Crawling back into it

by shamanic

I've been suffering network problems ever since I let my neighbor's 18-year-old son piggyback onto my wireless signal. Yesterday I finally gave up and implemented a fresh security regimen on said network, since I couldn't even get Google to fully load, and yesterday evening we had a discussion about bittorrent and bandwidth. I seem to be back online, and hopefully he is too, a little more respectful of limitations than he was before.

Last night, I saw bits of Rev. Joseph Lowery, an Obama supporter, debate Rep. John Lewis, a Clinton supporter (audio here, under "Politics and Race"), and living not far from the final resting place of Martin Luther King, I believe I felt the ground shake as he spun in his grave. To see two leaders of the Civil Rights movements going after each other over two primary candidates was... it was wow. It felt surreal. Give it a listen and tell me if I'm crazy.

Like Stranger at Blah3, I'm a little depressed about the way the discussion of race is being handled in the campaign and especially in the media. I realize there are now weeks to go before the next round of this, but here's where we are: The Democratic nominee for president will almost certainly be a woman or person or color. This is something we should be celebrating, an historic moment that may forever change the possibilities that live in the minds of Americans. This is a moment for high minded optimism, and instead we're subjected to leaders of the frigging Civil Rights movement squaring off in support of their various candidate choices.

Depressing, yes. Yes yes. Oh, and reading Andrew Sullivan these days feels like 2002-2003, except instead of "get Saddam", his mantra is "get Clinton". Whom he calls Hillary. And speaks of in the plural. Savage, paranoid, and depressing.