Friday, March 28, 2008
A LITTLE CONTEXT (SPIRITUAL/POLITICAL) RELIEF?
Picked this link up from E. Ethelbert Miller's blog. Worth checking out to put things into context. Though I doubt Obama detractors and right-wingers will view this the way those familiar with history and the African-American church and oral tradition will. But it seems obvious to me Wright's comments in this case were totally taken out of context and interpreted almost the opposite way he intended. But the comments on the youtube site make it clear there are a lot of un or under educated folks out there that can't read context, only style, but then that's what a lot of us have been educated to do in a consumer-based society where kids know brands before their own roots and history, hip hop lyrics before the founding documents and/or ideas and ideals, and manufactured teen idols and celebrity gossip before their own sense of self and standards, etc.
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5 comments:
I find it amazing how people who are, supposedly, "Liberal", which one would think means, equal rights under the law ,just as Martin Luther King advocated, can rapsodize incessently about an over the top racist preacher who hates America and belongs to a church in relatively poor area in Chicago, that thinks it is appropriate to purchase a $1.5 million house for its ex hate mongering preacher. One would think that church money should be spent on worthy projects in the neighborhood. Obama wants to spend $850 million (can't remember if million or billion over 13 yrs) of tax payers money on the world's poor. Barak, assuming he agrees with the decision to build the pastor his house, has equal disregard for church funds as he has for taxpayer money.
Maybe the pastor could be pensioned off to Africa,to work with real poor folks to atone for the hate he has spread at home.
Imagine for a moment that John McCain had given money to Mr. Duke, of KKK fame, for 20 years and still refused to denounced his hatefull rhetoric, would you not respond with as much anger as I hope I have.
Jim, the context, the context! You comment has absolutely nothing to do with the post, which was to present the context from which the news (begun by FOX of course) extracted one statement to make it seem like Wright was saying something other than he was. So you, as rightwingers always do, avoid the point at hand and make an ad hominem argument about something entirely different. What Obama might or might not want to spend in some nonexistant future (totally speculative and inarguable since your sources are not Obama but rightwing propogandists, otherwise a clip of Obama saying that would be on FOX news right now!) and the allegation that rev. Wright lives in an expensive house. Gee I wonder if any fundementalist rightwing conservative preachers have expensive houses!? In fact way more expensive than Wright's house and all tax free! I don't have to wonder if they (rightwing conservative fundamentalist white preachers) blame 9/11 and earthquakes and Katrina on "gays" and "lesbians" and other Satanic forces including the Catholic church (most spcifically in the case of two McCain endorsers who he was happy to present in public on the same platform with him, as Obama has not with Reverend Wright). Wright instead blames 9/11 in part on the "terrorist" past of the USA, i.e. in killing and displacing native Americans from their homes to make room for Europeans and European descended "whites," (we call it ethnic cleansing noawadays) and killed and enslaved native Africans for hundreds of years and then kept them disenfranchised and oppressed and segregated for another hundred years including the years of Rev. Wright's boyhood and youth, and the government continues this racial oppression by incarcerating 1 in 4 young black men, (as opposed to 1 in 10 "white" ones, and almost all of the lower class(es)—a higher percentage of citizens in prison in than in any other country in the world except China, North Korea, and I think Iran, though if i remember correctly we just supassed China and Iran (finally the U. S. is number one in something again!). But despite putting 9/11 into the historic perspective of the U. S. government's use of force and "terror" to achieve its ends of the centuries of our existance, Rev. Wright doesn't conclude that we, and certainly not the victims of 9/11 desrved what happened, but instead suggests that we each examine our own hearts and our own relationship with our God. A much more nuanced and sophisticated argument than the clips that have been shown represent. And that's all I'll say about that, because I know you will come back with some other anti-"liberal" comment about how we "liberals" are "America-haters" because we hate what you rightwingers have done to the ideals of our founding fathers in turning this country from a society based on the rule of law and the ideal that all humans are created equal, into a society based on the rule of corporate interests and the ideal of greed and profit uber alles.
The core of the discussion is that Obama has supported a racist and anti-American for 20 years. He refuses to renounce that support.
If John McCain supported David Duke (white supremeacist, anti-semite and founder of the Knights of the Klu Klux Klan) with funds and attended his sponsored meetings for 20 years, would you give him a pass like you do Obama?
Jim, It's like you can't hear, or read, or comprehend English or something. Rev. Wright is not a "racist" or "anti-American." People who don't agree with you are not all "anti-American" or as you called him before, and me, "America haters." It's a deliberate ploy by those who have obviously influenced your thinking to redirect criticism of their raping and pillaging of America and destroying everything, or most of what "America" stands for, by questioning the patriotism of those who accuse them. The Klu Klux Klan comparison is not only wrong and odious, it is racist, because it indicates that you consider a few remarks of a man who has suffered under the brutal oppression of this country's racism, equal to the actions of those who raped and lynched and enslaved and terrorized and ethnically cleansed and beat and persecuted, etc. etc. him and his ancestors. You equate the actions of the Klu Klux Klan and all the repression and brutality and hatred they represent, with a preacher in a pulpit advising his parishioners to reflect on their relationship with God and their responsibility for violence perpetrated by these same oppressors. So, if someone took hostage a young woman, tied her up and enslaved her in their basement, raped and beat her, violated her in every way imaginable, then sold her, and eventually she is freed from her enslavement and grows up and marries and has children and loves her husband and sons and has good relations with many men but writes and reads a poem condemning those who supported the kind of violence and oppression she had suffered, then her poem equals their brutality. Not! It's illogical, untruthful, and wrong Jim. Rev. Wright condemned, in his sermon and his writing, acts of terror committed against anyone, the victims in New York on 9/11 and the victims of racism and other prejudices. And in one of those sermons he pointed out that you cannot condemn the terrorists without condemning your own actions if they have contributed to your own society's terrorism. if you think that's anti-American, than all the rightwingers who condemend "liberals" who believe in the liberal ideals at the heart of the Declaration of Independence and the Constituion and the Bill of Right,s almost all the founding ideals of this country, and fight for them, including risking their lives in the military (Rev. Wright was a Marine! unlike most rightwing leaders and spokesmen and fundamentalist preachers who never served their country) etc. are "facists." Period. I don't like to let these arguments get to that point of over the top generalizing and categorizing, though as I often admit I am as guilty of it as anyone. But to interpret any criticism of this country, or more specifically of various government administrations and leaders of this country with anti-Americanism is exactly the opposite BECAUSE THIS COUNTRY WAS FOUNDED ON THE IDEAL THAT EVERYONE IS FREE TO EXPRESS THEIR OWN OPINION AND THAT THE GOVERNMENT IS MEANT TO SERVE THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE, NOT VICE VERSA, AND THE PEOPLE ARE FREE TO NOT ONLY EXPRESS THAT WILL BUT TO ARGUE OVER IT AND FIGHT FOR THEIR OWN INTERPRETATION! RIGHTWING NEOCONSERVATIVES HAVE DRAGGED THIS COUNTRY SO FAR DOWN IN THE PAST SEVEN YEARS AND IN PREVIOUS RIGHTWING ADMINISTRATIONS, HAVE DONE SO MUCH DAMAGE, IT WILL TAKE GENERATIONS TO GET BACK TO ANYTHING RESEMBLING THE BEST IDEALS OF THE FOUNDING FATHERS. And equating a preacher's occasional condemnation of our government's policies, and yes "damning America" (so many rightwing preachers have called down God's wrath on this country and damned it and condemned it for its not conforming to their rightwing views and lifestyles, it would take a hundred blogs writing for ten years to name every instance. You may not like Rev. Wright's style of preaching, you may not agree with his perspective, but to my mind, you and the rest of the rightwing hatemongers who can see nothing but their own narrow definition of patriotism (i.e. anything their rightwing leaders say and do is for the good of the country, anything anyone else says against their rightwing leaders and politics is anti-American) are the true America haters. You can't handle the truth, as the man said, because the truth is, as Rev. Wright pointed out, this country has been as responsible for terroism, for the brutal killing and enslaving and driving from their homes of entire peoples, as almost any other country, no matter what the pretense or justification for it was. And if you don't know that, then you aren't the history buff I thought you were. And saying that doesn't make me anti-American, it makes me anti-terrorism and anti-brutality, and anti-murder and anti-ethnic cleansing etc. etc. etc.
You are apparently unable to hold liberals to the same standards that you would hold conservatives. Neither of us should be surprised.
Or to be more succinct, as my 14 year old daughter would say, Whatevveerrr!
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