I once asked a reporter back from Vietnam, “Who’s telling the truth over there?” “Everyone, he said. “Everyone sees what’s happening through the lens of their own experience.” That’s how people see Jeremiah Wright. In my conversation with him on this broadcast a week ago and in his dramatic public appearances since, he revealed himself to be far more complex than the sound bites that propelled him onto the public stage. Over 2000 of you have written me about him, and your opinions vary widely. Some sting: “Jeremiah Wright is nothing more than a race-hustling, American hating radical,” one viewer wrote. A “nut case,” said another. Others were far more were sympathetic to him.
Many of you have asked for some rational explanation for Wright’s transition from reasonable conversation to shocking anger at the National Press Club. A psychologist might pull back some of the layers and see this complicated man more clearly, but I’m not a psychologist. Many black preachers I’ve known - scholarly, smart, and gentle in person - uncorked fire and brimstone in the pulpit. Of course I’ve known many white preachers like that, too.
But where I grew up in the south, before the civil rights movement, the pulpit was a safe place for black men to express anger for which they would have been punished anywhere else; a safe place for the fierce thunder of dignity denied, justice delayed. I think I would have been angry if my ancestors had been transported thousands of miles in the hellish hole of a slave ship, then sold at auction, humiliated, whipped, and lynched. Or if my great-great grandfather had been but three-fifths of a person in a constitution that proclaimed, “We the people.” Or if my own parents had been subjected to the racial vitriol of Jim Crow, Strom Thurmond, Bull Connor, and Jesse Helms. Even so, the anger of black preachers I’ve known and heard about and reported on was, for them, very personal and cathartic.
That’s not how Jeremiah Wright came across in those sound bites or in his defiant performances this week. What white America is hearing in his most inflammatory words is an attack on the America they cherish and that many of their sons have died for in battle forgetting that black Americans have fought and bled beside them, and that Wright himself has a record of honored service in the Navy. Hardly anyone took the “chickens come home to roost” remark to convey the message that intervention in the political battles of other nations is sure to bring retaliation in some form, which is not to justify the particular savagery of 9/11 but to understand that actions have consequences. My friend Bernard Weisberger, the historian, says, yes, people are understandably seething with indignation over Wright’s absurd charge that the United States deliberately brought an HIV epidemic into being. But it is a fact, he says, that within living memory the U.S. Public Health Service conducted a study that deliberately deceived black men with syphilis into believing that they were being treated, while actually letting them die for the sake of a scientific test. Does this excuse Wright’s anger? His exaggerations or distortions? You’ll have to decide or yourself. At least it helps me to understand the why of them.
But in this multimedia age the pulpit isn’t only available on Sunday mornings. There’s round the clock media - the beast whose hunger is never satisfied, especially for the fast food with emotional content. So the preacher starts with rational discussion and after much prodding throws more and more gasoline on the fire that will eventually consume everything it touches. He had help - people who for their own reasons set out to conflate the man in the pulpit who wasn’t running for president with the man in the pew who was.
Behold the double standard: John McCain sought out the endorsement of John Hagee, the war-mongering Catholic-bashing Texas preacher who said the people of New Orleans got what they deserved for their sins. But no one suggests McCain shares Hagee’s delusions, or thinks AIDS is God’s punishment for homosexuality. Pat Robertson called for the assassination of a foreign head of state and asked God to remove Supreme Court justices, yet he remains a force in the Republican religious right. After 9/11 Jerry Falwell said the attack was God’s judgment on America for having been driven out of our schools and the public square, but when McCain goes after the endorsement of the preacher he once condemned as an agent of intolerance, the press gives him a pass.
Jon Stewart recently played a tape from the Nixon White House in which Billy Graham talks in the oval office about how he has friends who are Jewish, but he knows in his heart that they are undermining America. This is crazy; this is wrong - white preachers are given leeway in politics that others aren’t.
Which means it is all about race, isn’t it? Wright’s offensive opinions and inflammatory appearances are judged differently. He doesn’t fire a shot in anger, put a noose around anyone’s neck, call for insurrection, or plant a bomb in a church with children in Sunday school. What he does is to speak his mind in a language and style that unsettle some people, and says some things so outlandish and ill-advised that he finally leaves Obama no choice but to end their friendship. We are often exposed us to the corroding acid of the politics of personal destruction, but I’ve never seen anything like this. I’ve never seen this wrenching break between pastor and parishioner before our very eyes. Both men no doubt will carry the grief to their graves. All the rest of us should hang our heads in shame for letting it come to this in America, where the gluttony of the non-stop media grinder consumes us all and prevents an honest conversation on race. It is the price we are paying for failing to heed the great historian Jacob Burckhardt, who said “beware the terrible simplifiers”.
Bill Moyers is a journalist and host of PBS’ Bill Moyers Journal.
© 2008 PBS
Right on the money, Mr. Moyers.
“It is the price we are paying for failing to heed the great historian Jacob Burckhardt, who said “beware the terrible simplifiers”.”
Thank you once again, Bill Moyers for lending a voice of reason to a miasma of simplification.
We all know who the terrible simplifiers are. We hear them on talk radio (my local AM station, WGAN in Portland, Maine, runs non-stop conservative simplification, morning, noon, and night), we see them on TV, and we hear the parroting of this in supermarket aisles and work places.
Life is not simple, but the little voice in our hearts is. That is what we should turn to. We each need to listen to our heart, and those who speak to it.
What’s refreshing about Barack Obama is that all the race-vitriol directed at or past him from BOTH sides just seems to roll off of him. I’m convinced that the reason Jeremiah Wright and Barack Obama, both intelligent men, have such different gut responses to the topic of race is because of where they were raised. Obama was raised largely in Hawaii and Indonesia: poly-racial societies where overt, directed racism is difficult to formulate because you’re never actually sure of the race of the person you are directing the hatred at, or on behalf of. There IS racism in Hawaii, mostly by Hawaiians against whites or asians, but for most of the population, its simply difficult to identify your ‘tribe’. Obama would have stood out, however, and felt isolated by being black. But there were none of the ‘convenient’ explanations for his feelings of racial-isolation that appear all to readily to blacks living on mainland America. In Hawaii, you Hapa (half-half)? Join the club!!
Wright was raised in mainland America: ‘nough said. He’s got a chip on his shoulder the size of a truck. Some of it is deserved, and much of it isn’t. The subcultures in mainland America are huge. The tribes are separated and are unlikely to rejoin anytime soon. Even an Obama Presidency wouldn’t change that. If it did, Wright would probably have as much reason for discomfort as any white-supremacist. Their respective racism is like a down comforter, by now. It’s a lullaby that helps them sleep at night.
In my newspaper today over 50% of the meager 4 pages of Sunday “Perspectives” is devoted to bashing Rev Wright and undermining Obama. The feeding frenzy is on and corporate media is pulling out the stops to torpedo Obama or make sure he never ever ever again associates with someone who speaks the words “US terrorism”, “Israeli apartheid”, or “US drug experiments” again.
Terrible simplifiers are the self-styled “people of faith.” To ingratiate themselves with one another they feign belief. Faith is what we can have instead of conviction, and religion is something we can do instead of the right thing.
No it’s not all about race. It’s about money and power. The Empire will not go down quietly but it will go down. Are we ready yet to supplant it and actionize the new paradigm? No!
No one has yet stitched all the pieces together and brought them into focus. We are still fragmented. The American People will need a new road to walk or they will be led to destruction. When the collapse occurs, mild or miserable, the American People will be ready to change. The philosophical underpinnings of the new lifeways need to be clarified and connected directly with the actions necessary to fulfill them. The Dim’s and Repug’s are the old paradigm of competition, military dominance, and false propaganda.
Change is bold and strikes out in a new direction. We are at a critical point. A decision for a new paradigm of cooperation, respect for all life, and healing MUST be chosen. Politically the Green Platform is a new paradigm and one that is badly needed. Personally, each of us will be required to risk for the future. Deny fear and risk with your heart, soul, and mind. Risk aggressively. The hour is upon us.
I respect Mr. Moyers, but here I think he is missing some key points.
What did Rev. Wright say that was outlandish or ill advised?
Rev. Wright spoke a truth that resonates with many people across this country and indeed the world.
He was saying something that an American ambassador and a Presidential candidate had also said.
No thinking person can deny the dastardly deeds America has perpetrated on others.
In regards to AIDS, I don’t know if the US government deliberately set this upon Americas, but it is well documented, beyond the syphilis example, that this government sent rock cocaine into black American neighborhoods, small pox into native American nations, and certainly didn’t rush to eradicate AIDS with all its might, money and resources.
This isn’t just the fault of the media. The people who wish to stay ignorant, narrow, and in denial are also to blame.
Also, Obama did have a choice and choose to be a typical politician and stick his head into the expedient sands that so often define our leaders.
From my perspective we should be thanking Rev. Wright for the opportunity to bring things out into the light of day and deal with what ails this country in a constructive honest manner.
Of course that’s not what happened - we all just rallied around our arrogant ignorance and deny, deny, deny, and demand renouncement and more bamboozlement.
I do agree with Mr. Moyers - shame on all of us.
Thanks for this article Bill. It seems to me that a big fault of the majority of American people is that they tend to think too well of themselves. They refuse to believe that we are just as selfish and as bigoted as any other peoples on earth.
Obama seems to be an honest man - every time I have heard him speak he seems to speaking his truth rather than what he thinks will get enough votes to get elected as our next president. I worry that Americans don’t want to hear the truth.
Reagan said that he was going to simplify your taxes and then he took away automobile loan and credit card interest deductions. It was effectively a tax hike, but since it was cloaked as simplification, everyone went along.
Right on ej! Given the behavior of the US throughout its history, it wouldn’t surprise me if it were behind AIDS.
What really astonishes me is the inability of folks to see the pattern of behavior of our governing body, our corportocracy, our media whores - and their abuse of citizery - enacted, over and over again. If it were a marriage, or business partnership one would have long ago gotten a divorce, a dissolution, or killed the perpetrator.
What’s with the blindness and denial???
Abuse in every sector of our society is out there writ large. Its not a unique event brought to us by a “few bad apples” it’s the entrenched attitude of Power towards Citizens. And it’s International - we’ve provided an exemplary model of abuse for all to use.
If you think the reverend is angry, try out Bobby Fischer:
http://bobbyfischerpage.tripod.com/
You might start with his infamous interview in the Philippines on September 11, 2001. If you are among the many anti Semite who frequent this site, then you will probably thoroughly enjoy all the interviews.
As for myself, I grew up with Bobby, my constant chess companion. I would say that I have always been very strongly in favor of Bobby Fischer and supported him through all his trials. I agree with much of what he has to say about the United States provided I simply leave out the word “Jew” from his reckless diatribes; some of you will prefer his words unedited.
It is truly impossible to have a rational political discussion in the U.S. There is only anger. I myself am just as angry as Reverend Wright, and I know that I am not alone. A reasoned argument or a presentation of fact is always met by a personal condemnation and accusation - “swift boating.” That in itself is reason enough for anger.
“In my newspaper today over 50% of the meager 4 pages of Sunday “Perspectives” is devoted to bashing Rev Wright and undermining Obama.”
Did you finish reading your paper or did you walk immediately to the telephone or your computer keyboard after reading the 4pages and cancel your newspaper subscription ?
Holy smokes : you and fifty million other MSM-newspaper readers and do-nothing whiners are incredibly stupid . Boycott MSM .
I gave up everthing except local tv and newspapers except PBS and now that Bill Moyers is neutralized by the almost-copycat-of-MSM “Washington Week” PBS is boycotted too.
I’ll get my news from the Guardian , Agent Presse France …
Whine on
ubrew12,
I think you need to examine the definition of racism before describing the resentment of Hawiiians or US blacks as “racism”.
Racism is not just racial prejudice. Racism is defined as a system of race-based social and economic structures that exist to maintain the political and economic power of a dominant group. In other words, a person can only be a racist if they are using race to maintain their position of privilege. A black American person can express hatred of whites all he wants, but because it doesn’t buy him a single bit of power or privilege, it is NOT racism. Same is probably true of native Hawaiians - Even their annual “kill Haole (white foreigner) day” doesn’t buy them a bit of power. Prejudiced and bigoted? Yes! Racist? No.
As far as Wright, aside from the AIDS thing, I completely support both what Wright has said, and how he delivers it.
And Mr. Moyers’ article is pretty good for a mainstream journalist, but exactly what noble causes over the past 60 years did so many USAns, white and black, die for? Didn’t most of them, from Korea to Indochina to Afghanistan and and Iraq, die for lies?
Reverand Wright said nothng that was not the truth or very near the truth. He could have stayed away from the Aids remark, as apparently he has no evidene of that charge.
So it came down to Obama and his personal decision to condemn and betray his long time friend, his chosen pastor and advisor. He betrayed a good man, whom he had only a week prior said that he could no more turn his back on his pastor, than he could on the black community, or his white grandmother who had raised him.
However, Obama changed his mind for ‘political’ expedient reasons, after Wright had spoken at the Press Club, where he fielded hard and often leading questions with perfect and starkly honest, eye opening replys. Obama chose to betray and publically denounce the man, his 20 year long, very good friend and advisor____ for political reasons.
Obama in a time of stress and unnecessay anger, displayed that he will do anythng to win an election. He is not the man he has been telling us all he is, or the man he wrote about in his “self penned” books. He displayed some of the worst character flaws a person may have. ___ Hypocracy and greed.
An analogy: ___ In 1928, there was a man who was part Irish and very proud of it. He was a Catholic and had never had the opportunity to finish high school. He was a very progressive, for the people, FOUR time Governor of New York, who was considered to be a very honest man. “AL” Smith ran against Hoover for the Presidency in 1928.
AL Smith had to fight a great deal of prejudice, as in 1928 Cathloics and the Irish were not well recieved by the vast majority of Americans, not all that different perhaps from a black man running for that high office today. During the campaign Smith once quipped, ___”I’d rather be right than be president”.
Well, I don’t know if he was right or not, but he didn’t win the election.___ He didn’t betary his morals or his principals either in order to win.
Bill Moyers says…
“All the rest of us should hang our heads in shame for letting it come to this in America…”
All the rest of us, specifically everyone except Barack Obama and Jeremiah Wright, should hang our heads in shame?
Shame on us… for anything and everything that happens anywhere ever in the history of the world? For every stupid, hateful thing that anyone may ever say or do?
This garbage sounds like a parody of “bleeding heart” liberals by Rush Limbaugh on one of his really bad days!
We should “hang our heads in shame for letting it come to this in America,” when a black Senator can become the leading candidate for President of the United States?
We should “hang our heads in shame for letting it come to this in America,” when the only thing that can keep Barack Obama out of the White House is his own cowardice for not confronting Jeremiah Wright?
I feel so ashamed that Barack Obama didn’t have the balls to confront his hate-freak pastor for 20 years!
But look, says Bill Moyers! Jeremiah Wright doesn’t scream hate-speech every second of every day!
Jeremiah Wright actually managed to talk to Moyers for a whole hour without screaming hate at whitey!
What a wonderful guy!
And when David Duke or some other KKK lunatic comes on Bill Moyers and manages to avoid the N-word for an hour…
Is Bill Moyers going to tell us how ashamed we should be for condemning the KKK?
This is a new low in low standards!
If you can act sane for 60 minutes, then anything else you may have ever said or done was probably just a freakish aberration!
Hurrah for Barack Obama and his hate-freak pastor!
But none of Moyers’ excuses kept Obama from throwing Jeremiah Wright under the bus!
“He finally leaves Obama no choice but to end their friendship…”
Poor little Obama! No choice! Whitey made him renounce his dear friend! We should all be so ashamed!
Now lets all sing “God damn America!” along with Barack and Jeremiah and Bill Moyers, and spend the next 4 years wondering how the Democrats lost another election.
Yet again Mr. Moyers crystal clear and clean perspective shines through the slimy selfish murk of corporate media’s disjointed coverage of their attempts at the assassination of the character of two extremely intelligent and thoughtful men who have devoted most of their lives to public service. Corporate media’s bloody fangs are drooling with the very idea that their half-truths and out of context coverage has succeeded in turning these one-time friends against each other. It’s all about market share! To hell with America and the American people as long as they line their pockets. Perhaps we shouldn’t participate in this travesty by not purchasing the products of the sponsors of this drivel.
Wow, Bill Moyers is great. But I would take his argument one step further. The corporate media is literally trying to destroy Obama’s campaign.
“Hurrah for Barack Obama and his hate-freak pastor!”
Go back to your art, man, and leave words for those who know how to use them.
I’ll add this: You’ve proven Moyer’s point to the T. Very simplified.
Mr Freeze,
Speaking truth to the evils of power, with a strong and angry voice, is most decidedly not being a “hate-freak”. OK?
There are NO parallels between black distrust of whitey, and white racism. You must have skipped over my 1:50PM post; please go back and read it now.
If the path to political success for the Democrats is to resemble a softer voiced Republican, what’s the point of the Democrats even existing?
USAn May 4th, 2008 2:21 pm — “If the path to political success for the Democrats is to resemble a softer voiced Republican, what’s the point of the Democrats even existing?”
I suspect that’s probably a rhetorical question, but just in case an answer is required, the point of their existence is to allow the terrible simplifiers to pretend that their ‘two-party’ system of corporatocracy provides USans with the ‘greatest democracy on earth’ and that its export to other nations at the point of a gun constitutes ‘liberation’ worthy of your support.
Let’s be clear. Barack Obama had to distance himself from Pastor Wright because Rev. Wright mischaracterized Obama. He called Obama a politician who was saying what he said in order to be elected. This is not who Obama is. He says what he believes in, and apparently Rev. Wright did not understand this. It is sad that it had to come to this because much of what WRight has said is true. The lesson is: we never really know someone until the hard times occur and we see how they react. The media and the other campaigns have pushed it to this point.
I remember when AIDs was being ignored. It was because of a commonly held belief that it was among the gay community, black community, and drug community.
And all of those people are dispensable to the rightous minds of the religious and conservative right. They were ignored by many democrats as well.
The preacher may only be slightly off the mark, but clearly there wasn’t any concern for the aids victims in the early days because of their color.
Until the progressive movement gets its act together and actually starts supporting truly progressive candidates as opposed to the warmed over corporate sponsored entities we call presidential candidates, we will get whatever is offered up.
Why aren’t people demanding that Nader, Kucinich, Mike Gravel, McKinney be included in the conversation about the future of our country.
Even this website, supposedly common dreams, seems more and more to be a watered down version of the republican dream.
I want a candidate that will get us out of Iraq, stop executions, provide universal health, cut the defense budget and increase the education budget.
Isn’t it time to actually support candidates that support the progressive’s platform?
The worst crimes were dared by a few, willed by more and tolerated by all. ~Tacitus
The mind of Jacob Freeze is not only a terrible simplifier. It invents things and then believes in its own inventions. It looks as if he has a point of view about this, but I’m having a hard time figuring out what it is. I think he is too attracted to invective (which is always an oversimplification) to speak plainly.
It is a shame the debate organizers and participants did not take the opportunity to get into the substance of Rev. Wright’s point of view beyond the “gotcha” accusations and third rail disassociations revolving around an ill-advised punch line in one of his sermons. I guess that would be like asking a class of kindergarten kids to attend a college level seminar. Obama probably understood that a Disney sponsored venue was, sadly, not the place for an adult conversation or an informed, nuanced discussion of race. It was a silly assed obstacle course peppered with booby traps, like all brainless TV game shows. No choice but to terminate a debate with a tribe of hostile yahoos by terminating his ties to Wright. How depressing that our election process insists on such intellectual mediocrity, such embarrassing poltroonery from our candidates. Ça nous abêtira.
HI~SALLY~ Wright said Obama is a politician and does what politicians do and I’m a minister and do what ministers do. There was no malice in those words. He was not berating Obama or attempting to hurt Obama.
The way I understood him, Wright was explaining that it was perfectly alright for Obama to attend his church and to be his close friend and be a politician. He helped Obama a great deal when Obama was running for public offfice in Illinois.
Obama should have had a meeting of the minds before he did what he did, which only hurt his chances to win the Demo nomination. He screwed up. He also showed he has serious character flaws which had not been evident till then, nor were they of course mentioned by himself in his books about himself. We all have our personal flaws, but we don’t all betray our friends to gain a higher position.
Why condemn a man who the vast majority thought was telling truths with one possible error in his words. Obama didn’t have to say anythng, except he didn’t agree with everything Wright said. Neither did I or many others, but overall Wright displayed that he is a fine an dhonest man with a high degree of character and he showed it. ______ Obama didn’t.
I never miss Bill Moyer’s show on PBS. He’s like the lone voice of reason in an insane asylum. I like the way he speaks softly, but carries a big stick.
I find it interesting how many of us actually agree with Wright [even accepting the possibility that our government deliberately did too little about AIDS], and how many of us are miffed that Obama knuckled under and disavowed Wright. Of course coporate media will dis Wright, as they will anyone who is not afraid to speak what they think to be true [I almost wrote truth, but I didn’t want to set up an argument about the nature of truth]. Wright is a vet, a patriot in the true meaning of the word. I find more in common with his speeches than any politician running for office. [Except, of course, when he rally goes out on a limb intellectually, talking about some mythical dude creator for which there is REALLY no evidence.]
Here’s a link to a documentary featuring one of the people that Wright referred to on Monday when the AIDS question was asked.
In Lies We Trust
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8674401787208020885
Wright appeared to be spot on in both interviews ,but the dumbed down public can’t let go of the FACT that nearly all they’ve been taught in their (government funded)schools and institutions is simply Bullshit designed to keep them in their place.
Sorry Amerika but you’ve been took.
But some of you seem to enjoy it.
Can we please turn this particular spotlight on John Hagee? I’d love to hear Moyers compare the two.
Let’s make it a little less simple:
First Obama makes the most condescending defense of Jeremiah Wright that it is possible to imagine, even including racist language from the days of Jim Crow… He’s my crazy old “uncle.”
Then Obama gets exposed by his own advisor for bullshitting about NAFTA.
The Obama decides it’s a wonderful idea to undermine every gun-control law ever written, and make it almost impossible to write new gun-control legislation.
Then Obama votes to fund the war in Iraq every chance he gets and then he throws Jeremiah Wright under the bus for saying exactly the same things he has been saying for 20 years.
Maybe some of us are just too simple-minded to understand how Barack Obama could be anything other than an absolutely unscrupulous politician and all-around bullshitter, and I’m sure Bill Moyers would want us to be very ashamed…
And meanwhile Moyers and all the other Obamabots and Obama himself can just go on shamelessly bullshitting forever!
Speaking of AIDS. I remember reading long ago, that our government gave Indians blankets, which were purposely contaminated with (small pox germs) in an attempt to eradicte the “savages”, who were different. They had different skin coloring and practiced different customs and were a pain in the ass.
I wonder if our government stopped doing such criminal type of things over the years?
~Bill Moyers~ you wrote, “BOTH men will no doubt carry the grief to their graves.” An excellent point Bill, and I totally agree with you on it.
Why should Obama feel any long tme grief for betraying his good friend and pastor of 20 years?
Obama would ONLY feel grief on that issue, ___ if he was guilty of doing somethng terribly wrong and knew that he had done so. So I agree with you, he will feel long time grief for what he has done, because he is guilty. ___ Would you agree?
I remembered the story of the contaminated blankets given to the Indians who’d gathered to greet those early white men coming in big ships when the AIDS thing turned out to be a major thing. My first thought was one of the germ warfare part of our military complex coming up with a new “bug” and looking for human guinea pigs. Which two groups would they see as expendable?
Jeremiah Wright is of a generation of blacks that has every reason to be distrustful and cynical. They experienced an America that no white ever knew, or will ever know.
White America hates to be reminded of it’s sins, whether racial or in foreign policy. Wright reminds them of both in no uncertain terms.
So of course he deserves to be pilloried.
Hagee, who unabashedly promotes war with Iran and Russia, gets a free ride because he’s white, rich and republican.
I started to read this article with an eye for cutting Moyers title Beware The Simplifiers apart. Places to cut I didn’t find but a snip here and there could do us all good.
The “simplest”, most focused, act for overcoming the shame Moyers mentions, and for very much more: is through the process of impeachment hearings.
Impeachment hearings will construct a National dialogue based on Congressional interactions and not the sound bites of our infernal campaigns. From these dialogues and interactions will come the best answers for resetting the direction of this great Nation
There are two posters on line who have touched the reality of thought: EJ and Kem Patrick: EJ weighs in with her respect for Bill Moyers as I do and I always hope to read a response from Kem for the depth of his reasoning.
The Rev Mr. Wright warned of actions coming home to roost … they do and our actions in the Mideast will haunt our nation for eons in the future. However Mr. Moyers claims that offensive opinions and inflammatory appearances are judged differently. He adds that the Reverend Mr. Wright says some things so outlandish and ill-advised that he finally leaves Obama no choice but to end their friendship.
There was a choice - namely loyalty. But Obama does exibit loyalty - loyalty to war mongers when he said he would vote to bomb Pakistan and there hasn’t been a war funding act that as an elected senator he hasn’t voted to empower. Is that loyalty to the troops in the field? So Obama had no choice to end their friendship; will he have loyalty to the troops sent on an invasion of another country to steal its valued natural resource - OIL? Is his loyalty to these 4,000 plus service men and women killed in this grand theft? Is he loyal to his christian upbringing and to its perogatives to offer more than prayers to the million plus Iraqi citizens killed in this action. Maybe even monetary compensation to rebuild their homeland. Will he vote to invade another nation - Iran - without speaking out to oppose such a barbarity? Loyalty is as loyalty does.
Obama would ONLY feel grief on that issue, ___ if he was guilty of doing somethng terribly wrong and knew that he had done so. So I agree with you, he will feel long time grief for what he has done, because he is guilty. ___ Would you agree?
Grief is not the emotion associated with wrongdoing, but with loss. If Obama has done something wrong and knows it, the feeling he should have is guilt. If he has instead lost a friend, he should feel grief.
The “simplest”, most focused, act for overcoming the shame Moyers mentions, and for very much more: is through the process of impeachment hearings.
I personally cannot impeach Bush, nor do I know how to cause him to be impeached, so I think your proposal is too simple.
Sally wrote:
“He called Obama a politician who was saying what he said in order to be elected. This is not who Obama is. He says what he believes in, and apparently Rev. Wright did not understand this.”
But Sally, you should understand that many of us are only going to vote for Obama if we can become convinced that his is indeed only saying the things he is saying in order to get elected - like increasing military spending, escalating military action in Afghanistan, maybe bombing Pakistan, supporting Israel as a “stalwart ally” utter silence on the plight of Palestine, promoting a useless corporate-insurance based health care plan, etc…
The point of departure of Moyers piece and what we should be discussing is the prevalence of racism in the USA. I tried to do that in the 1:50 comment. It is telling that few have anything to say about it.
USAn said: “ubrew12, I think you need to examine the definition of racism before describing the resentment of Hawiiians or US blacks as ‘racism’. Racism is not just racial prejudice. Racism is defined as a system of race-based social and economic structures… A black American person can express hatred of whites all he wants, but…it is NOT racism. Prejudiced and bigoted? Yes! Racist? No… Even [Hawaiians] annual ‘kill Haole (white foreigner) day’ doesn’t buy them a bit of power. ”
I’m sure the white friends I had who couldn’t go to school on the last day because they’d get the sh*t kicked out of them will appreciate the subtlety in your definitions. Hey, they’d say to themselves as the boots fell, THIS ISN’T RACISM, ITS JUST PREJUDICE!!! Among those white friends could have been Obama’s MOTHER.
I hear what you’re saying, however. When prejudice becomes institutionalized it becomes racism. I had white friends in Hawaii who, after 20 years in the fire department, finally just had to leave because they were NEVER going to get promoted and they’d FINALLY realized why.
Meanwhile, I’m here on the mainland, and I realize: I will NEVER get promoted and I FINALLY realize WHY!!!
Not enough blacks in America have employment as corporate elites, and lack cosy tax shelters in Bermuda, or shares in military corporate pillage of foreign countries. Why should rich old white men have all the fun?
My friend Bernard Weisberger, the historian, says, yes, people are understandably seething with indignation over Wright’s absurd charge that the United States deliberately brought an HIV epidemic into being.
Yes indeed the United States deliberately brought an HIV epidemic into being. The US had a choice between delivering free medicines to epidemic-prone areas and not delivering free medicines and the US made the deliberate choice not deliver to them. Thus the US deliberately brought HIV epidemic #2 into being, that is, an unnecessary epidemic above and beyond epidemic #1 that raged as the medicines were being developed. The US deliberated the pros and cons of bringing epidemic #2 into being. The pros were protection of the short term profits of the medicines developers and protection of the long term “well-being” of the capitalist system in particular, and elite domination over people in general. The cons of bringing epidemic #2 into being were the threat of class war escalation, rabble riots and revolution, possible degradation of elitist domination and destruction of elitist “property”. The pros outweighed the cons and the US conspiracy to “bring on” HIV epidemic #2 was implemented.
“I personally cannot impeach Bush, nor do I know how to cause him to be impeached, so I think your proposal is too simple” - barely human May 4th, 2008 5:30 p
Do you not know your Congressional Representative, or how to contact them? Amazingly I find this as a common malady and one of the main reasons the Nation is in the condition it is in. It is also on my list of the constructive outcomes that would be derived from the human actions that would need to be carried out within a process of impeachment hearings - Citizen/Representative engagement.
If you study great practitioners of any craft you’ll find their basic methodology was very simplistic (Upledger, Reich, Feldenkrais, et al), a simplicity that leads to a complexity of hypothesis and potentiality of application.
If the People will come to realize that stopping the jet fumes and missile strikes are the number one thing one could do for the environment, that putting a halt in the surging production of traumatic stress disorders would be the number one thing humanity could do for improving it’s health, that it is now a matter of not supporting the Troops but Protecting the Troops, and that in terms of economics, nothing would help the US Treasury more for stopping the blood letting of deficits stemming from funding the Middle East wars, and, that the one action: capable of bringing all this humanity uplift to pass are through the impeachment hearings for George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney - a simple methodology - complex compelling potentials.
USAn;
So right you are. I posted several comments (and rather long ones at that) these past days about the ‘racism in America’ aspect to all of this and there was only one comment, in response to that theme.
As Bill Moyers said, “it’s all about race” and “he (Wright) finally leaves Obama no choice but to end their friendship (BECAUSE of the racism in America)”.
Mr. Freeze - Someone whispered something hugely, disspiritingly true in my ear a couple of elections ago when I had my shorts in a twist about milksop politicians who could not bring themselves to speak the plain truth or get specific about anything they stood for or intended to do. It still drives me nuts, but here is the reason why: The more positions a candidate specifies, the more votes he/she loses. Every position (guns, race, the war, you name it) has a pro and a con, and if you are a pro you lose all the cons and vice versa. You’d be insane to bravely speak your own truth as a candidate. It is not the fault of the candidates or their advisors. It is the name of the game as it has evolved in our unfortunate society. They are fighting right now over the votes of the vast herd of middle American ungulates who have not made up their tiny minds about anything because they have not looked at a newspaper in eight years. If they care about lapel pins, lapel pins it is. The trick is to appear to be candid and plain spoken and a brave little fighter for this or that, without ever actually saying what it is you plan to do, because anything beyond favoring “change” or offering “experience” is the kiss of death for your candidacy. They have zero room for strategic mistakes. I agree with you that there is no point in being ashamed of ourselves. We inherited this state of affairs from our dumbassed fathers, and we will pass it along to our children. But there is also no point in blaming the candidates, who must function in a demented culture. The fact is that we can’t be sure what any of them will do if elected, based on the pitches they are making to get our votes. We should obtain their college grade transcripts and ignore their speeches.
There is a way in which Hagee’s support of Israel is like racism, which is based on the premise that the ‘other’ is not quite human. Hagee is a strong supporter of Israel (and therefore, by definition, completely opposed to any peaceful negotiations with the Palestinians) because he believes that the ultimate destruction of israel is one of the signs of the Apocalypse. When the Apocalypse happens, Christians like Hagee will ask the Jews if they accept Jesus as their Lord and Saviour; if the answer is Yes, the Jews (now Christians) arise into Heaven; if the answer is No, the Jews go straight to Hell. I spell this out for two reasons: 1) like whites who believe that blacks (or natives) are less than human, Rev. Hagee believes that Jews are less than human if they remain Jews (at least they’re not required to change the color of their skin!)
2) This is the man from whom John McCain has sought and received support! One more reason to feel very afraid, if McCain were to become President! And of course, MSM is leaving Hagee alone.
Wipe the slate clean, dream a new dream. Thank you Bill Moyers
rtdrury wrote: Yes indeed the United States deliberately brought an HIV epidemic into being.
I believe this is mostly correct. But for different reasons than most y’all who believe that AIDS is a disease. AIDS is a wonderful way of scaring the population, and enforcing puritanical beliefs.
1) AIDS is not a disease, it is a syndrome;
2) No-one dies of AIDS. They die of associated complications;
3) AIDS is artificial. It is defined as the presence of one or more of 40+ diseases with the HIV virus, which is known to be completely benign;
4) There is no connection between the HIV virus and disease, other than the connection defined by the term AIDS;
5) AIDS is a lifestyle killer. It was first defined in gay, black and injected-drug communities because of their lifestyle. Their lifestyle consisted of unprotected sexual activity, multiple/anonymous partners, extreme drug use to extend sexual stamina, and the use of dirty needles. Such activity not only spread HIV, but weakened their auto-immune systems. Again I repeat: HIV is benign, and does not contribute to the immune system suppression;
6) Today, bi-sexuals, blacks and drug-users move freely and sexually through the heterosexual community much more easily than in the past, and so we see the HIV virus in the heterosexual community;
7) AIDS was enthusiastically adopted by the gay community as a lever to come out of the closet, and to generate funding for gay issues;
There is a lot more to the AIDS myth than I allude to here. Nevertheless, there is truth to saying that the AIDS myth was “invented” in both the USA and France.
Hi~BARELY HUMAN~ guess I didn’t express my thoghts properly for your understanding with my typed words.
You say Obama should feel guilt not grief. I wrote he was “guilty” and would feel grief because of what he’d done.__ He’ll feel shame too. Well he will if he has a good soul.
He’d feel guilt, shame AND grief and if he does, it will show from now on in his public appearances, just as it did surface when he was being interviewed after he denied his friend. It was very sad seeing him attempt to justify it. He wasn’t able to give a magnificent speech, he stuttered and stumbled and he looked like a person who had been whipped. He looked guilty.
If Obama is the Demo nominee and he likely will be, unless Hillary wins both N.Carolina and Indiana, then when he debates McCain the Wright issue will arise and arise and arise and his shame will be evident. It only will if he has a good soul and feels guilty, for what he has done was WRONG. It was totally unnecessary. ____ And that’s the bottom line.
Race? Of course. Sadly race is an issue. However Obama proved so well in Iowa and Mass, Vermont and other predominently white voter’s states, that race was not a big issue.___ Not at all, race was minor, if that. Few cared what color skin Obama has and it was refreshing and grand to see that.
White Americans for the most part don’t care anymore, they wish to ignore race and most consider a person’s moral values and character. Ophah Winfrey and so many other personalities with exceptional character have proven that is so and Obama managed to elevate their presence to a even higher level.
He won Iowa, and the other states and we “white” people applauded and cheered him on and Obama wasn’t white and we whites for the vast majority didn’t care, RACE was NOT an issue. Nor should it be.
But when Bill Clinton truthfully said,___ “Jessee Jackson recived most of the black vote in South Carolina when he ran for the office and so will Obama recieve most of the black votes there.” ___ Oh my God.___ Clinton played the race card. and it has been the subject ever since, now it’s racial.
Clinton -DID- NOT- play- a -race -card. He was correct and what Clinton said (had been) and (still is) said daily, by every TV and radio newscaster. They state, and no one accuses them of being racial,___ “Obama gets the black votes” __ and he does, by over 92%. So what??? Why wouldn’t he???
Obama was the hope for the future for African Americans, but most importantly, not only black Americans, but for ALL Americans, for all of mankind as far as racial division goes and the black community wanted to insure he won. ______ He messed it up and he showed serious character flaws messing up. We’ll know in about 50 more hours if he messed up real bad. ____ We’ll see.
Rev Wright was spot on when he talked about the AIDS virus as a man made creation. I suggest if anyone wants to find out about it, read the well written and referenced book by Leonard G. Horowitz, DMD, MA, MPH called Emerging Viruses AIDS and Ebola in which the good doctor exposes the development and tracks the spread of AIDS originally through the Hepatitis B Vaccine in the gay community and Smallpox Vaccine in Africa.
Doesn’t that Smallpox ring a deja vu bell. The blankets for the Native Americans. It’s a novel twist, you have to admit, to put AIDS in a Smallpox Vaccine.
We cannot judge these people by our standards. They have no moral compass to guide them. We cannot use our view of life and humanity and garb TPTB with the same cloak, It is simply not a part of their ken.
Moyers writes: “… America, where the gluttony of the non-stop media grinder consumes us all and prevents an honest conversation on race. It is the price we are paying for failing to heed the great historian Jacob Burckhardt, who said ‘beware the terrible simplifiers.’”
That 999 of 1000 Americans have never heard of Jacob Burckhardt, or seriously studied history, even the history of their own country, not to mention the Middle Ages, which was Burckhardt’s area of expertise, is a big part of the problem.
Perhaps Americans will begin to take life and the responsibilities of citizenship seriously again one day, after the criminals now running the government and the Big Media conglomerates bring the nation to ruin.
RTDRURY: Good post. I agree.
Remember when some venom was hurled at Karl Rove and he “stepped down”? We all know he’s still a player. It was just an orchestrated move to appease a portion of the populace. What if that’s the “dance” at play between Obama and Wright? What if Wright recognized that the “outing of unpopular truths” would cost Obama the race, and somewhere behind the scenes BOTH realized it would be best for America, best for Obama’s presidential ambition of some theatrics were deployed to cause an apparent separation between the two men? Personally that maneuver wouldn’t bother me in the least. Politics is a DIRTY game, and as Glenn Greenwald articulated in an earlier posting today, the media has become a slime machine aiming at those unpopular to its corporate masters’ cause. Obama is no saint, and he has to appease at least some of the power structure to be considered for CEO of American, Inc. at all. In comparison with the other 2 “front runners” at least the man has intelligence and a soul. At this point in America’s karmic slide under, that may be the best we can hope for. Therefore allow the guy some strategy! All politicians are part actors… a sudden scene change may serve the ultimate plot!
Rev. Wright is like an Old Testiment Prophet condeming the godlessness and immorality of the nation and its leaders.
Those religious leaders of old scripture were killed or had to flee into hiding. .That did not change Gods Message one bit. .There was terrible accountings.
Rev. Wright has taken the lonely and dangerous road. .He has condemned the immoral and racist America that he has grown up in these most recent 70 years. .Racism, immorality, crime, and a socio-economic divisive country still are the norm of the United States of America !!!!!!!!!!!!
The sermons of this black preacher are bitter and upsetting, but they are the TRUTH of a very brave prophet……..
.
voxclamantis: Thanks for your substantive post. I almost agree with you that it’s impossible for any politician to get elected or even nominated on the basis of anything other than malarkey, but Obama’s brand is outstandingly vapid even by the usual low standards, and I’m really afraid that if we undergo some sort of economic meltdown in the next few years, Obama would produce some watery compromises with Republicans instead of New-Deal style programs for the dispossessed.
But I mostly agree with you, and blame the media conglomerates for stupefying the public. All of us with a real interest in advancing or even holding our ground with the progressive agenda should make breaking up the media conglomerates our number one priority!
As long as right-wing billionaires control the flow of information, they also control everything else, and the blinkered public will just continue stumbling down whichever path those predators trace out for us.
jamadison4, if Reverend Wright is like an Old Testament Prophet condemning the immorality of the nation and its leaders (a very good analogy), then dare I say that Barack Obama can be likened to Peter, denying Jesus (”I don’t know him, and I am not his disciple!”). It didn’t make Peter a bad person; he was simply fulfilling prophecy.
I still don’t care about Jeremiah Wright.
I still don’t care about Jeremiah Wright.
I still don’t care about Jeremiah Wright.
I still don’t care about Jeremiah Wright.
I still don’t care about Jeremiah Wright.
I still don’t care about Jeremiah Wright.
I still don’t care about Jeremiah Wright.
I still don’t care about Jeremiah Wright.
I still don’t care about Jeremiah Wright.
I still don’t care about Jeremiah Wright.
I still don’t care about Jeremiah Wright.
I still don’t care about Jeremiah Wright.
I still don’t care about Jeremiah Wright.
I still don’t care about Jeremiah Wright.
I still don’t care about Jeremiah Wright.
I still don’t care about Jeremiah Wright.
I still don’t care about Jeremiah Wright.
Obama ‘08!
“Racism is not just racial prejudice. Racism is defined as a system of race-based social and economic structures… A black American person can express hatred of whites all he wants, but…it is NOT racism. Prejudiced and bigoted? Yes! Racist? No”
Well, that’s just stupid. From Merriam-Webster:
Main Entry: rac·ism
Pronunciation: \ˈrā-ˌsi-zəm also -ˌshi-\
Function: noun
Date: 1933
1: a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race
2: racial prejudice or discrimination
Now, by YOUR definition, anyone belonging to a minority and/or not in power cannot be racist. And what, my being a white man in the USA means I automatically am racist, even if I hold no prejudiced beliefs, simply because it is other white men who run things? What about Germany? Nazism was clearly racist. Neo-Nazis have identical ideologies, yet not only are they not in power but the state keeps them on the fringe through laws designed to curtail speech our 1st Amendment protects. So do the tenets of Nazism lo longer count as racist since Nazism holds no sway in German society? I think not.
voxclamantis said: “Someone whispered something hugely, disspiritingly true in my ear a couple of elections ago when I had my shorts in a twist about milksop politicians who could not bring themselves to speak the plain truth or get specific about anything they stood for or intended to do. It still drives me nuts, but here is the reason why: The more positions a candidate specifies, the more votes he/she loses.”
This is SO true and needs to be said more often. The value of money in elections means a politician can buy office by ‘defining’ his opponent as, basically, a politician with an opinion, while carefully avoiding any opinion him/her -self, on ANY issue.
He’s MA, PA and Apple Pie! But does he believe in progressive taxation? The more money he/she has to spend, the less you’ll figure that one out. Thats the primary reason why I believe in progressive taxation. When the rich get too rich, they use that money to buy influence in politics. Pass all the laws you want, when wealth becomes concentrated, it represents too few voices in our ‘democracy’, purchasing influence.
“The point of departure of Moyers piece and what we should be discussing is the prevalence of racism in the USA.”
A good point, USAn.
Of course it’s about race, but Moyers’ point is that it has to do with so much more, such as stations in life, experiences, relationships, and more. Life is like that - full of nuances and complications. Don’t we all just get caught up in all the little nuances…
Or, we can simplify life and see everything in black and white.
“I don’t do nuance.” George W. Bush
How can our now long time progressive Bill Moyer so deceiving relate a question like:
“I once asked a reporter back from Vietnam, “Who’s telling the truth over there?”
You were in the White House as Johnson’s spokesperson and even writing his own words for him, and they were lies, and half-truths that allowed for the continuing crucifixion of the largely rice farming French colonial populations of Indochina - millions, millions dead and all these years since we have been waiting for your memoirs of the day to day horrific crimes you were justifying as noble anti-communism.
Bill, we knew the truth here in the States, Muhammad Ali knew the truth, and you knew the truth. Only the poor boys in Vietnam didn’t know until they were dying or killing some innocent in their own country, own village, own home very often. If they knew the truth of why they were sent there they would not have gone. Bill Moyer was at the top of the crew making sure they thought they were the good guys.
Is our Bill Moyer going to continue to let the media call every person who shamed this country’s reputation by killing Vietnamese a hero? Ike said Ho Chi Minh would have easily won an election of all Vietnam had Ike allowed it FOUR years before McCain dropped his first bombs on OUR Hanoi, two weeks after Martin Luther King Jr. made headlines all over the world condemning the war as genocide!
Jesus, how could you write in this article of ” that many of their sons have died for in battle” “for the America they cherish” Does Bill want us to continue to cherish sending their sons in ignorance to destroy innocent people like during the Vietnam War you sold them and your country.
Come on Bill, you have been a great exposer of current lies, but why hold back on throwing the light on why you felt compelled to do what you did that so belied your true wonderful kind character that we have come to know and love. Expose the establishment then that continues as you have shown that same murderous perfidy.
Ramsy Clark was with you in those Cabinet meetings. Ramsey has spoken of his past complicity and denounces calling every Viet vet a hero, thus glorifying even that shameful war to encourage the naive and misled to go to yet to ’serve’ who in more and more invasions and occupations of third world nations. Don’t let yourself and us down, Bill
Yours truly, Jay Janson, has asked you before in open letters, for cannot contact you directly, can see below:
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Confessions: Cindy re Casey, Bill Moyer re Vietnam, Jimmy Carter re Funding Terrorism
Cindy Sheehan, “I bought into this system for so many years and Casey paid the price for that allegiance. I failed my boy.” Bill Moyer could stop media Vietnam War worship, by telling how the lies worked during dark days when he was Press Secretary to Johnson. Jimmy Carter please ‘fess up’ to secretly arming fundamentalist tribes against the socialist (women liberating) government in Kabul, six months BEFORE the Soviet entry.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_jay_jans_070609_confessions_3a_cindy_r.htm
I watch Bill Moyers Journal on PBS every Friday night. He conducts various interviews and show news clips that I find very interesting.
I agree with Moyers concerning the News Media. Many friends, neighbors, and others have asked me did I think Rev. Wright hurt Obama’s campaign. My answer was no, the media is what’s hurting his efforts. I failed to see how Rev. Wright’s statements had anything whatever to do with Obama. I have been a member of the same church more than 40 years. Four Pastors have come and gone, and whether I agreed with everything they said, or not, it didn’t effect me. I joined the Church, not the Pastor.
recognizing the wonderful and much appreciated decades long efforts of Bill Moyer to confront the distortions and war propaganda in conglomerate owned media, one can only imagine how big a dent Bill could make in conglomerate owned media’s ongoing successful project to rehabilitate the Vietnam war as something to be proud of, if he would relive and describe for us in detail, what must have been a supreme agony for young Bill Moyer, namely, his twenty six months as Chief of Staff and Press Secretary to President Johnson during the Vietnam war. Here is what Moyer could help us with:
Media constantly proclaims each and every Vietnam veteran a hero, silently encouraging viewers, listeners and readers to forget that many of these veterans were spit upon in the 70’s upon their return home. Today, every politician who ’served’ in Vietnam presents himself proudly, and is hailed by media as an American hero; in spite of three million dead Vietnamese, and another two million Laotians and Cambodians; in spite of Eisenhower having admitted that Ho Chi Minh would have won overwhelmingly the all Vietnam election Ike blocked; in spite of Truman going against Roosevelt’s promise of freedom from French brutal colonial occupation, and putting back in the French, who had been collaborators with the Japanese; in spite of our eight years of funding the French war of re-conquest until the French defeat, and then creating an separate and independent dictatorship called South Vietnam; in spite of the fact that the government of which we slaughtered a million of their citizens, in a quarter century attempt to overthrow, is the very same communist government we now happily trade with and sponsor for WTO membership.
From October ’64, until his resignation in December of ‘66, Bill Moyer was described as Lyndon Johnson’s umbilical cord. What a volcanic blast our favorite talk host could loose on the media for its praise of the Vietnam War, categorized as a defense of our freedoms. But Moyer would have to confess and share with us participation in what he today would consider indictable in a court of law. The Vietnam War was a crime against humanity that has gone unpunished.
Below are just a few of the events Bill Moyer was called upon to defend from 1965 until his resignation in 1966:
February - The U.S. begins the regular bombing of North Vietnamese towns and villages.
March - Vietnam War: 3,500 United States Marines arrive in South Vietnam.
Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) organizes the first teach-in against the Vietnam War, with 2,500 participants, at the University of Michigan.
April - In the Dominican Republic, officers and civilians loyal to deposed President Juan Bosch mutiny against the right-wing junta running the country, setting up a provisional government. Forces loyal to the deposed military-imposed government stage a countercoup the next day, and civil war breaks out, although the new government retains its hold on power. U.S. troops are sent to the D.R. and to prevent the reinstatement of Bosch.
May - The largest teach-in to date begins at Berkeley, California, attended by 30,000.
June – An anti-war protest at The Pentagon
July - Johnson announces increase in the number troops in South Vietnam from 75,000 to 125,000, and to double the number of men drafted per month from 17,000 to 35,000.
August - President signs a law penalizing the burning of draft cards with up to 5 years in prison and a $1,000 fine.
October - Indonesian army arrests and executes communists, using lists provided by CIA.
Brazilian president Castelo Branco removes power from parliament, legal courts and opposition parties. (Recent declassified files reveal that Lyndon Johnson had wanted the US to “take every step” to support the military coup which overthrew President Joao Goulart 1964, described as a “democratic rebellion” by the U.S. ambassador)
November - In New York City, 22-year-old Catholic Worker Movement member Roger Allen LaPorte sets himself on fire in front of the United Nations building in protest of the war in Vietnam (this was the second such incident in a week; on 32-year-old Quaker member Norman Morrison did the same thing in front of The Pentagon).
- Congolese lieutenant general Mobutu ousts Joseph Kasavubu and declares himself president. (Elected Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba had been deposed in a US CIA sponsored coup and assassinated in 1961, and is still significant inspirational figure in the Congo as well as throughout Africa)
- Tens of thousands of Vietnam War protesters picket the White House, then march on the Washington Monument. Pentagon tells Johnson number of American troops in Vietnam will have to be increased from 120,000 to 400,000.
January - Lyndon Johnson states that the United States should stay in South Vietnam until Communist aggression there is ended.
March - In South Vietnam, 20,000 Buddhists march in demonstrations against the policies of the military government.
April - The South Vietnamese government promises free elections in 3-5 months.
May - Tens of thousands of anti-war demonstrators again picket the White House, then rally at the Washington Monument. In New York City, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. makes his first public speech on the Vietnam War.
June - U.S. planes begin bombing Hanoi and Haiphong.
August - The House Un-American Activities Committee starts investigating Americans who have aided the Viet Cong, with the intent to make these activities illegal. Anti-war demonstrators disrupt the meeting and 50 are arrested.
_
September - United Nations Secretary-General U Thant declares that he will not seek re-election, because U.N. efforts in Vietnam have failed.
Moyer prepared Presidential messages to Congress, and was chief speechwriter. He played a serious role in foreign policy discussions. “The Young Man in Charge of Everything,” said Time Magazine at the time.
April 2007, grateful viewers of the Bill Moyer’s Journal conspiracy expose “Buying the War” on PBS, observe Moyer’s now well known demeanor of serenity and serious inner fortitude as he calmly presents undeniable evidence of criminality in government with media collusion promoting the deceptions. But the techniques of deception that Moyer addresses in this documentary on the fraudulent reasons, pretexts, and lies to produce an acceptance of bombing, invasion and occupation of Iraq are the same as were used in presenting justifications for the war in Vietnam, in which Bill Moyer was supremely complicit as a key player involved in the day to day decisions of the war and criminal foreign policy toward other nations.
How much more could Bill help expose the entire murderous facade which confronts America and the world today, by recalling how similar it was back when our politicians were just as callous about daily body counts of innocent Indochinese as today they are about those equally beautiful Iraqi, Afghan and Somali civilians falling under U.S. bombs and bullets.
It is said that Moyer, at the time of his resignation was under severe strain, suffering from a stomach ulcer. Bill has subsequently been more or less on humanity’s side for the greater part of his life. How very very much more could he accomplish with a complete and elucidating airing of contemptible U.S. policies within condemning recollections from his dark years.
Praise the Lord, Jeremiah Wright has achieved immortality — well, relatively. His life span of attention on the news rivals Methusela. Why do we care? He isn’t related to Obama. He is a retired pastor. He holds no official position in the Obama campaign, never did. Why is this story still alive? He has a right to his opinions and a right to express them, but it has zero to do with Barack Obama. If we accepted that, would it still be newsworthy?
huzzah,
Consulting a dictionary for the word “racism” and then thinking it tells you everything you need to know about it is about as absurd as it’s entry for “quantum mechanics” qualifying you to be a theoretical physicist.
May I suggest a text on sociology instead? Racism is a property of a society, and it permeates individual decisions in that society (”society” being a word badly in need of wider use in the USA) even if the role of race is often unconscious - by whites, that is, because it is a glaring as a blazing house on fire to a black person.
And everyone please re-read Moyers last paragraph. His main point was that race is the issue. And KEM, after studying the neighborhood, by neighborhood results of the primary here in Pittsburgh, the role of race in the working-class white neighborhoods was glaring and obvious. Among the white neighborhoods, only in the rich ones did Obama win. For an explanation of this result, go here:
http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/17313
Also, anything by Tim Wise is good. Google his name.
To all who enjoyed the show, please tell Rupert Murdoch’s propaganda service Fox, how much you love being duped by their adol minded so called journalist.
All I know is that Obama supports infanticide and ethanizing the disabled.
Don’t know how anyone can vote for someone like that.
brontoburger said: “All I know is that Obama supports infanticide and ethanizing the disabled.”
But, then, you eat brontosaurus burgers…
It is always a pleasure to read Bill. One of the last authentic journalist’s left in Ameri(k)a.
Rev. Wright is speaking from the context of Black Liberation Theology. A context developed by Professor Cone’s seminal work on the subject and following on the heal of its Latin American version developed by Gustav Gutirerez and other Catholic theologians.
White Ameri(k)a is threatened every time a Black man or Woman asserts justice for marginal populations. Now, even Barack Obama is denouncing Wright. I guess the TRUE Obama has come the fore: a black man with a marshmellow center. Vote Nader.
USAn, I don’t know where you got the idea that I think the dictionary definition of racism tells me all I need to know about it. Would that be considered a straw man? Yes, you may suggest a sociology text instead. Waiting…
Still waiting…Oh, should I just guess the text you’re suggesting, much like we had to guess what definition you were using regarding racism? Defined by whom? You? Is this not the whole point here? You have a definition, I have a definition…Wright’s perception of America is different from many others’, but that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily incorrect.
“…a person can only be a racist if they are using race to maintain their position of privilege. A black American person can express hatred of whites all he wants, but because it doesn’t buy him a single bit of power or privilege, it is NOT racism.”
Sorry, but this is crap. By your definition, Affirmative Action is racist, but unemployed John Q. Redneck donning a sheet and marching around ranting about Niggers isn’t racist, because in Affirmative Action Black people use their race to gain/maintain a position of privilege whereas Mr. Redneck has no position of privilege to maintain.
Look, I know racism. I live in a town in north Georgia. An hour drive South and you’re in downtown Atlanta, an hour North and you’re in hillbilly central. We have a literal “wrong side of town” here. A major thoroughfare cuts the town into northern and southern sections. The northern section is mostly White. The middle third of the southern section is mostly industrial, the western third mostly Hispanic, and the eastern third almost exclusively Black. The KKK has marched in our town within the past decade.
Now, I know you’ll say that those things I just mentioned meet the sociological definition of racism or some shit like that, but I’ll go with the definition of racism I know best — racial prejudice and bigotry — since I missed the memo that must have been issued at the beginning of this campaign stating that racism would henceforth be defined by a couple of sociologists. The idea that a Black man can’t be racist even if he spends every waking hour screaming about how he hates White people is just about retarded.
Amen Bill!
Good article and interesting comments! I can’t see how anyone could disagree with Wright…..except maybe about AIDS. Chances are it was developed to get rid of gays of any race.
But more importantly we should be talking about WHO set all this noise through the airwaves. It’s a disservice to the election…we need to talk about issues. The Clintons started the “race” angle, and the Repubs want Clinton to win, believing they can beat her easier. The ditto headed talk show hosts are encouraging their people to temporarily change parties so they can vote for Clinton.
There’s a lot of dirty business going on. We help promote the effort by taking the silly talking points seriously. We should point it out and shout, “Hey, I’m not buying this nothing you call news! I’m looking at the candidates and what they say and have done!”
Jakob Burckhardt, a teacher and friend of F. Nietzsche, especially liked N’s little aphorism against standard thinking, which went: “What? All Truth is Simple? Is that not doubly a lie?”
But deep thinking truth seekers don’t get to be president in the US anymore, if they ever once rarely did. The electorate has been systematically dumbed-down to the point where anything resembling complex truth is automatically gagged on, blocked, shut-out.
Big lies told in a simple manner are the easiet route to power for now, and any presidential candidate expecting to get elected by telling the truth in its manifold complexity, like Nader, is quickly disposed of and made a pariah.
An honest candidate with an unrevealed aim of turning all this corrption around, could, theoretically, sneak past the System and get elected, I suppose; but only by telling simple truths that outshone the simple lies.
[Some people think this what Obama is trying to do.]
But even then, such an elected leaders’ problem would be to quickly create an actual mandate for specific change, based, presumably, on widely cultivated and suddenly-shared ‘less-than-simple’ truths.
All of which is very complex in itself; i.e., politically unlikely.
Some of us feel that the best we can hope for at the moment, is the return of Some degree of truth, however simple.
As for HIV origination, if you have an open mind, read the link below.
http://www.politicalgateway.com/news/read.html?id=5420
Consider also:
On June 9, 1969, Dr. Donald M. MacArthur, Deputy Director, Research and Engineering, Department of Defense, testified before Congress:
Within the next 5 to 10 years, it would probably be possible to make a new infective microorganism which could differ in certain important aspects from any known disease-causing organisms. Most important of these is that it might be refractory [resistant] to the immunological and therapeutic processes upon which we depend to maintain our relative freedom from infectious disease. [Hearings before the House Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations, “Department of Defense Appropriations for 1970.”]
July 1, 1970—Senate Appropriations hearings are held for the Department of Defense and refer to eminent biologists who believe that within 5 to 10 years it would be possible to produce a synthetic biological agent (infective micro-organism), an agent that does not naturally exist and for which no natural immunity could have been acquired. Tentative plans to initiate a program to develop such an agent were discussed by the National Research Council .
Hearings in the British House of Commons from April 8 to May 13, 1987 regarding AIDS will include the following: “Every biological scientist who has dispassionately studied the virus and the epidemic knows that the origins of the virus could lie in the developments of modern biology….Some who know perfectly well what has happened are deliberately fudging scientific data to keep the heat off them and fellow members of their molecular biological ‘club’.”
1974 Henry Kissinger signed a secret National Security Study Memorandum (NSSM 200), calling for the deliberate suppression of 13 strategically important nations, so that they would not be using up resources that the United States and its allies want. The nations were India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nigeria, Egypt, Mexico, Indonesia, Brazil, the Philippines, Thailand, Turkey, Ethiopia, and Colombia.
2000-Project for New American Century issues publication calling for - I) “Biological warfare (and other new arms) could become a politically useful instrument”. This point is particularly frightening if one considers the sudden spreading of the incurable SARS, which started in China, at the same time as the war in Iraq. Due to the importance of the subject, we are printing the remaining portion of the text. “New methods of attack – electronic, non-lethal, biological – will be more widely available….combat likely will take place in new dimensions, in space, cyberspace, and perhaps the world of microbes….advanced forms of biological warfare that can target specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool”.
Other Eugenic methods of population control/reduction below. You are simply a higher class of animals to the elite, killing you off doesn’t bother them much. The next virus they release will target those members of the non-elite of all races. The 600,000 members of the elite and upper classes will have been vaccinated.
1910—The Eugenics Record Office is established at Cold Spring Harbor in New York. It is funded by the Carnegie Institute, and will receive funding from the Rockefeller Foundation which will be founded in 1913. The Rockefeller Foundation also will fund Nazi Dr. Ernst Rudin’s eugenics research at the Kaiser Wilhelm Brain Research Institute in Berlin. At the Third International Congress on Eugenics held in New York in 1932, Rudin will be unanimously elected president of the International Federation of Eugenic Societies. Rudin and other Nazis will be transported to the Congress on George Herbert Walker’s and Prescott Bush’s Hamburg-Amerika Lines.
1911—John D. Rockefeller, Jr., forms the Bureau of Social Hygiene, and in 1913 the Rockefeller Foundation will help organize and fund the American Social Hygiene Association “for reconsideration of public attitudes toward prostitution.” Via the National Research Council, the Rockefeller Foundation’s Medical Division for many years will fund the horrible sex research of Alfred Kinsey. In the early 1900s, Rockefeller introduces Margaret Sanger to the monied elite who help her form the Birth Control League that will become Planned Parenthood. She eugenically advocates limiting “dysgenic stocks” such as Blacks, Hispanics, American Indians and Catholics, as well as “slum dwellers” such as Jewish immigrants.
1932 — Plan for Peace by American Birth Control League founder Margaret Sanger (1921) is published. She calls for coercive sterilization, mandatory segregation, and rehabilitative concentration camps for all “dysgenic stocks” including Blacks, Hispanics, American Indians and Catholics.
“In 1932, the British-led ‘Eugenics’ movement designated the Rockefellers’ Dr. Rudin as the president of the worldwide Eugenics Federation. The movement called for the killing or sterilization of people whose heredity made them a public burden.
“A few months later, Hitler took over Germany and the Rockefeller-Rudin apparatus became a section of the Nazi state. The regime appointed Rudin head of the Racial Hygiene Society. Rudin and his staff, as part of the Task Force of Heredity Experts chaired by SS chief Heinrich Himmler, drew up the sterilization law. Described as an American Model law, it was adopted in July 1933 and proudly printed in the September 1933 Eugenical News (USA) with Hitler’s signature. The Rockefeller group drew up other race laws, also based on existing Virginia statutes. Otmar Verschuer and his assistant Josef Mengele together wrote reports for special courts which enforced Rudin’s racial purity law against cohabitation of Aryans and non-Aryans.
“The ‘T4′ unit of the Hitler Chancery, based on psychiatrists led by Rudin and his staff, cooperated in creating propaganda films to sell mercy killing (euthanasia) to German citizens. The public reacted antagonistically: Hitler had to withdraw a tear-jerker right-to-die film from the movie theaters. The proper groundwork had not yet been laid.
“Under the Nazis, the German chemical company I.G. Farben and Rockefeller’s Standard Oil of New Jersey were effectively a single firm, merged in hundreds of cartel arrangements. I.G. Farben was led up until 1937 by the Warburg family, Rockefeller’s partner in banking and in the design of Nazi German eugenics.
“In 1940, six months after the notorious Standard-I.G. meeting, European Rockefeller Foundation official Daniel O’Brian wrote to the Foundation’s chief medical officer Alan Gregg that ‘it would be unfortunate if it was chosen to stop research which has no relation to war issues’ so the Foundation continued financing Nazi ‘psychiatric research’ during the war.
“In 1936, Rockefeller’s Dr. Franz Kallmann interrupted his study of hereditary degeneracy and emigrated to America because he was half-Jewish. Kallmann went to New York and established the Medical Genetics Department of the New York State Psychiatric Institute. The Scottish Rite of Freemasonry published Kallman’s study of over 1,000 cases of schizophrenia, which tried to prove its hereditary basis. In the book, Kallmann thanked his long-time boss and mentor Rudin.
“Kallmann’s book, published in 1938 in the USA and Nazi Germany, was used by the T4 unit as a rationalization to begin in 1939 the murder of mental patients and various ‘defective’ people, perhaps most of them children. Gas and lethal injections were used to kill 250,000 under this program, in which the staffs for a broader murder program were desensitized and trained.
1948 — UNESCO president and Fabian Socialist, Sir Julian Huxley, calls for a radical eugenic policy in UNESCO: Its Purpose and Its Philosophy. He states:
“Thus, even though it is quite true that any radical eugenic policy of controlled human breeding will be for many years politically and psychologically impossible, it will be important for UNESCO to see that the eugenic problem is examined with the greatest care and that the public mind is informed of the issues at stake that much that is now unthinkable may at least become thinkable.”
1950-51—Rockefeller Foundation chairman John Foster Dulles takes John D. Rockefeller III on a tour of Third World countries stressing the need eugenically to control the growth of non-white populations. 1952—John D. Rockefeller III and John Foster Dulles found the Population Council to fund population control measures.
1961– World Wildlife Fund (WWF, now the World Wide Fund for Nature) was founded for one stated purpose: to raise money to expand the operations of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
Prince Philip became head of the WWF-UK from the outset. Among his closest collaborators was Sir Julian Huxley, president of the Eugenics Society, and a founder of the IUCN as well. Since Hitler had given eugenics a bad name, Huxley tried to sell his anti-human ideology through “conservation,” as expressed in his statement, “the spread of man must take second place to the conservation of other species.” He brought this same conviction to his role as the first head of the United Nations Education, Social, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
Philip also recruited a card-carrying Nazi into the leadership of the WWF, notably Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands. Bernhard had returned his Nazi Party membership card in a letter to Hitler when he was given the opportunity to marry the Dutch Queen Wilhemina, but betrayed his ongoing sentiments by signing the letter “Heil Hitler.” Bernhard was the first head of the WWF-International, while Philip presided over the U.K. branch. After Bernhard was hit by the Lockheed scandals of the mid-1970s, he was replaced first by John Loudon, the former head of Royal Dutch Shell, and then, in 1981, by Philip himself.
As head of the WWF, Philip openly called for population control, calling human population growth “the single most long-term threat to survival.” Treating human beings like animals, he claimed in a 1981 article in People magazine: “The more people there are, the more resources they’ll consume, the more pollution they’ll create, the more fighting they will do. We have no option. If it isn’t controlled voluntarily, it will be controlled involuntarily by an increase in disease, starvation and war.”
Philip has also endorsed the long-discredited Malthusian claim that population must outstrip food supply. While his official statements pay obeisance to the idea of merely reducing the rate of growth of population, Philip’s activities—which involve setting up “ecological reserves” that are used to preserve animals and serve as sanctuaries for terrorist insurgencies, campaigning against life-saving major infrastructure projects, and opposing the most fundamental life-saving measures, such as draining swamps—give the genocidal game away.
March 11, 1969—Vice-President of Planned Parenthood-World Population Frederick Jaffe’s “Activities Relevant to the Study of Population Policy for the U.S.” is printed containing a memo to Population Council president Bernard Berelson. It includes examples of proposed measures to reduce U.S. fertility, such as (a) encourage increased homosexuality, (b) fertility control agents in water supply, (c) encourage women to work, (d) abortion and sterilization on demand, and (e) make contraception truly available and accessible to all.
In 1972, the Club of Rome was founded, releasing the book Limits to Growth, to assert, by computer simulation, that the world’s limits to growth had been reached, and zero growth must be enforced..A slew of media operations and new agencies were mobilized to pound on this message. With the rock-drug counterculture under way as part of the campaign, the degradation operation proceeded.
March 7, 1972—The Rockefeller Commission on Population issues a report advocating population control, stating that further growth of the American population could cause economic problems, and that “in any case, no generation needs to know the ultimate goal or the final means, only the direction to which they will be found.” In other words, they will control population, but they’re not going to tell us how!
1973—The Trilateral Commission is begun by David Rockefeller and will issue a report stating that “population planning should be an integral part of social and economic development.”
1973—George H.W. Bush praises the Population Crisis Committee (PCC) for having played a “major role in assisting government policy makers and in mobilizing United States’ response to the world population challenge.” The PCC was founded by General William Draper, Jr. (vice-chairman of Planned Parenthood), and is largely funded by the Rockefeller Foundation.
In 1974, several key events in agriculture policy occurred. A World Food Conference was convened in Rome, to address how to defeat hunger. However, Secretary of State Kissinger was sent at the last minute to represent the United States, after an orchestrated scandal cancelled the trip of Agriculture Secretary Earl Butz—an “old school” farm advocate. Instead of addressing the need to rev up agriculture capacity, Kissinger’s theme was that nations should try to help the needy with a little food aid.
In 1982 the World Resources Institute was founded, headed by Gus Spaeth, to issue pseudo-scientific tracts saying that expanding the food supply and population destroys the environment. Al Gore is on their board today.
In October 1982, the U.S. Congress granted the Commodity Credit Corp. of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) discretion to convert government grain stocks to gasohol fuel, and kicked off the ethanol promotion program, giving Cargill and ADM multi-billions for government-subsidized ethanol
an unprecedented U.S. food output reduction program was enacted, called “Payment-in-Kind,” in which farmers were given claim chits for government-controlled surplus corn stocks, in exchange for idling 30-50% of their corn acreage. Then, during the very same 1983 crop season, a 50-year drought hit, and that entire year’s corn harvest fell by 50% from its recent previous levels.
October 1984 report of the World Bank, “Toward the Sustainable Development of Sub-Saharan Africa,” called for large-scale water projects to be “re-examined”—meaning cancelled—given the “extreme shortage of resources.”
GATT was used as the venue for an all-out attempt at a one-world trade treaty, to make it even easier for the private, neo-British-East-India-Company networks to subvert nation-serving agriculture. An opening round of trade talks began at Punta del Este, Uruguay, aimed at “reforming” agricultural trade, by coercing nations to remove tariffs, export controls, and national regulations. Over the next ten years, a drawn-out sequence of conferences were held in Montreal and elsewhere, attended not only by national government officials, but by Cargill, ADM, major banks, and non-governmental agencies.
In 1985, the U.S. Patent Office ruled that plants could now be protected under the powerful industrial patent. The industrial patent does not have any exemptions for farmers or for research, so any use of a patented plant or seed without specific license from the patent holder would be considered
violation of the patent. This patent decision is the basis for the new weapon to control agricultural production and research that the cartels have pushed to the limit.
1986 The BSE brain-wasting disease—bovine spongiform encephalopathy, called Mad Cow—broke out for the first time ever, in Britain, around 1986, and was widely exported. Veterinarians attribute the occurrence directly to the Thatcher government’s malfeasance. Soon after she was elected, a national livestock sanitation board asked the government to intervene to prevent any tainted sheep matter from being cycled elsewhere into the livestock feed chain, because there was at the time in the U.K., a widespread outbreak of sheep scrapie, TSE (transmissible spongiform encephalopathy). Thatcher and Agriculture Minister Lord Peter Walker refused, on the grounds that the animal feed sector should “regulate itself.” Within six years, after tainted matter continued to be blended into animal feed, the species jump from sheep to cows occurred.
1988 The Princes of Genocide: Philip …
“In the event that I am reincarnated, I would like to return as a deadly virus, in order to contribute something to solve overpopulation.”
That statement, reported by Deutsche Press Agentur in August 1988, presents in the most concise manner, the commitment of the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Philip, to genocide against the world’s population. In expressing this view—which he also put in writing in the foreword to the book People as Animals in 1986—Philip places himself in the tradition of that Fabian genocidalist Lord Bertrand Russell, who had defined alleged overpopulation as the greatest threat to the oligarchical way of life.
World Wildlife Fund (founded in 1961), run in tandem with the Conservation Foundation (a U.S. continuation of a pre-World War II Europe-based, eugenicist “nature” society) merged in 1991, and subsequently became known as the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF).
Their assault on food and agriculture was profound. They mounted a campaign to force governments to remove land from agricultural production, in the name of “conserving” scarce resources. In the United States, an entirely new program was established, the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP). As of today, it has over 30 million acres locked up, out of a crop base of 365 million acres. The “Wetlands Reserve” is taking still more land out of production.
In 1994, the PVPA was amended in accordance with the regulations under the GATT. The changes to the act made it illegal for farmers to resell or exchange any seed of protected crops. The GATT agreement also forces the developing nations to recognize the patents and protections on plants
and living organisms held by other GATT member countries. This allows the cartels to deny developing countries’ farmers access to advanced biotechnology, and instead forces them to pay huge licensing fees to use any patented seeds.
Inter- American Ethanol Commission (IEC), the entity founded in 2006 by former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, and the major sponsor of the First Biofuels Congress of the Americas. The IEC is at the center of many of the ethanol ventures now being promoted around Ibero-America. An ardent defender himself of free trade, Gore embraces Jeb Bush’s notion of using multinational ethanol deals to “energize” the debate on hemispheric
free trade.
No matter that that debate is effectively dead. It makes a good talking point for the IEC, which argues that the continental “integration”—that is, elimination of sovereignty— that might have been achieved through the Bush Administration’s failed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), is now
possible through ethanol! The IEC is a key driver behind the newly launched “Bioenergy Alliance,” whose members reportedly include “the leading ethanol producers of the Americas.” This apparatus, with heavy Brazilian input, is now embarking on a major biofuels offensive in Central America and the Caribbean, whose populations are starving. Thinking themselves very clever, these killers plan to use this impoverished
region as the base from which to significantly increase, and then export, biofuels to the United States, to get around the United States’ 54-cent-a-gallon tax on Brazilian ethanol. If exported to the U.S. from a nation such as Guatemala, which is particularly targetted, ethanol can enter the U.S. tariff-free, because of Guatemala’s participation in the Caribbean Basin
Initiative (CBI).
The Brazilian involvement with IEC and the Bush-Gore lovefest, is—tragically—lawful. In the speech he gave April 16 before the FAO conference in Brasilia, President Lula da Silva vowed that, despite world starvation, he intends to act as a spokesman for the British Empire’s genocidal biofuels drive. He had the nerve to lie that “more people are eating better” in the world than ever before.
I would be proud to call Jeremiah Wright my pastor. He certainly speaks the truth as I see it.
This definitely includes his ‘chickens come home to roost’ sermon after 9-11. His perspective was one I felt was critically missing from the USA discussion at that time. So many people were saying ‘How could they do this to us?’ He had the answer that I believe is the correct answer.
They have managed to do it again. Now, can we get back to talking about the issues that affect all the people all the time,like healthcare and the fact our economy is in recession and possibly headed for a depression if it continues to decline.Oh, then are two on going wars!
Bill Moyers is a national treasure, and once again hits the nail on the head in his assessment of this tragic situation. It is about race. None of the luny white preachers on the right have received any scrutiny, despite the fact that Republicans openly court their endorsements, something I find far more troubling. After all, the right wing preachers do seek political pay back from public servants they help put in office. I can’t imagine how I’d feel if my ancestors had been hauled over her against their will in the hulls of slave ships, forced into slavery, subjected to Jim Crow Laws, and all sort of discrimination. I certainly can’t imagine any white person just getting over it. And, now with the Rev Wright fiasco, there’s a clear double standard. Rev. Wright’s anger is primarily directed at American policy (if you actually bother to listen to his words), both foreign and domestic, and with good reason. I find that far less offensive than white preachers who single out groups of people for moral condemnation. To hear Rev Hagee bellowing about the poor and penniless, “let them starve, let them starve”, is morally reprehensible, yet this is the preacher whose endorsement was actively sought by McCain and others. Not the mention the fact that Hagee with his megachurch and televison broadcast reaches millions of people with his hate filled sermons. The bottom line is that much of what Rev Wright preaches is the truth. White folks aren’t comfortable with his preaching style and angry tone. I say to them “get over it”. Wake up America and get a clue.
The Biggest SECRET in the Land!
Welcome to a Never Never, Bush-Zarro Land!
Where the:
See No and Hear No Evil, Faux Media says:
I see nothing!
Some watch dog?
More like a pet goat.
Pack The Courts!
Pack the Schools!
Pack the Government!
P