Telling Wright from Wrong

It's Official: America is a religion! And criticizing America per se is blasphemy. And blasphemy, although not registered as a crime - yet - is certainly right up there with murder, corruption, outright lying, torture, and pollution. Oh, and it is far worse than eliminating and disrespecting the First Amendment to the Constitution. That is, if one acts as if America is merely a word, a statue, a flag, a uniform, and a set of rhetorical rules. And in this religion-heavy world, Obama consorted with a Blasphemer, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, aka Mr. Wrong. (Click image at right for full size.)

America, according to the Majority Media view of the Majority American, is no longer a set of ideals, principles, such as, say, democracy. Otherwise, why would Bush be a patriot and Rev. Wright be an "America-hater"? Who brought the country to war over a lie and killed its best and most loyal for that lie in a foreign country which is now a spawning ground for the seeds of terror and hate, and has made the U.S. the most hated nation in the world, bar none? Who lied about his so-called "military service" and orchestrated, along with his adoring "patriotic" fans of "America" luvvers, the removal of a seasoned journalist over the mere mention of his possibly even conceivably fudging on that all-important rite-of-passage-to-patriotism, military service? Rev. Wright? McCain hobnobs with Bush and Cheney, torture-mongers, liars, people who gutted the economy and ruined jobs for millions of white-collar working class white Americans in Pennsylvania and Indiana and other hard-core white states, and no one taunts Mr. McCain with his association with those destroyers of America and its values in every respect, those Constitution-flaunters.

No one asks Ms. HRC about her association with Whitewater or Vince Foster, or some papers left on the dining room table in the white house, and why didn't she "quit years earlier" on such matters, as she claims, saintly robes in tow, to have disowned a man she and Bill previously had as an honored guest at the White House. Maybe to enjoy his rights of free speech which she now conveniently disowns.

Ms. HRC is no proponent of the First Amendment, of detente, of talking instead of bombing, of thinking twice before jumping on the avalanche of war, of debate instead of war, of open and free discussion between human beings instead of attacks between opponents and mud-slingers. She is a huge proponent of winning elections, but she can't win on her reputation as a hard-line conservative, which she isn't, or as a woman of integrity, which she isn't, or as an experienced negotiator, which she isn't, or as a person who will stand against the tide of wrong-headedness on behalf of the downtrodden or the unpopular but right side, the moral side. She's all about being expedient. So she looked at Rev. Wright out of the corner of her eye and said "I would have disowned him long ago." And so she would have disowned anyone who speaks his/her mind against the political winds of hard-headed O'Reilly-fueled hatred, war-mongering, bomb-brained protoplasm. Ah, but now saying "damn America", unlike "damn Yankees", means "hate-filled church" and that most sacrilegious thing of all, anti-Americanism, something the late J. Edgar Hoover was, like HRC, firmly against.

Democracy Now! brought this issue in debate where Adolph Reed Jr., Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania (author of several books, including Class Notes: Posing as Politics and Other Thoughts on the American Scene and Stirrings in the Jug: Black Politics in the Post-Segregation Era who makes a case against voting for Sen. Obama in the latest issue of The Progressive magazine), argues

Obama opened himself to this by leaning to—on the premise that he can
appeal to Republicans and to conservatives and by parading his personal faith
around.

and

...we’ve seen a number—a significant segment of white voters who sort of like the idea, like to savor the idea in their heads, like the sound of it in their mouths, that they’re prepared to vote for a black candidate, the closer it comes to the election of a black candidate being a reality, the more likely you’re going to find people finding ostensibly nonracial reasons to bail and to find him unlikable. And I think that’s—frankly, I think that’s—from the standpoint of the national political race, I think that’s the most significant aspect of the Wright contrast now.

Plus, regarding Wright, whom Reed believes to be honestly expressing truths,

...Obama couldn’t embrace him, couldn’t do anything except distance himself from that largely astute analysis of American power and other contradictions of the governing regime of both parties, because of the warrants of trying to win
an election in which the discursive center of gravity is much farther to the
right.

So therefore, he concludes Obama couldn't win, and he claims, neither could Hillary ... and so we vote for a "winner", then? McCain? We cave to the perception that Americans are mere protoplasm? Even if they are, even if Americans care about nothing whatsoever except maintaining their own creature comforts today, not tomorrow, it is conceivable that someone, somewhere could inspire us to higher ground.

If Obama is not that person, who on this scorched, pollution-threatened earth is? Why does everybody keep saying "Impossible!"??? What if secretly, in the hearts of most Americans, lies a soul that hopes, dreams, thinks that democracy really does mean "government by the people, for the people" and thinks "the people" is pretty damn inclusive? What if most of them actually fear bleeding democracy to death in useless, pointless, doomed wars overseas? What if they are just hoping to find someone to inspire them out of this video-game mind-numbing business of chasing celebrities while the whole country, its earth, sky, water, and people - not to mention the economy - goes to hell in a flag-draped, patriotic, rhetorically-sterile coffin?

Is it "hate" to condemn America for its racism and war-mongering? Or is it "hate" to refuse to condemn its sins and to whitewash it in red, white and blue meaningless doubletalk, and then condemn those who dare say what they really think? Are Americans really mindless protoplasm? Or do even working people, among whom I count myself, really on a higher plane than most pundits realize? Is Obama electable? Even after Wright?

Only the hopeful, optimistic, democracy-lovers who believe democracy actually could work think that way.