Yes, sorta like the Al Bundy types, whose greatest moment of their lives was when they caught the winning pass in high school, or else who always talk about their days in the service…. as though nuthin' else in life ever improved after that. And BTW, it's probably all the more reason to depend on the sorta media like cable, talk radio, and the interwebs, that not only "validates" their POV, but also keeps creating these hated "out groups" to feel 'superior' to (blacks, gays, atheists, 'illegals', edumacated elites, etc.).

Terrific writing, thank you! And Marche is spot on, there's a huge chunk of 'Murican white culture that desperately needs to always have someone they can "look down on", no matter how humble their own station in life. And this is the unofficial 'role' of black folks in the U.S., which is why they always have to 'mind their place', and why Obama's very existence as POTUS (aka, an "uppity" muslim Kenyan) is such an outrage to so many.

Retired to a rural, and very white small town not long ago, and this point was brought home one day in a conversation I overheard in a restaurant between the owner and a patron, a local, and fairly prosperous white dentist. And what was intriguing was how insistent this dentist was that Obama had "help" graduating from Harvard (presumably as a minority), and that he wouldn't have made it otherwise. Though it wasn't difficult to see that even this affluent and educated dentist still "needed" to believe that the POTUS, with 3 degrees from the most prestigious college in the country… was somehow 'inferior'.