With 7 days to go, a friend wants to know why he is so angry

I'm gonna have to go with lies. Not spin. Lies. And hate begets hate. It has a root, and I believe one can find it in Columbus's and other "explorers'" diaries. And the fact that you can't find it any of it in US public school history books is what makes me angry. They teach us all that racism and its effects are some sort of unfortunate accident, when it is well-documented (by the perpetraitors!) that genocide and/or long-term disenfranchisement (whichever was deemed more profitable at the time) of certain populations were the intent of racist acts. That propagandist ish leads to things like: saying affirmative action is unfair to White males; to White kids who can count the number of minority people they know on one hand explaining to me how racism (and just about everything else) works, thus perfectly illustrating and perpetuating the the ism itself.

Another example you might relate to: What do White (and other) classical musicians think of Jazz musicians? Lazy, ignorant, "talented"- meaning they didn't work for it a day in their lives, the virtuosity is something that magically happened- which sounds like a compliment to some people, but notice how by implication in includes the first two negative stereotypes. But the truth is, last time music evolved it was jazz, and every one of those founding jazz musicians (and every single one I know) was classically trained and knows a hell of a lot more theory than your average classical musician and practices at least as much (because if you don't know your gd chords, intervals and progressions, you can't very well improvise on them, can you??) But jazz musicians are treated like some sort of remedial idiot savants.

Those stereotypes can only have their root in racism. But everything has become so polished and underground that nobody believes it anymore. They just either accept the stereotypes as truth or they label that kind of thinking as "elitism." (If it were elitism, wouldn't it be the jazz musicians who were classing themselves off, considering they can use more knowledge and invention in a single album than most classical artists use in an entire career? That they don't has more to do with cultural codes than anything else) Whereas, if the founding jazz musicians were white...? exactly.

My problem with that is that if everyone blames an institutional problem on a "small" bunch of "cuckoos" nothing gets done. But no one is willing to examine the fact that deep down they believe: me (meaning those in power)= good, everyone else= bad( or, ="danger" or, ="danger to me" is really how it's panning out these days- it just gets more and more insidious) is a fundamental problem with our society and until those in power are willing to address it, we will ALL keep going in circles.

Politically though, at this point the middle ground, not so much going to get new votes for McCain. I keep saying this: he was always too dem for the right wing so they wouldn't vote for him, and what do the dems need with a dem-lite, especially when they have a majority? He just ran at the wrong time. He should have run instead of GWB. Now he's screwed; enter Palin.
http://btryback.blogspot.com/2008/10/7-days-to-go.html