Two igno­rant crack­ers got them­selves arrested today after plan­ning to assas­si­nate Barack Obama.

Law enforce­ment agents have bro­ken up a plot by two neo-​Nazi skin­heads to assas­si­nate Demo­c­ra­tic pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Barack Obama and shoot or decap­i­tate 88 black peo­ple, the Bureau of Alco­hol, Tobacco Firearms and Explo­sives said Monday.

Assas­si­na­tion plot tar­get­ing Obama dis­rupted — Yahoo! News

Frankly, I’m sur­prised we haven’t seen more of this by now. I grew up in Texas, in a pre­dom­i­nantly black neigh­bor­hood. Seri­ously, there were three white kids in my high school, one of the larger schools in Hous­ton. Until I was ten or so, I thought I was just a really pale brother. But even so, I ran into enough big­oted red­necks to under­stand that the irra­tional roots of racism run deep in the south. It was only 40 years ago that the fed­eral gov­ern­ment had to inter­vene to guar­an­tee the right of reg­is­tra­tion and vot­ing to African Amer­i­cans (which still doesn’t work that well, see Florida 2000, Ohio 2004).

There are still a lot of igno­rant white peo­ple in the south who just can’t accept the idea of a black pres­i­dent of the United States. It is lit­er­ally alien to their entire world­view. I think one of the few things the Repub­li­can party has done right this elec­tion cycle is keep­ing these wingnuts out of the news, sweep­ing real domes­tic ter­ror­ists like the Klu Klux Klan under the rug until the elec­tion is over. But those idiots are still down there, and they’ll still be there after Novem­ber 4^th. What do we do about them then?

I’m dis­heart­ened at how many working-​class peo­ple are still out there that have been deluded into think­ing that McCain, the mul­ti­mil­lion­aire with seven house, is one of them, while Barack Obama is a “Har­vard elit­ist” who doesn’t under­stand the “real America.”:

Rep. Robin Hayes, R-N.C., main­tained last week that, “Lib­er­als hate real Amer­i­cans that work, and accom­plish and achieve.” Such notions get trac­tion quickly in today’s age of instant com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Walk around Durango High School, where the crowd was wait­ing for a McCain rally to start, and peo­ple spoke glow­ingly of the Viet­nam hero’s kin­ship with “real Amer­ica.” “It’s some­thing Barack Obama can’t pos­si­bly know, because he’s not one of us. It’s like the way (Richard) Nixon was able to talk to the hard hats,” said Jim Wil­son, a dis­trict attorney.

Is Barack Obama a real Amer­i­can or a Har­vard elit­ist? | MiamiHerald.com

Actu­ally, lib­er­als work. I work. I’ve got daily wage-​slave job just like every­one else in my tax bracket. These peo­ple clearly don’t know or don’t want to know that Barack Obama was raised by middle-​class heart­land folks in Kansas, that he and his sis­ter once only got by because their mother was able to get food stamps to buy gro­ceries. That he comes from begin­nings as hum­ble as any Amer­i­can. He made it to Har­vard by work­ing for it, by get­ting schol­ar­ships. Obama’s story is the Amer­i­can dream, work­ing his way up through dili­gence and hard work, and being rewarded for his effort.

But some­thing tells me that’s not the real story here. When peo­ple opposed to Obama say “he’s not one of us,” are they really talk­ing about him being elit­ist? Because any­one who’s read about Obama for five min­utes knows that can’t pos­si­bly be true. Or is it code? When they say he’s not one of us, are they really say­ing he’s not white?

The roots of racism run deep in Amer­ica. It took a hun­dred years after the slaves were freed before they could prac­ti­cally vote, and blacks in Ohio and Florida will tell you that’s not nec­es­sar­ily even the case here in the 21^st cen­tury. In my own state of Col­orado, the sec­re­tary of state is being sued for ille­gal purg­ing of the voter rolls. I can pretty much guar­an­tee the peo­ple purged off the rolls and denied the right to vote weren’t rich white folks.

What do you think? Is the cur­rent of us-​versus-​them “real Amer­i­cans” about class, or is it really about race?