Terra incognito

To second dave's sense of wonder, "wow" describes a lot of things I'm seeing right now. Honestly, I'm lacking any sort of historical reference to which I can grab and gain some sort of insight into what might happen. A black man is the odds-on favorite to be president of the United States. An economic catastrophe makes it likely that we will see a fundamental reordering of the premises of the financial world (although like dave, I'm not ready to call it the "end of capitalism"). And most worrying to me, a segment of the population - as a consequence of the two previous points, a decades long diet of eliminationist rhetoric, and candidates for high office willing to light a match - seems on the verge of a very ugly explosion. What does this all mean? Hell if I know, but I have a sense of unease unlike anything before.