Prometheus 6

I am trying to get to the bottom of what Kristol is saying.... just what is he saying?  That conversations about race are over-rated? 

He's tired of talking about race, don't want to talk about race but is willing to lie about is to calm the masses.

That's what I get from it.

why he stayed there for two decades

Hmmm...  So Kristol, Krauthammer and a host of ignorant conservatives are trying their hands at being Black Separatists.  I mean, surely if they can raise questions about "two decades" then two centuries plus of both offensive rhetoric and offending, physical/material damage would suggest that the "leave the church" logic is a renewed call for Black people to leave the U.S. en masse for the kind of racism beyond and accompanied by racist rhetoric that no one should abide for so long.

Farrakhan can retire with confidence now.  Kristol and Co. are ready to fulfill the NOI dream of a Black nation...  a campaign they've kicked off with a question consisting of two simple words:  WHY STAY?

One that I hear and read being voiced with increasing frequency and urgency. In a nutshell, there is a risk that increasing "talk" about race - rather than substantive engagement around great Depression style community organizing and action in response to the economic implosion - increases the likelihood of increased scapegoating and trigger-effect type violence.

And I didn’t shudder when Obama said he could no more disown Reverend Wright than he could disown the black community.

OF COURSE HE DID.

I keep on telling folks, THAT was the most important line of the entire speech, because it told folks who Obama was. It told them that he WASN'T Tiger Woods. He WASN'T Uncle Clarence. He WASN'T Shelby Steele. I don't even believe JKristol understands the complete DEPTH of that line. BUT, he knows it was an important line. Show me another sentence that was more important to Black folk. Kristol wouldn't get the depth and context of that line, and how it showed Obama's SOUL. The line told folks that Obama was a Free Negro, and all that entails. Kristol can't quite put his finger on it, but he knows the importance of that line.

"I did think this statement was unfair to many in the black community..."

Like, for example, who? Clarence Thomas? Enlighten us, Mr. Kristol. Tell us who in the black community is being treated unfairly by Babarck Obama? Juan Williams?

In a nutshell, there is a risk that increasing "talk" about race...increases the likelihood of increased scapegoating and trigger-effect type violence.

I would like to say that's silly but you never know what will set white folks off. 

flying up their asses at supersonic speeds is what promises to set these folks off, the all around acrimonious race talk merely serves to square up their preferred targets of opportunity. Here's the thing as I see it, my father in law told me on saturday morning that his father told him that they didn't really even feel the Great Depression. In fact, with 5 kids and a good tactical plan for working the bread lines, and the rice lines, etc.., they wound up with food and provisions surpluses.

My father in law recollects no childhood privation. He said, OTOH, folks who had a couple pennies to rub together, i.e., working class and middle class folks got kicked all up in the behind by the Great Depression. They weren't ready for it, didn't know what to do in the face of it.

Comparing now and then hell, folks back then had forgotten more than folks nowadays know about how to get along on a shoestring. I think that's the core of the problem. Violent, heavily armed, teevee addicted shopaholic dolts are liable to do anything when things get crunk, because they lack many of the rudimentary skills and disciplines (not to mention community minded interpersonal grounding) to cooperate, stretch, and make do. I predict violence with the onset of fuel rationing. Not quite ready to wager yet, but that's just my prediction.

While I'd be the last one to give Kristol more than his due, I think he and some others here that dog-whistle in the background of barely constrained violence wanting to erupt.

the all around acrimonious race talk merely serves to square up their preferred targets of opportunity.

If that's the case, all the race talk may as well continue. 

Jim Kunstler owns the blogsite ClusterFuckNation. The following is excerpted from his piece:

Race Doesn't Matter

I'm satisfied that Mr. Obama is comfortable with his own persona. He doesn't appear to be either hung up on his racial background or disregardful of its subtler meanings. Of course in a better world, where the old "one drop rule" didn't apply (the mentality that one drop of black blood makes someone "black"), Mr. Obama would be justified in calling himself black or white. In any case, his own apparent comfort has allowed other Americans to feel comfortable with him, and about the better angels of our nature as a people.

The world can't afford to repeat that kind of thing. But the world is heading into a stressful situation that could provoke another wave of worldwide conflict -- not to mention the kind of internal conflicts that induce ethnic cleansings and genocides within nations. So, from my point of view, the further America removes itself explicitly from a collective racialist mentality, the better off we would be. But there is a catch: if perhaps Mr. Obama wins the Democratic Party's nomination, and goes on to win the White House, and the nation enters the socioeconomic convulsions I call The Long Emergency, and Mr. Obama is overwhelmed by its overwhelming problems... would he be singled out for blame? Surely there will be a lot of finger-pointing and scapegoating. Would Barack Obama become a tragic figure? The answer may be that anyone who occupies that office during the next term could end up a tragic figure.

Yeah PT - it's the Kunstlerian view aided and abetted by perusal of the strident tone that has erupted on some here-to-date vastly more mainstream conservative blogs. That's where I'm thinking Kristol informed himself, as I surely don't picture him talking with any of the long haul truckers catching hell from $4.00/gallon diesel and so forth...,

They ain't fire that dude!?!!? 

"King and chief probably had a big beef; 'Cause of that now I grit my teeth." - Chuck D.

Both them bastards get a zero for contextualizing the history.  The racialism of the Germans did not have it's origins in WWII or even in the Nazi Party.  Yale's Benjamin Madley, in the European History Quarterly, Vol. 35(3) wrote, "From Africa to Auschwitz: How German South West Africa Incubated Ideas and Methods Adopted and Developed by the Nazis in Eastern Europe."  It's one of the best pieces I've read on the subject and connects the German concept of lebensraum with the genocide against the Herero and the experimentation with bio-chemical research, torture and confinement on Shark Island (and other places).  

"White folks" continue to view their descent down the devil's pole as some decontextualized moment - apart from the history of Africans.  Not so.  These funky bastards need to get it together.

"King and chief probably had a big beef; 'Cause of that now I grit my teeth." - Chuck D.

T3 - I don't understood your anger at Kunstler even if he is mistaken about the origins of the European campaign of genocide. Hannah Arendt, for example, traces the Holocaust's origins to European imperialism and the murder of millions of Africans during European colonial expansion. My point in quoting Kunstler had to do with his view of the impending economic and financial crisis. I am not aware that he attributes any of thses developments to black folks at all.

What's up, brother? 

And unoriginal columnists sometimes borrow stylistic devices from other writers (even widely-read ones like Williams Shakespeare) without giving credit. And Bill Kristol is an unoriginal columnist.

James Kunstler and Bill Kristol are not the same persons. They are probably not even distantly related cousins like Obama and Dick "So What" Cheney.