How Many Roads?

Back in the 1960s, I took "The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind" to mean that soon, any day now, some of those things would come to pass. And some of them sort of did.

Wikipedia says there's an ambiguity to "blowin' in the wind." I've always been an optimist and still don't feel the downside.

That's fifty years on, now. Back then it was a bit more than fifty years on since Reconstruction, a hundred years now. And we still have racism that's willing to be right in our faces. You know what I'm talking about, the birther nonsense, the still-too-common slurs that those darker folks just can't be as good as us whities.

I just don't get it, and it's seemed that the people who were born back then, when a new world seemed to be blowin' in the wind, seem less willing to get it, too. We've got one of the best and smartest presidents we've had in some time. Lovely family and family values, too, if by family values you mean loving and encouraging each other toward the best they can be.

I've experienced a mild version of what's going on, and it seems as if the prejudices toward women are flaming up again too. But that's prejudice light compared to what's going on with Donald Trump and the demands for President Obama's birth certificate. It's never enough. Place highest on the tests, live an exemplary life, no, we need to see more, you need to jump one more hurdle, then another and another. Even being elected President isn't enough for them.

I think that Juan Cole and Baratunde Thurston have provided the best commentary.

But I disagree with Thurston on one thing. I think that President Obama easily showed himself to be the better person this week. It probably won't stop the racists; maybe the rest of us can help with that.

And here's another place we need to be working to eliminate racism.

Added later: Jeff Danziger gets it right.