Well, the bad news is that we’re a bunch of racists.  The good news, though, is that our liberal overlords are understanding.  Due to their boundless capacity for empathy, they understand that we just can’t help the inherent bigotry that characterizes us.  But with a little firmness and a good talking to, they’ll set us back on the progressive path.

At least, that seems to be the strategy du jour for the left and their mainstream media meat puppets.  Apparently realizing that their cacophonous chorus of innuendos and outright epithets excoriating the wayward bourgeoisie for its myriad sins was not having the desired effect – astonishingly, the know-nothings who make up the bulk of American society actually found being called “racists,” “sexists,” “homophobes,” “Islamaphobes” and all manner of other “-ists” and “-phobes” annoying.  With the polls tanking, it was time to try a new approach.

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That new approach rolled out Sunday as columnists Nick Kristoff and Cynthia Tucker tried out the new, kinder/gentler scold mode. Kristoff’s New York Times piece, delightfully titled “America’s History of Fear,” generously allows that maybe – just maybe – a virulent hatred of Muslims is not the only reason one might oppose the Ground Zero mosque.  No, he doesn’t quite say that perhaps some people might find a terrorist apologist putting up a mosque on the site of where other Muslins, acting explicitly as Muslims, murdered nearly 3,000 folks to be, at best, unbelievably tacky and insensitive.  Instead, those expressing feelings are “worriers” acting out because of their irrational fears:

A radio interviewer asked me the other day if I thought bigotry was the only reason why someone might oppose the Islamic center in Lower Manhattan. No, I don’t. Most of the opponents aren’t bigots but well-meaning worriers — and during earlier waves of intolerance in American history, it was just the same.

Screeds against Catholics from the 19th century sounded just like the invective today against the Not-at-Ground-Zero Mosque. The starting point isn’t hatred but fear: an alarm among patriots that newcomers don’t share their values, don’t believe in democracy, and may harm innocent Americans.

Now, a journalist without an agenda – or, in fact, anyone who has been awake for the last nine years – might point out a few inconvenient truths.  In fact, many of these “newcomers” expressly admit to not sharing our values – sharia is not an American value.  And their verbal footsie with Hamas is not exactly indicative of a love for democracy.  And the fear that they “may harm innocent Americans” is a pretty reasonable concern, in light of their proven track record of harming innocent Americans.

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Clearly just as disappointed as Mayor Bloomberg must have been to find that the clown who planted  the Times Square car bomb was not some wayward Tea Partier incensed by health care reform, Kristoff just ignores the brutal fact that the guy was another committed jihadi.  Like Obi-Wan Kenobi, Kristoff waves his rhetorical fingertips and whispers to his readers that, “These aren’t the terrorists you are looking for.”

Cynthia Tucker of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution knows the score too.  Are the American people upset because of massive deficit spending that bankrupts our children to pay off government bureaucrats and Democratic constituencies?  Of course not.  In her column “Discontent is Backlash to the Browning of America,” she puts her finger on the real concern motivating voters this fall:

This is a tempestuous and irrational time, an era of economic gloom, eroding living standards and deep fears about the future. But economic uncertainty alone cannot account for this summer’s strange currents. The runaway inflation and  deep recession of the late ‘70s/early ‘80s didn’t produce a similar season of civic craziness.

Our long, hot summer needed another ingredient to induce a fever-like madness in the national psyche: demographic change. Over the last year and a half, many Americans have begun to see a deeper message in President Obama’s inauguration — the end of the white majority. For some,  especially those who are middle-aged and older, it’s a jarring and unwelcome message.

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Yeah, I was just saying the same thing to my hot American-Cuban wife – thinking about how them for’ners has got me all riled up, by cracky.  Yeah, Cynthia, focusing my rage on long-term demographic trends sure takes my mind off the prison-shower treatment liberal policies have given my retirement accounts.

But Cynthia wants to make sure that you know that just because she is calling you a racist doesn’t mean that she thinks you’re a racist, though you most certainly are a racist:

Before you assume that I’m stereotyping all of the president’s critics as racists, let me be clear: I’m not.  Many voters have legitimate criticisms of the Obama’s policies. I’ m talking about something more subtle and yet more profound: a fear of minority status. (Actually, by the year 2050, demographers expect that whites will be a “plurality,” the largest easily- identified ethnic group.)

Most human beings are more comfortable surrounded by others who look and sound as they do. It’s innate. That’s why most of us attend churches, join clubs and look for friends who reinforce our sense of identity, usually along lines of color and class. Successful black and brown professionals have had to learn to be comfortable in a sea of white faces, but most white Americans have not experienced the reverse. And many are not eager to have that experience.

To sum up the new liberal response, my big issue this summer is whether in 2050, at age 86, I’ll be able “to learn to be comfortable in a sea of [non]-white faces.”  Huge tax increase coming in four months? Not important.  Health care reform that forces me to subsidize people who refuse to pay for their own? Not on my radar.  Alienation of our allies around the world and waffling about the threat of Iranian nukes?  Not an issue.

No, in the liberal fantasy world, the big concern of the majority of Americans is supposed to be that minorities might get “uppity” – never mind that a good portion of that majority is minorities.  So, as usual, the bad news is that most Americans are awful, awful people unworthy of the liberal media mavens who seek only to save our misguided souls.  But the good news is that our liberal betters understand that we just can’t help ourselves.