The Nature of Things

White people's knee-jerk reactions to recent events in Baltimore seem to be a pretty accurate barometer of their level of racism. There are those whose immediate reaction to another black man being killed in police custody is to blame the dead man. He shouldn't have been disobeying the law.  Except, what if he wasn't? What if, as apparently in the case of Freddie Gray, there was no probable cause for him to be arrested? And yet, police stopped him on the street, handcuffed him, manhandled him, dragged him to a police van and threw him in, failing to obtain medical help for what seemed to be obvious injuries.  And then the man dies of his injuries.  But for people who blame the victim, the police are always right. They are never guilty of overstepping their bounds, of unnecessary violence. It's the Fox News theory of race relations and it is all summed up very succinctly by Tom Tomorrow in This Modern World. (Hat tip to Daily Kos .)

Have you heard about this letter to the editor from a Canadian citizen in British Columbia? It's been making a bit of a stir on the internet this week. It might be a bit difficult to read in that format, so here is the text: "Many of us Canadians are confused by the U.S. midterm elections. Consider, right now in America, corporate profits are at record highs, the country's adding 200,000 jobs per month, unemployment is below 6%, U.S. gross national product growth is the best of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries. The dollar is at its strongest levels in years, the stock market is near record highs, gasoline prices are falling, there's no inflation, interest rates are the lowest in 30 years, U.S. oil imports are declining, U.S. oil production is rapidly increasing, the deficit is rapidly declining, and the wealthy are still making astonishing amounts of money. "America is leading the world once again and respected internation...

The end of a year brings about thoughts of how to sum up that year. That's essentially what all those year-end lists of the ten worst and ten best are all about. We want to find some short-hand way of thinking about the year just past. As I think over the last twelve months, I am struck by how often our news was dominated by the idea of the poor, oppressed white person. Especially the poor oppressed white man. Poor oppressed white men like the "Duck Dynasty" guy who had his hand slapped for expressing his homophobic and racist and misogynistic views. Then, of course, there is Fox News' annual hysteria and hypocrisy regarding what they are pleased to call the "War on Christmas." What they really mean is the war on white Christmas as was made plain by their TV hostess Megyn Kelly's amazing freak-out over the idea that anyone could even imagine that Santa Claus could be anything but white! Because, you know, Santa Claus "just is white." Oh, and, ...

There are certain groups in our country who seem to honestly believe that if they say a thing is true, no matter how outlandish it is, that makes it true. That, I believe, is clear proof of a faith in magical thinking that bedevils our national discourse this summer. You might also think of it as the "Tinkerbell philosophy." If I close my eyes and believe real hard and clap just as loud as I can, then I can make it true. Thus we have highly placed members of the Republican Party claiming with a straight face that reducing taxes for the richest people in the country will not increase the nation's deficit and that it will stimulate the economy. They make these statements in spite of the fact that all empirical evidence points to the conclusion that any tax reductions received by these people go straight into their own savings. They have no effect on the economy at large - except to depress it by increasing the deficit. Furthermore, it is self-evident to anyone who is...