text: I owe Abernathy an apology.  In a recent post I sneered at him as apparently dimwitted.  In that column, he was dimwitted.  In this column, he presents a coherent and useful point of view.  Though I reach it starting from a different place, I agree with his implied conclusion that it's not now possible to have an honest conversation about race in America.  The Swastika Right and the Infantile Left, armed with the worst thing that ever happened to the human race, the internet, have both dumped so much poison--magnified many times over by President-Manque Trump--into our public discourse that any sincere effort to discuss race would spend most of its time trying to steer the discussion away from the fringes.  (You could, of course, cherry-pick your discussants and get any result you wanted.)