Baraka's City of Brotherly Love

Obama's speech this morning took race baiting off the table as a continuing tactic in American campaigns and elections methodology. Oh, there will be knuckle dragging ethnonationalist throwbacks who continue to try it - because it's all they know or ever can be. Most of them got caught in the honeypot, however, and were weeping and gnashing their teeth on the radio in the aftermath of today's anointed remarks. But from this point forward, we have been shown the Baraka of a possible American future.

In 1980 Ronald Reagan kicked off his general campaign for president of the United States in Philadelphia, announcing at the annual Neshoba County Fair, "I believe in states' rights ... [I] believe we have distorted the balance of our government today by giving powers that were never intended to be given in the Constitution to that federal establishment." He went on to promise to "restore to states and local governments the power that properly belongs to them".

Reagan's speech marked the continuation of the successful Republican "Southern strategy"; this was supposedly evidence of Reagan's libertarian belief in federalism and a greater role for states in determining their own policies. However, given the history of Philadelphia, and Reagan's use of the words "states' rights", often interpreted as a desire to return to pre-Civil War laws regarding segregation, many felt that Reagan was at least insensitive to the concerns of blacks, or that he even was using this location and these words as a cynical appeal to the white racist vote.

Ethnonationalist political gamesmanship has experienced a mortal blow and an extinction level event. Let's watch now and see how long it takes for that vast and diseased reptilian body to "realize" that it's little walnut-sized brain has been annihilated.