OOGA-BOOGA ON THE DOWNLOW.

You may have noticed that, after the the latest gun massacre in newly-assault-weapon-friendly Boulder,  conservatives held to their usual thoughts-and-prayers let's-ride-this-out quietude until they heard reports that the shooter is Muslim, at which point their glee became explosive. Rightwing operative Caleb Hull did a long thread on liberals who presumed, based on the cops taking him alive, that the shooter was white -- haw haw libtards, who's the mass-murder racist now? "The Left Politicized and Racialized the Boulder Shooting, Now Its Racism Is Exposed," gurgled Brandon Morse at RedState; "TWITTER LETS VERIFIED LEFTISTS SPREAD MISINFORMATION ABOUT ‘WHITE MAN’ COMMITTING CO SHOOTING" hollered Breitbart, etc.

This brings up one of the more toxic aspects of modern American conservatism that should be self-evident but apparently needs pointing out: They see racism not as a social problem but as a zero-sum game -- that is, they think if they can just pile up enough points for whiteness, they win. That's why you see so many rightwing essays about the need to defend "Dead White Males" from their imagined assault by liberals ("'White conservative/reactionary crowd'? W.E.B. Du Bois would take exception," lol), and racists both small- and big-time portraying their aim as a defense of "Western Civilization." And why, for all their blubbering over "cancel culture," they approve of laws banning the teaching of critical race theory. They identify whiteness with everything good and vice-versa; when, as with many if not most modern American mass murders, the targeting of out-groups is obvious, they either clam up or (as with Atlanta) try to muddle the issue, not out of shame so much as out of a desire to keep the non-whites from running up the score.  

Speaking of which, Jim Geraghty at National Review:

Senate Democrats’ Short-Lived Opposition to All White Biden Nominees

... [Senator Tammy] Duckworth and her colleague Mazie Hirono of Hawaii told reporters that they intended to vote against any Biden “nominees who aren’t minorities.”

Instead of judging those nominees by their merits, those senators pledged to judge them by the color of their skin. If only we had a word to describe that phenomenon.

In a country where you can see white racism just by walking around with your eyes open, it takes special effort to focus on the alleged racism of members of minority groups. But they apparently find it worth the effort.