Obama’s speech was noteworthy. Some things he said, I have only thus far seen said on “The West Wing”. I think it was a good speech, a very good speech, but I was not as moved by it as Beckie was. Mostly i saw his words as just common sense, and not sure it really requires explanation if you are a normal color-blind civilized person. Some people hopefully will open their eyes because of it, but i think those are many of the same people you can’t get through to in the first place.

I think more important than what he said, it reveals his character and allowed him to deliver an emotional roundhouse to the voters that no candidate other than he could have thrown. I’ll bet his campaign has been saving this bombshell for the right time. So its surely political. The man gives a good speech, no doubt, but I am still not convinced he’s not just another stupid democrat, or even a smart guy who will be unable to escape the stupid democrats around him. Which is not to say that McCain won’t also have his hand forced by all the idiot Republicans.

The speech led to an interesting conversation with one of my co-workers, who is a good friend and a lot like me in his politics and common sense, and also a native from Puerto Rico. Our discussions are usually good ones, since we like and trust each other and don’t get offended by straight talk about race. It was news to him that Hispanics generally are voting away from Obama due to racism. My friend’s experience is of a person who had an active family and education and goals when he moved here. I can’t say how typical this is, but he and his sisters and their families seem just as middle class as anyone. Which means they are pretty much sans-color-nee-religion-nee-stupid-ethnic-hate. It is surely different from the Mexican who comes here to work as a day laborer, and who views blacks as competing with them for jobs.

In some ways it was no surprise people are not dialed into this voting trend of brown v. black, for the press certainly does not talk about it. And if they do it is always in the most arm’s-length of terms. Beckie calls it code. I noticed much the same seems to be the case with Jews sucking onto Hillary like lampreys cause she once ate a kinish at a deli. Just like the press won’t say how the hispanics fear blacks, they won’t talk about how irrational Jews can be about Israel. It got me thinking about how I was raised, and the dogma pushed on me.

From the 3rd grade onwards, Hebrew school pumps kids all full of Israel: sell candy bars to raise money to plant a tree in Israel, vote for Carter cause he made peace with Egypt and Israel, your most noble goal is to go visit Israel, blah blah blah. Fact is, every kid I knew who went to Israel came back some militant mutherfuggar, at least for a few months. Fact is, the Jews can be as crazy and rascist as anyone – from the pro-Israelis-bullshit to the forever-hate-the-Germans to having a not-so-subtle distaste for blacks. Its hard to see when you are seeing it in the fabric of your day-to-day, and sometimes it takes the reflection in macro voting statistics years later to really understand what someone tried to sell you when you were too young to know you were being mindfucked. But even then, I did know I was being mindfucked. I surely remember my grandfather not speaking to my cousin’s black boyfriend, despite how Jews wear the ACLU on their sleeves. and I remeber how the synagogue’s flea market proceedings in part went to Israel. And i remember the hebrew school teacher who screamed at the class that the Holocaust was the worst atrocity in human history. While this is arguably true, screaming anything at 6th graders surely reveals something about the warts in your character.

I’m not trying to blame anyone or hate on the Hebrews. That the religion was not for me should not take away from my ability to critique it for its platform and its training. Some of the things it imparted are good – passion for education, willingness to question and think, appreciation for the power of knowledge, and an awareness that being a dentist is better than being a ditch-digger. Why is it ok to praise what is praise-worthy but deny the equally true doctrines that should be criticized? We all know some of stereotyping is true, and every group does really have their own hatreds. Little future Jewish lawyers like to be the alpha-geeks in 4th grade math class, just as much as they snicker at the shvartzes who were bigger and meaner than them growing up in Brooklyn but could kick their butts in gym class. These traits evolved out of history and are passed down. The Jewish religion managed to survive almost 6,000 of hatred and exile by evolving a survival technique and utilizing it. Gibbon called the Jews know-it-alls in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and Nietzsche railed against the slave morality because it was real and it was powerful. It should not be taboo to acknowledge these things in their context and with respect. Like Obama said, to reject it is to reject oneself.

But to take it too seriously is to be one of lemmings taken in by the absolutism. I sit comfortably on my high-horse, remembering the real lessons taught by my rabbi.