Obama and the right Reverend Wright

Posted: March 25, 2008  Author: Dr. Moss

Is there anyone who has not seen or heard the words of the right Reverend Jeremiah Wright of the Trinity United Church of Christ?  Most of us are by now familiar with what is essentially boiler plate far left rantings in which the US is accused of unbridled racism, imperialism, and a host of familiar conspiracies such as the government sponsored development of the AIDS virus to "commit genocide against people of color" and "the importing of drugs" to further decimate the black community. 

Wright morally equated 9/11 with the bombing of Hiroshima and felt it was caused by our own actions "...because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought back to our own back yards.  America's chickens are coming home to roost."  He further stated that "...Violence begets violence. Hatred begets hatred. And terrorism begets terrorism." 

Reverend Wright urged his black parishioners not to sing "God Bless America," but to "God Damn America" and referred to his country as the "US of KKK-A." 

He traveled to Libya with Louis Farakhan, a known anti-Semite and black supremacist, upon whom he conferred a lifetime achievement award and wrote admiringly of in "Trumpet," the church magazine.  

He has sprinkled his speeches with a mix of anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist statements and has been tenderly solicitous of the plight of the Palestinians despite their egregious behavior. 

He is a segregationist/separatist and subscribes to black liberationist theology and a "black values system" that is Afrocentric and black nationalist.    

White racist America, as described by Wright, controlled by rich whites, is a grim place indeed for blacks who have no chance to succeed, no chance for a piece of the American pie, doomed to a life of misery and penury, and lucky just to escape with their hides.

As I said, it differs little from most boiler plate paranoid, hysterical, left wing tirades with a twist of black liberationist/nationalism added in.  It is Marxist, anti-American, anti-white, anti-Semitic, segregationist, apocalyptic, and racist.  It is the black version of the KKK.

And so why did the leading candidate for Democratic nominee for President sit in the pews of the UCC for the last twenty years, listening Sunday after Sunday to Reverend Wright's lusty, racist anti-American chants, have his children baptized by the racist pastor, name his best selling autobiography, the Audacity of Hope, after one of his sermons, and look up admiringly to the reverend whom he describes as his guide and spiritual mentor?

Obama, the biracial man, the post racial candidate, the unifier, the savior, the haloed, sainted one, the messiah who would deliver us from our stained racist past and absolve us of our sins has been exposed. 

The soothing, uplifting candidate of hope and change saw fit to spend his Sundays in a church that espoused hatred, racism, and anti-Americanism.  The man who would relieve (liberal) whites of their guilt and blacks of their sense of inferiority has himself been found guilty of drinking in the fetid waters of race hatred and diatribe.

And so he is no longer transcendent or unifying.  His pastor of choice goes well beyond the race card playing antics of Jackson and Sharpton, whom, at the minimum, can be thought of as divisive, antagonistic, or worse.  But Reverend Wright goes well beyond this.  He is destructive and dangerous.  And so, with this revelation, it becomes absurd to even consider Obama as some sort of "unifier" or racial healer.   

What we find instead is a young, insecure political aspirant finding his identity and establishing a base in Chicago from which to launch a political career.  He needed contacts and backing and so he played the race game by joining and supporting Reverend Wright and the UCC.  But he didn't really believe all that racist/leftist drivel, did he?  Perhaps he did.  One does not know and he will of course deny it.  Yet, it does require a willing suspension of disbelief (as Hillary Clinton put it in another context) to imagine that Obama could sit there all those years and not have found something in the hate filled messages of his pastor that resonated with him.

And so the question becomes one of honesty, judgment, and character.  He must inevitably be found wanting in all three.  Even Hillary, for all her flaws and shrillness, now appears more honest and sound than the dubious Obama, to say nothing of the plodding, robotic but straight shooting, venerable old war hero McCain. 

Obama may run his campaign as if nothing has changed, he may continue to draw adoring throngs and recieve fawning attention from the media, but he has been damaged. 

The Obama campaign after all was never about competence or experience for he has proven neither in his nearly vacant record.  Community activist, state Senator for seven years, and two undistinguished years in the US Senate.  Mediocre, null, and almost void.  In truth, by any reasonable measure, he has no right to even consider a run for the office of Presidency.  And, in fact, the comments of dyed in the wool liberal Geraldine Ferraro (who does not have a racist bone in her body) recently are not without merit. 

She said simply that "If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position."  And while it is ironic and perhaps enjoyable to see liberals who have imposed the politics of identity on the rest of us being hoisted on their own petard, her reflections are accurate.  Indeed, Obama is our first affirmative action Presidential candidate.   

In terms of policies, he is no uniter, reaching across the aisle to Republicans or conservatives, and coming up with bipartisan solutions.  He is doctrinaire leftist.  He plans to raise taxes, increase spending, nationalize health care, restrict trade, and surrender in Iraq.  He regularly attacks the usual objects of leftist populist derision, corporations, the "rich," Wall Street, and the GOP; he engages in class warfare and the politics of envy, and seeks, if anything, to convert everyone into "victims," white or black, all standard liberal tactics.  And there is not a paper cut's difference between him and Hillary anyway.  While his rhetoric may sound airy and transcendent, there is nothing "unifying" in Obama's specific policy proposals, just as there is nothing uplifting or conciliatory in his past associations. 

But Obama's candidacy was never about his competence or specific proposals and policies but symbolism and allegory.  He served some vital role and purpose in the psyche and conscience of the country.  He gave many whites a chance to feel good about themselves, to participate in a candidacy of destiny, to join in a historic campaign that could finally absolve the nation and lift it from the darkness of its tortured racist past, by supporting and voting for the uniter Obama, the Sainted Negro, who would accept them as they were and not shame them, as Shelby Steele has written, for their whiteness.  Blacks too would flock to him as fellow blacks but also to derive some sense of hope, meaning, and possibility in their own lives, and to banish any lingering sense of inferiority, by embracing their biracial knight in shining multicultural armor.

But he is no longer the savior and redeemer of his imperfect and flawed nation, for he is no longer invisible or a "blank screen" as he put it.  The redeemer has himself been found flawed and imperfect - or even worse. 

Is he a phony?  And if so, whom did he decieve?  His fellow congregants and pastor whom he pretended to agree with in order to build a power base?  Or his country, by pretending to be a uniter when in reality he endorsed (despite his protestations and denials) much of what his pastor preached, the one whom he followed for twenty odd years and who baptized his children.

The question actually is, is he a phony or a racist?

It must be one or the other.

My own impression is that he is probably not a racist, but a leftist - and obviously far more left wing than he lets on.  I believe he subscribes to much of the anti-Americanism of his pastor (and of the left) but has been successful in crafting a more subdued and inclusive message while, until now, concealing his past.  Perhaps, here, his wife is a better barometer of their true sentiments (given her previous remarks) than he.  But it is difficult to conceal the truth forever.  For the unvetted Obama, as his pastor might have stated, "the chickens are coming home to roost." 

He is though unquestionably a phony with poor character and judgment and manifestly unfit to lead the country.