Did the current path of America's destruction get set into motion by "acceptable racism"?

America has a history of acceptable racism.  Beginning with the early settlers, "Indians" were seen by some to be inferior and "pagan."  Certainly, not everyone in early America felt this way, but in many circles this viewpoint of the Indian was the accepted, unquestioned popular opinion of the day.

Slavery came along and, once again, the belief generally was that the black person was property and had his or her place among the beasts of burden in a white man's inventory of possessions.  Many were horrified by this notion, but its wide-ranging acceptance is found in the fact that a civil war was necessary to crowbar it out of existence in this country.

After the Civil War, a scholar no less than Booker T. Washington pointed out that many black people used their newly acquired voting rights to vote against anything the white man was voting for.  Many blacks (about 100% of them registered Republicans) would find out which way their white neighbors were voting and then cast their ballots the opposite way.  This was one form of acceptable racism of Booker T. Washington's day.

President Woodrow Wilson segregated the military and government jobs, and set the wheels in motion for segregation society-wide -- and that was acceptable in his time.

Jim Crow laws, spanning almost a century (1876-1965), were somehow acceptable to citizens nationwide.  Hatred between the races grew along with discrimination, but it was hard to "swim against the current" of America of those times.

The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King made great strides in the 60s, finally addressing an evil practice in a way that exposed its ugliness, while at the same time uniting a diversity of people of good will.  People were willing to "come out of the closet," as it were, to take a stand for righteousness in the name of equality.

Perhaps the defining edict on this terrible scourge on this nation was the Reverend King's immortal declaration that a person should "not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

After the assassination of Reverend King, the uniting of peoples based on his concept of "content of character" began to slowly dissolve.  Just one obvious example: a quick-fix known as Affirmative Action was brought in to address inequality.  And it was accepted, because it made some who felt guilty feel like they were doing something meaningful.

Soon, acceptable racism ballooned.  In small ways and in large, examples abound.  We see it today in offhand remarks that denigrate even the Founders.  They're labeled "a bunch of rich, white men" -- a neat little ball of acceptable racism, with some classism and sexism tossed in for good measure.

A couple years back, dissecting a tragic encounter, Trayvon Martin was seen by many as innocent and George Zimmerman guilty because it's acceptable to accuse a white man of targeting a black man (even though, in this case, Zimmerman's race had to be tweaked by the New York Times to make him a "white Hispanic").

Those on the left can pretty much call anyone they disagree with racist, that's acceptable, but on the right new phrases have emerged.  Consider "race-baiter" and "playing the race card."  These are quite mild concoctions used only by the right.  Have you ever heard anyone on the left embrace those phrases?  No, the left goes right for the jugular, calling anyone who uses Reverend King's "formula" to evaluate a person of color an automatic racist.

Now, all of this would be nothing more than a nuisance if it weren't for the fact that acceptable racism set the wheels in motion six years back for America's destruction.

The progressives finally found what the incorrigible Joe Biden called a "clean, articulate black man" to carry their water.  People liked the way then-candidate Barack Obama looked and, of course, the way he spoke.  Forget the fact that if a white guy were to utter "this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal," he would be dismissed as a big BS-er.  But not Mr. Clean-Articulate.  He was "electable."  Oh, and don't dig too deeply into his past.  No one cares about his hard-drug use or his associations with America-haters or his camaraderie with domestic terrorists.  They cared about voting for him to make history.

We saw it many times on TV, even heard it from our friends:  "I'm going to make history by voting for Barack Obama."  However, what does it imply to vote for someone because he's black, and in that way "make history"?  That would be like saying, "I'm not going to vote for Barack Obama because he's black."  Both phrases are at the opposite end of the scale, the scale labeled "racism."

America voted for a black man for president in 2008 so that it could make history, then doubled-down in 2012, unwilling to face up to its mistake.  Now America is paying for its racist screw-up with a divided country filled with new laws and regulations that are destroying it slowly from within.

What's next, we might wonder?  Well, in a country that accepts a lot of things without much deep and thoughtful consideration, it's pretty predictable.

In 2016, Hillary Clinton will be running with the campaign slogan, "Make History Again!"  What will America do?  It's quite possible that Hillary will be whisked right into the Oval Office because of the new euphoria of the day: Acceptable Sexism.