Something/Someone Old

I found this today while Christmas shopping for a dear friend I don't see much. She's interested in maps, and she's from the Research Triangle, so I thought this might be nice:

Were he alive today, how sad and sick he would be to know that it’s still true 50+ years later, and that the Empire hadn’t heeded his visionary warnings.  But of course, his socialist, radical warnings were what got him assassinated, weren’t they?  That the amerikan military budget is now close to a trillion dollars, and that this President has even upped the ante on Obama’ Nuclear Posture, according to leaked documents on the DoD’s draft means the hegemonic impulses of the Empire are more frantic than ever, which many radical leftists believe  indicates an Empire in its final throes.

Something Old, Something New will be back next week. I want to use my Open Thread this week to discuss an uncomfortable development in the ways we talk about race.

It seems that it's time to bring out this old speech, which has been in danger of being reduced to a cliche that people repeat but pay no real attention to:

Joe Kennedy, referenced in Part One, helped FDR craft the New Deal. On the fiftieth anniversary of the assassination of Joe's son, Meet the Press ran a tape of then Senator John F. Kennedy's 1960 campaign appearance.

John Lennon said that life is what happens to us while we're busy making other plans. We're having a primary where the coronation got interrupted by an insurgent. That was unexpected, but it quickly became clear that the insurgency could grow into a Democratic schism. One side is corporatist, neo-con, and neo-liberal. The other side is progressive, democratic socialist, and peaceful. "All we are saying is give peace a chance."

On the other side of the American divide, their ideological madness is splitting the GOP into a racist, corporatist, and global side and a racist, christian-dominionist side. The leader of the christianist side is, ironically, Drumpf, with the yet more dangerous Cruz at his heels. Cruz is a traditional racist, a lawyerly blower of dog whistles. Drumpf,on the other hand, is a Freudian carnival of ego gone amok. As the Democratic sides separated into a catholic and protestant side, Drumpf's drumbeat of racist incitement overwhelmed not only the GOP primary race, but the entire 2016 election. The bitter harvest of ancient hate and a decade of racist incitement against one of the most accomplished of all American presidents is in. Now. In real time. Spring may be in the air, but in the American psyche, it's fall and the bitter harvest is in. Drumpf's race-baiting is now the defining feature of the 2016 election. Life happens while we are busy making primary plans. So, what does all of this mean for Bernie?