Billmon says what I am feeling as well.
I dunno, I guess that’s when it hit me — the enormity of what I’d just seen. It may not mean as much to you youngsters (get off my lawn!) but for someone of my age, who grew up in the dying days of segregation, who still remembers the colored and white drinking fountains and the monochrome lunch counters, who saw Washington DC burn the night Martin Luther King was killed — who, in some sense, has essentially spent his whole life living in the shadow of American racism, it was completely mindblowing. The party of Jefferson Davis and George Wallace (but also of FDR and Bobby Kennedy) had just chosen a black man as its standard bearer — and God willing, as the country’s leader.
As always, all of what Billmon writes deserves attention, not just this excerpt.
I got kind of choked up, myself, watching. I tried to explain it to the boys, but they just didn’t get why it was such a big deal.
Which is awesome.
Bilmon, when running “The Whiskey Bar”, wrote an essay about the Scotch-Irish. Not half Irish, half Scot, but a continuing and distinct mix that stands alone. He pointed out, with excellent historical points, how they have been responsible for pretty much all of America’s troubles since the beginning.
All his blogging was excellent. He had an archive, but it’s been years; I can’t find it.