Near the end of this rather quick essay (chop, chop), which is in the Telegraph and concerns white America's rather rocky relationship with its black president, the writer, Toby Harnden, offers something of a warning:
...Mr Obama is the leader of a Democratic party that is now coming dangerously close to proclaiming that any fervent opposition to him must spring from a racist impulse.In targeting Mr Wilson, they appear to have the wrong man. A previously anonymous congressman, all of whose four sons have served in the US military — two in Iraq — he comes across more as an ordinary American who let his mouth run away with him than as a venomous racist.
His shout, moreover, reflected a manifestation of genuine anger felt by many ordinary Americans about the wholesale state intervention of the Obama administration that amounts to an ambitious and radical transformation of the country. Crying racism can be a cheap way of shutting down debate.
What Harden and many others do not understand is Wilson and many others like him are not making any fucking sense. These tea people refuse to deal with facts and simply make a lot of noise and work hard to disturb any effort to make meaning and connect ideas with facts. Because the tea people's arguments and grievance make little sense, intelligent people like Jimmy Carter are forced to conclude the root of all their noise and disturbances is racism and not anything substantial or political.
Toby, read this from WSJ:
Protesters who attended Saturday’s Tea Party rally in Washington found a new reason to be upset: Apparently they are unhappy with the level of service provided by the subway system.You see! They are not making any fucking sense. What are we to think of them? What is at the root of all this nonsense about socialism this and communism that? Are these real issues? No! What has Obama really done to these people? He has pulled their economy out of what many economists thought was going to be the mother of all depressions? True, we are not out of the woods yet but the situation was supposed to be much, much worse than it is today:Rep. Kevin Brady asked for an explanation of why the government-run subway system didn’t, in his view, adequately prepare for this past weekend’s rally to protest government spending and government services.
Seriously.
The Texas Republican on Wednesday released a letter he sent to Washington’s Metro system complaining that the taxpayer-funded subway system was unable to properly transport protesters to the rally to protest government spending and expansion.
“These individuals came all the way from Southeast Texas to protest the excessive spending and growing government intrusion by the 111th Congress and the new Obama administration,” Brady wrote. “These participants, whose tax dollars were used to create and maintain this public transit system, were frustrated and disappointed that our nation’s capital did not make a great effort to simply provide a basic level of transit for them.”
Americans are $2 trillion wealthierIf the economy fully stabilizes, that will be the end of the Republican party, which has retreated to the noises and nonsense of its base and will be drowned in that noise and nonsense.
Soaring stock market boosts household net worth for the first time since the fall of 2007. Real estate holdings rise in value too.After nearly two years of declines, the net worth of Americans rose by $2 trillion to an estimated $53.1 trillion in the second quarter compared with the first three months of the year.
The soaring stock market accounted for much of the gain. Stock holdings rose by 22% to $6.3 trillion, while mutual funds' value jumped 15% to $3.7 trillion, according to a Federal Reserve report released Thursday.
