Well, look no further than the "Rants & Raves" section on Craigslist.org where I have never posted and never will, but which I confess I have visited a few times just to remind myself that I'm not such a bad and nutty person - yay! Or maybe it's the freakshow attraction factor at play here.

The R & R section is so filled with bile that it makes most hateful bloggers look like saints. Whites, blacks, Latinos, Asians spill their venom and because it is 100 % anonymous, there is zero incentive to hold back. One could argue that it serves a purpose - better they rant than go out and kill someone, right?

There will always be hateful people among all races, but I truly believe that they are a minority: rotten apples in the basket.

Don't give these haters of all colors so much attention - they are like spoiled brats purposely seeking and craving the spotlight. The media insists on giving them attention, incl. Salon. Ignore the nuts - and I promise I will forever ignore the R & R section on Craigslist how's that?

-doesn't want a President, or even a Commander-in-Chief!

Nope, they want a Co-conspirator-in-Chief. And whatever Barack Obama is, or is not, he is not eligible for that role.

And if he's not conspiring with them, he must be conspiring with the Black Panthers and Saddam!

Maybe it will be true. Maybe my "Invisible Man" prediction will come to pass: That unable to even begin seeing Obama for who he is, since they are incapable of doing that with any non-white person, they will simply start to project, and I feel from an even darker place that "Islamophobia" comes from, since it doesn't even go outside the US to find its "other".

And by doing this they will, at long last, marginalise themselves with a populace that whatever its other political sins may be, has had to come to terms, as a practical resort if no other ideal animates their liberality, with a more diversified populace. We can but pray, and hope, anyway.

Sheesh

It must suck to be the victim, I meant...

(And in the headline, too! "Preview means preview the headline, too, not just the content!)

Love the topic, if only because of the many interesting viewpoints it's brought up in the comments. I'm especially fond of Update 5, because you're completely correct. It's necessary to fight back against these tactics if you want to have any chance of avoiding 4 years of Bush redux.

I wish that America was really ready for an honest discussion on race, but I think that a lot of people would honestly rather die than be honest about where they're coming from, or try to empathize with someone else. I hope I'm wrong, because that's really sad, but I'm pretty sure I'm right. That's too bad, because I'm sure some people are ready, but it's going to get swept away in ignorant, angry, scared diatribes.

I really hope I'm wrong.

I wonder what would happen if you took "Instapunk"'s post and substituted "redneck" for "nigger", along with suitable stereotype examples?

First of all, I am truly grateful for the many ejaculations of heart-felt commiseration I have received in my recent toothy travail. Many have offered to remove the rest of my dentition with a celerity only pugilism, not dentistry, can supply. Thanks to you all. I will try to remember to duck.

But I am now completely recovered, my retirement cut short by matrimonial exigencies. My wife is of the misguided opinion that the Family Leave act only covers maternity and consanguinous bereavement, not the loss of a molar. My comparison of the relative lengths of marital and dental attachment was not received with favor, and here I am, at work again.

Oh they won't say it aloud, they'll even claim they know a few. But they're sure as shit hoping they'll all go the fuck away to Jewistania at the bottom of the sea.

You see in America there's PC hate speech and there's non PC hate speech and then there's PC hate speech that can only be uttered by some people. Rev Wright utters PC hate speech. Blogonauts who substitute "politics" for race, creed and color utter PC hate speech, Salonobots like aVulcan and Gordon Wagner utter PC hate speech. But their critics, even for so much as pointing that out, are by definition, uttering non PC hate speech. Moreover what's amusing to me, is that by their very utterance of PC hate speech though, Salonobots assume it's being uttered by people are not entitled to. That is, while their sentiment is true (Rev. Wright speaks the truth of black experience and anger in America etc etc etc etc) but by their membership in the wrong group, they're not allowed to say it.

Tim Mcveigh was a right wing white man who, with the help of a bunch of other right wing white men and women, committed the worst domestic terrorist act in US history. How come neither McCain nor any other conservative politician is ever asked or expected to apologize for his deeds or to disassociate himself from right wing white men? A white man with right wing political views walked into a San Francisco office building and murdered scores of innocent employees with a semi-automatic assauly rifle back in 1993, but no conservative politician, including those who oppose any restriction on the sale of semi-automatic assault weapons, were ever asked to disassociate themselves from people like him. An ultra-extreme white evangelical who engages in hate speech against catholics supports McCain's run for the presidency, yet McCain refuses, and isn't expected by the MSM to reject his endorsment. Barack Obama on the otrher hand is held responsible by the MSM and many whites for anything his former pastor is saying. Why did we have to replace South Africa as the most racist country in the world?

Speaking of Ward Churchill

Aren't we, as liberals, required at certain times to denounce his extreme views so we can prove to everyone else that we aren't radical, communist, America-hating freakos?

I never did that. If you had read Agents of Repression in the 80's like I had, one of the best pieces of scholarly research I've ever read, you wouldn't write Churchill off so easily. Same with his personal issues. They don't cancel out the previous work. He was a co-author with Jim Vander Wall and he gets some credit for that work. Read that book and you never question black anger again. If you aren't brain dead it will make you white angry.

Read Chris Clarke:

Liberal Outrage

I Am Ward Churchill

By CHRIS CLARKE

http://www.counterpunch.org/clarke02192005.html

http://faultline.org/index.php/site/comments/i_am_ward_churchill/

I wish I had the link to his first defense re: Anna Mae Pictou Aquash's still unsolved murder. Try google or look through his archives.

I thought his remark about "little Eichmann's" was poorly chosen, unfortunate and regrettable. For that one comparison, the whole argument about "chickens coming home to roost" was ignored. And to understand that comparison, you'd have to have read and understood Hannah Arendt's With Eichmann in Jerusalem, and the "banality of evil" in the sense that she meant it. It really is about the clerks, and Eichmann was nothing more than a clerk, a paper pusher. That's how these things proceed.

Bill Sullivan: I have to tell you, I have some real problems with this whole thing despite how much we need it. I'm concerned that too much power will end up in the hands of too few. It's always in somebody's best interest to promote enemies real or imagined. I see this as America's eyes and ears; I don't want it to become its heart and soul. So I told the president for this to work there is going to have to be some kind of civilian oversight.

Edward Wilson: Oversight? How can you have a covert organization if you have people looking over your shoulder?

Bill Sullivan: You know who gave Hitler his power? The clerks and the bookkeepers, the civil servants. I have this one weakness: I believe in a just God. I always seem to err on the side of democracy.

[Bill Sullivan is getting into his car to leave]

Bill Sullivan: No matter what anyone tells you there'll be no one you can really trust.

[pause, looks away]

Bill Sullivan: I'm afraid when all is said and done we're all just clerks too.

~The Good Shepherd

For the record, I believe that OBL wanted to draw us back into the ME to humiliate and defeat us like he managed to do with the Soviets. Chickens or not, it was coming. But we had plenty of chickens out there.