Dwellers On The Threshhold

A good reminder from Al Giordano of The Field:

Stay Cool

It's becoming evident to almost everybody on all sides that America is at an historic threshold: this is very much like that moment in a wedding when it comes time to say, "I do."

Except that the next two weeks are the part where those who might object are encourage to "speak now or forever hold your peace."

We've already seen today various wedding crashers: Rush Limbaugh and Pat Buchanan outright seethed that Powell endorsed Obama only because, they say, he's black. There is an uptick of anecdotal information - in the media, from canvassers and volunteers, etcetera - of increasingly ugly statements of naked racism and aggression against Obama and his supporters.

It's exactly what happened late in the primaries last spring, only now that the prize is not just a nomination - a mere step toward state power - but state power itself, a certain segment of the population is beginning to freak out and blurt out its racist ideations and fears in public.

I'll argue, based on my own experience, that this is not bad news, strategically and tactically, nor a moment for panic: We've always known these people and that they exist. The academia-fueled "political correctness" wave since the 1970s has not served to change them, or society, one iota. It has, rather, repressed such expressions deeper down, turning them into a more compact and explosive compound, which will come spewing out now at the moment of greatest pressure.

 As Lenny Bruce said, "it is the suppression of the word that gives it its power."

And we all ought to know that very similar person deep inside every one of us, no matter what pigmentation is our personal wrapping paper.

Universal racism is the result of 5,000 years of social engineering: the powerful have always sought to divide and conquer the workers along such superficial lines, and the toll has been heavy on all. It's the dirty secret of America - and, frankly, all lands - that festers in the collective closet: fear of The Other.

Read the whole thing. It's great.