Geographic Isolation

    We've been told so often and tried so often to walk a mile in another's shoes we sometimes forget we really do have shoes of our own.  We try so hard to keep an open mind some people seem to forget to not keep their minds so open their brains fall out on the ground.  The 'white man's burden' is becoming something other than Kipling's completely innocent but completely objectionable idea.  We're being burdened with blame we really don't deserve.
    The truth is the collection of 'scary white guys' that traditionally have run the United States aren't exclusively some manifestation of white supremacy. They're just the product of geographic isolation.
    We currently face and have faced the tension between accident of birth and true meritocracy.  Capitalism is the ideal venue to let that play out.  ( Boy, that'll get me in some trouble.)  Capitalism with its rewards can separate aristocracy and meritocracy better than any other system.
    Our aristocracy is just the product of a certain group of individuals being confronted with relatively unlimited resources and opportunities.  I don't think it would really matter if they had been white, black or purple.  It was a unique circumstance and they would have to have been pretty dumb not to make the most of it and they would have to have become some sort of different species to not pass on their success to their progeny.
     I guess that's all just a roundabout way of saying, in the end,  race plays a smaller role than we seem to believe.  It sure has played a different role than most people think in the debates of the last 60 years or so.
    The recent formulation is:  Scary white guys because of  'white privilege' run the show.  They somehow abuse the 'privilege' to hold everybody else down.  Do they?  Which white guys?
    It seems to me there has been an awful lot of progress made in the last 50 years or so.  An awful lot of it proposed by those white guys and at the very least promoted by those guys, encouraged by those guys, very often articulated by those guys and articulated well. Sure, we're seeing backsliding but we're responding to it.
    I don't like the idea that somehow I can't know your circumstance or understand your aspiration because I am not you.  It's so obviously untrue in actual result.  I don't think I have to be black or purple to see the value of ultimate truth.  I seem to have done fairly well being old,  white and fairly scary.  I have no more to do with northern Europe than other people have to do with Africa or Latin America. I do have a lot to do with America as an ideal I want to succeed, just as my neighbors do. We all can read and have a sense of right and wrong.
    I believe in inclusion across the board.  It works.  We've built a NATION by using it.  Let's not forget.  But also let's not forget who "all" includes.