Drum (11/13/13): ...anyone over the age of 40 knows that Clinton lived through an eruption of right-wing rage that was every bit as bad as what Obama has gone through. Even the specific obsessions of the wingers weren't even very different. Health care socialism? Check. Economy-killing taxes? Check. Gay rights destroying America as we know it? Check. Supposed juvenile drug use? Check. Endless faux scandals and corruption? Check. Government shutdown? Check. Deficit hysteria? Check. Ball-busting wife? Check. The similarities, frankly, are pretty stunning."
And yet how often do we liberals say it's worse this time because the President is black?
How often do we write off the Tea Partiers as racists?
And how is that helpful exactly?
Not only is it poisonous to civil dialogue, it seems naive when we need only look back at how the last Democratic administration was treated... (Clinton murder conspiracies? Check.)
Of course racism is still extant in our body politic -- race has played a prominent and punishing role in our country since its inception -- and elites have used it to divide us down through the annals of history, so...
given this bloody past, shouldn't we treat racial matters with care?
Does it really serve progressive interests to label millions of Americans racists so, uh, liberally?
Because when we assume to know the hearts of millions of fellow citizens and cavalierly (if not claravoyantly) call them racists, we serve the plutocratic desire to divide and conquer.
99% are easy to beat when we're all in a circular firing squad!
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