The American Conservative continues its embrace of "We're not really racists, but..."

So the American Conservative magazine has an article this morning praising a play with a distinctly conservative viewpoint called Heroes of the Fourth Turning. "Turning" is a pseudo-historical phrase for that "every eighty year period" where America comes apart and is reborn; there were approximately 80 years between the Constitution and the Civil War, and another apprimimately 80 years between the Civil War and World War 2, and now we're supposedly at another turning.

The main character of the play has a line that stopped me and made me understand that the writer is not a fair dealer: "The turning is right now. The national identity crisis caused by Obama. Liberals think it's Trump."

What "national identity crisis? I wondered.

Obama was a middle-of-the-road old-school conservative. Literally. He put all of his energy into conserving the union. He bargained and dealt even when the Republicans eagerly said their goal was to destroy him, not merely as a president, not merely as a politician, but as a man.

Note the wording, too. The Obama statement is presented as fact. The Trump statement is a second hand report on what the writer believes "liberals" believe.

The only "national identity crisis" brought on by Barack Obama is this: the United States of America will not always be governed by white men. That's it. That's the whole crisis.

There is nothing in the Constitution of the United States that dictates that only white, Christian men get to sit in the Oval Office. The people who believe that Barack Obama represents a violation of the natural order and creates a "national identity crisis" are those who are working off some secret constitution, something that isn't in law but is only in their minds, or perhaps written down but not official. An Elder Protocols of Richmond, perhaps.