So it looks like the Secret Service is in trouble. There have been a number of embarrassing incidents over recent years.

The most recent was someone being able to scale the fence around the White House, run across the lawn and make it all the way inside the front door before being stopped.

This followed such shortcomings as the 2012 prostitution scandal where agents partied with prostitutes in Colombia during an advance trip, a shooting incident in 2011 where the agency took four days to confirm or acknowledge that shots had been fired that struck the White House, and the 2009 incident where a couple "crashed" a state dinner at the White House.

Now some may point out that these problems are institutional and started in the Bush years as the memory of the assassination attempt on President Reagan faded from memory.

But you just know at some point a conservative pundit or talking head, or at least a Fox News panelist, will suggest the issue might be that the Secret Service is demoralized. After all they are being asked to protect, and potentially lay down their own lives, for a President they just "know" is not really Constitutionally qualified to be president. No where in their job description does it say they have to protect Kenyans. No wonder they aren't on top of their game.

Just saying, is it that far fetched to imagine someone at Fox News, or some other right wing sites, at least giving voice to that type of speculation?

In retrospect I should have known better. At the time I was relatively new to Twitter so tended not to wade into Twitter wars on political issues. It is so easy, especially if trying to be humorous or satirical or sarcastic, to be misunderstood when reducing your deepest political thoughts to 140 characters. 

I especially try to steer clear of issues that I see as minor flashpoints guaranteed to cause polarization. If I'm going to get involved in a flame war it has to be over an important issue, not some sideshow. 

So by all of my standards I should have stayed away from comments regarding what was happening at the Bundy Ranch in Nevada. For those who have had more sense than me, or have forgotten after lo these many months, I'll provide a brief synopsis of the issue:

• Rancher Bundy in Nevada has let his herd of cattle graze on federal land without permission for over 20 years
• He refuses to pay the fees required to do so; these fees were instituted by one President Ronald Reagan in 1986
• There have been several court rulings concerning the issue; all have gone against Mr. Bundy
• Finally the Bureau of Land Management sent Mr. Bundy a letter essentially threatening to confiscate any of his cattle found on federal property unless he paid the required fees (which by the way over 16,000 ranchers have done over the years); and I believe they began to do so
• Mr. Bundy complained and become a cause celebre to the right wing, conservative pundits and Fox News; armed militia members showed up on his property to protect him from the big bad "gummint" 

Not the type of issue I take great interest in usually. One I leave to the internet to fight out while I worry about income inequality and a better, more secure life for the middle class in this country.

Unfortunately I also tend to have a low tolerance for bullshit and intellectual dishonesty. And this issue is just dripping with it. All of these people portraying Mr. Bundy as a hero are so quick to judge others for even the most minor infractions or for stealing from taxpayers. So stupid me, after reading some comments about this issue by people I follow on Twitter, decided to make a comment and use the hashtag #BundyRanch which was the tag being used for comments concerning it.

My comment was simple enough: "So new right wing hero is breaking law signed by Reagan and stealing from every American taxpayer. #BundyRanch"

And it was actually retweeted by a couple of folks, a very uncommon occurrence for me as I do not do a lot on Twitter. And now I know why.

I then received a response: "Only in Libtard Land. He has stolen nothing from me and provided me with food and milk. @SenatorReid stealing NV 4 Chinese"

fyi - that last part about Harry Reid stealing Nevada for the Chinese is a reference to the latest right wing nut job conspiracy to flare up over this Bundy Ranch issue. Namely that the only reason they are trying to get Bundy to stop using the public lands is that the government wants the property to build a solar power array in the desert, that the company supplying the solar panels is Chinese, and Harry Reid's son is somehow connected to the Chinese company and stands to make a lot of money off of it.

And indeed if you enter "Harry Reid stealing Nevada for Chinese" online, you get a lot of entries popping up - almost all of them belonging to right wing sites repeating the accusation. You have to search harder to find links like the one here that debunk the story. Turns out yes there are proposals for solar sites in Nevada. But none of them are for the land Bundy is using without permission, nor anywhere close to it. Nevada is a big state after all.

But I was intrigued by the beginning of the response. "Only in Libtard Land". Supposedly this meant that only a "libtard" would label Mr. Bundy a thief rather than a true patriot.

I looked up "libtard" in the urban dictionary. As you can tell the entries are not complimentary to people who would consider themselves liberals. By the tone and words used you can tell the entries were written by people who are, well let's be nice and simply call them, "conservatives".

They paint a stereotypical picture of liberals as rich elitists who live in a fantasy world where people can get along and work together. Reality however, in the view of these authors, is a conservative bitch. In reality people are not good-natured, don't want to work together or work towards a common goal. So the "libtard" must advocate for government control and laws and regulations to try and enforce their naive utopia.

Wow. Projection thy name is conservative. I'll leave to another posting, hell it could take several, to deconstruct the pejoratives associated with "libtard". For now though let's accept the label and try to imagine what life is like in "Libtard Land".

You may be living in Libtard Land if:

• every individual is treated equally and with respect, regardless of race, socioeconomic status, gender or sexual orientation
• every individual has the opportunity to receive a good, free public education through the 12th grade
• every individual has access to quality medical care, and access to the care and the quality of medical care received, is not dependent on the size of your bank account, or that of your parents
• nobody goes bankrupt or loses their home because they or a family member becomes ill or has a devastating accident
• every individual has ready access to necessary information, whether through adequately funded and maintained public libraries, or affordable internet, cable or satellite facilities
• full-time jobs are available that pay a living wage for every individual who is physically and mentally able
• communities have quality transportation, health care facilities, schools, and other basic infrastructure
• the air you breathe is clean, the water you drink is potable, and the food you eat is safe from disease and pathogens
• military solutions are always the last resort, not the first option in foreign policy

Is that reality? Not even close. Is it the ideal we should be striving for? Absolutely. And the free market does not by itself get you there. Yes those pesky government laws, policies and regulations are needed to help create equal opportunity for all, not just for those that start out ahead of the game due to fortune of birth.

So I will admit to living in Libtard Land. In the future I'll try to imagine what conservative utopia might be and see if we can post some dispatches from there. 

What should it be called? ConservoCretin Country? ConservaCretin County? Feel free to offer suggestions. There have to be better ones.

The unfortunate events in Ferguson, Missouri, yet another shooting of an unarmed black male by white police, along with some other recent shootings of blacks by cops, have led to increased discussion of the legacy of race in this country. It has also resurrected the discussion of "white privilege".

For those not familiar, white privilege is the notion that white people, in a society such as the United States, receive certain deference or privileges based solely on the color of their skin. The evidence can run from the trivial, blacks more likely to be followed in a store when shopping for example, to the more profound, such as blacks more likely to be arrested and incarcerated than whites for the same offense.

While some whites acknowledge the existence of white privilege, many do not. Some doubt its very existence or downplay its significance. For what it's worth here is the perspective of a white, middle-class, middle-aged American male who also used to be a "white privilege skeptic".

Growing up and in my earlier adult years I did not believe in white privilege. I'm sure my reaction to the notion was similar to that of many middle-class white males. My thoughts would have been something like this:

"What privilege? Nobody handed me anything on a silver platter. I had to work for my grades. I had to work to get into a good college. I didn't get in to any school because Daddy gave a big donation or knew the right person. And I had to find my own job. Mummy and Daddy didn't have one waiting for me at the family business, or put in a word with an uncle or a family friend to get me a job. I've earned what I have. So what privilege did I get?"

I even recall an incident sophomore year in college, sitting in our dorm room with my roommate, an aspiring pre-med student from Long Island. One of the freshmen on the floor came in to introduce himself. He was African-American. We got to talking and he told us he too hoped to go to medical school. Of course he threw in that he had to achieve a 2.75 GPA or so to insure getting in.

After he left my roommate looked at me with a smirk, shaking his head. He stated something along the lines of, "do you know what happens if I apply to med schools with a 2.75 GPA? I might as well not bother if that's what I have." And shook his head some more. 

Because while he and I could acknowledge that many blacks had been disadvantaged and deserved some breaks to account for that,  we chalked it up more to poverty than skin color. Sure, cut someone some slack if they came from a bad neighborhood with bad schools. But don't give breaks if they came from a suburban neighborhood and a decent school (as the aforementioned freshman had) just because they were black. Due to our middle class background we didn't see ourselves as privileged. We couldn't see where anybody had paved any paths for us.

This ambivalence concerning affirmative action and to the concept of white privilege stayed with me most of my adult life. It began to change when I served on the Board of Education in my town in Connecticut. 

About the same time as my service on the school board began the Sheff vs. O'Neill case had made its way through the courts. A brief summary for those who don't want to follow the link:

• In 1989 several school children and their parents sued the state of Connecticut alleging that as urban and minority students they were not receiving an equal education compared to other children in Connecticut
• In 1996 the Connecticut Supreme Court sided with the plaintiffs and stated that every child in Connecticut was guaranteed an equal education as a constitutional right
• In 1997 Connecticut's General Assembly (state legislature) passed laws in response to the Sheff ruling to attempt to eliminate racial and socio-economic inequalities in the public schools

Among the efforts supported under the legislation were seminars or group sessions within the schools concerning diversity. Our school board formed an ad-hoc committee to implement this aspect of the law. One of our board members (the only person of color on the board) ran diversity training and workshops as part of his business. He was a natural selection to head up the committee and run the workshops. They wanted another board member to participate as well. I don't know what the reasoning was, but I was asked to join the committee. With no real enthusiasm I agreed.

To say that the experience was educational and eye-opening is an understatement. The first group as I recall consisted solely of staff members from the district. Later groups would include parents and administrators. 

The first group focused on the changing demographics of our town and our schools. As with many communities we were seeing a growth in the Hispanic population in particular and minorities in general, while the staff remained almost exclusively white. We had a mix of "old guard" teachers, and younger Hispanic staff who were involved with ESL and other support services, in the first group. We met several times over a some months exploring diversity, understanding, etc. The discussions were very interesting and informative, at least to me who was in a position to really sit back and observe the interactions and perspectives of this diverse group.

One day the topic was white privilege. We watched a video of an Oprah show where racism and white privilege had been the focus. That did open me up to the concept of white privilege and lead to much discussion in the group. But it was a story told by my fellow board member during the group discussion after watching the video that somehow really drove it home to me.

He related a story of one of his first jobs at a corporate headquarters in New York City. I believe this was in the late 1960's or early 1970's. As you may imagine there were not too many people of color in the office at that time.

There was a really good soul food restaurant not too far from where their office was. So occasionally the minority employees got together to go there for lunch. At first they would meet up at someone's desk. Once they had all assembled they would then go out to lunch. As I recall we are not talking about more than 5 or 6 people, maybe even less. 

One afternoon after he had returned from one of these trips to the soul food restaurant my colleague was approached by his boss. The boss began by asking if everything was alright. The response was sure why do you ask?

The answer was that "they", the others in the office, had noticed the black people congregating and talking together and then taking off. Just wanted to be sure there were no issues, they weren't upset about anything, etc. My colleague answered that no they were just meeting to go out to lunch together to a local soul food restaurant.

From that day on whenever their group wanted to go out they always met on the sidewalk a short ways from the office before going to the restaurant. No sense making their bosses and co-workers nervous seeing the black employees together in one place, probably talking about "them".

That anecdote is what finally drove home the truth of white privilege to me. How silly. How stupid. And how exhausting. If a group of white employees ever gathered together before going off for lunch, or for any reason, would anyone have cared? Would anyone have noticed? Would it have made anyone nervous? Would anyone have mentioned it to them? No. No. No. And no.

From that day it was like the scales fell from my eyes. I won't pretend to be able to fully understand, or to "get it",  but I can empathize and at least understand at an intellectual level. And I can certainly see the many ways, both mundane and profound, that white privilege asserts itself in our society.

Whether it's not being able to congregate in a group, large or small, with people of like color without causing suspicion; whether it's being stopped outside a store because you, having dark skin, could not possibly afford that $350 belt and must be using a stolen credit card; whether it's driving or walking or sitting while black; or whether it's being steered to certain neighborhoods no matter your income or occupation; being suspended or incarcerated at higher rates for the same behaviors or crimes as whites; or to be considered threatening and therefore a justifiable homicide, simply due to your skin color and physical features; or gunned down in a store while holding a toy gun pulled off a shelf; or be met with a militarized heavily armed unit and tear gassed when peacefully marching for your rights; while all the while a white person can open carry automatic weapons into fast food restaurants, or point weapons at federal agents and be hailed as heroes and it is law enforcement that stands down to "avoid conflict"; the evidence for white privilege is ample and obvious, whether intellectual heavy weights like Bill O'Reilly care to acknowledge it or not.

Jon Stewart on The Daily Show segment addressing Ferguson and the issues of race and white privilege probably summed it up as well as I've ever heard it:

"Race is there and it is a constant. You're tired of hearing about it? Imagine how fucking exhausting it is living it."