL tragedy of Climate Crisis. We don’t have time to fear each other or hate each other….that is THEIR thing.
(Though it must be admitted, we do have time to chuckle occassionally in schadenfreude as they reveal themselves and their fear of us, lol)
Of course equality and justice are anathema to them. “They” still feel, even if it is just a gut feeling that even they don’t understand, that they have the RIGHT to rule the world. That their fantasy of Manifest Destiny is real. To which the rest of the world, the vast majority of the world, is responding to by looking at them funny, shrugging their shoulders and saying….tough shit.
The multiculturism and “miscegenation” and “race mixing” that they have feared for so long…is here. And there is absolutely nothing they can do about it. The demographics cannot be denied and the results of generations of planetwide media, information dispersal, and education are being felt.
Young people, being influenced by the new paradigm that started in the late 50’s and 60’s and has been ‘slowly’ spreading ever since, are just not that interested in hating each other. They are far more interested in finding our commonality than our difference.
They realize thast there is nothing to conquer…except human nature. They are coming to realize that the future is not about separating, but about finding ways to come together. That “IT” is not about hating…but about Harmony, not about competiton, but about cooperation.
And it is driving the racists crazy!
Sorry folks! You may be able to kill Health Care. You may have a few wins after that too….
But it is OVER.
And their is nothing you can do about it….even if you do give in to your old paradigm conquering instincts and turn violent. You lose. The world has passed you by.
The rest of us will just…eventually…ignore you and move on to saving this world and building a new one.
Pausing, occassionally, to watch your tantrums, to watch the The Pathetic Wails of a Dying Paradigm…and smile and maybe even pat you on the head in sympathy.
But we ain’t going back to that mythical America you pretend existed.
Deal.
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hahaha
…I half expected another essay about Rupert, you know? 😉
I’m in.
…the White Man’s Dreamtime is ending. Not a moment too soon.
It will get worse before it gets better. The death shrieks will be shrill and the spastic twitching of the dying will trip up the stride of the still-living.
Look both ways before you cross the street, everybody.
I love it!!
I think you’re right, but I also think we’re a long way from “there.”
Now, we can add to the mix of a Black President — we now have the first Hispanic Supreme Court Judge, Sonia Sotomayor.
And, I’m sure everybody knows that Lou Dobbs claims to have found the Kenyan Birth Certificate of Barrack Obama. Well, Media Matters had just the answer for him:
(h/t Kenyan Birth Certificate)
I mean, goodness gracious, what is this world coming to? (LOL!)
that about capsulizes it!
roll up all that Manifest-Entitlement-Destiny bullcrap
put it all in a Time Capsule,
and bury it at the bottom of the Ocean!
Better yet, fire it all, into the heart of the sun!
Why isn’t it about health care? The killing of people to make profit like the colonizers. I have a lot of various things
But what this really is about is the right wing’s more effective message machine.
No, what this about is the lack of organizing on our part. Real organizing. Not blogging but getting feet on the ground and heads in the town halls. And Buhdy I know you aren’t at fault here.
Astroturf?
Guess what folks, most grassroots organizations use astroturf. Unions use it to call on their members, Acorn uses it to call on those they have contacted, and most use it like moveon.
And because the Left has been handicapped IMO by the blogs/media and others who have been largely ineffective in gathering the strength of the grassroots either by messaging or timing, the public option has been given up on to give us a bill that will help those who have insurance leaving behind the rest.
Instead of convincing people we have fell back on a much safer and easier issue of racism. Not by convincing people that everyone has a right to health care but an issue we essentially won in the 90s.
Which is sad.
Even sadder is that most can face this reality and get off their asses.
…you know I’m always the creepy twit with the objections, so what the hell.
Like the essay, hope it is true. It is the best kind of story, one with a happy ending.
Based on the righties I’ve talked to, it actually is a LOT about having a black man as president, and how that ties into the American vision of the president as a surrogate dad in an authoritarian family structure. It freaks their shit out existentially, right to the bone.
…I just did a rant on the orange. It isn’t exactly the sort of thing to pimp…and I don’t want it bouncing across the DD rec list for two days, so I did not crosspost…but I also am saying a few things you have said de temps en temps, albeit in a very different frame. I’d value your feedback, if you have a sec.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/…
Does Joe the Plumber (noted that is not his real name) want to rule the world? Or does he want someone like him to rule the world? Trying to pin this down.
and as much as I empathize with your gloat, conquest for loot and slaves goes much, much further back than 500 years and did not originate with “Whites”. All you have to do is look at historical maps to see who was conquering whom and when (I love historical maps). The first stories ever written down were of wars and conquest. It’s a human nastiness in every color of skin. Europeans and their get (ergo white skins) were just the latest murderous mob in the long roll of history.
Now the wheel turns again.
my mind one day and i said how do you word it to let ‘them’ know non whites (as a whole) are not looking for revenge. We want peace and prosperity, as would anyone. We want to all just get long.
they will just take their paradigm to the next level…..
and there are plenty of people out there that want to be one of the privileged…….