My parents were divorced when I was 10 y/o.  I lived with my mother and two sisters and spent a lot of time with my mother’s two bachelor brothers.  I was paid room and board working for them and 50 cents an hour.  ”I’d pay you more but you’re not worth it.”  I was 11 at the time and I think he was right.

I spent a good part of summers at this uncles place in the country.  He had 20 acres in the midst of a lot of other land which was there for me to roam with a .22 rifle.  I shot up everything, hunted down roadkill to throw in the creek and harvested crawdads.  Which I threw back, not wanting to eat the damned things.

One summer I listened to most of the Republican and Democratic conventions.  It was Eisenhower and Stevenson, both years.  As I remember there was a strong intellectual quality to those events and if there was chanting it was “I like Ike”.

What there wasn’t was the juvenile, jingoistic “U S A”, by which is meant whi te protestant USA and this is the last gasp for it.  After this, that particular caucasian will be a minority.  After this summer our favorite beer-swilling Archie Bunker will no longer have the security of being in the majority.  It’s over, there’s a new game in town and it’s not stacked in Bubba’s favor.