Chamblee54

In dog bites man news, there was a post about Bernie Sanders on facebook. A well meaning lady made a comment, with a link to When Racism Trumps Socialism. The feature was a collection of tweets. PG got through a few, until he saw “The GOP has no qualm w/hugging its proudly bigoted, predominately White base, but Democrats decide to have an identity crisis every 2 yrs. ~ We can’t seem to agree on whether we want to fight the bigots or the banks first. ” PG remembered that there was some paint he could watch dry.
A few hours later, the well meaning lady had posted another comment. Included in the comment was a quote. : “If you aren’t starting from the basic premise that deep seated American distrust of government is rooted in racism, you’re doing it wrong.” There was a deeply edited reply.
Luther Mckinnon “”If you aren’t starting from the basic premise that deep seated American distrust of government is rooted in racism, you’re doing it wrong.” The Vietnam war. The outsourcing of jobs. The petty corruption. There is a lot of times the government has abused the trust of the governed that are not related to race.
Well Meaning Lady Luther: Respectfully, I think it’s naive to think systemic racism didn’t/doesn’t play into each of your examples.
Luther Mckinnon I am in the middle of a lengthy reply. If I feel it is worth my peace of mind to complete, I will put it on my blog.
Here is the incomplete reply: “When someone starts a reply with the word “respectfully” I know I am not going to like what follows. I can talk at great length about the obsession with other people’s racial attitudes (OPRA) that our culture has today. Yes, so called systemic racism may play a part in those three items, which I pulled out more or less randomly. There are a lot of other areas where the government has abused the trust of the governed. But the current dialog on race is not really about systemic racism. It is about what foolish thing some celebrity said. Or something that your neighbor says that rubs you the wrong way. This is what people mean when they say racism.”
There was a saying during the era when communism was an ongoing operation. People would say there is a communist under every bed. Today, this is true about racism. Some people think there is a racist under every bed. To some, all of the problems in today’s society can be traced back to racism.
Rhetoric has a way of evolving in a discussion. First, the distrust of government is “rooted” in racism, whatever that means. When the well meaning lady is called out on this, it becomes “play into.” In both statements, a cause and effect relationship is alleged, without a whole lot of evidence.
Lets focus for a minute on Vietnam. From her profile picture, Well Meaning Lady appears to be thirty something. This means she is probably the daughter, or grand daughter, of people who were old enough to be aware of the tragedy that was Vietnam. She probably does not have first hand knowledge of the lies told by the American government throughout that hideous conflict. A generation of patriotic Americans were disillusioned by the wretched conduct of that war.
Was the hatred of that war “rooted in racism”? Not exactly. Some said that the slaughter of Asian women and children was racist, and to a certain degree that is true. However, the racist nature of that war… and of most of the wars since then … is not the primary reason why Americans turned against it. The war was hated because the young men of America … our fathers, uncles, sons, and brothers … were being conscripted into the army, and sent to die. The reason our men … black, white, yellow, brown and red … were fed into the meat grinder was the lies of our government. And to make money for the military industrial complex… the petty corruption mentioned above. That is the reason why many Americans turned on its government, not racism.
Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.