Mad Atoms

Last month, Attorney General and noted black person Eric Holder called us “a nation of cowards,” for avoiding “frank conversations” about race. He was apparently upset that white people don’t hang out with black people on weekends. Instead of having this conversation, the government decided to do a few other things, like, say, solve the crippling depression. Does this make us a nation of cowards?

I’m all for big government. Let’s have free health care, crazy big schools, and microchips that record our every movement. Like Sweden. But if there’s one thing that free market does fairly well, it’s deciding what we should have conversations about.

The news is a perfect example. If we wanted a national conversation on race, then the news would be having one, right? Well, the other day, as an experiment, I painfully sat through a half hour of the news. Here’s what they were conversing about: the stock market, Octomom, and how much Bobby Jindal looks like Kenneth the Page. 

OK, so maybe there are some things we should be talking about but aren’t talking about. Like why we still have troops in Germany even though World War II ended like a billion years ago.

Or why we subsidize corn even though it costs a shit ton of money and makes people fat. Or if men should hug (George Will thinks no). But the amorphous, ambiguous subject of race? Really?

Here’s the secret: when someone says we need to have a national conversation about X, what that someone really means is that everybody needs to shut the fuck up and listen to that someone lecture them on X. Because if Eric Holder actually listened to what some people in this country said about race, he’d want to blow his brains out. 

I know racism still exists. And I think we should do something about it. I think we should elect some politicians, who should change the goddamn law. Oh wait, we already did that. So let’s not have a national conversation about race. Instead, why doesn’t the attorney general get off his sanctimonious ass and change the fucking laws. That is what the attorney general does, right? 

So get on with it. End mandatory sentencing, ease drug laws, hell, you can even bring back welfare and school busing for all I care. Just don’t tell me what to have a conversation about.