Hard to believe this article was published. Some people would describe it as cultural Marxism. I find the article offensive because it suggests that
1) white people’s brains operate differently from the brains of other ethnicities in ways that make is more susceptible to various lunacies.
and 2) I oppose government healthcare, bailouts, stimuli, money printing, and the expansion of our wars, because I’m racist.
It is a very, very typical red herring distracting from the ideological debate between liberty and socialism and shifting the game into identity politics. When the game is identity politics, it doesn’t matter whether the red team or blue team is in charge, they win, and we, the masses, lose.
The brains of white folks had been humming along cogently for near on 400 years on this continent, with little sign that any serious trouble was brewing. White people, after all, had managed to invent a spiffy new form of self-government so that all white men (and, eventually, women) could have a say in how white people were taxed and governed. White minds had also nearly universally occupied just about every branch of that government and, for more than two centuries, had kept sole possession of the leadership of its executive branch (whose parsonage, after all, is called the White House).
But when that streak was broken—and, for the first time, a non-white president accepted the oath of office—white America rapidly began to lose its grip.
As with other forms of dementia, the signs weren’t obvious at first. After the 2008 election, when former House majority leader Tom DeLay suggested that instead of a formal inauguration, Barack Obama should “have a nice little chicken dinner, and we’ll save the $125 million,” black folks didn’t miss the implication.
. . . .
A black man got elected president, and suddenly every aging white boomer in this country turned into Carole King—they sure as hell felt the earth moving under their feet.
Meanwhile, the brother moving into the White House inherited the kind of mortgage that even Wall Street executives might hesitate to call “subprime.”
A devastated economy. Two wars, neither being fought with clear goals. Housing markets that resembled war zones. A health system crippled with costs. An auto industry cratering.
But surely, in a time of crisis, the country could pull together to fix this mess, right?
Can you help a brother on health care? No.
The economy? No.
Financial regulatory reform? No.
National security? No.
Now, some black folks can be forgiven for thinking, as they watched the political drama in Washington unfold over the past two years, that this was just another form of the same old thing they’d put up with in one way or another in this conflicted multiracial country.
But there is another explanation.
White people have simply gone sheer fucking insane.
. . . .
On February 19, 2009, not a month into Obama’s presidency, Rick Santelli—a former hedge-fund manager—had a meltdown on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange while broadcasting for CNBC. Santelli was incensed not that the government was bailing out the multimillionaires who had run giant financial institutions, but that assistance would also be going to help out ordinary people who found themselves defaulting on their home mortgages. Calling such folks “losers,” he said, “How many of you want to pay for your neighbor’s mortgage that has an extra bathroom and can’t pay their bills?”
He then added that he was not only mad as hell, but wanted to do something about it: “We’re thinking of having a Chicago Tea Party in July. All you capitalists that want to show up to Lake Michigan, I’m gonna start organizing.”
Suddenly, other angry (and obviously very confused) white people began organizing their own “tea parties” and, from the start, had to defend themselves from charges that there was more than a little racial component to their movement.
(Read more from villagevoice.com)