This is the word to describe those of us facing off against an America that has lost its mind and its soul. What we are witnessing from Ferraro's refusal to enter the 20th century-century (let alone the 21st) to this week's frothing lunacy from the extreme right to the vulgar cannibalism in the political center and even part of the Democratic Party is a testimony to a very simple fact. It's not that America IS racist--that is obvious--it is that America refuses to even contemplate its addiction to racism.
The shit that is now being spewed from the rabid simpletons on Fox and talk radio and a host of (rightwing and lefty) blogs and Youtube is an expression of 40 years of frustration with America's attempt to live with "racial equality," not to mention justice. Let's be honest. The vitriol out there is nothing short of an expression for a desire to behold and partake in a lynching--not of a man or of an entire people--but of an idea: the hope for a union, any union let alone "a more perfect union." Many of you good people may think that this is hyperbolic, and certainly not appropriate table-talk. Note, however, what I am saying: this is their clearly expressed desire for something ghastly--it is obviously not a foregone conclusion. These last weeks have opened not just the ever-present wounds of race in America but the atavisms that are ingrained into our constitution sans and post Amendments. This is a glimpse into the pressure cooker that was and continues to be the Civil Rights movement--because Jim Crow is alive and well in the souls of way too many Americans. While it is obvious that the flesh eating zombie of Jim Crow is up and about, I am less confident about the viability of America's vintage Civil Rights movement. As Barack Obama is hung out to dry (sorry, I mean "vetted"), where is the Congressional Black Caucus? Where is the NAACP? Where is the "First Black President"? Or Oprah? Or Tavis? Or any of the hundreds of major figures--black AND white--from politics to the academy, sports to Hollywood? That's OK. This is just politics--"vetting," right? This is just the proverbial chickens coming home to roost for an "upstart" candidate, a "domestic insurgent" (candidacy I presume), right? An experiment in "electability" as the Clinton campaign would have it. Where are Democrats? Liberals? Progressives? Centrists? Christians? Feminists? People of Good Conscience?
AWOL.
Answer me this: has America ever seen so much unmitigated viciousness in a primary campaign? Maybe 1968--in the Democratic Convention and on the streets outside. But then there was Vietnam! Excuse me, but now we have Iraq, Global Warming, a tanking economy--Oh, and Jim Crow rearing its death-head. Something is happening right now and if you haven't been outside, take a look at the gathering gloom--not for Barack himself, but for us. The madness of this Wright episode in the MSM is exposing the paralysis of Democrats to think beyond their own craven self-interests. There is an enemy out there and they mean business. Perhaps we are now too fat, "happy," and dumb, too doped and inured to even the realities of others not to mention their sorrows, too damn lazy, to even care--or to act. Maybe we are so nihilistic that what we as Americans (and as a Democratic Party) really want is a revival of the ghost of Jim Crow or worse. Maybe that is what we deserve after all... Maybe Rev. Wright was correct.
For my part, personally, I don't think I have ever seen these battle lines so clearly or so ominously. And yet, I adamantly refuse to occlude my heart, mind, soul with the pap of cynicism or despair or passivity or silence or ignorance. Hope--and yes, for those of you who see my writing this four letter word as the pablum of meaningless politics--I would ask you: what has happened to you? What went wrong? For those of you who can read that word honestly and actually incorporate it into your sense of America, its history--and its politics, it is time to rescue that word. The right and the dead-enders in the Clinton campaign (see today's NYT), who are using the Wright sermons to tear apart not only the Democratic Party but America itself, will have to face (indeed, they are facing--thus the rabid fury of their attacks) a very unnerving fact: that adamantine word--hope--is not going away. WE are not going away.