Feeling out of control - not exactly guilty

Okay, I think I'm on the cusp. Saturday I had an upswing, then a downswing, and now I think I'm on an upswing again, and I want to gently fan the flame until it's well kindled.

This is weird stuff. It's like depression, only magnified and compressed. It's really easy to find one's self feeling bad, and losing a day, and then a few, without recognizing the problem is starting up and catching it and taking action. The good news is, the action is mostly resting. The bad news is, it seems like the difference between "resting and getting better" and "not quite resting and getting worse" can be really tiny. And once things are going wrong, just like with depression, it's easy to forget that you *can* feel better.

Here's hoping. I'd love to make a DW/LJ post that wasn't a health update! (I might tonight, anyway. I have some thoughts that have been brewing.)

Race and social status and very old Heinlein...

I've seen a few people talk about how race was used in the US to defend against problems of class. The claim is, basically, you could dump on poor white people in the South because they had slaves - black slaves in particular, white slaves wouldn't do - to dump on.

If I'd heard that when I was young, growing up in a white, working class neighborhood, I'd have thought it was pure-D bullshit.

( this is long - spoilers (obviously) for issues of race and racism )