I'm heartened by the fact that the United States is a nation of immigrants and there just aren't any truly ethnic prejudices we can employ anymore. I mean yeah - muslims are teh terrorz and stuff but Islam is a lot more heterogeneous than, say, Hutus. Even when we try to be racist pricks we fumble it compared to lots of the world.
Japanese internment was a blotch on history but I honestly believe that we simply don't have the latent capacity for racism and ultra-nationalism the way Europe and Asia do. I suspect that if we did, Trump would be acting a lot more racist than he does.
- Even when we try to be racist pricks we fumble it compared to lots of the world.
I don't know if I buy that. On the one hand, a few guys I grew up with joined the Klan and an ex girlfriend joined a National Anarchist group. We have racists as nasty as anyone's, I have known them and I have wondered "where did that come from?" On the other, we don't have parties like Golden Dawn or the British/French National Fronts that threaten to win or actually win elections, so either they're more marginal or the two-party system does some good along with the bad. But I wonder if they'll stay marginal if we have Trump being an openly racist presidential candidate.