William Marvel: Dark-Side Diaries

As the unrepentant and unreconstructed Democrat Jim Salmon recently remembered, with minor garbling of facts, I joined him and his fellow partisans to watch the election returns in November of 2008. I doubt that I drank any of the beer he mentioned, as I don't like more than half a bottle, and only on the hottest of summer days. I did vote with them that year, although I had already quit their party over the political poltroonery of celebrities like Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden — who carefully protected their presidential ambitions by acquiescing to George Bush's invasion of Iraq. I think I said nothing publicly about the invasion of Afghanistan, although Jim apparently assumed that I agreed with them about that, too.

I hoped, as they may have, that Barack Obama's election would mark the opening of America's post-racial epoch. Unlike those devoted party loyalists, however, I could not ignore his later revival of racial divisions for the sake of social revolution.