Maureen Dowd excellently encapsulates the problem at the root of some – though certainly not all – of the reactionary right-wing.

Up ’til now, I’d have loved to pretend that racism really doesn’t exist except in hidden, smirking, low-class and dank corners of our society. It’s certainly my experience that people are far more virulently anti-racist than racist.

But I live in a large country. I live in the country with the third-largest population in the world, and arguably the most diverse. This doesn’t include simply diversity of ancestral origin, but diversity of culture and thought. And having grown up in the Northwest, the Deep South is about as far as anything I can imagine both geographically and culturally. And this article opened my eyes to the fact that there is real, live racism afoot in a part of my country that is as unknown as any jungle, any ocean trench, to me – and that just because I and other young, progressive believers in multiculturalism are a force to be reckoned with doesn’t mean we can ignore the pernicious effects of this one, nor any other that is contrary to the tide we’re a part of.

Boy, Oh, Boy

The normally nonchalant Barack Obama looked nonplussed, as Nancy Pelosi glowered behind.

Surrounded by middle-aged white guys — a sepia snapshot of the days when such pols ran Washington like their own men’s club — Joe Wilson yelled “You lie!” at a president who didn’t.

But, fair or not, what I heard was an unspoken word in the air: You lie, boy!

I, to be fair, didn’t hear this at all. I heard a scuffle off to the right, and the booing. I had heard at one point a sound like a muffled “fffwwWWHHYYY!!” from the distant back of the room, and I didn’t know what was going on but I was concentrating on the content of Obama’s speech, eager as I was to hear his plan – finally, his plan for healthcare coverage for the American people. I didn’t even take notice until people started talking about it later. And yes, he’s a douchebag, and yes, ultimately completely ignorable. Except.

Except except except…

Those who might be called the drama mavens of our national political scene wouldn’t let him be ignored. The White House was fine with the offered apology – I get the feeling they felt it was as significant or important as I did at the time, which was to say not at all. But his fellow Congressman and a portion of the American public I personally have no way of connecting with took it and ran with it.

The outburst was unexpected from a milquetoast Republican backbencher from South Carolina who had attracted little media attention. Now it has made him an overnight right-wing hero, inspiring “You lie!” bumper stickers and T-shirts.

The congressman, we learned, belonged to the Sons of Confederate Veterans, led a 2000 campaign to keep the Confederate flag waving above South Carolina’s state Capitol and denounced as a “smear” the true claim of a black woman that she was the daughter of Strom Thurmond, the ’48 segregationist candidate for president.

WHAT?

For two centuries, the South has feared a takeover by blacks or the feds. In Obama, they have both.

The state that fired the first shot of the Civil War has now given us this: Senator Jim DeMint exhorted conservatives to “break” the president by upending his health care plan. Rusty DePass, a G.O.P. activist, said that a gorilla that escaped from a zoo was “just one of Michelle’s ancestors.” Lovelorn Mark Sanford tried to refuse the president’s stimulus money.

Rusty DePass? I consider myself an informed individual, such as my busy life allows me to have time to peruse the internet. I hadn’t heard of Rusty DePass or his truly awful joking about gorillas. Neither had my husband, who peruses different blogs than I and generally keeps more up to date on political issues. For those for whom this is their first exposure, here are the apelike antics of Rusty DePass.

No, I do believe now. I believe with those lines that we are in fact in the midst of a civil war that never ended, that left our country permanently rent but never allowed it to separate and heal. The wounds have boiled under the surface ever since for some folks, and they will never, no, never forget it.

Herein is a valuable lesson for learning how cultural elements, including those of intolerance and hatred, are passed down from one generation to the next, over hundreds of years. And therein have various attempts – civil rights, bussing, forced integration – been based, to some success. Things have changed. Except where the culture had more of a stranglehold than did the law.

It may be President Obama’s very air of elegance and erudition that raises hackles in some. “My father used to say to me, ‘Boy, don’t get above your raising,’ ” Fowler said.

Er.. really. The best I can come up with for such a baffling statement is: Gee, those cultural divides sure are deep! If my parents ever told me anything, it was that I could be anything that I wanted, despite coming from a poor family living in a destitute place.

From the comments, I found this to be an excellent summation of the situation we face:

These are ominous times. The healthcare ‘debate’ has gone far beyond the topic of healthcare, exposing the troubling division in our country. New code words for racism emerging nightly. DeMint this morning telling the crowd that Obama would ‘call out’ anyone who disagreed with him. I heard Obama’s speech. He said anyone who ‘lied.’ Mr. DeMint appears to be one of those liars. He along with Limbaugh, Beck and Hannity are setting us on a dangerous path. I wonder has the revolution started? I think it is too late for America. The right has gone too far, forgetting the very notion of loyal opposition.

Change has come quickly to the uneducated and the undereducated who know only that things don’t feel right in their world. They feel so threatened in our evolving world they can’t even see how they are being used. Prisoners of their own prejudice. They seem unaware that they are working against their own self interest. They cannot ask how the rest of the world manages to provide healthcare for their citizens. They do no research preferring instead to believe fantastic tales of death panels hoping to catch the infirm, posted on the websites of their leaders and bellowed on hate radio. I read a sign that said ‘Youth in Asia wants to kill Grandma.’ It took me a minute to decode the meaning.

I find myself thinking of these mobs as ‘other’ people. They are ‘others’, the first step in objectifying people and I am sure they think of me in the same terms. We are becoming the Hutus and the Tutsies of the US. I don’t know that we can have any rational discourse, as Joe Wilson proved on Wednesday night, or make a difference using our system of government. I have called my representatives but found them uninterested and see them as purchased by big pharma and insurance companies, a new sort of corporate slave.They reinforce my perceptions and prejudice about corporate rule and plutocracy. This leaves little possibility for change. The question is how do we stop this madness? I fear we cannot persuade the anti-reformists with reason nor even confront them about their own fear and racism. I read the comments of the ‘others’ hitting back angry, paranoid, racist, yes racist, and defensive. I watch their aggression grow on the nightly news. Is their fear really about the changing demographics in our country? Is healthcare merely the symbol of this change?

I hope our path is not to revolution. Revolutions are living entities with a life of their own, not at all controllable and revolutions start with one small act. In the meantime we squabble with each other, divisive and angry, while the plutocrats and corporations make off with the wealth. Ominous times indeed.

There you have it, folks. Incontrovertible evidence of what is going on in the state of our national politics today, whether amongst politicians or the normal folk. This is your carte-blanche to tell anyone who disagrees with Obama’s policies that they are a racist, and really mean it.

…

Just kidding on the last line, of course.

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Update: Bob Herbert’s wonderful column addresses this, and as usual the comments are well worth reading.