White America's Loss Of Supremacy Starting To Manifest As Despair, Drug Abuse And Suicide

Aggressively Ignorant

... and as stupid as they look

American Conservatives And Aggressive Ignorance

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2015/08/american-conservatives-and-aggressive.html

The Dunning-Kruger Effect: Stupid People Don't Know They're Stupid 

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2015/12/the-dunning-kruger-effect-stupid-dont.html

The American Party: Know Nothing Nativism And Opposition To Catholic Immigration

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/12/the-american-party-no-nothing-nativism.html
Like the Pharisees, the Know Nothings are always with us.

"White America's Broken Heart" by Charles Blow

I don't read Charles Blow a lot, but I certainly took notice of this column.  Blow almost channels  barber shop conversation I could hear any given recent Saturday morning:

Much of the energy on both the left and the right this cycle is coming from white Americans who are rejecting the direction of America and its institutions. There is a profound disappointment. On one hand, it’s about fear of dislocation of supremacy, and the surrendering of power and the security it provides. On the other hand, it’s about disillusionment that the game is rigged and the turf is tilted. It is about defining who created this country’s bounty and who has most benefited from it.

White America is wrestling with itself, torn between two increasingly distant visions and philosophies, trying to figure out if the country should retreat from its present course or be remade.

Not totally true. There is BLM. But that is a primarily young people's activity, especially college educated black kids. Blow is largely correct however in that the action in the electorate is coming from white conservatives and white liberals. Blow then remarks on a speech given by Bill Clinton in Iowa:

During Bill Clinton’s speech on Sunday, he brought up the recent report about the rising death rate among some white people in America.

As Gina Kolata reported in November in The New York Times:

“Something startling is happening to middle-aged white Americans. Unlike every other age group, unlike every other racial and ethnic group, unlike their counterparts in other rich countries, death rates in this group have been rising, not falling.”

He rattled off the reasons for this rise — suicide, alcoholism and drug overdoses — and then concluded that these white Americans were dying of “a broken heart.”

Ok, what do you make of this, Chuck? 

America has a gauzy, romanticized version of its history that is largely fiction. According to that mythology, America rose to greatness by sheer ruggedness, ingenuity and hard work. It ignores or sidelines the tremendous human suffering of African slaves that fueled that financial growth, and the blood spilled and dubious treaties signed with Native Americans that fueled its geographic growth. It ignores that the prosperity of some Americans always hinged on the oppression of other Americans.

Much of America’s past is the story of white people benefiting from a system that white people designed and maintained, which increased their chances of success as it suppressed those same chances in other groups. Those systems persist to this day in some disturbing ways, but the current, vociferous naming and challenging of those systems, the placing of the lamp of truth near the seesaw of privilege and oppression, has provoked a profound sense of discomfort and even anger.

And? 

In Sanders’s speech following the Iowa caucuses, he veered from his position that this country “in many ways was created” on “racist principles,” and instead said: “What the American people understand is this country was based and is based on fairness.” Nonwhite people in this country understand that as a matter of history and heritage this simply isn’t true, but it is a hallowed ideal for white America and one that centers the America ethos.

Indeed, the current urgency about inequality as an issue is really about how some white Americans are coming to live an experience that many minorities in this country have long lived — structural inequity has leapt the racial barrier — and that the legacy to which they fully assumed they were heirs is increasingly beyond their grasp.

Inequality has been a feature of the African-American condition in this country since the first black feet touched this ground.

For Native Americans, its been unequal since the first white feet touched this ground! 

Now I know you all have taken issue with me noting 'oh now inequality is a problem, huh?!' Just remember that those proposing solutions to this problem aren't talking about it terms people of color understand as its root cause. The proposed solutions to it are solutions for those most recently affected, and they'd be the ones most benefited, rest assured of that.

However, Blow needs to aim most of his fire at the white right. The angry white left might be occupying public parks and agitating for socialism, but the angry white right is arming themselves to the gills and agitating for fascism. Way over the top and crazy. They are openly supporting an autocratic billionaire, demonstrating they could care less about economic inequality and see the real problem as civic equality. First class citizenship for them and them only.

The two movements are not the same thing, although there is some overlap as there always is with populist movements. 

I must say it is very tempting, if your a person of color, to have a healthy schadenfreude at all this. Or view the statistics Bill Clinton referenced as a optimistic ray of hope. However, there's a good argument to be made that we all depend on each other and we are either going to sink or swim, together. Bill Clinton said that in his speech. But I'm not sure his Iowa audience, seething with anger or broken hearted, is buying it.