Phil notices that Christopher Chantrill described it adroitly at American Thinker:

We thought that we were parties to a bargain: that if we shut up and truckled to the liberal race bullies sooner or later we would emerge from the post civil-rights era and its hypocrisies of affirmative action and diversity and we would ascend to the sunny green uplands of post-racism.

Now we hear the ravings of Reverend Wright and realize that we have been had. While we were buttoning our lips and attending compulsory diversity seminars liberals were not holding up their end of the deal and neutralizing the Reverend Wrights of America and their vicious racist bile. On the contrary, liberals were pumping them up!
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I don’t think we yet realize what a watershed moment this is in American politics. All of a sudden the veil has been ripped away from a sacred mystery and a horror revealed to an innocent world.

The unpleasant truth here is that, in public policy as well as in personal affairs, there is only one way to “get over” anything nasty, no matter what it is, and that is to stop talking about it.

It sounds like the essence of cowardliness. But the truth of the matter is that it is the essence of cowardliness to avoid admitting it, and to babble onward about great-great-grandpa owning slaves, or women being oppressed for five thousand years, or you didn’t know which way to put the lug nuts on the spare tire when we got that flat on our honeymoon, or you sleep with all my friends, or you didn’t pull out your credit card to “support” me in my multi-level marketing business…or…or…or.

I wish I could jot down something to the effect that we are simply sloshing through this kind of cowardliness, the inability or unwillingness to recognize that to indulge in idle chatter about past episodes of chaos and inequality, is to wallow in them.

In fact, the situation is much worse than that. We aren’t just sloshing through. It’s a rising tide. We were waist-deep in it yesterday, and now it’s up to our ears.

Multiple times a week, now, I hear the word “discussion” being used to propose something that isn’t a discussion at all. The word “dialog” is abused more feverishly, recklessly, and sadistically. I see it in Barack Obama’s call for a “dialog on race” — did anyone, anywhere, think a genuine dialog had anything to do with what he was requesting of us? I see it in Jimmy Carter’s trip to go “talk” with the Hamas leadership — if it was such an amazing victory, and so clearly the right thing to do, then what in the hell did they talk about? I know about a wreath being laid at Arafat’s tomb, and I don’t know of anybody who knows any more about the details than that. But they’re ready to defend it…and re-define the word “idiot” to apply to anyone who disagrees.

I see it in the drive to take down Saddam Hussein and put a new government in his place. Or rather, the attacks on that historic decision. “Diplomacy” would have been a better way to go, I’m told. Really? Isn’t that just a lot more talking about stuff? Wasn’t that already being done?

Forgive me, I grew up in the seventies when it was very fashionable for the middle class to start going to “therapy” to “talk” about their “problems.” Being an unsociable little kid, rather than a well-connected and talkative grown-up, I came to rely on my senses and common sense in coming to grips with what was going on. I noticed everyone I knew, knew several people who were going to therapy or were going to therapy themselves. And were all “making progress” toward solving…you wouldn’t believe what a gamut of problems they were “confronting” in therapy. No finish line crossed. Ever. Nothing actually buttoned-up and put-away.

So after three decades and change, I’m well acquainted with this. Talking-about-talk, to me, is just a huge red flag. Now that I’ve got a head full of gray hair and the center-of-gravity of my lifespan is now in the rear view mirror, I see I’m still waiting for talk-about-talk to lead to something productive and good…ever. I’m still virginal to that. So people talking about solving problems by talking-em-out, to me, is a harbinger of extreme waste. It is a sign that a problem is about to not get solved — and some snake-oil salesmen are going to want immediate credit for solving it anyway.

I’ve never seen it fail.

Maybe we should have a “dialog” about that.