Just Blame Fred

Now that the election is over and Obama creamed McCain, time to get on with the real problems that beset us. Obama certainly does have his work cut out for him — “fixing” an ailed and broken system, flawed at the fundamental roots. I kinda liken Obama as a type of ‘Sheradian’ from Bablyon 5 defeating McCain, a type of ‘President Clarke’ from the same show. Actually, President Clarke is more like President Bush, but analogies only go so far.

I am a Libertarian myself, so I look at both the Democrats and Republicans with great disdain. Alas, I saw that McCain and Palin continually beating the war drum, even saber-rattling with Russia. A war with Russia would be very bad for everyone, because for the very reason that when two nuclear powers have a face-off with each attacking each other’s homelands, the loser will be extremely tempted to use the nuclear option, meaning, of course, the end of life as we know it on this planet.

So, scared out of my gourd with McCain and Palin, I got my butt out there and voted for Obama, despite the fact I don’t like his socialist leanings and his support for the very unions that is responsible for chasing manufacturing jobs out of this country, among other things. I don’t like Joe Biden’s support for the very misandrist “Violence Against Women” bill, because it ignores the violence women exact against men, which according to FBI stats, is about equal with violence women exact against men.

But I digress.

What really bothers me is how NPR has been covering this election. At every opportunity, they choose to hit up the election from the race angle, rasing questions about the “Bradley Effect”, which to my knowledge have not been scientifically confirmed, to ignoring half of Obama’s heritage by referring to him as a “Black Man”, by throwing the race question up in the face of nearly all they’ve interviewed and covered and asked opinions of.

What amuses me is that a number of people on their call-in shows asked the very questions I am asking about why NPR chooses to focus on race so much when this election is clearly NOT about race.

NPR’s response? “We have no choice.”

To which I say, hogwash!

We have seen remarkable progress in this country since the Civil Rights movements of the 60’s. We have seen the rise of a new generation that is, for the most part, unbiased on the so-called “race” issue.

The truth of the matter is that the whole “race” issue is of our parent’s and grandparent’s generation. They still live in that world, for the most part, and still think in those terms. Thankfully, though, their influence on the world is diminishing as we move forward to a bold new future.

That’s not to say that there aren’t racists in they younger generations. But it does not compare at all to what existed 50 years ago.

But I ask the question: What exactly is “racism”, anyway? What exactly is “race”? Why would it even matter to begin with?

Firstly, “race” is purely a social construct with no basis in science. This is already widely known. It makes no sense, anyway, because it does not even speak to the culture a person belongs to, but to some silly notions about humanity — notions that were created by the racists in the past to divide people for the purposes of power and control.

The truth of the matter is that there is only one ‘race’ — the human race. What most refer to as ‘racial characteristics’ are merely regional and climatic adaptations our ancestors who branched out from Africa many thousands of years ago underwent. Those who migrated to the northern regions got lighter so their skin could synthesize more of the vitamin D from the reduced sunlight. Those who migrated to the Asian continents were most likely small clans with features differences that were amplified over time to the billions that exist there today.

Genetics show no basis for “race” at all. And many of these so-called “racial characteristics” are poly-genetic in nature, meaning that many different genetic configurations produce the same phenotypic traits. Meaning, of course, nature simply found many avenues to archive the same adaptive benefits.

Well, duh.

Also, from a memetic standpoint, the ‘race’ meme is a thought contagion, meaning that it’s a meme that programs for its own retransmission, much like religion and politics does. But a deep discussion of memetics is beyond the scope of this blog. Feel free to Google the many references on the Internet for your own self-edification.

NPR’s fixation on race does us all a disservice. Personally, I find it condescending, as though “race” can tell you all you need to know about a person. Actually, it tells you nothing beyond the fading social notion and perception of that person — and it would fade far faster if NPR and other media outlets would cease giving it special attention.

Now, I otherwise like NPR, though they are not perfect, and they did knuckle under to Bush’s War Machine during the genesis of the Iraq war. At that time I was so disgusted with NPR that I stopped tuning them in, and have only recently begun picking them up again.

But with their fixation on the ‘race’ question over and beyond what it needs to be, I may indeed tune them out again. I’ll leave it up to them to see reason instead of racism.