You always scream the loudest with your last gasp.

[WilliamPitt]

Last edited Fri Jun 14, 2013, 12:36 PM - Edit history (1)

A woman records her own racist tirade at a Dunkin Donuts and then uploads it to YouTube, thinking she did the right thing.

A Cheerios ad featuring a biracial couple causes one of the more remarkable racist freak-outs in recent memory.

An 11-year-old Mexican-American boy sings the national anthem at a sporting event wearing a mariachi outfit, and Twitter erupts with racist bilge.

Yahoos all over the country are stockpiling weapons...and the New York Times reports that White deaths are outpacing White births in America for the first time.

Sensing a pattern?

The paradigm is changing, and the now-receding alpha dogs do not like it one little bit.

You always scream the loudest with your last gasp.

[Laelth]

1. Very insightful. I agree. The attitudes of Americans have changed rapidly.

We, the left, did this. The right does not like it. On all the great cultural issues of our day, the left has already won. It's just a matter of time before our cultural victories become fully encoded in the law.

On the economic issues, we have lost--though we keep fighting, to our credit, because we are right and we have been right all along.

-Laelth

[PNW_Dem]

28. Silent Majority Still Healthy

What’s interesting is that we still have a very healthy “silent majority”. However, it’s the opposite of what it was when Richard Nixon popularized the phrase. I count myself as part of the new silent majority as do, I assume, many other folks on DU. Silent Majority now = secular, post-racial, level-headed America. Thank "God"

[Laelth]

29. Interesting.

And welcome to DU.



-Laelth

[eridani]

33. I think that the reason we have won on cultural issues is that the 1% doesn't care about them

At least not unless they can be used to divide the 99%, and the 1% are fully cognizant that they have exceeded their expiration dates for that purpose. The DLC in fact coordinated the successful defense of marriage equality last year.

Democrats need to be more than Republicans who are good on social issues IMO.

[Laelth]

34. Oh, indeed. This is still an oligarchy.

The only reason the left has won on all the great cultural issues of our time is because the 1% agrees with us. The reason we keep sliding back towards the 19th century in terms of economic policy is because the 1% disagrees with us. Our task, then, is to convince the 1% that it's in their best interests to share the wealth and to work toward a more just and equal society. Since Reagan, that argument has had little or no persuasive power.

-Laelth

[bigtree]

2. gawd, I sure hope that what we're witnessing.

It sure looks like much of this stuff is piling up at a dead end . . . of course, it's all too prescient for those caught up and in the way of it.

I'm still amazed at the resiliency of racist expressions and their adoption by a new generation of American bigots. It's hard to imagine a point where these hateful things aren't occurring, but, it is possible to envision a point where there's much less tolerance for it all. I think that's what we may be witnessing.

[Cigar11]

3. Dam Straight

[phantom power]

4. But also, an animal is most dangerous when cornered

I feel unsure which metaphor is most applicable. Hopefully yours!

[CakeGrrl]

5. Also true

But progress can't be stopped.

[Zorra]

6. I am very concerned about a possible pending RW extremist coup, like in "The Handmaid's Tale":

The Handmaid's Tale is set in the near future in the Republic of Gilead, a country formed within the borders of what was formerly the United States of America. It was founded by a racist, homophobic, Christian nativist-derived, theocratic-organized cult's military coup as an ideologically-driven response to the country's ecological, physical and social degradation.

Beginning with a staged terrorist attack (blamed on Islamic extremist terrorists) that kills the President and most of Congress, a movement calling itself the "Sons of Jacob" launches a revolution and suspends the United States Constitution under the pretext of restoring order.

They were quickly able to take away all of the women's rights, largely attributed to the financial records being stored electronically and labelled by gender. The new theocratic military dictatorship-styled "The Republic of Gilead", moved quickly to consolidate its power and reorganize society along a new militarized, hierarchical, compulsorily cult-Christian regime of selectively skewed Old Testament-inspired social and religious ultra-conservatism among its newly created social classes. In this society, almost all women are forbidden to read.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Handmaid%27s_Tale

[siligut]

15. Margret Atwood is Canadian

I was vacationing in Canada when the twin towers were hit and a conversation with the hotel owners led to their concern over the growing white supremacist groups in the US.

[truebluegreen]

7. Lord Dog, I hope it is the last gasp...

we have a lot of work to do and we need these people to get out of the way.

[Gore1FL]

8. I hope you are right.

The howl is deafening.

[SecularMotion]

9. Republican voters are a shrinking demographic

[Amonester]

21. And most of them live outside urban centers

and sometimes quite far from suburban communities as well.

[sellitman]

35. They will hold off the inevitable with Gerrymandering & voter suppression for a while.

But sooner or later they will change or be left in the dust.

[cliffordu]

10. And the closer the loss of that alpha status, the more dangerous they will become.

[Cirque du So-What]

11. Through no choice of my own

I was born into the ethnicity now approaching minority status. Looking back at the horrific messes created by those at the pinnacle of power within that ethnicity, it's apparent to me that the reins of authority would benefit from guidance by different hands, realizing that all progress made in the area of human rights since European ascendancy occurred in spite of the reactionaries who would have called all the shots if they could.

[dgibby]

36. Me, too.

So called "white people" have made a mess of things.

[KittyWampus]

12. Are these the alpha dogs with Jesus on their buttholes?

[Va Lefty]

13. and I thought this post was about Sister Sarah

[Scuba]

14. Good to remember that things change, including who holds the alpha position ...

[northoftheborder]

16. love it!

[existentialist]

17. You sir, are an optimist

I'd like to be an optimist too.

I hope you are correct, it will take a little bit more to convince me.

[AlbertCat]

19. I'd like to be an optimist too.

I keep thinking of Hypatia and the Library at Alexandria.

[caseymoz]

18. I remember my argument RWnuts

Who said our country was just so-over racism and people who complained about it were just "picking at a scab." I told them I was stunned anyone could be so ignorant.

Now the Internet has provided us with documented proof. I just wish I could be right about something happy for a change.

[Igel]

20. This scream is louder than the previous ones?

Lynchings?

Bombings?

Widespread discrimination?

A commercial got a few thousand Internet postings in condemnation. Out of millions of viewers and netizens. And this is worse than what went before?

In class I point out something that happened 5 years ago and my kids say, "But we were only 12 then!"--meaning that it's ancient history and can't possibly be relevant to their high-tech cutting edge happening lives, so their immediate impressions and likes and outrage surely trump things like 20 million killed in the USSR, the Rwandan genocide, or even Katrina.

The race paradigm started changing after the war and it's been an ongoing change since then. And by "the war" I don't mean something like Vietnam or WWII. Civil. Everybody can find something to dislike. Everybody can find something to like. De gustibus.

[DinahMoeHum]

22. Like I always say: A mad dog is at its worst. . .

. . .just before it dies.

[Major Hogwash]

23. Social media: Biggest misnomer of the 21st Century.

When people over 14 years of age are venting their guts out using instant messaging communication means like Twitter, it's no wonder then that those same people want instant gratification.

[madrchsod]

24. "change in the weather....

change in the weather, something happening here"

[arely staircase]

25. I agree 100 percent

nt

[formercia]

26. Tell it like it is:

[1-Old-Man]

27. Just as a matter of experience, most people die with a whimper

I have seen a number of people die. Mostly they were quiet, many, at least of those who could speak, said they were cold, not not a one of they went out screaming. Mostly they just go out with a whimper

Nope, in my experience people do not scream the loudest with their last breath, they usually scream the loudest when they are about to do something very stupid. Often lethally stupid.

[DonCoquixote]

30. Oh yes

sadly, 2016 will likely not be a watershed as it will be between Christie and Hillary, but that will be the final, last gasp, what needs to be hurried along is the other shoe, where the old ways of thinking actualy DIE, and are not just entrusted to people who do not look like the majority, but think like it (ala Obama and Booker).

[Rozlee]

31. As a minority that intermarried with a white man

I feel a little conflicted looking at my mixed heritage grandchildren. You can't even see the Hispanic blood in most of them with their blond locks and combinations of green, blue and hazel eyes. My half-Japanese step-daughter married a white man herself and was wondering where her 3-year-old came up with his strawberry blond hair when no one on either side of their families is a ginger. I think many whites aren't going away. Many of them are just going to get really easy tans.

[dgibby]

37. I'm caucasian,and I look at your mixed heritage grandchildren and my

mixed-heritage gg niece and pray they will change the world for the better.

[bluedeathray]

32. None of us have a crystal ball

Especially in terms of social change. When the tipping point is reached. Change occurs.

I pray, as a "white yahoo", that this is correct. It's way overdue.