Ronald Reagan's dream come true

Vent Haven Museum, Ft. Mitchell, Kentucky

     The Reagan epiphany was a simple one. With overt racism fallen from favor, in some quarters, you could no longer directly afflict the people you are keen to scorn— the minorities, the immigrants, the poor, gays, not to forget women, who are actually the majority but historically vulnerable because of their sex. 

      But you could assail the government that helps them. Starve it by slashing taxes, for the rich. Smother programs. Jettison goals. Scrap supportive laws and pass restrictive ones.
    Public education, once the bedrock of American society, could be abandoned once Black people found their way into white classrooms. School choice could be boosted, and here "choice" means "using tax money to pay for private schools for parents who couldn't bear to let their kids rub elbows with their lessers." 

     People bought it.

    That many of your own kind are hurt — most people in poverty are white — didn't matter. Bigotry is both a kind of ignorance and a form of self-immolation. Southern towns would fill in their swimming pools in the 1960s after the courts ordered them integrated. If your own children sweltered, well, there are always private clubs, and another reason to hate the people you hate already. 

    And there's always someone to hate, to fear, if that is what you are looking for. 
    The task never ends, and when would-be demagogue Donald Trump took office, he arrived with a flurry of spite and vindictiveness, sprayed in all directions, against groups and individuals who dared stand up to him in the past, a practice, already rare, sure to become rarer. 

      Trans soldiers were ejected from the army, based on nothing more than malice and general distaste. The same calumnies directed at Black military personnel until Truman integrated the Army in 1948 could be retrofitted. Any port in a storm. The first thing the new secretary of defense did was strip former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley of his security detail and security clearance, and take steps to bust him in rank in retirement. The first thing.

     Whatever pressing matters the country faces are pushed aside. The need for a functioning military is overlooked. 
     So, open season on vulnerable Americans and the government that serves them. The whole system torn down, as if by a child. That the government does so much, from building roads to testing the purity of food and drugs, that it helps so many, is simply ignored. Racism is both a form of ignorance and a powerful addiction that must be fed .... with somebody. Anyone will do. Democrats, liberals, will serve too, eventually. Does it seem the bond that should hold Americans together in unified purpose is easily dismissed? Apparently so. 

    Today's post is late — my apologies — and I know feels ... what? ... muted, wooden, subdued. That's an accurate rendition of my mood. There must be a lot of that going around.