Moving backwards

 I feel you, Denmark. I grew up in the last dying vestiges of Jim Crow. My elementary school class photos look like they were made in Norway. I didn't have a non-white classmate until I was a freshman in college in 1977. That is also the first time I knew a black person. At all. Really. Previously, they were distant and ghostly figures. The first black person I can remember being friends with was Laurence Lowe. He was on the Georgia Tech football team and lived a couple doors down from me in the dorm. He was a giant. Well, you know, football. TV trained me to be afraid of that. But he was one of the most gentle and kind persons I've known. A genuinely good man. He became a State Patrol.

So a lot of my college life was taken up with learning what was right about the way I grew up (not much) and what was wrong (a shitload -- I grew up in Marjorie Taylor Green's district and it has always been that way). I became what I would describe as an 18th century liberal with a sense of the importance of community. I have always been of the opinion that we had better founding fathers than we have any right to expect.

I was teaching at Spelman College when Barack Obama was elected. My students had been giddy for weeks and I gave them some slack in my class so they had time to participate in the campaign.

The day after the election, I told my class the story of my upbringing and how, based on that, I never thought I'd see the day when a black man (or black anything) would be elected president. I told them that this country keeps surprising me, usually when it lurches toward doing the right thing.

Privately, I thought maybe the Rump of the Jim Crow Generation was finally leaving the stage. Dr. King used to say that he thought racism would fade away once little black kids and little white kids grew up together. I believed him. I couldn't imagine how you could dislike people based solely on color once you know Johnny and Ashley, and they're black and they're good people.

And then I met my nephews. Grew up with black kids, have black friends, and still a pair of fucking bigots. I haven't heard "He just wants to be white" since the 70's.

And now here comes Trump and his whole reality show gang. Dumb is the new smart. It is now OK to be a public racist again. Lee Atwater would be in hog heaven. And that is half of America.

Well, OK, that's how math works. No matter what you are looking at, half of it is below average. It doesn't take much brain damage along the margins to tip the world to crazyland. But now we have a bimodal distribution. The average Democrat is moderately liberal. The average Republican is, well, these days by definition Donald Trump. There is a party that loves America and a party that loves itself.

So yeah. I feel you, Denmark. I have recently learned that I am on the downswing of history. Who knew? My life peaked in childhood in the 50's and 60's. Wait, wut? I thought the world would end in 1968. That was as good as it gets?

Yeah. I feel you, my friend. The world, the country I live in are not at all what I thought they were or headed in the direction I thought they were heading. That's a hell of a thing to realize in your old age. The world is getting worse, not better.

I can't deal with that either.