Not About Race
It was when I first moved up to Redding, at the northern end of the Sacramento Valley, that I first realized the scope of the term human being. I suppose I’d just been naive, not to realize the range of species. There were folks there who said the Second Amendment meant they could own nuclear weapons. Of course, they said nucular.
This thought arose again from a couple of columns by Maureen Dowd and others that attributed Joe Wilson’s "You lie" comment not to incredible stupidity or out-of-control political fervor, but to racism. Jimmy Carter had an observation in the same vein.
Maybe that’s a fair observation. Racism is based on ignorance. Especially in the case of Barack Obama. Goodness gracious, the man is whiter than most whites I know. If he’d been to Whacko Jackson’s dermatologists for a coupla treatments, who’d have known?
Sorting people on the basis of gender has some logic to it in certain situations – so long as it’s not an issue of equality– but to discriminate on the basis of skin color falls beneath contemptibly mindless.
One suspects most of those who don’t like Obama on the basis of his skin color are nasty white males. Ya gotta bet their IQs average around 80. They probably smoke cigarettes, drink much too much beer, and still go to church. All of their behavior is based on habit. They haven’t had a new thought since they first arrived and wondered where they were.
It’s one of the over-arching flaws in the notion of democratic government that there are no standards for participation. The number of people who cast ballots based on misinformation is exorbitant. The percentage who vote based on faulty thinking...well, you don’t even want to think about that.
Joe Wilson raised $2 million in less than a week after his doltish remark.
I think we probably need a disease that weeds out the unconscious.
©2010 SetonnoteS
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