tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post6035386784137109894..comments2024-03-28T18:32:05.933-04:00Comments on bensozia: Not Much Interest in the EconomyJohnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01037215533094998996noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post-74746865492195516982018-11-12T09:15:13.429-05:002018-11-12T09:15:13.429-05:00"Some liberals think the underlying issue is ...<i>"Some liberals think the underlying issue is white angst about becoming a minority, exacerbated by having a black man in the White House. I remain unconvinced; it just doesn't seem to me that racism is any worse than it has been throughout my lifetime. There is certainly economic uncertainly and unfairness, but, again, this does not seem to me to have gotten worse, and if this were the driver you would think our current economic boom would help."</i><br /><br />As you yourself have stated before, people are emotional in politics more than they are rational. Racism might not actually be worse than it was before - indeed, we might even have objectively improved in that area - but if people FEEL like racism is worse, that's all that matters.<br /><br />Consider issues like domestic abuse, or drug addiction. Over time, the number of cases of each issue have declined significantly, but simultaneously the problems themselves have become better reported and more visible. What were previously issues people never really thought or talked about, even when they were everywhere all around us, have now become matters of intense discussion and concern, even while they are the decline.<br /><br />Racism might be at the lowest point its ever been in this country for all I know, but awareness of racism may just as easily be higher than ever. In particular, it seems that awareness among privileged whites has reached record levels, creeping into portions of the culture that previously had little to no awareness at all.<br /><br />Thirty years ago in much of America, white people may have been more racist, but they didn't <i>think</i> of themselves as being racist, or even that racism really existed. In their minds, it was just the natural order of the world. The only people who might ever have accused them or their actions of being racist were "coastal liberal elites", and why should a Good Ol' Boy from Memphis or a steel worker from Detroit care about the opinion of some crazy New Yorker or San Franciscan who is probably a lazy fatcat gay communist Jew who hates Freedom?<br /><br />But now, they're being called out on their actions with much greater frequency, and with much more tenacity than they ever faced before. They no longer just watch a dozen TV channels, read two newspapers, and talk only to people who live in their own hometown area, allowing them to remain insulated from unpleasant criticisms. Now they're online, able to be criticized by anyone, anywhere. Now mainstream media has begun to comment on issues of race more openly and more liberally, where before they turned a blind eye and remained neutral. Now the racists who had never been challenged on their racism are being taken to task, and they don't like it.G. Verlorennoreply@blogger.com