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THE GRAY AND THE BROWN-THE NEW CIVIL WAR
Fri, 15 Oct 2010 01:04:40

"The United States may be heading for an intensifying confrontation between the gray and the brown," says author Ronald Brownstein. Yes, as we trip into the Double Dip, older white folks are being replaced by brown and black kids; and, in a decade or so, young non-whites will be the national majority.

In response, older white folks have gone just, plain crazy. It’s the simplest explanation for the mania that has gripped a vast segment of the over fifty, white Boomers. They are being simultaneously overwhelmed by the Not-Me and the Not-It.

The Not-Me is every member of the legion of young people of color-any color, any shade-that increasingly dominates the popular culture.

The Not-It is the new reality of disappearing jobs, evaporating credit and diminishing resources that overnight replaced their familiar world of American Exceptionalism.

Look at the crew of white seniors-to-be, leading the reactionary charge against anyone who smells like the Not-Me and anything that smacks of the Not-It. There's Rush Limbaugh, morphing daily into an even more poisonous windbag; the self-annointed Glenn Beck, calling on God Almighty to strike down his ever-growing enemies list and Laura Schlesinger who vomits up the "N" word when a woman of color has the temerity to call her show.

Who's listening to these pious pus-bags? The overwhelmingly white and over fifty Tea Party for sure, and 71% of Republicans identify with the Tea Party. It's the revenge of the getting-old people.

That's why back in January the entire GOP congressional delegation locked arms and brayed "Ney" at every piece of Democratic legislation. It's a form of magical thinking. Say "Ney" long enough and the problem will go away. But it won't.

If the super-rich and the super-pissed orchestrate a midterm bloodbath, and send a gang of know-nothing yahoos to Congress, who blame sun spots for global warming, American Muslims for Al Qaeda and masturbation for the decline of family values, things will get really bad, really soon.

States will go belly up, the infrastructure will crumble, unemployment will skyrocket, and the dream of the return of that "Shining Gated City On the Hill" will fade away. The angry grays will have to step aside and let a younger, multi-hued America put this country back on the road to recovery.

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