Okay, folks. It’s truth time.
Barack Obama has now weighed in on the Jeremiah Wright nontroversy in exactly the manner that I expected him to, I’ve got something to say about about the whole thing: Jeremiah Wright is right.
This country was founded by landowning (read: affluent) men of European descent for landowning men of European descent. I love Thomas Jefferson. He was a brilliant political philosopher. But when he wrote “All men are created equal” he didn’t mean it the way I take it. He wasn’t talking about the rights of all men. He certainly wasn’t talking about the rights of women. The man owned slaves.
This country was built on the backs of African slaves on land that was robbed in the slaughter of Native Americans. I’m sorry if this offends your bourgeois sensibilities as it isn’t the totally awesome, God-fearing, flag-waving, USA #1!!!1 narrative that we teach to school kids, but it is historical fact.
America is a work in progress. It took people like Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglas to read deeper into the philosophies that birthed this nation. They realized that the rich, white men so many of us proudly call our Founding Fathers had only scratched the surface. And so they joined what would become a larger tradition: the fine American tradition of dissent. One hundred years after the Emancipation Proclamation this country was still segregated. Restaurants, buses, schools, drinking fountains and bathrooms. Again, it took leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. to see that “separate, but equal” was a ruse and that it represented a reading of these ideas that sold them short entirely. And some of these people were told they were too bombastic, too loud and too angry. It took leaders like Bobby Kennedy to see that their anger was well justified and long overdue.
We’ve come a long way since 1776. In many ways, America still represents some of the best hopes of this dream of human liberty. But we are not perfect. We have not yet arrived at our destination. And this country is still largely controlled by rich, white men. You can say, if you wish, that Jeremiah Wright is too loud and too angry, but you cannot say that he is wrong. I’ve been astounded by all of the people on this so-called progressive forum that seem to be held aghast at these ideas. I thought that progressives knew that the Iraq War was predicated on lies. I thought that progressives knew that unilateral support for Israeli policies with respect for Palestine was a source of difficulties in our nation’s relationships in the Middle East at large. I thought that progressives knew that 9/11 didn’t happen because they hate us for our freedom, but because of a complex history of these relationships that go back at least 50 years if not back through the better part of the 20th century. I thought progressives knew that entering the halls of power isn’t easy if you’re not a white man.
Let me be clear on this: This is only a problem for Barack Obama in that there are still a lot of pinheads around that don’t understand that dissent is the highest form of patriotism. And he’ll distance himself from it because he has to and because Wright’s style isn’t his. It’s not how Obama rolls. But there’s nothing untrue about Wright’s statements in and of themselves.
This is a picture that I like to look at every so often to remind myself of these realities. It’s a picture of nine white men beaming over Bush as he signs the “partial birth abortion” ban. It’s ten white men presiding over the rights of women. There isn’t one woman present here. This is the reality of power in America today. You can squawk all you want about how everything is fair, but that isn’t the way it shakes out, now is it?
If America wants to insist on maintaining the status quo so that we can make sure that rich, white men can keep taking advantage, then I say damn America, too. If America wants to insist that no wrong can be done underneath Old Glory, then I say damn America. If America wants to insist that nothing our nation does in the world community will ever come back on us, then I say damn America, but I don’t have to because she’s already damned herself. The power of the ideas that founded this country was not in the men who codified them. The power lies in the way that they ring to true to all who encounter them, encouraging them to be spread ever wider, ever deeper. It is the touchstone of human nature that we desire to be free. It is this spark that becomes a fire when we realize that we are all locked into this struggle together.
The struggle is not over and maybe it never will be, but don’t get confused about Jeremiah Wright. His only crime is being abrasive, but the people who find him most abrasive are the people who have are invented in denying the truth that he speaks.
Copyright 2008 TPM Media LLC
“Let me be clear on this: This is only a problem for Barack Obama in that there are still a lot of pinheads around that don’t understand that dissent is the highest form of patriotism. And he’ll distance himself from it because he has to and because Wright’s style isn’t his. It’s not how Obama rolls. But there’s nothing untrue about Wright’s statements in and of themselves.”
Amen
Speaking truth to power always upsets the powerful,elite.It is not Mr. Wrights acerbic style that is the problem,but he knows the truth and speaks it in his style, and so is demonized as a kook.What is wrong with saying: damn the American crime family that has killed close to 4000 of our brave soldiers that have died for a lie that has just been corroborated by the pentagon.
I believe it is quite simple — one can hardly call oneself a progressive if you don’t the the “real” history of the USA. DF does a damn good job of symthesizing the truth. George Carlin also does a damn good job in “American: Bull Shit” on YouTube. Now that you have read DF’s linguisticly correct version, go watch George put our history in scatalogically correct perspective.
Personally I find all the hysteria about Reverend Wright and Michelle Obama (the accusations being thrown at them come from the same sources) indicative that the real forces of “evil” are once again loose in my homeland. It is time for true patriots to stand up and say — ENOUGH LIES. TRUTH WILL OUT, NOW!
Yeah, but I don’t like someone saying “God damn America,” or justifying the 9/11 massacre as chickens coming home to roost (reminiscent of Malcolm X’s sneering at JFK’s assassination). Those people didn’t deserve to die for America’s sins.
Of course, I don’t like “God Bless America” either because it purposefully excludes the rest of the planet. Why not “God Bless the Earth”?
militantliberal__Agreed—Most of us know God would not be pleased with what our country has become, however, one has to know when to stop in the rhetoric. I like your “God Bless the Earth”.
Obama may also share the opinion of Rev Wright (right) but for political reasons has to denounce it. Hillary did the same thing when she voted to allow Bush to go to war, as she did not dare to be branded as soft on terrorism along with many others.
Isn`t politics grand?
It’s funny when McCain’s preacher supporters bash Islam in the most vile way, America hails them as heros. Robin Wright speaks the truth and he’s a pariah. Americans are so full of themselves.
Getting elected in our Through the Looking Glass polity is a matter of winning a popularity contest while successfully appeasing the powerful vested interests that really run things.
So it’s no surprise that Obama got rid of Reverend Wright faster than a fart.
I have no qualms accepting the blunt and bitter truths voiced by Wright, and Malcolm X before him. (And Ward Churchill, for that matter.)
In these circumstances, I’m reminded of a prescient fictional scenario in Kurt Vonnegut’s “Cat’s Cradle” (1963). In that novel, we learn from a US ambassador on his way to an obscure, undistinguished assignment that his career was finished after the New York Times published a letter from his wife commenting that Americans were at least partly responsible for anti-American sentiment in the world.
The ambassador (IIRC) explains wryly that his wife touched a nerve as potent as the third rail on the subway by suggesting that Americans were not, or were not likely to be, utterly lovable at all times.
This chauvinistic, narcissistic conceit is bipartisan; it’s by no means confined to the anti-intellectual, jingo yahoo classes or their wingnut political leaders. It’s as pervasive and insidious as any other Chosen People designation.
(I regard Obama as the Least Evil candidate, FWIW, but he’s being disingenuous at best with his rhetoric of Not Going Negative. Isn’t he Going Negative on the Reverend, after all?)
Good piece, DF!
Right on DF. When I heard Jeremiah Wright talk about America being controlled by rich, white men…I thought to myself…why are people offended by this? It is the truth. The preachers those on the right embrace have said more than once that 9/11 was God’s punishment for gays…and that’s alright? So you can say what you will about gays and blacks and women but don’t speak the truth about rich, white men in this country and the havoc they have caused in the rest of the world. Until we can face the truth of the history of this nation we can not change. So it’s no surprise that Barack Obama has had to distance himself in this situation. Unfortunately, we are Pinhead Nation.
Ya know, I could take DF alot more seriously if he didn’t seem to have a grudge against white men, rich or otherwise.
Amen to that! I spent quite a while last night trying to express the same thing, but couldn’t finish as I was getting increasingly angry at the ignorant, defensive media response to Wright’s comments, and the vicious responses around the blogosphere.
Why can’t white folks simply act with humility when faced with the reality of racism, rather than lash out in guilt by crying “racist” when it’s not even an appropriate use of the term? Why is the new strategy to discredit Obama suddenly about making him a “racist” by proxy? Talking about the existence of racism does not a racist make. Why are there so many Americans that cannot understand the simple principle that there are consequences to our foreign policy actions, and yet that the interconnection between our actions and “terrorist” responses doesn’t imply that innocent people deserved to die?
It is unfortunate that Obama has to separate himself from someone in his life who has been so influential to him. When Obama is President, and not having to run his “take the high road” campaign, perhaps he can afford to realign himself with some more powerful and outspoken figures who speak the truth.
Wright wasn’t ‘justifying’ the 9/11 attack, merely examing the reasons it happened — if our government hadn’t meddled in the Middle East, there would never have been a 9/11.
While I appreciated Obama’s statement on the Wright flap on Olbermann last night, I wish he would have said while he disagrees with his pastor and old friend on some things, he supports his right to free speech to openly express his opinions, even unpopular ones, just as he would support the right of any American to speak freely, even those with whom he profoundly disagrees.
Make it a free speech issue, which it really is, instead of defending himself and letting the Big Media play it as a ‘judgment’ issue, as they are now.
It’s ironic that the only way that views such as Wright’s can get exposure in the mainstream media is in context of “extremist” speech that any serious candidate must, of course, disavow and denounce.
I believe that Obama is being truthful when he protests that he does not agree with Mr Wright’s political views, and more’s the pity. I could support him if he did.
hakori (12:34 p.m.)
–probably not so much a grudge as a response to this country’s social and political history–
DF writes, “We’ve come a long way since 1776. In many ways, America still represents some of the best hopes of this dream of human liberty. But we are not perfect. We have not yet arrived at our destination. And this country is still largely controlled by rich, white men. You can say, if you wish, that Jeremiah Wright is too loud and too angry, but you cannot say that he is wrong.”
Tom Russell sings,
“But as I travel around this big ol’ world,
There’s one thing that I most fear:
It’s a white man in a golf shirt
With a cell phone in his ear.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZkAoosVLkA
and Ry Cooder “commemorates” Chavez Ravine, where Dodger Stadium is now nestled (URL split):
http://www.lyricsmania.com/lyrics/ry_cooder_lyrics_13877/chavez
_ravine_lyrics_41770/3rd_base_doger_stadium_lyrics_452477.html
I’m sorry, mwb, but the tone of the article is what I have the problem with, not so much the content. I am sick and tired of people on any side pointing fingers for the sake of pointing them. It’s time we learned from the past and moved forward. Blaming rich white men rightly or wrongly for the nation’s ills serves no purpose or no one.
And I thought Rev Wrights comments were reprehinsible! Did he really think he was doing Obama a favor? The man should have shown some judgement.
Actually the comments here are turning me off Obama as much as Wright’s.
Fine, when rich white men stop being the cause of so many of this nations ill, I’m all for letting bygones be bygones. But I don’t see it happening anytime soon.
“Let me be clear on this: This is only a problem for Barack Obama in that there are still a lot of pinheads around that don’t understand that dissent is the highest form of patriotism. And he’ll distance himself from it because he has to and because Wright’s style isn’t his. It’s not how Obama rolls. But there’s nothing untrue about Wright’s statements in and of themselves.” Obama is distancing himself because he wants to be elected. He is a politician out of the same mould as all the other politicians. Poeple choosing to support him because they think anything different have deceived themselves, and let him deceive them. Disillusion will follow as surely as night follows day, but by then it will be too late.
“And he’ll distance himself from it because he has to and because Wright’s style isn’t his.”
If we hope Obama will move to Wright’s side once elected, we are setting ourselves up for a disappointment. That almost never happens when they got you by the balls.
Good one mwb!
It’s pretty sad that Common Dreams has chosen for a while now to only print pro-Obama news and commentary, to the extent of pulling a post from a blog in an attempt to justify the words of Obama’s minister and Obama’s relationship with him. I agree that there is a lot of truth in the portions of Wright’s sermons we’ve now heard, but denunciations of America, of whites, of Europeans, and whoever else he castigated have no place in a church. That’s where you’re supposed to learn about your about own sins. That Obama would choose to be so strongly allied with someone so hate-filled is just the beginning of the problems here. There’s Obama’s incredible lack of judgment, or extreme egotism, in thinking that it wouldn’t matter, when he’s running for president of the United States at a time when love of America is bound to be seen as a primary requirement for keeping the country safe. There’s the problem that by ignoring that fact, Obama has put us in a situation where we’re much more likely than we should be to wind up with McCain for president. Just imagine McCain’s current ad, highlighting his service to the country as a POW, juxtaposed with Wright screaming “God damn America,” followed by the picture of a beaming Obama with his arm around Wright. Good grief, a third of the country is terrified of Obama just because of his middle name.
Hakori, are you kidding? Poor, poor rich white men. The injustice of it! So wrongfully accused!
Wright speaks the TRUTH, and Obama knows it, but he’s trying to get elected in this country of morons. (He’s no Dennis Kucinich.) Obama may not agree that America brought 9-11 on herself, but he certainly knows that the world is ruled by rich, white men (Hakori, again, are you serious????). Obama also certainly knows that this country was founded on the backs of African Americans. Too bad he doesn’t feel free to say that Wright speaks some truths. Of course, if Obama did that, it would be political suicide in the U.S. of A.
I didn’t hear Wright say “G-d America.” If he said so, that’s something I would definitely distance myself from. But the rest of what Wright said (at least what I’ve heard) in spot on.
If you are a “Liberal”, then you can see Wright’s point of view. The reason Obama has to distance
himself from Wright’s comments is because most people don’t look at life from a progressive point
of view. It’s the average person you try to reach when running for office. The true test of a
politican is what they do after they are elected, not what they say before they are elected.
It seems that if any Democrat hopes to get elected, he or she must remain alone and uncommitted to any issue (except maybe to God and Zion), in a nebulous limbo. To be criticized for that is evidently better than for something said. It’s safer to listen to the pollsters and handlers than to voice your own opinions unless you have the corporate media behind you.
No, Wright wasn’t justifying the attack. If you give a reason for an attack does not mean you agree with the attack. It’s possible to hold two concepts in one’s mind. That the attack was wrong and tragic, and that we have brought the attention of terrorists onto ourselves through our policies throughout the world.
I got a different impression from Wright’s fiery talk. That he was treating America as a disappointing loved-one. As you would yell “damn you!” at a spouse or parent when you are hurt and angry. In this stifling conservative climate however, one is always charged as an America-hater.
militantwhatever — “Yeah, but I don’t like someone saying “God damn America,” or justifying the 9/11 massacre as chickens coming home to roost ”
Truth hurts. Its called blowback. You dick around and screw people over in the worst possible way it will eventually come back and bite you in the ass. This is exactly what Wright meant. You can examine and analyze and spin his statements any which way you want but thats the truth.
As for this patriotic bullshit about not damning America … get over it. My ‘white’ ancestors have lived here for more than 300 years and I still happen to fully agree with what Wright says. Tough shit.
Riddimboy and Mairs, and any others who I may have missed, but whose views are very similar - I wish that there were more people like you, because I am sick and tired of people not saying what they believe.
I don’t care if it’s not political, because if you don’t air your views, then you may as well be lying, and you are doing a great disservice to the people you are talking to.
I would rather have a Jeremiah Wright at my dinner table, than some fawning, sycophantic coward, because you just can’t trust the latter.
We have to admit to our past failures, put our hands up and say “I got it wrong”, instead of constantly trying to shift the blame, wave the flag and sing our national anthems, giving the false impression that everything is right in our World.
We (the US and UK) have messed up big time in the World, we have been responsible for the deaths of millions of people, through Africa, Asia and the far East, not to mention the excursions into Latin America. The majority of the people in the World know us for what we are, and some are willing to start evening up the balance sheet.
If we cannot accept these facts, then we should stop interfering in other countries affairs.
hakori, get your head out of the sand. it is quite simple. Rich white men have been, are with many others, including you and Bush & his boys, and always will be, responsible for putting every single person who believes in embracing the heart and soul of the down-trodden, as well as the down-trodden, no matter the color or the ethnicity, into the ground. You damn well know it. Don’t ever dare put your hand over your heart and pledge allegiance to this flag & preach otherwise. Black people, other people of color, and other minorities, including the Jews, will never be accepted into the Kingdom of the USA. Only the rich, white, Christian Man. Tell me it aint so and Ill hold a mirror up to your face & you will see a fool.
I beg to differ with the author of this excellent article on only one point: I don’t find Reverend Wright in the least abrasive. In fact, he has got just the right tone and delivery for the present order of things.
Reverend Wright is totally correct on all counts. I am elated that he came out and stated these truths again: they need to be screamed on all rooftops now more than ever.
9/11 is blowback: it is what one reaps when one intimidates, bullies, terrorizes, invades, occupies, manipulates, murders, bombs, blackmails other peoples for decades on end.
The fact that Reverend Wright was dismissed and thrown out of his campaign by Obama proves once and for all what I have been saying about Obama on this site for months: the man is nothing other than a mouth piece of the status quo.
Reverend Wright has blown Obama’s cover: after this incident, Obama won’t be able to hide behind the self-servingly vague word ‘change’ any more.
Wright has forced you to show your true colors, Obama: with you, U.S. foreign policy will remain in the service of the imperialist outlook of the oligarchy.
I agree with DF. I wouldn’t even call Wright abrasive. Why can’t Obama mention Jeanna, La., in his comments? We know why. Our system has allowed religious (often synonymous with racist) zealots in, and they have the microphones. Our founding ‘fathers’ (thanks for the photo, DF) I suppose knew this would come of politics in the pulpit and the pulpit people in politics (great alliteration, eh?).
Maybe after we all kill each other and the next species arrives, people who want to govern can ligthen up about other peoples’ shit, and be responsible for their own (and maybe even just spit out facts).
DF you are assessing the situation exactly right. White Americans many of them just cannot stomach a black man at the helm so they will blow up out of proportion every little blemish on a black candidate’s ass. You will never get them to admit their euro-centric ways of thinking. If BO becomes prez I feel sorry for him. Everyone knows if you’re black you have to run faster, work harder, be smarter, to even HOPE to be “#2″ in the white man’s eyes. Every decision GW makes now would be under a 24-hour news microscope if he were black. Currently all we get are missing or killed white women on tv, so I know why white men lean the way the do. Proof? Hillary is behind in delegates, states, and popular, and she’s offering front runner the #2 spot. That’s typical white folks. Our govt leaders know white folks follow like sheep, they don’t question enough and thus get away w/a lot of stuff. Black people don’t take a lot of mess and thus they ask the smart questions whites won’t. I agree w/Obama’s pastor, wish the rest of America would so we could then stop trying to force our will and violence around the globe. And I’m white.
Another Divide and Rule issue.
The truth hurts. Jeremiah Wrights statements have been presented as a Black vs White issue by those who wish to divide us, and certainly as an African American, his spin will be racially oriented. Thats not necessarily a bad thing, but what he says has Truth that crosses racial lines.
What hurts Americans is that most believe in the myth that America is gods country, a Christian nation representing Christian values, who fight for Justice, Democracy and the American way, at home and abroad, and who value human rights and freedom for all. Too bad it was not true.
This does not mean that we, as Americans, are bad people and do not have these ideals individually or even collectively. It does mean that the power elite who control our currency, government, oil and media have been doing some pretty nasty things under our name, and telling you otherwise. Fooled you not once or twice, but mucho numero times.
The rest of the world sees though it, many have been our victims at one time or another. At home, African Americans certainly are not blinded, and even some of us white folks and others see it. Yet when you try and expose it, you are branded as someone who hates America or a terrorist sympathiser, or even a terrorist. And if you happen to be in government or with a company or institution that relies on government, you would get Spitzerized while the Larry Craigs of the world are free to terrorize the mens room in the Senate and airports. So most people just keep quiet and pretend the Emperor is finely clothed along with the flock.
And people like Obama and his wife, who also see the naked Emperor, they back off when confronted since they know most of their constituents do not have an open mind on the issue.
But in order to solve a problem, you must confirm you have a problem. If you deny reality, and say there is no problem, nothing gets done. If you minimize the problem, by making it smaller or more limited than it really is, then you will only solve part of the problem. Anyone who has had cancer knows that the only cure is to get all of the cancer out. Our problems are a cancer and we are in a terminal stage. I see no evidence the majority on even the left fully understand the extent of the problem, as some of the comments here today have confirmed. The cancer will not go away.
I understand why Obama has broken with Jeremiah Wright, it would be political suicide if he did not. But it does not bode well for change in this country.
Instead, the politics of the day are about a politician who went up against the bankers and a prostitute (practicing free trade, infidelity and fighting fraud), Obama (his muslim roots vs our christian values), Obama (christian priest with non-mainstream views that highlights black vs white issues), Hillary (playing the fear and sex card), McCain (wooing the Christian Right). RIP-America.
Here is an interesting article on slavery, maybe African Americans had a good thing 150 years ago compared what we are all going to be facing if you do not wake up, and maybe even if you do.
http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/debt-serfdom.php
“This form of “debt slavery” or “debt peonage” was not just an accidental development of history. It was a deliberately-planned alternative to the slave arrangement in which owners were responsible for the feeding and care of a dependent population, and it is still with us today. Although European financiers were in favor of an American Civil War that would return the United States to its colonial status, they admitted privately that they were not necessarily interested in preserving slavery. They preferred “the European plan”: capital could exploit labor by controlling the money supply, while letting the laborers feed themselves. In July 1862, this ploy was revealed in a notorious document called the Hazard Circular, which was circulated by British banking interests among their American banking counterparts. It said:
Slavery is likely to be abolished by the war power and chattel slavery destroyed. This, I and my European friends are glad of, for slavery is but the owning of labor and carries with it the care of the laborers, while the European plan, led by England, is that capital shall control labor by controlling wages. This can be done by controlling the money. The great debt that capitalists will see to it is made out of the war, must be used as a means to control the volume of money. To accomplish this, the bonds [government debt to the bankers] must be used as a banking basis. . . . It will not do to allow the greenback, as it is called, to circulate as money any length of time, as we cannot control that.”
I am glad to hear several voices on this thread praising Wright for calling a spade a spade. 9/11 is first and foremost, blowback.
This country is absolutely drowing in BS and in the inability for anyone to speak the plain truth. Until we have leaders who have the guts to cut through the BS and who have the guts to cling to, and proclaim the truth, our country is going nowhere but down.
And yes I know Obama has to win the - shall we call them the “moderate” voters (I won’t use the other word - “moron” - that I had in mind) - but I remain unimpressed over the cowardly way he handled this issue. What else is he going to fudge, if elected?
Eveningland and alyosha, I agree. On the blowback point and on Obama’s limitations. My true heroes are the ones who are not afraid to speak the truth: Kucinich, Gravel, McKinney, Nader, Sheehan, Paul (on some issues), and others who aren’t politicans, such as war veterans, activists (such as Code Pink), and that NASA scientist who keeps speaking out, despite the Bush cleaver hanging over his head. After all the years of LIES, LIES, LIES, how refreshing it would be for us to hear the truth!
But the truth tellers get squashed like little bugs - marginalized, ridiculed. This is the reality of this country. So kudos to Wright for speaking the truth. While I’m sure he’s been assured it’s “just politics,” I don’t feel good at all about it. Obama has known this man for many years. Wright officiated at Barack and Michelle’s wedding. He baptized his daughers. In my dreams, Obama would have stood up and said, “I will neither renounce nor repudiate this man.” Dream on.
Now, I know a bunch of Hillary fans are going to say, “I told you so.” But I’ve never been blind to Obama’s limitations. He’s just, IMHO, the dreaded “lesser of the evils.”
Mwb26810 (March 15th, 2008 1:34 pm), that quote from Tom Russell is pure gold. Thanks.
Hakori (March 15th, 2008 2:06 pm, et al), properly identifying a problem is a necessity before you can go about solving it. Generations of blame for society’s ills have been heaped on blacks and other minorities when, in fact, the group doing the most mischief turns out to be the rich white folks running the plantation is simply identifying the root problem.
No one is calling for these people to be crucified, enslaved or deported — only that they be given no more privileges, and have no more influence, than any other citizen of the country.
I somehow think that, if any comments here have turned you off to Obama, that you probably had no intention of voting for him in the first place.
Dakotalin (March 15th, 2008 3:34 pm), we found your Hillary hat — it was floating on top of the water.
Mairs (March 15th, 2008 4:37 pm), I took Wright’s remarks the same way as you did, and he didn’t in any way ‘blame the victims’ for 9/11, as Chris Matthews and some of the other Big Media pundits have been trying to frame it.
As someone who is white, I’m not the least bit offended by Wright’s truth — I know how bad some white people can be — I grew up with them! But others of us have been in enough situations with our friends to comprehend to some degree what black people in this country go through on a daily basis. If it happened to you, you’d be angry too.
EveningLand (March 15th, 2008 6:10 pm), Obama has to get elected before he can make any changes — many of his supporters understand this, as does Rev. Wright — and he’s not going to get many votes if he comes off like a hothead, though what he says may be the truth. As DF says, it’s not how he rolls.
Undercover (March 15th, 2008 6:27 pm), good comment! If Bush had been born black, or even just a poor white, he’d be sweeping up a Wal-Mart in Midland right now.
Undercover: No, you’re not. Everybody else: I don’t believe this! If Hillary Clinton had responded to Wright’s comments (which are 2 years old, by the way) in the way that Obama did, you would be all over her: I can imagine the string of insults you’d have for her. But because it’s Obama–a black man and the closest thing you think you have to a progressive candidate–you make excuses for him. Poor baby, he has no choice, the big, mean politcal machine is going to crush him if he speaks the truth. I hope this motivates the true progressives to finally reject this faker. The reality is that if he had not deserted his friend, if he had helped others to understand the truth of what the man was saying, he would have won any number of supporters, including me. Instead, he cemented my disgust with him. I would vote for anyone else at this point. And by the way, black men are far from the most repressed group globally or even in this country. Around the world, women are still the least respected and valued, the most exploited and marginalized–often to death. Why is it that no one ever wants to address the situation of women and children, especially within minorities? Listen to a few rap songs, why don’t you? Look at the number of casualties in all the wars and ethnic conflicts going on right now, and count the number of women and children. I don’t hate white men, or black men, or any other men, but I’m fed up and disgusted with their continuing abominable egocentrism that keeps them from seeing what is happening to others around them. Wake up and smell your own manure–and clean it up!
I wish that Obama would have supported his pastors’s right to free speech. This country was founded on dissent, and what remains is the fact that Wright is essentially right.
As has been noted above, the founders were white slave owners who drove off the native people for the principle of profit. It hasn’t changed that much in 225 years. It’s still rich white men who run things (like insurance companies and banks). Anyone who can’t see the reality of this situation is deluded.
For the unenlightened, it would be helpful if people like Wright would define a concept, call it ‘BushAmerica’, that is actually what he means when he say’s: “God Damn America”. I read what he said and knew immediately WHAT unpatriotically neocon fraction of America he meant, but too many Americans DONT understand the subtleties of this distinction.
God Damn BushAmerica should be a liberal cry all over this country. Its a cry the rest of the world is ALREADY making!!!
So Rev. Wright not only tells the straight truth but sounds the faint echo of why the Black Churches were among the most important of people’s institutions for the last 100 years. And Obama responds by not just throwing him under the bus but by backing it up and driving over him again. Meanwhile, all his supporters explain why he just had to do that, and they explain “vetting” and all sorts of other very sophisticated “political strategies”.
And here I am thinkin’ that I am starting to sound a little too cynical about these characters… Well, there’s Hope™ for ya.
Planning to vote Hil, I’ve concluded it’s OK for her to be more corrupt and nepotistic and dirty and dumbed down and dishonest and centrist and militaristic since white women have it rougher than black men…
“Just imagine McCain’s current ad, highlighting his service to the country as a POW, juxtaposed with Wright screaming “God damn America,” followed by the picture of a beaming Obama with his arm around Wright. Good grief, a third of the country is terrified of Obama just because of his middle name.”
So the alternative is to fold, settle for Hillary McCain … er Clinton as Presidnt, and bury our heads right back in the sand where it has been these last 20 years.
We need to believe in our ideals and vote accordingly. To allow the media to manipulate us is the primary problem all these years. Its not even so much about the candidates themselves. Obama is just a little left of Clinton-McCain and I believe he is far less of a warmonger than these other two chumps. To believe that somehow Hillary is gonna save our collective liberal-progressive asses is to stretch my imagination to its fullest. Hillary is far more like McCain than Obama will ever be and thats what most Obama backers are betting on.
If Hillary steals this (she will) then a whole chunk of Obama backers will stay put at home. If Obama wins, a whole chunk of flag-waving breast-beating ‘patriots’ (euphamism for morons) will back McCain. Either way we are screwed. So I suggest for the next 20 years we should just close our eyes and vote with our conscience, at least we can sleep at night.
Get a grip: more than half of the country is “terrified” of Hillary because she’s a woman–period. You have tried to make her into a monster, but she isn’t. For many, many of us, she is hope, she is the future, she is a far better reality than anything you–in your bigotry and fear–have to offer. And she’s going to win, because it’s about damn time!
dear militant liberal;
who cares if you like someone saying “god damn america” - god’s blessing or damnation, should a god capable of such exist, is his/hers to bestow - whether you or anyone else favors the action or doesnt, as is your own
also, chickens coming home to roost does not mean that the innocent lives taken deserved it any more than those killed by america’s terrorism here and abroad deserved what they got was - it simply means what it always has meant - you reap what you sow.
Femme fatale, I’m not afraid of Hillary, just terribly disappointed in her. As often happens with the first, she is the flawed spearhead of progress, most likely destined to fall and be used as the bridge for other women in the future, because now we have allowed these new concepts to take hold, that anyone, male or female, of any race, can become president.
Lots of “hate America” posters on Common Dreams…
Barack Obama got a full scholarship to prep school, he got a full scholarship to Columbia and Harvard law, Michelle Obama got full scholarships to Princeton and Harvard, and she makes $300,000 per year.
But it’s still not good enough for the “hate America” Obamas. This is still the “U.S. of KKK-A” says Jeremiah Wright. The pastor screams “God damn America!” and the congregation cheers!
Was it the KKK that gave Barack a free ride all the way from prep school through law school? Is it the KKK that pays Michelle $300,000 per year?
The pastor screams “God damn America!” and the congregation cheers!
And NOW after 20 years in the same congregation, in the same congregation that cheered “God damn America!” Obama thinks it’s time to speak up! Deny everything! Make it all go away!
Maybe he can con his way out of this with his know-nothing disciples, but nominating Barack Obama for President is a prescription for suicide for the Democratic Party.
Three strikes you’re out, is legislation that was sold as directed at only repeat violent offenders. In application, it is for ANY felony violent or not. It is a felony to commit a misdemeanor while on parole in many instances. PEOPLE ARE SERVING LIFE IN THE PENITENTIARY IN AMERICA FOR PETTY OFFENSES… GET IT?
We are like 5% of the World’s Population but we HOLD 25% OF ALL PRISONERS here. They are poor and/or minorities underrepresented in government. It’s a prison state, it’s a police state, it’s an unjust state.
God Damn America… I gotta hand it to a Christian Preacher with those kind of BALLS. He’s been making people think, making people care, making people UNDERSTAND for decades.
These kinds of statements are made more inflammatory than they truly are when taken out of context, and presented by the corporate media in soundbytes to an audience that’s been inundated with fake Patriotism for way too long.
In the general election this will be MEANINGLESS… a tempest in a teacup compared to the raging racism and bellicosity of McCain’s Christio-Zionist, fanatic backers.
It’s a NO BRAINER and a NON-issue.
Rev. Wright’s a Marine. Semper Fi MF!!
Now I’m going back to listening to Angela Davis on the Prison Industrial Complex.
KMA in the BEST possible way.
Apparently few of you have ever taken up the cause of the working poor, or fought racism on any level. You’ve obviously spent no time talking to Black people in the US… you’ve never spent substantial time looking at the US from the other side of the line you assert no longer exists. I bet you can’t even play dominoes.
You want to wish it away.
So, what are your TRUE MOTIVES jumping all over Obama… asserting guilt by association and restating, exaggerating… further inflaming this thing?
If you’re with Clinton, you’re apparently willing to do and say ANYTHING, even cost us the General Election to stop Obama. His recent drop in National Polls is directly correlative to your false allegations, race baiting and mudslinging.
I have to say it’s the money. The DLC is a bunch of corrupt Republican “Light” party hacks. I have to assume you either have some personal investment in corruption OR…
You just don’t like Black People.
I despise dishonesty and duplicity. I know people in the Ku Klux Klan that are less vehemently opposed to Obama than you so called progressives. At least they’re honest.
You’ve been lying so long, you don’t know what the TRUTH is. You can’t catch your own acts to save your lives.
Next will be Eugenics in the name of Conservation.
Jacob Freeze said: “Barack Obama got a full scholarship to prep school, he got a full scholarship to Columbia and Harvard law, Michelle Obama got full scholarships to Princeton and Harvard, and she makes $300,000 per year.”
I guess you’re implying they didn’t deserve these awards. Fine.
But ‘God Damn BushAmerica’ is a fair shout in these times of waterboarding, spying on political opposition members (in the name of Al-Qaida), $10 trillion national debts, illegal wars, and economic mishandling. ‘God Damn BushAmerica’ is what Wright meant, and what I mean. And, if you had any truth left in you, you’d be shouting it too…
Obama’s pastor didn’t scream “God damn BushAmerica” and the congregation didn’t cheer for “God damn BushAmerica.”
Pastor Wright screamed “God damn America!” and the congregation cheered for “God damn America!” and Obama sat in that same congregation for 20 years and never spoke a word of disapproval until he started running for President.
Maybe Obama can con his way out of this like he conned his way out of the double-talk about NAFTA, but nominating Barack Obama for President is a prescription for suicide for the Democratic Party.
This is a confirmation of everything Ann Coulter and Hannity and O’Reilly ever said about the Democrats, and if they go ahead and nominate Obama, a hundred million people who don’t hate America like Barack and Michelle and Jeremiah will cast their votes for John McCain and every other Republican all the way to the bottom of the ticket.
Jacob Freeze said: “Obama’s pastor didn’t scream “God damn BushAmerica” and the congregation didn’t cheer for “God damn BushAmerica.”
Bush doesn’t hate America. He just hates liberal America. But, if he were put down to the degree that Wright has been, he might be excused for shouting ‘God Damn America’. I mean, just because he hasn’t said it, doesn’t mean he hasn’t DONE it.
Put another way: I dislike Norquist for saying he wanted to Drown the govt in a bathtub, but I didn’t hate him for it: they were just words.
But, when he had a chance to put those words into actions, and I saw that he, through Bush and the rest of the neocons, actually MEANT to KILL our Federal GOVERNMENT, THATS WHEN I HATED HIM.
Actions speak louder than words. That means Wrights words, and Bushs actions, should be judged accordingly. Wright doesn’t mean to condemn America, AND BUSH DOES. Its in their actions, its in eight years of Bush’s every action: he HATES AMERICA in actions, if not his words or feelings.
At this point, I’ll take someone who says he HATES AMERICA, and doesn’t act it, over someone who says he LOVES AMERICA, but acts out his HATRED for it.
Someone who says he ‘hates America’, and two bits, will buy me a cup of coffee. Hatred of America is, in these Bush years, not exactly hard to find in the world.
Some of us just HATE the America Bush has turned it into.
So, Wright hates the America that supported S African Apartheid!!! Oh, hell yess!!! I hate that Amerika too!!!
The question is: don’t you????
it’s spam now buck
RSJ, at 7:42 pm above, says two things: 1) that “Obama has to get elected before he can make any changes” and 2) that “he is not going to get many votes if he comes off like a hothead.”
The first point is trivial and is thus granted. I don’t think I ever denied such. What bothers me is that in Obama we have a candidate who’s asking that one vote for a man who promises to make unspecified changes. It is just too easy. Moreover, not only is the change that he will bring about once in office unspecified, but everything that he does countenance and specify by his votes in Congress and his public utterances is the same old stuff: always votes for funding the occupation of Iraq; does not rule out nuking Iran; would intervene militarily in Pakistan without informing Pakistan; supports the construction of the sprawling U.S. “embassy” in Bagdhad and the establishment of permanent military bases in Iraq; etc.
Why should one trust someone with that sort of record when he promises change?
RSJ’s second point seems to assume that being specific about what changes one intends to seek once in office amounts to being a hothead. I leave the responsibility of such an assumption to the person who makes it. I certainly never expressed any such thing in any of my posts.
Fox played the Wright tapes over and over last night. hHdid say “God damn…” a lot, and claimed HIV was created for genocide among other things. Obama had to know Wright said things like this, but denied it. Hannity concluded such an association and deception disqualifies Obama from ANY public office, of course.
Its pretty ugly. Just what the republicans were waiting for. But it will blow over. Robertson and Falwell also called 9-11 God’s wrath on evil America. Its obvious Obama doesn’t agree with and is even appalled at some of the things Wright has said during his preaching, but made the decision to stay with that church. I don’t have to know why. He is still the best candidate.
femmefatale — “she is a far better reality than anything you–in your bigotry and fear–have to offer”
Really ? So if I dont vote for Hillary im a bigot and if I dont vote for Obama that makes me a racist. This is exactly the kind of screwed up identity politics that has destroyed the Democratic Party to begin with. Youve got to be totally ignorant to believe that somehow casting a vote for Hillary is tantamount to standing up for feminism. That argument has been trashed many times over based on her behaviour these last … 15 years !! And to think I actually supported this warmonger at one time !!
– “more than half of the country is “terrified” of Hillary because she’s a woman–period.”
I dont think thats entirely true. I dont have much faith in anything American and yeah stupid Republicans would rather step of a bridge than vote for a woman but then who in the world could believe that these very stupid Americans (mostly white and in the middle states) actually voted for Obama over Hillary !! Common ‘white people’ logic would tell you that most of these voters would vote for a white woman over a black man but the opposite happened and please give these so called stupid Americans some credit. You may be right … we need to get over our ‘coastal’ bigotry !
I cannot believe everyone throwin down over this!
WTF. keep your eyes focused, what is happening right the F$$K NOW!?????? Please Iraq, Afghanistan, everyone in this country losing homes, jobs, kids because of the residents at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
Goin at each other, why???? keep letting it go round and round and round and…..
So many here are unwilling to accept that the attack of 9-11, if it really wasn’t a false flag operation, was justified. Ours is a criminal nation responsible for the death of millions and the suffering of many millions more. How can you defend this? This site is supposed to be progressive, but as Kernel pointed out there are limits. Well, so sorry, but 9-11 was amply justified, in fact much mre would e justified. This nation has barely been touched over the lst 200 years. That America should suffer some destruction in exchange for all it has done is not only justified, it is way overdue. But it is fake. 9-11 was a false flag opearation and indicative of the moral decay of this nation. Justice has not been deliverd yet, but it will be. The US deserves to descend into poverty and chaos, and it will. I do not wish it, but actions have consequences. Americans will eventually experience some of what we have dished out. 9-11 was too lttle to make up for the horrors the US has brought to so many countries. This counry is a murderer and a thief, and has been for a long time. Yet it has stood unscathed. This is justice?
When everyone believes what Rev Wright believes, this country will have hope of redemption and progress. He says what must be said if we are to become a civilized member of the world community. Right now we are not, we are a terrorist nation that wishes to control everyone on earth! And we do it through terrorism. Shock and Awe indeed. I call it terrorism.
95% of native americans perished, all their land was stolen
150 years of slavery followed by 100 years of apartheid and humiliation
Exploitation of the poor from other countries
The theft of one third of Mexico
The theft of Hawaii
The theft of Cuba
The purchase of stolen property: Alaska and Louisiana
The theft of the Phillipines (tortures, murders, over 200,000 killed)
The attack on Vietnam: over 1,000,000 killed, deforestation, mines
The attack on Korea…US provoked
The entry into WWI and WWII by lies and deceit
Fire bombing of Dresden
Nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Long list of supported ruthless dictators including POL POT of Cambodia ( condemned Vietnam for invading Cambodia and stopping the holocaust there - 2 million had been murdered)
Support of Israel, a criminal pariah
The Iraq wars
Bioterrorists acts in Cuba: loss of most of Cuba’s pigs
50 years of spitefully blocking all countries from trading with Cuba, a very poor nation with scarce resources
NOT JUSTIFIED?????
LIZARD: Nature will act as the great equalizer. But suggesting that one violent act DESERVES another (on a human scale) only leads to a never ending spiral. What is the means for escaping this otherwise inevitable spiral? A mass ascension of CONSCIOUSNESS. This is what EVERY master has taught! If we learn to forgive, we release the trespasser and ourselves and obtain a clear new slate. This process was enacted with great spiritual sophistication in S. Africa as per the Councils on Truth and RECONCILIATION. Who that has seen carnage wishes to see that fact visited on others? Tragically, it’s often the authoritarian rightwing personality who is first to show up at the execution chamber when a capital crime is punished. As Gandhi said, this “Eye for an eye” policy will leave the entire world blind.
I remember a very moving 60 Minutes story about a young woman doing Peace Corps style work in Africa. She was murdered. Rather than her parents calling for outrage, etc, they WENT to the camp their deceased daughter worked at to COMPLETE her work. That is grace. There are many people capable of grace, and the more that cleave to this approach the faster this world can enter into a very necessary healing process. Without it, between the ravages of unstable climate events, DU, the methane gas escaping, the escalation of a new cold war and derelict sale of weapons to nations without ideals can only mean more and more misery for more and more persons. The spiral of violence requires a transcendental vision and the human will to live in accord with communal ideals, not those that have set tribe against tribe for centuries… with weapons now capable of not only kiling vast numbers, but despoiling genetic lineages that earth mother took millions of years to genetically assemble!
UBREW12: Good posting!
The post by lizard of March 16th, 2008 7:54 am is a very well taken reminder of the murderous abuse U.S. imperialism has dished out to all corners of the planet.
In view of the nearly daily threats issued by the White House thugs against Iran, one must add to lizard’s list the 1953 covert overthrow by the CIA of the democratically elected government of Iran, all done for the sake of oil (see Chalmers Johnson in his The Sorrows of Empire, pp. 167-8). That nauseating episode of the “foreign policy” of the Greatest Nation on Earth is of course part of the historical context that determines Iran’s contemporary situation and its relationship to the U.S.
Regarding Siouxrose’s March 16th, 2008 9:22 am reply to lizard, I would like to make a couple of comments.
1. The rejection of the Old Testament law of the talion (an eye for an eye) is as old as Jesus, since he is the one who most memorably rejected it. Why is it then that the camp of the Christian nations, of which the U.S.A. never ceases to pride itself of being a member, still has not internalized that rejection, after more than two thousand years of unending Christian preaching?
Why is it that those who should have been most likely to have made Jesus’ rejection a law regulating their behavior, have exhibited such resistance to the new law that was supposed to replace the law of the talion, and have continued to apply mercilessly the law of the talion?
2. When lizard speaks of deserving certain acts, I take him or her to mean that one reaps what one sows, and that reaping what one sows is a liability of a certain type of abusive behavior towards others. In other words, all oppression of others generates resistance, and at times the resistance may be well a resistance that kills. I don’t take him or her to mean that oppressive, abusive behavior must necessarily be countered by murderous retaliation. However, it just may, and that possibility should be taken into consideration by the potential abuser. Behavior, and especially murderous behavior, has consequences, and those who perpetrate such behavior, should know that before they commit acts of abuse, spoliation, and murder.
EveningLand (March 15th, 2008 11:49 pm) wrote: “What bothers me is that in Obama we have a candidate who’s asking that one vote for a man who promises to make unspecified changes. It is just too easy.”
Be bothered no longer, EveningLand, here are Obama’s specified changes:
http://www.barackobama.com/pdf/ObamaBlueprintForChange.pdf
EveningLand wrote: “RSJ’s second point seems to assume that being specific about what changes one intends to seek once in office amounts to being a hothead.”
Read above for specific changes. I just meant that if Obama shouted like Wright giving a sermon, he would scare some people off before they had a chance to hear his message.
Rev Wright is right and I like his style. Asking, “Please, stop the killing”, does not work. Finally someone had the courage to speak the truth like others have before him - Malcolm X, Ward Churchill…
Watching Obama run from the truth shows a lack of knowledge of history on his part, or is it a lack of character?
I glad I’m voting for Nader but I would consider voting for Rev Wright if he was running.
RSJ March 16th, 2008 1:32 pm referred me and, I suppose, whoever shares my reservations regarding Obama, to an e-document that purports to lay out Obama’s planned changes (see the link above in RSJ’s post).
I perused the document, but failed to find any plans to abolish U.S. imperialism and its military Keynesianism (its military-industrial complex and the network of institutions, including a servile Congress, that enable the complex). Without the abolition of the United States’s essentially martial and predatory relationship to the world and its economic and political presuppositions, nothing can change in depth domestically. The basic structural features of life in the United States are determined by its empire. For instance, the present historically unheard of level of indebtedness of the nation cannot be curbed, let alone be gradually mitigated and eliminated, as long as the military budget and other military expenditures (primarily, those necessary to sustain the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan) are not massively cut back.
For a discussion of this extremely serious issue (the shape of the future of each us, and of our children, depends on it), see Chalmers Johnson’s American Empire Project trilogy.
I don’t think Wright went far enough. Just do the body count since Native Americans were butchered, slavery, then America dropping 2 atomic bombs in Japan for the heck of it, tons of other illegal invasions till today, with thousands being mass-murdered in Iraq and Afghanistan on a daily basis. Millions mass-murdered, and for what? Hegemony and greed, nothing else. America’s history has been written with blood. In fact Wright should be commended for not using scatological words associated with the word ‘America’.
militant liberal . . .
QUOTE: March 15th, 2008 10:53 am
Yeah, but I don’t like someone saying “God damn America,” or justifying the 9/11 massacre as chickens coming home to roost (reminiscent of Malcolm X’s sneering at JFK’s assassination). Those people didn’t deserve to die for America’s sins.
Of course, I don’t like “God Bless America” either because it purposefully excludes the rest of the planet. Why not “God Bless the Earth”?UNQUOTE
You misunderstand Malcolm X’s observations about JFK.
What he was talking about was the US/CIA “Operation Gladio”
– look it up. It has been brought home to America.
There is only one way the right wing can now or has ever come to power and that’s with violence, with genocide, with enslavment — and with stolen elections.
The simple truth is: “American exceptionalism” is just a variant of the odious creed of White Supremacy. Somewhere, Hitler smiles, and blesses the works of the inheritors of his version of “traditional values”: the Republican Party of the United States of America.
PS: Documents have now been found which verify that the CIA via Hughes Tool Company — a partial CIA front –
was pouring huge amounts of money into the campaigns of right-wing Senators/Congressmen who would do their bidding . . . Strom Thurmond, Gerald Ford, etal
This campaign’s sensitivity and defensiveness requiring candidates to distance, repudiate, and disown anyone who makes any criticism that might be falsely construed as racist, sexist, anti-american, anti-government, anti-patriotic, anti-war, or even mildly ideological in nature has now had the effect of muzzling all serious debate about the serious issues of foreign and domestic policy.
Specifically on the issue of Wright, his comments, while blunt in the particular use of the words ‘God damned’ are quite mild in comparison to Martin Luther King’s 1967 Riverside Church speech against the Vietnam War, and of many speeches and writings of Chomsky, Zinn, Chalmers Johnson, Nader, and many other political economic intellectuals —- not to mention Al Gore himself, who in his 2007 “The Assault on Reason” bluntly states that our country is totally controlled by a “radical corporatist faction, that does not even acknowledge that the concept of ‘a public interest’ even exists”.
My point is simply that by effectively banning any critical discussion which seems ‘heated’ and which can in any obscure way be wrongly tagged as targeted at any group of people, the MSM-corporate media has essentially banned the very concept of ‘criticism’ itself —- and thus banned the discussion of problems and issues which confront our country, but which we can’t confront, because even the simple act of talking about nasty problems is incorrectly tagged as nasty talk.
My proposed solution to this MSM imposed ‘talk ban’ on anything critical is to shift from discussions involving people, groups, etc. to pure inanimate objects as targets of our political-economic frustrations, problems and issues needing to be confronted by our posing political champions in this campaign. And when you need inanimate objects to substitute for people, under US law, what better inanimate objects than corporations and Empire?
So, following this logic, Obama could safely say, “The ruling corporate Empire hiding behind this facade of ‘Vichy’ government is what has plunged us into the senseless, immoral, and illegal Iraq oil-war abroad — as well as driving our domestic economy into an abyss of depression and oppression of our people, whom the corporate Empire continues to illegally spy on and is preparing to oppress with more domestic ‘police-state’ tyranny and imprison in corporate detention centers” —- and Obama could not be criticised fro saying anything that might be contorted into racial, ethnic, or anti-american aspersions on any individual or grouping of people.
Naturally, neither Ms. Clinton nor Mr. McCain would need to make avail themselves of this guaranteed non-personal criticism technique — because they are both willing supporters of exactly the corporatist Empire that is already carrying out and planning more of this precise foreign and domestic tyranny.
This really is refreshing. It’s so reassuring to know that there are people around who care more about the Truth than about being in that deadening “Mainstream” we hear so much about…and which we use as a club to bully people into upholding “conventional wisdom”…or, more accurately, “conventional stupidity”.
I was saddened to see Mr. Obama behaving like a deer in Anderson Cooper’s headlights the other day during his attempts to distance himself from the Truth the Reverend Mr. Wright was speaking. As with almost all politicians these days it is apparent that Obama has no taste for championing Truth, preferring instead to play to the ignorance that motivates the lowest common denominator among the Body Politic.
It’s a mystery to me why the current crop of expertly ‘handled’ candidates–most of whom are lawyers–are too afraid or too lazy to argue a case that is, at first blush, unpopular with the people those candidates seek to “lead”. If Mr. Obama were a genuine ‘leader’, he would pick up–and flesh out–the argument that Wright was making to his congregation, and explain it so that anyone with an IQ higher than room temperature could see the point Wright was making.
Certainly the facts are on Wright’s side. Either Obama doesn’t trust his own ability to persuade voters to consider those facts, or he doesn’t trust the cognitive abilities of the voters to make sense of those facts.
Whatever the case, We The People end up uninformed…which bodes ill for any government OF, BY and FOR the People.
amacd March 16th, 2008 3:30 pm is right: the cash value of Obama’s dismissal of Wright is a dismisssal of an open debate over the gravest questions and issues that one may raise about the history and the conduct of the United States’ institutions of governance up to and including our time, and both domestically and on the international scene.
Obama does not want to partake of that discussion: his not being interested in it is implied by the manner in which he reacted to Wright’s courageous and commendable expression of his outrage, which stands in the great tradition of African-American political speech that radically exposes the status quo for what it is.
This is one more indicator of the fact that Obamian change is merely a carrot that instrumentalizes the citizens’ genuine hopes for change, in the end to serve the interests of an utterly pedestrian political agenda.
What Wright said is true, but Obama had to throw him under a train because America can’t handle the truth. We want to believe we’re the chosen people, superior to all others despite so much evidence to the contrary.
Right On, Pastor Wright
Put down with disdain
for exposing real pain
of folks whose God-given power’s
crushed by evil glowers
of corrupt so-called warriors
exulting what’s destroying us,
leading us into perdition
disassembled, reconditioned
to hate by their plan
taught not to understand
our own best hope
to not be hooked on their dope
caught up in their fantasies
denying true sanity
to rally ’round a flag.
Watch them give that tail a wag,
pledging hand on heart it’s
our job to feed their markets
while tossed out on the street
eating tainted meat
breathing poisoned air.
They may cry like they care
to fool again, to lead us
into foreign wars to bleed us
for their fortunes, wealth expanding
until we understand banding
together, sisters, brothers,
trusting our own truth, not others’.
Pastor, preach and rail,
remind us their jail
can only bind us
when we allow them to blind
and define us.
I have reason to think that Obama is not at all what he seems to be. He may well understand what is wrong with America. If the American people ever realize what Obama really thinks he will lose the election. If they don’t, and he wins, we may have a shot at a decent president.
militantliberal: Of course, I don’t like “God Bless America” either because it purposefully excludes the rest of the planet. Why not “God Bless the Earth”?
So what’s it’ gonna be? “God Bless America” or “God Bless the Earth”? There seems to be a universal point to be made here, to apply everywhere. What if the rest of the world went to pot and America was the only thing left worth saving? Then “God Bless America” makes sense. But the problem is when people spout “God Bless America” when in fact the entire Earth deserves the same. Now what happens when we sing “God Bless the Earth” and then under our noses a rogue nation starts conquering its neighbors and we can’t do anything about it because the rogue nation is part of our “God Blessed Earth”? So the conclusion seems to be: “God Bless The Good” wherever, whenever it manifests, and “God Put The Crowbar To The Bad” wherever, whenever it manifests. The debate then shifts to “different opinions of what is good, what is bad”, but oh no, let’s not cop out so easily. There is universal justice and though it won’t be perfect it will be MUCH better than the “law of the jungle” unleashed today by “God’s Blessed America”. So maybe Americans should try embracing universalism, and start pushing for universal justice, and worldwide concensus on the question of good/bad. Isn’t this the basis of peace on earth?
America has always been a thugocracy. The Sopranos is the most accurate picture of our national morality ever produced.
Learning of Wright’s controversial comments, that Obama certainly must have agreed with to some extent, I hold greater hope that Obama really may be a closet progressive, who is hiding all his most progressive beliefs in order to get elected.
But we should all remember that this current controversy over the remarks is just more flak in the propaganda wars. Republican fundamentalist preachers have been saying for decades that “God” should “damn America” because of its policies regarding abortion, and Republican politicians have been courting their support while nodding in agreement. Some of the preachers have even hinted that maybe a violent revolution is necessary to overthrow the US government, including the author of the book that Huckabee claimed was his favorite outside of the Bible (Francis Schaeffer, author of “Whatever Happened to the Human Race”). And we cannot forget what Falwell and Robertson said after 9/11, about the US deserving the attack.
This is just politics as usual in the USA — all sound and fury signifying nothing.
Gahhhggg! It’s Willie Horton! Run away! Only John W. McCain can save us!
Americans make this crap way too easy.
To believe Rev J Wright’s views once must set aside disbelief. They are extreme and represent a belief in some of the most bizarre conspiracies ever imagined. Rev J Wright does not preach the Bible, he preaches hate. And, obviously Obama has the same bizarre views. Perhaps America deserves such an extreme man, and the 1 trillion dollars worth of tax increases he plans. But, a question or two remain, does the Rev J Wright support partial birth abortion in the same way that B Obama does? No one likes the way that blacks were treated in America, but why do people still treat innocent unborn humans as trash? Blacks at least have gained a voice and some hope to humane treatment, but the unborn still have no voice. There is no rational, Biblical or logical argument that supports partial birth abortion.
Wright might be right, but the timing is WRONG. The bush era is all but guaranteed to continue under McSame.
My reservations regarding Sen. Obama were based on revelations such as this coming out, because I knew that they would. The idea of an African-American or a woman president is highly desirable, but the top objective should have been eliminating the republinaziis from office, not all this grotesque in-fighting over who offers more “hope” or “change” or ” better health care” or “experience”; especially “experience” because why would we want more of the same ole shyt?
A HARD swing opposite from republinaziism was necessary in THIS election cycle, to be followed up with replacing any new official that did not “get the message”, formation of real PEOPLES parties, and corraling the MIC (Monsters In Charge) into a position where they would know that their gig is up- if they wish to survive.
“They” are probably ROFLTheirAO at the moronity going on in forums just like this one. Mere words can not describe how awful this situation has become, nor how AWFUL it will become.
Go ahead now RJS- make whatever ridiculous, inconsequential “anagram” comments you like. It is people like YOU that have brought the “audacity of hope” to a screeching halt.
I’m as pasty white and European as they come and I see nothing wrong with what Rev. Wright said.
The point being that there are (too) MANY “pasty european” types that WILL and DO take great umbrage at this and will vote accordingly, instead of looking at the big picture, which is the ruination of the nation by richfilth.
It should not and does not take a degree in rocket science to understand this!
Too bad Obama can’t come out and say he agrees with Wright, that he is right. So tired of seeing Democrats catering to the right wing. We need more people like Nader and Kucinich to speak truth to power. This year’s Selection is a farce. It will end up Billary vs. McSane, more of the same.
I like this article until he talks about the partial birth abortion ban. I’m very anti-abortion so no points were made when he referred to the ten white men supposibly gloating over taking a woman’s right to choose her own options on birth control. Bullshit! I’m tired of the pro-choice term call it what it really is, its pro murder! Plain and simple. Go free the Yates woman who drowned 5 of her kids then! if she had done it earlier like right out of the womb it wouldn’t have been murder it would be abortion!
There’s a great article on Huffington Post about this:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/frank-schaeffer/obamas-minister-committe_b_91774.html
When I watched clips of Wright, all I could say was “but he’s right about this!” I’ve read a lot of comments about this, and find it ridiculous that some people are offended that Wright would say “god damn” IN A CHURCH! Of course, these people don’t understand that “damn” has several meanings besides “condemn to hell.” It also means “to denounce” or even “disapprove of.”
If there’s anyone out there who does not think god disapproves of racism, abuse, or meddling in other nation’s affairs might want to think again.
Aside from the obligatory rose colored adulation of Israel, Obama did a good job of talking about race and religion. Too bad he had to as a result of people digging up attack material.
If politicians had to be responsible for all the mean and narrow statements of their clergy, maybe we would have fewer tests of religiousity as part of the political process. Almost every religion is guilty of arrogance or self-love in some form.
I remember my minister railing against the “civil rights troublemakers” during the period when they were being attacked and murdered. He felt that God had ordained whites to be in the dominant position and it should stay that way. Can you guess the minister’s race and the race of the totally segregated congregation? Can you imagine how, now that it is safe, his church pays homage to the sanitized icon of Martin Luther King?
That’s one reason I decided that I did not need any brokers between myself and whatever God there be. It is sometimes lonely not to have a community based on love and ethics, but better than self serving, mind numbing meanness.
Religion or non-religion should be a completely private matter. In my book, the less politics talks about religion the better.
Behavior should be examined, not beliefs, which are easy to fake.
Chickens do come home to roost - the article was right on and the tone of Rev. Wright was exactly right considering the speech was delivered following 9/11.
If you weren’t angry that some innocent people were killed as a result of a blowback of U.S. foreign policy, I don’t know what would make you angry.
Of course the act itself was disgusting, and of course it could never be justified. But, knee jerk patriotism is equally disgusting and the shock and awe campaign was no less terrorism.
Reverend Wright has every right to speak his mind and allow his emotions to flow. Especially since everything he said is truth. What people need to remember is that it represents one statement at one time in history that anger was an appropriate response.
What is clearly criminal is that when the anger should have cooled and useful reflection should have brought about discussion and a calm and measured action - Our president and the majority of the American people chose to extend our reign of terror rather than accept our measure of responsibility and look for a solution.
We will reap what we sow and because of our ignorance, arrogance and violence as a nation the empire is doomed and the end can’t come too soon for me.
Let all those who support violence, retribution and retaliation be damned and may the peaceful inherit the earth and move forward.
As has been mentioned here, Jeremiah Wright was a US Marine — since he fought for the country, I believe he has every right to express any opinion he desires — he obviously didn’t say “God damn America” when it counted, as have Bush, Cheney and so many other chickenhawks on the right.
Also, why aren’t all the Catholics, such as Chris Mattehws, who have been bloviating over this ‘guilt by association’ smear and demanding Obama sever all ties to Wright for exercising his right to free speech, quit the Catholic church since it’s been revealed that the highest levels of that church has been protecting pedophiles for years?
The point being that there are (too) MANY “pasty european” types that WILL and DO take great umbrage at this and will vote accordingly, instead of looking at the big picture, which is the ruination of the nation by richfilth.
If those pasty-faced types are so thin-skinned to cause them to vote Republican and subsequently allow the ruination of the nation by richfilth then that is what ALL Americans including you who cringe at ascerbic truth deserve , to be ruled by richfilth.
I do not wish you harm but I do wish that a time-machine could make you a slave or an aboriginal . It worked for Sharon and Senator Rawkins in ” Finian’
s Rainbow . That stage/movie music had no qualms about causing an ALL-WHITE audience to take umbrage . It ran for months.
After living the life of a slave or aboriginal , it is possible that you could personally identify with Rev Wright’s harshly spoken truth .
Walk a mile in another person’s shoes or keep your blinkered opinions to yourself .
You are correct.
And look what Obama did: instead of trying to get America to once and for all, as a nation, face our dirty truths—if only to put a stop to the policies supportive of these dirty truths that still breathe life—what does he do?
He distances himself from his truth teller, his good Reverend, and he supports Israeli terrorism to boot.
Pathetic.