As long as we can be kept focused on the issue of race, the American people can be kept sharply divided into many groups, each wary of the others. This has been amazingly effective at keeping us from moving forward. Race keeps us from focusing on the grave and immediate dangers of the economic/class war that was re-ignited by the "Reagan Revolution". This war has impacted the overwhelming majority of Americans, crushing white families as surely as it crushes families of every other color, as the wealth of the nation has steadily been funneled into the bank accounts of the few.

I can think of nothing more terrifying for the rich and powerful than the thought of low-to-middle income Americans of all races deciding as one that we have had enough, that we are no longer willing to continue to slide into an economic caste system.

I've lived in the USA for 25 years, I've come to know Americans and the picture they paint is of a caring god fearing nation. Nothing could be further from the truth, the church going is a buttress against the miserable life most live and god gives them hope, they have nothing else to cling to. The government is self serving, as corrupt as any in history and hell bent on grabbing, along with the robber barons, as much of the pie as possible, their greed is insaciable.

In order to enforce total control a false flag was organised which in turn was used as an excuse to invade two country's without any connection whatsoever even with the alleged perpatraters and it worked because the people have been dumbed down into believing anything the media tells them.

Where does the fault lie, in the schools, in the church or the government, answer all three, all guilty of manipulating the people they're supposed to help. The great brainwashed citizens of the USA who go GAH GAH when they see a military uniform, never giving a thought to the real purpose that man in uniform has, no connection to mass murder in foreign lands by these uniformed slayers, Oh! no, look he's got a wife and kids, he wouldn't shoot or bomb anyone would he.

These nutcase Americans will attack Iran, mark my words it's as certain as night and day, they have no choice have they the alternative to them is unthinkable.

An American Truth Commission---what a promising idea, like "National Grow The Fuck UP Week." It could start with the rape of two continents, genocide, slavery, gender and every other kind of bias and bigotry, and move on to the imperial "freedom wars" by which we've done our neighbors near and far so much harm (as Thomas Jefferson said of Indians, they find themselves "oppressed by a magnanimous nation"). And who would preside? That would be some battle in itself. Hackademics who even now help to bless the bloody empire? The JFK, RFK and King investigators? The 9/11 Omission? The Iraq Study Group? Ed Meese and Sandra Day O'Connor (who when asked her qualifications to be on The Iraq panel, replied with a vapid smile, "Oh, nothing!")? Who would write, vet, and publish the findings? Here's some news---it's already been conducted, in the miles of American libraries going unread more than ever since the almighty Television took power. A virtually impossible and, beyond that, surely toothless Truth Commission that could not lead to further rights-protecting Constitutional amendments wouldn't be worth the printed invitations....And a country that cannot even grasp NOW what it is doing will rise to the entire unspeakable history of capitalism launched against this place (to free it, enlighten it, and take its resources in the process) from western Europe? I end by confessing that even given all this, I still think it is a mighty and promising idea---as if we're going to try to launch the 2000 millennium (Aquarius) even though we fucked up the first part with surrendering to the ignorant, vicious shadow of our past---embodied in The Bush Crime Family.

There are many angelized truths Americans refuse to face. One of them is that our election systems in much of the nation and especially since computer changes of the HAVA Act are grossly compromised. That millions of minority voters, mostly black, Native American and Hispanic, are prevented from voting or have their ballots "spoiled." And still the majority of Americans continue to believe the idiotic claims, in the face of facts easily accessed, that a number of our elected officials from this president on down were ever elected in the first place. I've puzzled over the Democratic Party refusal to take on the facts. I still cannot figure it out. Article after article in publications owned by MSM which is about 92% of all written and broadcast information sources continue to repeat the false assumptions like a mantra of why Bush won and how we can make the eminently hackable computers work in the next voting cycle and the next and the next. Talk about angelizing something that is so basic to the functioning of democracy. Manipulators yell,"Conspiracy theories!" and repeat "Get over it!" Americans have been bullied and brainwashed for so long that it will take a major intervention and recovery program to heal us. The symptoms of an abused nation are all here to behold. Think about it.

like i said in another thread here..

It is so damn hard NOT to feed the misogynistic male supremest troll...lol

but don't feed em and they starve and move on

[[The government gives (blacks) the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing 'God Bless America.' No, no, no, God damn America, that's in the Bible for killing innocent people. God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme."]]

I have heard and read many things about Rev.Jeremiah's statements. The truth is: He was absolutely, positivly, 100% correct.

Blacks don't have the connections (to acquire drugs abroad), they don't have the planes and boats/ships to transport them, and they don't have the network to distribute them, but the cops wait on the street corner or alley to catch them selling, or snorting, then off to jail they go. Well said Rev. Wright.

Meanwhile, "they" want Obama to denounce Rev. Wright(which had nothing whatever to do with Obama) for calling a spade, a spade.

Rev. Wright has vetted his anger in terms that are shocking to religious folks who are complicit in the coverup of the USA government's racist, imperialistic, and cruel policies ever since Europeans settled this country. Talk about genocide, many of our most revered forefathers were masters of the science to eliminate native Americans to rob them of their homeland, religion, languages, food supply--everything. Then they took land they wanted from Mexico. They built this country on slave labor. It goes on.

There really needs to be a way for us to flag trolls here. Maybe issue little stick-em darts? Anyone gets hit with 10 darts and they get tossed for being a serial asshole.

"Obama's speech was very well stated; I can't deny that for a second.

However, some of the "greatest" war criminals, among other criminals, have also been "great" speakers or orators."

I believe it was Lao Tzu who said, "A speechifier is not a good leader. A good leader is not a speechifier." Yet, we now have a terrible leader who is not a speechifier.

Seems like for every rule there is an exception. Maybe that's where hope comes in.

Riverman,

Since I hate misinformation more than I hate right to lifers, one egregiously long post deserves another. To everyone else I deeply apologize for the length of this post, but the facts need to be set straight. Riverman is doing his best to use this blog as a soap box for his ideological views. Here's an opposing viewpoint that anyone can read if compelled to do so.

Did Abortion Cause My Breast Cancer
By Lauren Slater

Section: BREAST CANCER NOW
THE CONTROVERSY

One woman sifts through the evidence in a personal journey to the truth. But can she live with the answer?

I HAVE USED DIAPHRAGMS, CONDOMS, PILLS, AND FOAM; the cervical-fluid method, the basal-body-temperature method; the cap, the ring, the shots. Almost every one of these contraceptives measures has failed me, or, perhaps, I have failed them, unable to tolerate the hormonal disruptions, my cervix tipped back so the barriers were never very snug. The result: I've had several early abortions. In my 20s, it was easy, because I did not know what it meant to love a child. In my 30s, it was haunting, because I'd borne a beautiful girl and knew what I was losing.

My choice. And yet I've always believed that somehow, somewhere, I'd be punished for both my fertility and my freedom, that I'd see the children I've lost just as I left this life, all of them still in fetal form, there on the other side. I've feared that my daughter will somehow be taken from me, divine retribution against a mother who kills. Then, at age 38, I developed severe atypical ductal hyperplasia, an overgrowth of cells lining the ducts of the breast. I'd had multiple lumps biopsied in the past, suspicious chunks cut out; I had family members with breast cancer. With my new diagnosis, I was almost guaranteed to eventually develop the disease, if I didn't have it already.

I was worried about the implications of this diagnosis. I was worried about carrying two time bombs on my chest. I wasn't worried, at first, about just what had caused my cells to breed and split, misshapen. But other people were.

Other people suspected abortion was to blame. Though I didn't know it then, there had been considerable discussion among scientists for decades regarding whether having an abortion might increase the risk of breast cancer. There had even been a number of studies looking at the question. The research was reassuring, or so the National Cancer Institute (NCI) had said for some years on its Web site. Now, around the time I was getting my diagnosis, that reassurance was suddenly in doubt.

Eventually the NCI called a huge meeting to discuss the issue, and I finally heard about what had become a sizable controversy. By then I'd had a prophylactic bilateral mastectomy. My surgeon had gone in and taken the questionable tissue, all of it, leaving behind two red, raw wounds.

My breasts were gone, but I still had questions--more questions, and more freighted ones, than ever. What made my cells go awry in the first place? Did I deserve my disease?

Does abortion cause breast cancer? This is my attempt to find out.

"NO ONE, absolutely no one, disputes that a young woman who decides to abort her baby will have a higher risk of breast cancer than a young woman who chooses to carry that baby to term," says Joel Brind, Ph.D., a professor of biology and endocrinology at City University of New York. Brind is one of the most vocal advocates of what some call the ABC (abortion-breast cancer) link.

His assertion is partly true. A woman who gives birth before she's 30 is clearly less likely to develop breast cancer in the long run than a woman who doesn't have a baby. And no one disputes this, although scientists aren't sure why it's so. They do have some ideas. Pregnancy permanently alters a woman's hormone profile, especially the amount of estrogen she produces, says Leslie Bernstein, Ph.D., professor of preventive medicine at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. The substance is known to stimulate the growth of breast-cancer cells, at least those of the so-called estrogen-sensitive form of the disease, which accounts for most cases. The younger a woman is when her levels of this hormone, this elixir and toxin both, decline, the better off she may be.

But Brind isn't simply saying that having a baby before you reach 30 lowers the risk of breast cancer. In fact, that's his secondary point. His primary one is that having an abortion raises this risk by as much as 50 percent. A woman's first pregnancy alters not just hormone levels but breast cells as well, causing them to multiply and differentiate as the breast prepares to produce milk. Brind says that in an interrupted pregnancy, those cells are left in a dangerous limbo: adolescent, without identity, and likely to turn bad.

Lots of studies suggest that the danger is real, Brind says. In 1994, epidemiologist Janet Daling, Ph.D., interviewed 845 women with breast cancer and 961 women without, asking them about their reproductive histories. Daling found that women who had the disease were much more likely to report having terminated a pregnancy, and she concluded that abortion appeared to raise cancer risk by 50 percent.

"It's so clear," says Karen Malec, president of the Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer, for which Brind serves as an adviser. "The incidence of breast cancer has gone way up in this country since Roe v. Wade was decided."

A lot of things have changed in that time, though. The use of mammography has also gone way up, and the technology has gotten much better, which means lots of tiny tumors that in earlier years would have gone undiagnosed are being detected.

OR MAYBE I'M JUST BEING defensive. Because there is something that seems intuitively right to me about what Brind and Malec are saying. I remember my own breasts in early pregnancy, how full and aching they became--all surge and growth--and then the sudden shock as the cycle was disrupted. I remember the days following an abortion, the physical confusion I felt as my hormones peaked and plummeted. Could this disruption be somehow toxic?

No, says Lynn Rosenberg, Sc.D., an epidemiologist at Boston University who's researched the issue. According to Rosenberg, most of the studies that suggest an association between abortion and breast cancer are fundamentally flawed. Take the Daling study, which assumes that each woman interviewed was telling the truth about whether she'd ever had an abortion.

But can we assume that? Prior to 1973, abortion was against the law. "It is possible that women would not report having undergone an illegal procedure," says Bernstein, an expert on factors that raise breast-cancer risk. Even post-Roe v. Wade, Rosenberg says, you can't take full disclosure for granted. "In our society, abortion is considered shameful by some."

A woman with breast cancer, then, is a more reliable reporter of her reproductive history: She's got a knife at her neck, and she wants to know why. It's much easier for a healthy woman to forget or dismiss or deny a past abortion, because she has nothing at stake. So studies like Daling's have a reporting bias that could suggest a link between abortion and breast cancer even if there is none in reality.

That's what Bernstein and Rosenberg tell me. But to be honest, the argument seems problematic. I know many women who have never had breast cancer but have had abortions, and I don't think they'd be inclined to deny it.

Then again, maybe they would be. A 2001 study compared the number of abortions that women on welfare were willing to acknowledge with the number Medicaid had paid for. The study found the women did shy away from reporting their abortions by a significant amount, as much as 35 to 60 percent.

At any rate, researchers deemed the problem of reporting bias big enough that they searched for a way around it. Eventually, they found one in the health records of a whopping 1.5 million Danish women. Denmark, that little stronghold of Scandinavian seriousness, keeps all sorts of records and registries, including one that lists every woman born after 1935 who has ever had breast cancer and another for every woman who has ever had an abortion. Poof went concerns about reporting bias. The researchers mined the registry data, cross-checking 40 years' worth of entries.

"What they saw made it very clear," Rosenberg says. "When they looked at over 1 million women, there was just no association between abortion and breast cancer." Women with breast cancer were no more and no less likely than other women to have had an abortion.

Of course, I'm relieved. I reach up to touch my chest, which after my mastectomy is flat, the skin puckered, my heart that much easier to hear without the extra flesh--ba-boom. It keeps going.

THE DANISH STUDY WAS PUBlished in 1997. An accompanying editorial concluded that a woman not worry about the risk of breast cancer when facing the difficult decision of whether to terminate a pregnancy." Public health organizations like the American Cancer Society and the World Health Organization made similar statements. A fact sheet at the NCI Web site explained that some studies before the 1990s had produced inconsistent results but that subsequent research had found no link.

And that was that, until June 2002, when a group of about 30 avowedly antiabortion members of Congress complained to Tommy Thompson, Secretary of Health and Human Services, that the NCI fact sheet was "scientifically inaccurate and misleading." What followed was a rumpus. The institute pulled the document and replaced it with a new, more ominous-sounding one. Scientists have been examining the relationship between abortion and breast cancer since 1957, the new statement said, adding, "Some studies have reported an increased risk of breast cancer in women who have had abortions, while others have merely suggested an increased risk." An editorial in The New York Times called the revision "an egregious distortion of the evidence."

The controversy grew so loud that eventually the director of the NCI, Andrew von Eschenbach, M.D., decided to call a meeting in an effort to find the truth, quell each side, or do both. He invited cell biologists and epidemiologists and endocrinologists; he invited Bernstein, Brind, and Rosenberg; both sides, all sides. The conference happened in February of this year, very nearly the anniversary of my mastectomy. It was cold for the meeting, just as it had been on the day of my surgery. Snow was falling, a dry, scaly-looking snow.

As for my breasts: The left one, it turns out, was loaded with misshapen cells. The right one was merely speckled here and there. "It's good we removed them both," said my surgeon.

As for the NCI meeting: The scientists managed to reach a consensus. They concluded that no link exists. The NCI posted yet another fact sheet. The current one reads, "The newer studies consistently showed no association between induced and spontaneous abortions and breast-cancer risk."

"We went over all sorts of studies in Washington," Rosenberg says. "We cited more than just the Danish study. We cited studies like the one done in China."

That one looked at women in Shanghai. In China, abortion is common, no one denies it, and millions upon millions of women have undergone the procedure as many as 10 times. The researchers interviewed approximately 1,500 women with breast cancer and 1,500 women without, and, just as in the Danish study, there was nothing going on. Among Shanghai women who'd had three or more abortions, there was no cancer increase at all.

Brind remains unconvinced, as do other ABC advocates like Karen Malec. The new consensus didn't change their minds. And it didn't change the law in Mississippi, where medical professionals are required to inform a woman seeking an abortion that having one could raise her risk for breast cancer. Minnesota, Texas, and West Virginia recently began requiring the same notification. Nationally, 70 bills have tried to mandate such a law.

This makes me mad. Even if there is still a lingering question over the ABC link--and the overwhelming majority of scientists says there isn't--why is so much attention being given to it when there are proven dangers women aren't being made aware of? Why are states warning women who are undergoing abortions about breast-cancer risk but not women who are planning a pregnancy after age 35? The link in this case is undisputed.

"There's no question that pregnancy after 35 raises a woman's risk," says Daniel Medina, Ph.D., professor of cell biology at Baylor University. "Before 20, it acts as a protective barrier. But after age 35, the hormones act as growth promoters for tiny tumors."

So why is it that states like Mississippi aren't telling the 38-year-old who is considering taking fertility drugs that becoming a mother could be deadly?

For that matter, as long as we're disseminating information about risks, shouldn't we also warn women that one female a day dies in childbirth in this country? That psychosis is more than 10 times more likely to occur in the postpartum mother? Or that a woman puts herself in potentially grave economic circumstances by giving birth, each child costing her more than $100,000 in lost wages, by some estimates?

When I ask Brind why, if he supports warning women about the risks associated with abortion, he doesn't also advocate warning them about the risks associated with pregnancy, he pauses for a moment and then gets heated.

"The idea," he says, "of equating a natural process like pregnancy with a surgical intervention like abortion is not only off base, it's bizarre."

OK. But whoever said pregnancy is a natural state for the older woman, who more and more relies on frankly bizarre forms of technology to conceive? "Shouldn't we warn those women, the ones relying on medical technology to conceive, not to have babies or to consider the dangers?" I ask.

"I know someone," I continue, "who developed breast cancer at 40, when she was pregnant with in vitro twins. She died."

Brind is quiet.

For centuries, really, science and ideology have been hopelessly intertwined. We didn't just split the atom; we created a weapon with what we found. We've used science to "prove" that African-Americans lack the supposedly keen intelligence of Caucasians, that gay people have a distinct shape to their skulls, that Jews have dirty blood. We have been appallingly bad over time at disentangling the fibers of presupposition from the roots of real knowledge. Perhaps, to some degree, that's inevitable. Even at its best, science rests in a cultural context and is shaped by the day's dominant questions.

"I'm pro-life," Brind says, "I admit that. My family is like The Brady Bunch."

Of course, to be fair, who's to say for sure that Rosenberg isn't peering through her own magic microscope, powered by her own presuppositions?

I myself have read the studies, pro and con, yea and nay. But I'm not an epidemiologist, and I know how seemingly solid facts can slither and slide. It's confusing.

"No, it's not," Rosenberg says. "You will never get 100 percent certainty in science, so you have to go where the vast weight of the evidence is."

I think of the billions of women in China, of their high incidence of abortion and low incidence of breast cancer. I think of Rosenberg's words again and again: "You have to go where the vast weight of the evidence is." That makes sense. And, for now, the weight of the evidence says there is no association.

I GO TO SEE MY DOCTOR, BETH, for my checkup. She's the one who both delivered my daughter and escorted the bloody zygotes through her surgical straw. She has a round, freckled face and kind brown eyes. Right before my C-section, after 48 hours of failed labor, she took my hands in hers and said, "Everything will be fine." I remember her reaching up into me and saying, "The baby's stuck, but she has a lot of hair." I remember, right before an abortion, lying in the pre-op room, my eyes hot with tears, and the way she touched my cheek. A doctor like this is special, both for her ability to comfort and to tell the truth. The baby's stuck. But oh, all her hair!

Now I sit with her in her office. I have, by the way, just turned 40, and that is bothering me, the sound of it--40--like something slamming shut. There goes a window. There goes a door.

She does the routine things, the Pap, the cotton swab, the smear on the slide. I shrug the paper robe down around my shoulders, and she feels the flatness of my chest, the ribs extruding now, the skin stitched a little crookedly. Even after a mastectomy, there's still some breast tissue left, and it is still possible to develop cancer. I hold my breath. No lumps.

"Is it possible," I say to her, "that my abortions caused my breast cancer? What do you think?"

She lifts my robe back around me. I stare at the Monet on the ceiling, all blue and green. I think of the studies Brind cited, and then I hear Rosenberg's voice, her surety, the mountains of evidence. I think of the Danish study, and then of the 2001 British study that actually found a hint of evidence that abortion could have a protective effect.

"I don't know what caused your breast cancer," my doctor says. "But I can tell you this: The evidence doesn't point to abortion. It points to the fact that your maternal aunts have had breast cancer, and that your risk rises with age. These are the proven links."

I decide to believe her and Rosenberg and the vast weight of the evidence, because I have to, because I want to. Because in the end, there are some solid facts, some gold-standard studies. And even though the interpretation of results may change shape someday, those studies are, for now, the stones I choose to stand on.

Back at home, I stand before my mirror. It's dusty, so my reflection is furred, somehow softened. I have no nipples. Those were taken, topped off, and this was the strangest part. For months afterward I felt them, phantom nipples, still there, springing alive when the wind blew, when fabric brushed my bruised chest. Nipples so much more sensitive in their ghostly form than they ever had been when they were still a part of me.

I could get reconstruction. I could get nipples tattooed on, a worried nub of flesh for the point. That's not the point, though, is it? The point is that loss is complex, disease is complex, cancer is complex, caused by the interweaving of many factors. In the end, I know this: Cancers are multifaceted, ideologies aren't. I'll go with that, with what I see. It's all I have to live by.

Awesome article. Honest self-exploration is never easy and always painful. Maybe we're finally ready. I hope so, because it's long overdue and all this narcissitic self-love is giving me such a headache.

Riverman -

Stop reading Right to Life brochures. Resign from the He-Man Woman-Hater's Club. Go outside and get some air. Hug a tree. Listen to the birdies (not the one's in your head!). Soak up some sun. Wiggle your toes in the grass. Don't worry. Be happy. Get a grip. It's okay, my brother, it's oooookay.

Obama's speech was very well stated; I can't deny that for a second.

However, some of the "greatest" war criminals, among other criminals, have also been "great" speakers or orators.

The future will tell.

I grew up in the south. I still live in the south. While certainly some of the institutional aspects of racism have changed, the social aspects have changed very little.
My step-father was a racist and still is. The
"N" word is his daily fare...it rolls off his tongue like water off a duck's back. I work at a University where less then 2% of the staff are black. I never attended public school with a person of color, even after passage of the civil rights act. The largest minority ethnic group where I now live is Native American. Words like "squaw" and "buck" are common.
The United States (there ARE other countries in America besides us) is a racist nation through to the core. Like I said, some things have changed. Black faces are seated in the lunch room now , not just working in the kitchen; but the job is not even half done yet.
And yet every time there is a hoopla over statements like the Rev. Wright made, the news programs show us a panel of white people who deny race is a problem in this country...at least not for them. The only problem bigger then race and inequality here is the self-deception and lies Americans (in the US) tell themselves.

No, I don't think Americans can handle the truth - and Obama spoke like an adult speaking to other adults, which, I'm afraid, is another thing we can't handle. We can't handle any criticism, or self-reflection, can't empathize with others. We need to grow up!

No, I don't think Americans can handle the truth - and Obama spoke like an adult speaking to other adults, which, I'm afraid, is another thing we can't handle. We can't handle any criticism, or self-reflection, can't empathize with others. We need to grow up!

America can't handle the truth - or extra long posts : )

(initial post by Ostrogoth March 25th, 2008 1:53 pm)

"Those who can handle the truth should not 'angelize' Obama. He's a product and servant of our corrupt, oligarchic duopoly."

"But he's also the best chance we have of throwing out the torturers. The abolition of slavery was progress, and throwing out the torturers will also be progress, if only the recoupment of lost moral ground. One step at a time, hopefully two steps forward for every step back; that's the best we can hope for in the USA."
__________________________________________________

(response by Nietzsche March 25th, 2008 4:00 pm)

"Ostrogoth, let's be fair; anybody who owns property under the auspices of this government is a product and a servant of the system. The same is true for anyone who uses US currency, or has a job, or uses a highway."

"We may be too close to the problem to see it clearly."
__________________________________________________

Nietzsche, I don't think I'm being unfair. I try to be honest about US crimes against humanity, and about the consequences of US radical capitalism for Americans and for the rest of the world. Obama doesn't try. Maybe he really cares about people. Who knows? He doesn't try to be honest because he knows he would be political toast if he did.

Tristam admonishes us to confront the truth, so let's do so: both Bush and Obama knowingly, willingly perpetuate a corrupt, increasingly vicious oligarchy, although Obama has tried to hold onto shreds of his dignity and humanity, while Bush hasn't.

Why can't America face its past? The Germans after WWII had to at Nuremburg and today we have a well informed and comparatively enlightened population. Germans recognize their dreadful past and wish never to repeat it. Chirac publicly attempted the same cleansing in France but unfortunately his successor, Sarkozy, in order to gain Le Penn's extreme right wing voters refuted Chiracs claims.

Obama is being condemned by Bill Clinton for supporting his pastor who at one point said "God Damn America" for a past that has reaped the problems America faces today. In other words the pastor clearly stated the obvious and what every American needs to understand. Instead we here again observe the flag waving of Hillary and McCain who claim to love America more than Obama does. The US election campaign has truly hit the gutter with most of the press joining in. If Americans fail to come to grips with their sordid past the younger generations will go on making the same mistakes.

I recall that when the shoe bomber was sentenced the judge made the comment, "you hate us because of our freedom" It was a statement much heralded in the US and I received several copies via email "to send it on" No guilt or reflection on the many millions that have suffered in the Middle East, Vietnam, Cambodia and throughout Latin America over the past 100 years through US actions. Just "we love freedom and they hate us for it"

Like the pastor I am stating the obvious to most non Americans and am bewildered by their blindness. Maybe the impeding financial collapse will tear people away from their escapist TV and a majority will put their flags away and actually begin to think. I have my doubts.

"Obama offers a path to conciliation. The path begins with a willfulness exactly opposite angelization. It begins more along the lines of where a truth commission might begin. That's Obama's problem. It's doubtful whether this country can, in its lethargy for social justice at home and its trances for wars abroad, handle the truth."

Well, he seems to be the farthest from angelization, and that's a huge start.

This is a double-edged sword, however. One edge is that we go on to angelize Obama and infuse him with "angelic" qualities instead of working as citizens to make this imperfect man's words become reality. The other edge is that we tear him down for not being "angelic" - something other than the perfect specimen many seem to wait endlessly for.

When Americans are ready to start seeing ourselves as less than perfect, then we will realize that that's our choice in candidates. Once we can handle that, we will be able to handle the truth and get to work being citizens.

Thank you, TheProf for your comment. Obviously lillulu has not had to try living while black. And I had the same response to that comment "I'm not a racist", bracing for the next to come racist comment - which it did.

neomunk, thanks for your support. In my judgment, my best option is to ignore riverman.

lord trigo, if you recall, Nixon rose from the ashes to be heralded at last as a great statesman. All is forgiven.

mouse, I was never taken in by Bills' seduction; rather, I was repelled by it. As I was by G W Bush. I like sincerity and those two reeked of dishonesty and manipulation. I was appalled that so many couldn't see through them. Scary. They all vote. With Obama, I'm still not convinced, just hopeful, but his choice about Reverend Wright did impress me and confirm my suspicion that we have an honorable man here.

kathyodat

Nice piece Pierre. Thanks to Saul Bellow for giving us a word to describe part of our anguish.

Just as angelization is a distortion of the facts, so is demonization. What I see in America is a fact of human nature and not "American nature." Angelization is probably easy to detect in any nation-state that thought it was the tops.

Though Tristram says based on the hooplah you'd think more had been accomplished, the implication is that much, much more COULD have been done. I don't think I agree (and maybe I'm reading too much into what he wrote.) The roots of racial attitudes, psychology, dynamics run so deep in our natures that we have really done well to get as far as we have. Watching news stories out of Europe I get the impression there has been less progress than here.

Barak had me grinning from ear to ear. Then on Sunday morning I just had to watch the usual angelizing heads in the video slime. No traction or useless flailings. Krauthammer(sp?) won't be satisfied until BO survives the dunking test or trial by snakebite, and the rest go in circles until they end up proving what BO said.

lillulu "I'm not a racist, but hey there are a lot of rich blacks."

Whenever someone says "I'm not a racist but.." you can guarantee a racist comment, in this case blacks ought not to be rich.

I learned this from my mother who used to say "I'm not a racist but I wouldn't want my son to marry one..." which precisely defined her level of racial intolerance. It appears my younger son was not brought up with this mindset as we have a beautiful half-Korean grandaughter.

I don't think the average American can handle the truth. Maybe that's why the MSM is helping by not reporting any. What if cheney really did have something to do with 9-11? What would America think then? And if he did have something to do with it, what else is he capable of? Perhaps we'll see by Sept or Oct.

George is only the latest in a long line of liars and thieves who create confusion by trying to pass off sentimentality for kindness and jingoism for patriotism. Thankfully he is not very good at it but he is constantly trying to stir the emotions of the public.

Show me somebody who cries and blubbers in a movie and nine times out of ten they are mean bastards at heart.

According to the theory of evolution, we. including the TOE denying are al genetically a part of the human species, and therefore each and everyone of us behaves according to built in tendencies and the situation we find ourselves in. There are tiny special distinctions for each individual and their racial heritage, but they are so tiny they are far less than the broad spread of variation between all individuals. Distinguishing between us all is more a matter of culture and individual fitness and personality. Taken seriously, then no collective race, or nation has valid claims of greatest or nearness to god. What matters is cultural adaptation to local conditions. If you break the rules and try to live beyond your means by ransacking each and every other areas local conditions to support your own, then the whole world surely collapses. This can be mutually or more likely unilaterally. No one can escape this fate.

I watched Obama's speech on race last week and am still so moved and stunned I find it hard to comment with the clarity the above article nails so easily, and am hopeful and amazed that such a man is so close to the Oval Office. The speech left me felling good in a way that Bill Clinton at his best never could, because I always felt his paper thin seduction at work on me even as I fell for it. Barack Obama's speech on transcending the American racial divide left me with the sense that he is a thoughtful, open-hearted, forgiving, and most importantly, humble man. I dig the idea that we can collectively invest ourselves in such a person. He seems to have what it really takes for us to turn the country we fear we may have now become into the place we have always known and dreamed it could be. I just hope I'm not Angelizing, I prefer San Francisco.

Hey neomunk: You said "difference engine" chuckle, chuckle. That (and luckylefty) made my day!

Ostrogoth, let's be fair; anybody who owns property under the auspices of this government is a product and a servant of the system. The same is true for anyone who uses US currency, or has a job, or uses a highway.

We may be too close to the problem to see it clearly.

Paris Hilton is looking for a new BFF.

How can we NOT be proud of Supermerica?

What do you mean Nixon didn't get away with his crimes? He may have resigned the office of the presidency, but he was never tried, convicted, or spent any time in jail. Pardoning him for crimes "he may have committed" was the worst thing Ford ever did. It sent a message to all that followed that the worse that could happen to you was being forced to leave office and spend the rest of your life playing golf. That's why, compared to the bunch we have in there now, Nixon looks pretty good. Where have you gone, Tricky Dick, a nation turns its lonely eyes to you, woo woo woo . . .

Patriotism and religion, ingrained into every American in school and in the military, turn us into obedient slaves of the oligarchy.

"Yours is not to reason why, yours is but to do or die".

The more I see of this Obama guy the more I like him, despite the suspicions which I still harbor that he's in the back pocket of the multinationals. And now he has the temerity to stick by a friend, even when the friend says things which are dangerous to his political ambitions. Don't tell me: we get to vote for a presidential candidate with integrity?

riverman, don't stalk. Leave BeForKids alone.

Not only is it creepy, but any point you're attempting to make will in fact be taken with far less credulity for your efforts.

We've all read your high logic comments, now please take it down a notch and discuss normally. Reduced usage of CAPS would help. A greater understanding in the respective physiologies of males and females (particularly the strong similarities in the respective brains' logic functions. I think the concept of male logical-superiority has long been -correctly- delegated to the trash bin.

There is one particular shining example I cannot help but mention in my thoughts on the foolishness (sorry, but that's how it seems to me) of this line of thought. Even predating Hitler having his Aryan supremacy hopes dashed by Jesse Owens, your theory is completely destroyed by the brilliant Ada Lovelace. She stands out so strongly in my mind due to her field of interest; the utterly logic-based art of computer (actually, difference engine(!)) programming. To me, this is the very PEAK of applied logic. Lovelace is far from the only example, she just seems the most antithetical to your premise.

kelmer

I read the Counterpunch article you recommended, up to this sentence:

"Most of those white welfare recipients were probably Celtic, members of Moynihan's tribe."

A bald, bold assertion made with absolutely no attempt to prove the argument with evidence. (Even if the author has produced evidence later in the article, he has already lost me.)

If I want to hear this level of debate, there are plenty of other places I can go, such as my nearest school yard.

Those who can handle the truth should not "angelize" Obama. He's a product and servant of our corrupt, oligarchic duopoly.

But he's also the best chance we have of throwing out the torturers. The abolition of slavery was progress, and throwing out the torturers will also be progress, if only the recoupment of lost moral ground. One step at a time, hopefully two steps forward for every step back; that's the best we can hope for in the USA.

I am ashamed of my American nationality, even if it is an accident of birth. When I hear someone challenge us as being perfect, I think good, maybe, just maybe America will grow up enough to look at its faults and in doing so will begin to correct them and try to live up to the myth.

I don't know why Rev. Wright is all up in arms about race. He looks more white than black, as a lot of "black" Americans do. Compare him to an African and you'll see the difference.

I'm not a racist, but hey there are a lot of rich blacks. Take Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, Oprah Winfry, etc. Yes, there are poor blacks, but there are poor Native-Americans and poor whites, too. Not everyone is supposed to be a multi-millionaire or billionaire.

On the other hand, no one should live in poverty in the richest country on earth or anywhere for that matter. When some people have too much -- more than they actually need -- then others have too little as a result.

Who took the video of Rev. Wright ranting and raving, and why was he ranting and raving is my question. It's hurt Obama. Although Obama is too much of a right-winger and pro war to suit me, I think he's better than the other two foaming-at-the-mouth Dogs of War McCain and Clinton.

I liked this article.

It's been sad listening to the fallout on tv over those radical comments, all to avoid what it really means if a lot of people really think "like that". Heaven forbid; loving America is mandatory for Americans. Can't treat it as a valid topic of discussion, people's true feelings and convictions, silly stuff, who cares?

They imply we shouldn't care about how people feel, even if it's a lot of people. About their own nation. Even if the opinions are strong, and bitter and personal. So it's all about invalidating feelings, which anyone can agree isn't the right thing to do, but it's exactly what they're obviously doing.

But "95% of the world serial killers live in the United States" from another commenter? Interesting. I guess it depends of how you define serial killer. And if it matters that over 95% of THEM are male. All a question of priorities I guess. We're all human, supposedly.

Americans the most sentimental people on earth? That's the peculiar thing I notice about Narcissists. They corner the market on excessive sentimentality, covering over the savage self-interest that lurks underneath.

I wonder how good the Secret Service protection will be for BHO. Will 'somebody' pull off all his protection some afternoon, like "somebody" did at the Loraine Motel in April 1968? When Ritual Shaming doesn't work and they can't be falsely imprisoned, they are assassinated (by a lone gunman with 3 names who secretly spent time in MK Ultra).

You see, America don't like it when Black people get "uppity" and step out of their 'place'. That's why we have, Selective Enforcement of the Law; Targeted Incarceration; Disproportionate Sentencing, and 2.3 million in prison, 2/3 Black and Brown (quadrupled prison population and race reversed demographics since 1965--Civil Rights/Voting Rights).

Aryan (male) Supremacy is bred to the bone here. This runs right along with a profound taste for human slavery, gender slavery, massive child abuse, constant war, and genocide. We got away and continue to get away with them all. Angelize that. Pretty much what you'd expect from an unrepentant, genocidal, Aryan slave empire with pretentions of enlightenment.

We had a choice 43 years ago when LBJ was forced to sign those pieces of legislation giving people their Civil Rights and Voting Rights: We could end poverty in our lifetime and we could provide lifetime stable employment for all Americans(check it 1965 I was there). BUT in order to do that, America had to make a place for everyone at the table and reject war and conquest as a way of life.

Repsonse: TOTAL RABID HISSING SPITTING REJECTION. Then and now.

We chose Exclusion, White Male Supremacy, Constant War, and we got an Oligarchy as a bonus(by 1965 the oligarchy was nearly dead here, check it, fact). One problem.

The American Oligarchy spits on your children. Like GWB they believe they were born with spurs to ride you. They have since stolen the wealth of America for themselves and have reduced you all to illiterate penury - corporate feudal slave state, 80-20.

I hope that America enjoys the chains and soon the Chips. It has always been their choice. You will go to the implant center to get your RDIF Chip installed, won't you? It's free to the Slaves and won't hurt a bit. It's for National Security.

Peece.

P.S. Mr. Tristam also has additional excellent pieces at his blog - Candide's Notebooks. Worth the time.

Nice line, Pierre, "These colors don't run". Flashed me to the moral conflict in "Scent of a Woman". We have an opportunity as a country to be courageous and elect a person who is courageous enough to tell us what we need to hear. Who will do the honorable thing, who isn't a panderer or snitch. If Obama had thrown Wright off the train, I wouldn't have voted for him. I want integrity and courage in my President. I want a bold thinker and hard worker. Obama is all of that. I don't want someone who relies on focus groups for decision making. I believe in our history we are at a crisis point. In Chinese, the characters for crisis are danger and opportunity. Obama has shown how he responds to crisis. He turns it into an opportunity. That is what I need in a President. I believe that is what we all need in a President.

kathyodat

Congratulations, Pierre Tristam, on one of the finest essays of this, or any, political season.

Sure, I wish Barack Obama were more specific about how and how quickly he would end the US military occupation of Iraq. I also wish America's ability to direct any sort of change within Iraq in a positive, nonviolent direction had not already been compromised beyond repair by the litany of past crimes and arrogant policy miscalculations that the Bush White House will bequeath to Little George's successor.

Unlike Nixon, Bush/Cheney indeed appear likely to ride out of Dodge into the sunset laughing, all the way to the bank. They'll leave the tab on the table for someone else to pick up, no doubt the same crew that will materialize from somewhere to give the old frat house a good cleaning up too.

If the recent media feeding frenzy over what the Obama family's former pastor did or did not say in one of his past sermons has proven anything, it is that Barack Obama may speak softly, but he's not afraid to be confronted by raucus views that are sharply at odds with America's fuzzy milquetoast moral middle ground, or its super-patriotic orthodoxies.

James Carville is credited with saying that the commonwealth of Pennsylvania consists of Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, with Alabama in between. If so, what happens next month in ArchieBunkerville will tell us much. Race and religion have always been the two great all-American wedge issues.

Based largely upon his Philadelphia speech, Barack Obama may pass the big test with flying colors - a test America's founders expressly decreed no candidate for public office should ever be subjected to.

I mean, if this isn't a test of religious belief, religious practice, piety and religious loyalty in order to qualify for holding public office, then what else have we all been witnessing?

Bill from Saginaw

Counterpunch.org has a great article by Ismael Reed on this subject. Worth checking out.

Bush is merely a reflection of the people he presides over. 95% of the world serial killers live in the United States, the US is the world's greatest polluter, the greatest consumer of illegal drugs, the greatest exporter of arms, the greatest sponsors and financiers of terror and guerrilla in the world, the most brutal imperial force in history (in millions killed, or are China and the old Russia ahead? still, the US is way WAY up there with them), not to mention the fattest, one the least educated and most sexually repressed people on the planet.

Are you proud yet?

"opposition has managed to field nothing more pulsing than the Arizonan equivalent of Leonid Brezhnev."

I'd say Chernenko, perhaps Andropov. Would have made the point better, but then again how many of his reader's would recognize the names or their significance...

Continuing the Russian theme of this blurb, it's kinda strange that the us media wants to build up the image of a Potemkin USA, where the people are always happy, the armies humain, the government always honest, the corporations work for the public good. Not too surpising tho, Potemkin was Catherine's male whore; the media is the whore of the corporate us gov't.

I think a good example of the "America can do no wrong" affliction was during the initial invasion of Iraq when a MSNBC anchor heard a reporter in Baghdad say that an American tank was firing on the hotel where many journalists were staying. The anchor responded that it was impossible because American tanks wouldn't do that.

American tanks were firing on the hotel, but that immediate response from the "news" anchor showed how the entire country was mislead into a war without the faintest hint of criticism from the monopoly media outlets. Our monopoly media held American actions above criticism because of thier own prejudices and because of a business decision that maintained that questioning the President or the American military during a time of war would not be good for ratings and ad revenue.

It's the monopoly media, stupid.

America, I submit, needs to hit bottom.

I was lucky enough to hear the Philadelphia speech live on AAR, before the media sliced, diced and Julian cut it into something the corporate media could better digest. It was spectacular! GWB has never written a single speech he has ever delivered. That point is never mentioned among the myriad pundits who viciously criticize Obama for daring to take this subject on. I voted for Obama at the CO caucus in February and haven't regretted it for one moment. And I am one of those "born to oppress" white males. Brave and honest. It leaves the rest of the field loosing 0 for 2.
Stand and deliver!

I can't compete with Obama Girl, but hell, at least I voted.

YAWN

Someone must have senile dementia.

You just don't get it.

The only reason I said I wasn't a racist was because I knew I'd be accused of being one if I criticized Rev. Wright. This isn't the 60's.

USAn, I think it's both. Individual and institutional. Maybe your behavior (resisting blacks moving into your neighborhood) is based solely on financial considerations, but that's not the case for everyone.

I agree with Cynthia McKinney, but it would be political suicide for candidate likely to be elected to say what she is saying. I believe Obana's nature is to move slowly and build coalitions. Knowing that change doesn't come all at once, to persuade people. We will see what happens if Hillary doesn't succeed in destroying his campaign with her slimeball tactics. And if she does, I hope she loses. She doesn't deserve to win. Even more than not wanting to see McCain in office I don't want to see another lying Clinton in office.

kathyodat

And, I should add, this characterization of racism part of the structure of a society, rather than an individual attitude or opinion, is a mainstream concept in the field of sociology, but thanks to our politicians, it remains a foreign one to too many laypersons.

here's another piece:
http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/16976

kathoydat,

You didn't quite get my point, I am not defending race-based individual decisions; I am explaining them. Just as Rev. Wright not defending, the Sept. 11 attacks, he was explaining them. I am simply stating that the racism embedded in the superstructure of our society and economy, and forces people, aside from a few with very strong convictions like you, to make race-based desisions that, in turn support the structure.

Once again we must not personalize or individualize the issue, racism isn't a feeling or an emotion, or even an attitude! It is a societal structure exactly like buildings and layout of streets is to a physical infrastructure. And for many people, that structure, metaphorically speaking, is their only shelter.

For an alternative to how Obama characterized race issues, please consider Cynthia Mckinney's piece, here:

http://www.counterpunch.com/mckinney03192008.html

USAn, I cannot agree with you. First of all, my hard earned equity isn't as important to me as doing the right thing. I'm on a limited income, but I still boycott WalMart and buy fair traded and American made goods whenever I can. But getting ahead isn't as important to me as doing the right thing. Maybe that's why I never "got ahead".

I don't think Obama is as naive as you portray him. I look at the kind of work he's done and the bills he tried to pass. I consider the pastor he listens to, who, even if Obama doesn't agree with his negativity, has certainly informed him of the injustice in this country, and I think Obama has experienced it for himself more than you, being a privileged white male might realize. Certainly as a female who had to support my children, I have been extremely aware of white male privilege.

What whites don't get is that racism affects their attitudes toward themselves as well. What Hillary doesn't get is that the more she tries to cut down Obama, the lower her own self esteem sinks.

We need to understand that on an energetic level we are all one being. Expressed individually physically but not energetically.

USAn, I appreciate your thoughtful and honest post. I agree with your following statement, and I believe that Obama's father, not being of our culture, was not imbued with the inferiority complex we visit on black American males and did not pass it on to his son. I've believed all along that is one reason that makes Obama the person we need right now. Among some others.

By USAn:
By the way, this is why black immigrants - West-Indians or Africans - seem to "succeed" more easily in the US than Africn Americans - they and their parents didn't grow up immersed in a institutionally racist society.

kathyodat

kathyodat,

Your points are well taken.

The most important point her is that racism is much bigger than mere bigotry - it is sewn into the fabric of our social and econmic institutions. It is defect, or a disease in a society, which persists even if ALL of the individuals in that society were to cast aside ordinary bigotry.

For example, I may not be bigoted, but when shopping for a house, I am compelled by society to make racist house buying desicions. The racism in our free-market economy dictates that as soon as blacks approach their percentage of the US population in any neighborhood, the market value of the houses, and my hard-earned equity, goes down. Ironically, even black poeple mwho have obtained sufficient wealth for a middle class living standard must be racists too and avoid anything but token-levels of black representation in a neighborhood in order to protect their equity.

At the more psychological level, racism deeply affects attitudes and expectations of whites toward blacks, and blacks toward themselves, in unconscious or unavoidably conscious ways - self-hate being a unaviodable characteristic many people (especially men for some reason) on the recieving end of racism, or other institutionalized forms of discrimination, develop.

I am a fairly insecure, socially awkward type, and not very ambitious either, but success came in spite of myself, because I have been given preferential treatment due to my white skin (and, as a civil engneer - maleness) through school and at every job interview. I would not be where I am if I were the same person but born an American with black skin and kinky hair.

By the way, this is why black immigrants - West-Indians or Africans - seem to "succeed" more easily in the US than Africn Americans - they and their parents didn't grow up immersed in a institutionally racist society.

Sociologists have thoroughly studied this institutional racism and their concensus remains that affirmitive action remains the only effective means to dismantle institutional racism over anything less than centuries-long time frames. The necessity of affirmative action programs is another thing that Obama dare not put his eloquence and leadership to work in addressing.

But we live in an era hyper individualism of triumphal Capitalism where everything is based on a false model of atomistic individuals, making personal decisions in a "feee market", and the youthful, post Reagan, Obama is too young to know anything else. So, he is likely in denial of even the existence of this thing called "Society" in a way that people in more pregressive countries would be familiar. Therefore, I should not be suprised that Obama proposed nothing in his speech that will effectively eradicate racism in our society.

"I apologize for repeating myself and suspect I'm wasting my breath with bigots anyway." (BeForKids 12:21 p.m.)

Kathy, no apologies necessary. Kudos to you for trying. But I'm afraid you are wasting your time on bigots who are just trying to get a rise out of you. (Is that the definition of a troll?)

kathyodat

Flashed me to the moral conflict in "Scent of a Woman". We have an opportunity as a country to be courageous and elect a person who is courageous enough to tell us what we need to hear. Who will do the honorable thing, who isn't a panderer or snitch. If Obama had thrown Wright off the train, I wouldn't have voted for him. I want integrity and courage in my President.

Bravo...well said.

Ahuramazda

I am white and have black friends, former roommates, teachers...never once did they play the race card.

As I see it, the only race card I have seen recently is the one the media keeps pounding into us in the media.

iammyself, the most effective method of extinguishing undesirable behavior is by ignoring it. If they get no attention, ultimately they get tired of wasting their time. Of course, we always have newcomers who will try to argue, and I was one myself. I learned. I even learned not to respond to hacks who run around copying their posts on every thread, always spouting the same talking points and never responding to questions challenging them (Bob K comes to mind).

kathyodat

Ahuramazda are you for real?! Boy are black people lucky now. We've (mostly) stopped lynching them for being black! Of course the KKK and neo-nazis are still running around and while law enforcement can't seem to do much about them, the Southern Poverty Law Center is doing a good job of suing their britches off and confiscating their assets. But the SPLC is being kept busy.

I haven't copied my posts from other threads, but the following is for Ahuramazda and Jacob Freeze and any others who think blacks should be grateful for what we let them have in this wonderful country:

I see the usual double standard in this issue. No matter what horrible things white preachers say, no one in the MSM objects. But black preachers are supposed to say "Yassuh, we's all happy suh!". Health care delivery for blacks is appalling, blacks are found to die of diseases at a much higher rate than whites (with medical studies wandering around wondering why - I know why, I saw the level of care my asthmatic black daughter-in-law was getting), infant mortality rate of black babies is twice that of whites, unemployment rates of blacks are as high as 40%, incarceration and death row rates of blacks are through the roof, black kids get prison time for crimes that white kids get sent home to Mom and Dad, driving while black is a major hazard and too frequently life-threatening, black neighborhoods are loaded up with liquor and gun shops (now why would that be?) and overpriced grubby grocery stores with reject vegetables from white supermarkets, the most underfunded schools in the country, but still, they're not supposed to have any complaints, they are living in the most wonderful country in the world. According to the whites. Get real, there's plenty to be mad about. What's amazing and for me humbling, is the amount of grace in the black community.

I apologize for repeating myself and suspect I'm wasting my breath with bigots anyway.

It seems to me that what we need to do instead of getting mad at each other is get mad at the corporate thieves that have us squabbling with each other over their crumbs which after all are the results of OUR labor. We're just dancing to the strings they pull. You know, like American Idol distracting us from real problems. I hear so much about American Idol - I don't even know what it is, except it seems to be the most important topic in America.

kathyodat

What, pray tell, did Rev. Jeremiah Wright say that was wrong, offensive, incorrect, or inaccurate? Where did Rev. Wright tell a lie? Nowhere! He did a fantastic job of expounding on some of the murderous and negative actions of this country that have been perpetrated against weaker and poorer nations. It is tantamount to Mohammed Ali beating the shit out of a midget and then thumping on his chest, letting out a tarzan yell, and then congradulating himself on what a hell of a man he is!!! america is too caught up in this self created, self induced reality that has no basis in fact to true reality. If america cannot handle the truth then it needs to stop the murderous conduct that it has inflicted on the non whites of this planet. Rev. Wright said that hillary clinton was not black-she isn't. He said that no one has ever called her a nigger - they have not. He said that according to the bible you reap what you sow and that the god he represents says that vengence is his and that he shall repay measure for measure. IMHO Rev. Wright is RIGHT. But the one point that really gets my goat is the fact that all of the pundits, analysts, fake patriots, and news outlets ranted and raved about what he supposedly said but not one of these so called americans had the decency or fairness to talk to the man face to face and let him explain and defend himself.

Did anyone notice that Mr. Tristam, while pointing out the "angelization" of the USA, was paricipating in it himself?

Past US actions he described as "atrocities" but the current ones are jusr "moral degradations".

And, like so many other "liberals" there is plenty of "angelization" of Obama in his piece - particularly in the way he characterizes that speech so many liberal are fawning over.

Lets be clear, Obama's speech on race was at least as right-wing, and similar in some ways, to Bush Sr. "Thousand points of light" speech. Everything was about volunteerism - that relish and mustard sandwich girl at the end of the speech, and nothing about what his administration through specific policies and programs, and our tax dollars, will do about it.

If Obama had at least said that addressing racism started with, once again, ennforcing existing anti-discrimination laws which can be violated with impunity due to dismantling of the agencies enforcing them, then maybe it would have been a truly new and fresh pespective.

But Obama can't say that, because along with this "angelization" is very idea of an activist government has been utterly banned from political discoure.

I don't know that it's true that we never could. We just have a tenacious hope. When it becomes apparent that the hope was misplaced, that our values have been shredded and used as bait to taunt us, we've been pretty good at figuring it out. It takes brave people like Jerry Wright to point out that the emperor has no clothes. When I drive through the Airplane boneyard SE of Tucson, I can do nothing else but join in his chorus, and I'm white and my family came here in the early 1600's and have thus been here as long as my black brethren. We will stomp out this evil which has bourne us for so long because the Cheney's of the world grossly under estimate us.

America has NEVER been able to handle the truth!

A white pastor at the church the Clintons used to attend has defended Reverend Wright, but it's gotten little coverage in the press:

On Tuesday, Sen. Hillary Clinton re-stoked the flames of the controversy surrounding Sen. Barack Obama's former pastor, saying she would have long ago distanced herself from Rev. Jeremiah Wright if she had attended his church.

"He would not have been my pastor," Clinton told a gathering of the campaign press corps, repeating a line she used earlier in the day on a Pittsburgh radio program. "You don't choose your family, but you choose what church you want to attend."

But the pastor at the church that Clinton did once attend has recently expressed public support for Wright. He's even proclaimed it a "grave injustice" to make a judgment on Wright based off of "two or three sound bites," and criticized those who would "use a few of [Wright's] quotes to polarize."

Last week, Dean Snyder, the senior minister at the Foundry United Methodist Church in Washington D.C. -- which the Clintons famously attended while in the White House -- released a little noticed statement offering a sympathetic defense of the totality of Wright's work.

"The Reverend Jeremiah Wright is an outstanding church leader whom I have heard speak a number of times," Snyder wrote. "He has served for decades as a profound voice for justice and inclusion in our society. To evaluate his dynamic ministry on the basis of two or three sound bites does a grave injustice to Dr. Wright, the members of his congregation, and the African-American church which has been the spiritual refuge of a people that has suffered from discrimination, disadvantage, and violence. Dr. Wright, a member of an integrated denomination, has been an agent of racial reconciliation while proclaiming perceptions and truths uncomfortable for some white people to hear. Those of us who are white Americans would do well to listen carefully to Dr. Wright rather than to use a few of his quotes to polarize."

You can read the whole post here:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/03/25/pastor-of-clintons-forme_n_93418.html

I am tired of some African Americans playing the victimization and race cards in the USA. It is becoming old. Understand?

Poor baby. Want a blankie?

If Obama winds up not being the presidential candidate during the Democrat National Convention; ironically, one has Reverend Jeremiah Wright to thank. I find this scenario tragic as well.

Americans can't handle the truth if it stares them right in the face. Lies, manipulation, and propaganda has so permeated the discourse and debates there that on the rare occasion that truth is spoken no one will believe it.

I am tired of some African Americans playing the victimization and race cards in the USA. It is becoming old. Understand? Black/white race relations have improved significantly in the USA since the 1960s and it is high time that black people in general acknowlege that. Of course, parts of Africa had Hebrews as slaves in such countries as Egypt and Ethiopia. So let us stop portraying black people as innocent victims Reverend Wright. Ok?

By the way, Reverend Wright, are you sure you are REALLY black, or did you go through the same plastic surgery procedure that Michael Jackson did? :-)

A reading of most any competent history of the Civil War shows that many Union soldiers were fighting for union and not abolition. The ultimate cause of the conflict was slavery though, and the contradiction of the peculiar institutuion with the Declaration of Ind. and the Constituion, so yes many European immigrants gave their lives to end slavery, but many also gave their lives to assert the right to preserve it.

Yeah, our history sucks. Anyone looking for a giant mea culpa for - manifest destiny, slavery, the cold war, the School Of The Americas, the military industrial complex, Viet Nam, the invasion and occupation of Iraq - though is going to be waiting for a long time.

I've said lots worse than Rev. Wright. I think the rage he expressed is the rage we here feel when George W. Bush solemnly invokes "and may God continue to bless the United States" as he launches a criminal campaign that will result in the deaths of hundreds of thousands, the displacement of millions, and a regional conflict that will last for decades. I don't believe in God, but realize that ideal vessel embodies the best hopes and dreams of many human beings, and invoking hope for a deliberate policy of death and destruction SHOULD enrage believers.

Jacob Freeze, reading your post, I am reminded of the Mr. Show episode "White Man, Set Them Free!" The difference is that David Cross and Bob Odenkirk were TRYING to be funny. :)

"iammyself, that wouldn't work. The trolls would wipe the board clean.

All we can do is ignore them, don't even read their posts. I don't, I scroll right on past. You know, sort of like commercials."

Agreed, kathyodat, but when it takes 5 minutes to scroll past their diarrhea, it's a bit much (and I'm not saying that every long post is from a troll - we know who the trolls are).

I honestly wonder if there isn't some heuristic way of democratizing boards like this one so that the members could deal with trolls. The idea of a democratic and free World Wide Web as set out by Tim Berners-Lee has been co-opted by these Gollum-like trolls.

Jacob Freeze, you obviously are the product of the Disneyland version of American history that we all learned in public school. I challange you to read "The Peoples history of the United States" by Howard Zinn. I mean no disrespect sir, but try to entertain the notion that you have been taken for a ride, as was I.

I'm not impressed with either Tristam, his piece on Obama or the wanna be Obama or his ambiguous wholesome platitudes!

Tristam should try some of that truth he's trying hard to peddle to the reader; that he should come clean and admit that he's shilling for the corporate owned puppetObama.

Hey Tristam, where's the critical analysis of Obama and what he really stands for instead of this fluff material?

iammyself, that wouldn't work. The trolls would wipe the board clean.

All we can do is ignore them, don't even read their posts. I don't, I scroll right on past. You know, sort of like commercials.

kathyodat

Mr. Tristam is obviously unaware that hundreds of thousands of Union soldiers gave their lives to free the slaves.

It's easy for insignificant scribblers like Pierre Tristam to insult the memory of all the brave men who died to give Jeremiah Wright the freedom he enjoys today.

Here's a news flash for the rest of you: It wasn't Malcolm X who freed the slaves.

It was hundreds of thousands of European immigrants who died most of them miserably from infections in primitive hospitals.

Remember them the next time you hear some hate-freak scream "God damn America!"

I agree with Rojo, Obama is every bit bought and paid for as Clinton. Lessor evilism is some people grand apologetic on behalf of the corporate entity referred to as the "two party system" when will this type of tripe be curtailed? After the collapse, when the sheeple start losing their corporate jobs, and are cast out on the streets of suburbia. Instead of life on Sunny Side Street, the streets will claim the herd. Life as we know it is coming to an end, and Obama (if elected) will just be another instrument in the demise of the Earth with his Bio Fuel and Nuclear agenda. Both contribute diminished returns for solving the climate change problem.