Rev. Wright, Obama And Patriotism Reconsidered

Barack must not forsake the likes of Paul Robeson, who when challenged as to why he came back to stay in America, he forthrightly replied, "Because my father was a slave and my people died to build this country, and I am going to stay here and have a part just like you."

[Elections 2008: On Patriotism]

The Roman Catholic Church aided and abetted scores of Catholic priests in perpetuating and concealing what could easily have been called an organized child molestation ring.

Not one American politician of the Catholic faith was ever asked or even expected to defend their allegiance to the Church or explain why they continued to bring their little children to listen to these pedophilic priests and even worse enter tiny, enclosed, and darkened, confessionals, religiously seeking absolution from them.

So, why must Obama explain and justify his affiliation with ex-marine and now retired church leader, Reverend Jeremiah Wright? Well, because, like others before him, Obama knows all too well just how powerful the label un-American is in keeping the faith of white lies intact. 

Which white lies? The white lies the enslaved children of Thomas Jefferson experientially understood as the do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do, dreams of their father. A father who in The Declaration of Independence proposed, that all men have certain inalienable rights. Was he a liar, or just a coward, when he refused to read these words to his brown children?

Either way, his beautiful words outweighed his ugly behavior. And so I find it particularly ironic that it is the angry words of Rev. Wright which have brought so much disdain and distrust his way.        

And if words trump actions then what are we to think of Thomas Jefferson’s words, when in an attempt to explain his psychotic position regarding slavery, Jefferson is quoted as having said, “We have the wolf by the ears; and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other.”

Reading this, one must wonder if Jefferson thought of his own offspring as a pack of wolves. Can’t we see that the question isn’t why Obama’s father figure, Reverend Wright is so angry, but why we can’t understand his anger?

Even today, most people dismiss as impertinent that this country’s most revered Founding Father arrogantly disregarded his own children’s inalienable rights as innocent human-beings and not carnivorous wolves. 

So one can see why our history unfolded as it did. For instance, it is no surprise to find the actions of the Ku Klux Klan being excluded from the list of un-American activities by a Christian American, U.S. Senator, Martin Dies – who chaired the first House on Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) back in 1937. So given this I ask you now, honestly, ain’t Reverend Wright a Christian American when he says “Goddamn America”?

When successive Christian Americans placed their burning-cross-stake in America, certain of their right to do so, we should understand that it was not The Declaration of Independence alone which ensured and paved their way.

Rather, we need to remember the kind of help they had from the likes of U.S. Congressman, John Wood, an openly admitted member of the KKK, and also a chair of the HUAC who stated in the 1940’s that, “The threats and intimidations of the Klan are an old American custom, like illegal whisky-making.” Now, given this shameful American history lesson, again I ask, ain’t Reverend Wright a Christian American when he says “Goddamn America”?  

Just as it was understood and stated by Christian American, U.S. Congressman, John Rankin, a prominent member of that all powerful HUAC, that, “After all, the KKK is an old American institution,” implying therefore that it was apparently not subversive or dangerous in anyway to public safety. Shouldn’t we then be asking, ain’t Reverend Wright a Christian American when he says “Goddamn America”?

And if during the one hundred years between 1865 and 1965, that strange fruit hung from American trees across the south, and yet not one member of those lynching mobs of Christian Americans was ever arrested and convicted of that crime against humanity, then I ask you, ain’t Reverend Wright a Christian American when he says “Goddamn America”?

When President Truman, as a Christian American man could single-handedly order the total devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, two cities full of innocent Japanese women and children, and yet could not be effective in changing the lynching laws that made legal the pogrom to continue the terrorizing and murdering of innocent Americans, we all need to yell out, ain’t Reverend Wright a Christian American when he says “Goddamn America”?

And when that Christian Preacher-man, Pat Robertson could call on the U.S. government to assassinate foreign, head-of-state, Hugo Chavez, then the world calls out to us, ain’t Reverend Wright a Christian American when he says “Goddamn America”?

Though he hopes to effect change in the future, for now Obama knows that America worries not about how it’s perceived as much as it does about how its Presidential candidates keep wholly its white lies.

And yet Barack must not forsake the likes of Paul Robeson, who when challenged by those HUAC patriot actors of the 1950’s – as to why he came back to stay in America, he forthrightly replied, “Because my father was a slave and my people died to build this country, and I am going to stay here and have a part just like you.”

 

 

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