A break in the usual topics as I discuss the presidential primaries. It's something that's taken up a fair amount of my time as I've watched CNN or, occasionally, PBS or other US networks (don't get Fox News) as well as read columns and analyses online.

Deep down it's made me sad. I think there are a lot of people who wanted to believe Obama really could unite the country, was a different kind of politician, and so on. They say each of us are many people at the same time, have different "selves," and one of mine was rooting for the man. Even though, as I listened to his policy solutions it seemed like the "same old same old" sorts of things a liberal Democrat would say, still I hoped he really did have the sort of character that could transcend ideology, race, "red states and blue states," and so forth. The degree to which Americans hate each other's guts these days is something I find depressing.

Reagan's old speech writer, Peggy Noonan, in a Wall Street Journal column, had an interesting take on Jeremiah Wright. As someone of Irish descent, she said, she could identify with African Americans who hold onto their bitterness even when the worst grievances are in the distant past. She said that lots of Irish Americans do the same: they enjoy the solidarity of hating the British, of feeling the anger, even though it's all in the past and they'd never actually walk up and punch an Englishman in the nose. She herself used to enjoy those feelings when she was younger, she said.

Yes, but. Blacks (or Irish) nursing their grievances in public is not a good thing. It's a net impediment for progress in a society and is, frankly, unloving and a form of narcissism. I myself have some old, serious grievances from past church experiences, but after working through them, going through the grieving process as it were, there came a point that focusing on them became counterproductive. If some African Americans really are still working through the pain of past injustices, that's perfectly legitimate. But they ought to be doing so in the context of, say, counseling sessions, support groups, or what have you. Don't take all that stuff into the public to poison the political debate.

Oh and by the way, if Jeremiah Wright and followers really do believe the US government conspired to create AIDS to infect the black community, then there's some serious delusional thinking going on. Before they'll get better they need to recognize they have a problem.

Well I see that my commentary on the primaries dealt only with a single teeny tiny issue, but that'll have to do for now...