Maybe I know too little about the Obama biography to say this, but it seems fairly clear that he was raised white blue collar. (He was raised other things as well - black intellectual, African goatherd, white college intellectual, white, black and interracial middle class, among other things.) I assume that the black electorate sees and accepts his white blue collar background. But Democratic white blue collar voters either don't see that Barack is one of them, or are not yet ready for the possibility of having a black child or grandchild.

I actually think that despite his talking about hard times and Jello, most of them don't see the ways he is one of them (and Hillary is not.)

He could have been spelling it out, how he's lower middle class white, among other things. I do see how this might have complicated the discussion, but it's not a bad discussion to be having, given especially that it might have made the big difference in Ohio and PA and, now, Indiana.

Best,

(More, for free: google "Rabid Fanatic" +"Monty Johnston")

but it took the Washington Post yesterday saying it up front, that overt racism is clearly figuring in to Hillary's white blue collar wins.

It is repugnant when women vote for Hillary just because she is a woman, and when blacks vote for Barack just because he is black. But women and blacks get a little special-case pleading in this because their oppression remains a live issue.

There is simply no excuse for white racism. None. A white person bridling against a multicultural world... I don't know. It's sad. They don't know the richness of living among the people of an America that is the world. They don't recognize the disadvantage of benefiting from unfair advantages.

I wait to hear Hillary and John McCain make a joint statement that they don't want people voting for them because they are white. In addition, they each need to repeat this during their campaign speeches, that they do not want to benefit from white racism.

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(More, for free: google "Rabid Fanatic" +"Monty Johnston")

Thanks.

Why didn’t masterful China go on to do what Europe did? You give the answer: “China’s totalitarian government quashed initiative.” I would say it this way: Chinese culture hasn’t learned to do individuality. As Yugoslavia went to hell in a handbasket on the death of Tito, and Iraq on the downfall of Saddam Hussein, I was impressed on reading Orville Schell’s 1994 “Mandate of Heaven” how after the Tiananmen Square uprising the freedom fighters went too far and sabotaged their own just cause. It’s like the rigidly disciplined smart kid who goes wild at college and flunks out. Dictatorship teaches other-direction and tends to kill inner-direction. Your attention is so powerfully and brutally drawn outside yourself that you stop paying attention to your own best process.

When you hear Chinese references to individuality, it’s very often in terms of chaos and selfishness. You rarely hear an understanding of how an individual could be on the right track; how a person could both do for oneself and for the general good. Then you turn to Western accomplishments and see that, despite several glaring problems, like the Republican Party, Western individualism has been accomplishing what the Chinese can only hope for.

But it’s more. It’s all in the wu wei, or to do without doing. This is mysticism, practical mysticism, and it underlies all of the old great Chinese accomplishments. Get the self, the ego, out of the way and check out how the nothing of the Tao interacts with brass tacks reality to make all the particulars of a great civilization.

Okay so far. But dictatorship fucks with becoming egoless, making it fanatical. People in dictatorships are miserable; that is, they hate themselves. (A few become arrogant, but arrogance is a form of self-hate.) One way to be blissful when you hate yourself is to give up that hated self – to become egoless. Wu wei. And make a great society.

So we have the way of fanaticism. See how creativity that comes from giving up a hated self has ends in the West: Elvis, Janis Joplin, Hank Williams. “Into the Wild.” It can go great guns for a while but it eventually blows up.

Yes, Western wu wei has its over-the-top problems, as does Western non-wu wei individualism. But the Chinese would do well to give the roots of our creativity some serious study, along the way becoming democratic. Because the mandate of heaven, as the Chinese call it, entails individuals getting the vote.

Best –

(More, for free: google “Rabid Fanatic” +”Monty Johnston”)(I swear, someday someone who knows what’s going on is going to read this fucking book.)

Thanks.

Yes, the Smart Car is smaller than the Toyota Yaris, which is still small. There is a not-U.S. Yaris called the Vitz that's a 3 cylinder 1.0 liter version that apparently gets 55 to 60 miles per gallon. It's supposed to have gotten an award as the best mileage non-hybrid vehicle in Japan.

It should run about $10,000. It's safer than the Smart Car.

I don't know if they'd sell like hot cakes here, but they would not compete directly with the Prius and so should be worth Toyota's while. And it wouldn't need re-working to pass muster as an American vehicle. We need it here.

Please report more to us on this car and what needs to be done for Toyota to bring it here.

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