"He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind: and the fool shall be servant to the wise of heart." Proverbs 11:29

I've watched the progression ever since I became politically aware in high school. It probably didn't start there, no doubt its poisonous roots can be traced back to before the Civil War, perhaps even before the Revolution, but the early 60s is when I first noticed it. No, I wasn't taught this, or learned it from anyone, I could see it for myself, happening before my eyes. The Civil Rights movement brought it out in the open and made it respectable. Even a 14 year old kid could see the battle lines being drawn and people picking sides. And by the time I graduated I had picked mine. I wasn't Scotch-Irish or Anglo-Saxon or of Nordic descent. I knew I wasn't welcome to a substantial portion of my countrymen, I would always be a stranger, an outsider, no matter how long I lived here, or how long my family had lived here.

Oh yeah, it was called lots of other things in those days, code words and dog whistles like States Rights, Separate but Equal, and Strict Constructionism. Then came the John Birch Society, Barry Goldwater, Nixon and Watergate, Ronald Reagan, and the refusal to tolerate any Democrat in the White House, whether it be JFK, LBJ, Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. This hatred didn't start with Obama, its been festering for generations. Now we're even hearing about Nullification and Secession and the War of Northern Aggression.

No, this is not a normal difference in political opinions, or an evolution in the body politic, to be expected in any democracy. This has been a carefully crafted and meticulously plotted effort to take the nation back a century, before the New Deal, before Teddy Roosevelt, a new Gilded Age, where people, especially working people, Knew Their Place and Didn't Cause Trouble.

I doubt if I'll reach even one Conservative on this board with this message, but I don't care. They're not listening anyway. Like fish in clear water who have never known anything else, they are totally unaware of the viscous confining fluid they swim in. For a while, I thought those days were finally over, that they were an artifact of ignorance and poverty and a backwards racist culture that was finally dying a natual death. But I know better now. It is everywhere, just under the surface, ready to emerge when called, perhaps disguised and under a new name, slouching toward Bethlehem to be born.

"For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind: it hath no stalk; the bud shall yield no meal: if so be it yield, the strangers shall swallow it up." Hosea 8:7