Chanting

Death to the infidels Or wait, that's the wrong country's slogan.

In any case, while I agree that for the most part we're dealing with an incoherent ramble that invites us to believe that merely electing a Democrat means we've entered a Road to Serfdom, and that passing a health care bill which largely recreated the status quo (with one notable exception that it appears to be much more capable of destroying the employer provided health benefit system, for which I am greatly pleased, both because that needs to happen and because people who sold the bill didn't think that was possible or ideal) was likewise some great fascist program, I'm not sure that we have any claim on "Real America" either. To say that America doesn't have racists, doesn't allow for their often repellent views to be shared, and doesn't sometimes mobilize movements of people based on personal animus (see: anti-gay marriage movement), doesn't seem to be a realistic assessment. I see such people as equally entitled to claim "American" as a title as the immigrants, homosexuals, Muslims, and indeed, the African-Americans, that they rail against in public, although somewhat oblique, campaigns.

I suppose that means I have a somewhat dim view of Americans. I do. But I don't think it at all a "problem" that people who are dimly educated of their history and hostilities should claim a reverence of the Constitution and its supposed principles, which are indeed usually a functional ideal that has brought millions of people hopes and wishes and has been imitated many times over by international governments with varying levels of success, and yet turn around and be hostile toward other people wanting to share in the "us" dream of success and achievement. Like say, examining the inconsistencies of Jefferson, this is a problem in reconciling a idealistic hero with the man and his (numerous) flaws. It's a human problem that people tend to, well they tend to suck. As it were. Sometimes you can change this. Sometimes you can't.

I certainly don't sympathize with many of these claims and causes. I'm just confused that we have to fight them by simply assuming they are part of a different team. They're certainly a part and parcel of Americana, however much a liberal right-wing progressive like myself might wish them away, they have to be engaged in order to be defeated. I've observed many who seem unthinkingly to presume that they'd want Palin over Obama. I've carefully pointed out to them that the woman who stood up and directed invective cries of "socialism" was herself one of the main American practitioners while governing Alaska. Then they might complain about the health care bill. I point out that almost half of the money spent on health care was ALREADY federal and a gigantic social welfare program costing hundreds of billions of dollars per year. It's not like we were already a bastion of capitalistic wonder. They might complain about the deficit. I ask them how they might want to cut it. They will usually say "stop foreign aid". I point out that foreign aid makes up less than 1% of the total federal budget and this is an unserious means of cutting the deficit anyway. Much like cutting pork spending, maybe it's worth it on the merits to cut, but it's magical thinking that it would at all save us. And in any case large portions of such aid is military lending to places like Israel, Iraq, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt and then I ask them if they want to cut that too. Then I ask them why they're not at least as concerned about social security, public pensions, or medicare payments (which they will or are already receiving at my expense) ballooning our national debt by trillions of dollars each over the next several decades as they are about a few billion dollars spent handing out food and medical aid for impoverished, starving and sick Africans or Latinos or assisting in the wake of tremendous natural disasters. Maybe having the government do that isn't the most efficient thing in the world, I might be sympathetic to that argument at times. But it's ridiculous to then turn around and say it's somehow a great wonderful thing for the government to hand over many more billions of dollars to mostly well-to-do retirees. Much less that this would be a natural and efficient way to manage retirement funding and aid to the elderly or ailing poor. And that's already how we roll here. It's not starting in 4 years.

To me the real problem isn't racism. It's ignorance. Ignorance you can fight back against with facts, figures, education, and the shame of being shown up by not knowing what you're talking about. Racism, well, nobody has really figured that one out yet. I think the two are often related and that rumors substantiated by ignorance are frequently used to disguise less noble motivations (something like I don't want my social welfare dollars spent on those coloured peoples who live and work here alongside me, just "good" people like myself), but it's not really sufficient to defeat the rumors. They will be clung to out of a sense of conspiracy and lashed out against. Those of us who disapprove of such notions and causes like these must be prepared to lash back in our own fashion. We must also be prepared to accept that sometimes it won't matter a damn. And we must also be prepared to accept that we will indeed disagree about what must be done instead of their shrill claims. As I'm sure I do with almost any modern liberal on a variety of socioeconomic subjects removed from their social, moral, and civil liberties related claims and stripped down to practical and pragmatic solutions to our general and very "American" problems.

I say let the idiots speak for they will hear only echoes and not cries of support and agreement assuaging their concerns.