Thanks Jim

I agree. But this is only round #1 of the anti-Obama attacks. They will get even more vicious as the election approaches.

by John R Moffett (83 articles, 17 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 649 comments) on Tuesday, March 18, 2008 at 8:58:11 AM
 

good article

I was personally hurt by the statement from Rev. Wright--"God * America" only because God must bless and guide our nation. It is because America is less than perfect that she needs the blessings and guidance from God. God bless, preserve and nourish America. That is my prayer.

Rev. Wright has the right to free speech and can say what he wants. But especially as a person who is heard by so many, he should have been more sensitive.

by Nandinee Kutty (6 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 5 comments) on Wednesday, March 19, 2008 at 2:14:33 AM
 

Rev. Wright is wrong.

Is it racism that causes more blacks to commit more crimes or is it the black radicals preaching of racist hatred and the blaming of whitey for everything that is wrong with their lives that causes more crime?

If this is what young black men are being taught in church it is no wonder why so many are in prison.

by Gallaher (2 articles, 0 quicklinks, 3 diaries, 789 comments) on Wednesday, March 19, 2008 at 6:59:37 AM
 

Gallahen, Wright Is Absolutely Right

It wouldn't be that most blacks are have-nots. Would it? It wouldn't be that blacks are stereotyped as aggressive, violent drug attics. Would it? It wouldn't be that most blacks are trapped in poverty with little to no chance of ever getting out of the hole or having a good future. Would it? YOU ARE SUCH A PIN HEAD

by arlen custer (1 articles, 0 quicklinks, 6 diaries, 285 comments) on Thursday, March 20, 2008 at 9:03:25 AM
 

Right wing, MSM & Obama are wrong

Thanks for the analysis.  Note that in Obama's speech yesterday and in other statements, he has completely capitulated to his right wing critics on the substance of what Wright has said.  Obama attacks the idea that white racism is endemic in America and blames all the problems in the Middle East on "radical Islam" and asserts that Israel couldn't possibly have done anything wrong.

If Wright is right, Obama is critically wrong.  Obama's effort to become President by capitulating to those who have created false myths about America, when he should know better, needs to be firmly rejected. 

by Bill Samuel (4 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 342 comments) on Wednesday, March 19, 2008 at 9:55:38 AM
 

An expanded version . . .

Abstract. Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, gave a sermon at the school's Andrew Rankin Memorial Chapel in Washington on January 15, 2006. It is now being used to drive a wedge between Obama and his followers. Most of his black supporters believe what Wright has had to say, but many of his white supporters do not. The political trap thereby laid can be avoided by separating content from style and standing up for painful truths. Handled properly, this can be an object lesson in Obama's "new politics".

"What's Wrong with Rev. Wright?"

Senator Barack Obama's political appeal has many roots, among them his rhetorical eloquence and his apparent integrity. He has promised a new politics that transcends barriers between young and old, male and female, black and white. His success is such that he has now won more states, earned more delegates, and more of the popular vote than his rival, Hillary Clinton, the former First Lady, who, as recently as a year ago, had been widely expected to capture the Democratic nomination without serious opposition. That didn't happen.

Many students of American politics have wondered how he would be attacked next, especially since the prospect for Sen. Clinton gaining ground over the remaining contests are rather bleak, apart from the possibility that she can manipulate the DNC and her opponent into allowing delegates from Florida and Michigan she does not appear to deserve to count. That is not likely. What is highly probable, however--and indeed is now a certainty--is that attempts are going to be made to cast Obama as "just another politician" who has no abiding principles beyond self-promotion.

A firestorm has broken out over a column by Ronald Kessler in The Wall Street Journal ("Obama and the Minister", March 14, 2008), which discusses a sermon given at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago on January 15, 2006. Whether Obama was present is not clear, but since he has been a member for more than twenty years, the question of his faith has been decisively resolved at last. According to Kessler, the sermon included the impassioned delivery of a series of claims critical of the US and its history, claims that the author suggests are extremely inflammatory, including:

"We've got more black men in prison than there are in college," he began. "Racism is alive and well. Racism is how this country was founded and how this country is still run. No black man will ever be considered for president, no matter how hard you run Jesse [Jackson] and no black woman can ever be considered for anything outside what she can give with her body."

Mr. Wright thundered on: "America is still the No. 1 killer in the world. . . . We are deeply involved in the importing of drugs, the exporting of guns, and the training of professional killers . . . We bombed Cambodia, Iraq and Nicaragua, killing women and children while trying to get public opinion turned against Castro and Ghadhafi . . . We put [Nelson] Mandela in prison and supported apartheid the whole 27 years he was there. We believe in white supremacy and black inferiority and believe it more than we believe in God."

His voice rising, Mr. Wright said, "We supported Zionism shamelessly while ignoring the Palestinians and branding anybody who spoke out against it as being anti-Semitic. . . . We care nothing about human life if the end justifies the means. . . ." Concluding, Mr. Wright said: "We started the AIDS virus . . . We are only able to maintain our level of living by making sure that Third World people live in grinding poverty. . . ."

Kessler presents these claims as though they were obviously false, but many qualify as "common knowledge" to even the least educated with regard to American history. For the rest, it is rather easy to establish that most of them are either true or at least not obviously false. But if Wright is almost completely right, then something's wrong with this picture. The evidence suggests that those who are opposed to his candidacy are willing to distort American history and painful truths for the sake of political expedience, a familiar tactic in a new, contemporary guise. Consider, for example, the evidence for nine of the more inflammatory of Wright's claims, as follow:

Wright's claim #1: "We've got more black men in prison than there are in college," he began.

Accuracy: True. ABC News ("Census Study Eyes Blacks in Prison", September 27, 2007), reported that more Blacks and Hispanics live in prison cells than in college dorms. Stephen Ohlemacher explained, "More than three times as many black people live in prison cells as in college dorms, the government said in a report to be released Thursday. The ratio is only slightly better for Hispanics, at 2.7 inmates for every Latino in college housing. Among non-Hispanic whites, more than twice as many live in college housing as in prison or jail." Verifying that this is the case is effortless.

Wright's claim #2: "Racism is alive and well."

Accuracy: True. A recent study ("States and Black Incarceration Rates in America", Gibbs Magazine) reported, "California, which has the sixth largest economy in the world, (including its Silicon Valley), and a population that is 52% nonwhite, and is supposedly on the cutting edge of racial and social tolerance, has a prison population that is 69% nonwhite. And, of course, with a Black population that is only 7%, it has a prison population that is 32% Black. And this large population of Black inmates has helped this enlightened state to be the sixth state in incarceration rates". Surely no serious American doubts that racism in the United States is "alive and well". 


Wright's claim #3: "Racism is how this country was founded and how this country is still run."

Accuracy: True. As Wikipedia observes, "From the 1490s when Christopher Columbus set foot on the Americas to the massacre of Sioux Indians at Wounded Knee by the United States milita, the indigenous population of the Western Hemisphere may have declined by as many as 100 million", which suggests that the number killed exceeded that of the Holocaust ("Genocides in History"). And no American should need to be reminded that hundreds of thousands of blacks were kidnapped from Africa and transported to America to live their lives as slaves. That is common knowledge. Racism is pervasive in our history and continues to exert its damaging influence to this day.

Wright's claim #4: "No black man will ever be considered for president, no matter how hard you run Jesse [Jackson]."

Accuracy: Mixed. This turns out to be literally false, insofar as Barack Obama's own campaign has now falsified a generalization that most Americans have long known to be true. The intensity of the attacks on him demonstrate that he is being taken seriously as a candidate. But the suggestion by Geraldine Ferraro that being black could be an advantage as a political candidate would not have been apparent to any of us at the time. 
 Certainly being black has not been an advantage in the past. And if Barack were not highly intelligent, academically accomplished, politically astute, and an inspirational orator, it is difficult to imagine he would be taken seriously.

Wright's claim #5: "[N]o black woman can ever be considered for anything outside what she can give with her body."

Accuracy: Mixed. Historically, sociologically studies would show that black women have been most frequently employed as maids, nannies, and hookers. But others have become prominent as models, singers, and actors. The story of Motown, for example, contradicts this claim when it is taken literally, but as a generalization based upon American history, it still seems to be accurate. Most black women are channeled into subservient roles-although it would not be wrong to suggest that this is true of most women. The challenges confronting this country encompass sexism as well as racism.

Wright's claim #6: "America is still the No. 1 killer in the world. . . ."

Accuracy: True. We bombed Hiroshima and we bombed Nagasaki and "we never batted an eye"! In "A Century of U.S. Military Interventions: From Wounded Knee to Afghanistan" 
(September 20, 2001), Zoltan Grossman summarizes around 100 operations abroad, most of which led to the deaths of large numbers of citizens of foreign nations as well as US forces. One has only to list the names of Chile, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and now-in all probability, alas!-Iran to appreciate that the United States has become by far the greatest aggressor nation in the world, which also makes America the greatest terrorist state.

Wright's claim #7: "We are deeply involved in the importing of drugs, the exporting of guns, and the training of professional killers . . ."

Accuracy: True. There are so many studies of the war on drugs that it is difficult to believe views like these are not common knowledge. A sampler includes Dan Baum, Smoke and Mirrors: The War on Drugs and the Politics of Failure (1997), Dirk Eldredge, Ending the War on Drugs: A Solution for America (1998), Mike Gray, Drug Crazy: How We Got into This Mess and How We Can Get Out (2000), James Gray, Why Our Drug Laws Have Failed: A Judicial Indictment Of War On Drugs (2001), Bill Masters, Drug War Addiction (2001), and Douglas Husak, Legalize This! The Case for Decriminalizing Drugs (2002). They provide powerful evidence that the war on drugs is a fraud intended to keep their price high for special interests, including the CIA.

Classic works that tie the CIA together with the war on drugs include Peter Dale Scott and Jonathan Marshall, Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies, and the CIA in Central America (1998) and Mike Gray, Busted: Stone Cowboys, Narco-Lords, and Washington's War on Drugs (2002). In its review of Cocaine Politics, Publishers Review observed, "This important, explosive report forcefully argues that the 'war on drugs' is largely a sham, as the U.S. government is one of the world's largest drug pushers. The authors unearth close links between the CIA and Latin American drug networks which provide U.S. covert operations with financing, political leverage and intelligence." Most Americans don't know--the evidence is massive, clear and compelling.

Wright's claim #8: "We supported Zionism shamelessly while ignoring the Palestinians and branding anybody who spoke out against it as being anti-Semitic. . . ."

Accuracy: True. Osama bin Laden long ago explained his displeasure with the United States, not because of our "freedom", but because we had stationed military forces in Saudi Arabia, the home of Mecca and Medina, two of the most sacred sites in Islam, and because of our lopsided support of Israel in its dispute with the Palestinians. Anti-Semitism is discounting persons and their interests on the ground of their religion or their ethnic origins. Criticism of Israel or of the government of Israel or of the policies of the government of Israel is not "anti-Semitism", yet it is common practice to condemn those who are even mildly critical of Israel as "anti-Semites".

The blatancy of US support for Israel knows no bounds. As Wilmer Leon III has observed ("The Rev. Dr. Jermiah Wright and the Audacity of Truth", March 22, 2008), the Arms Exports Control Act forbids providing military assistance to any country engaging in the gross violation of human rights. "In spite of all of the evidence supporting claims of the Israeli government's human rights abuses of the Palestinian people, for FY2005 the United States provided $2.22 billion in military aid." Indeed, I find knowledge that the tanks, planes, and bullets that are being used to jubjugate and oppress the Palestinian people are being finanaced by the American taxpayer personally nauseating.

During debates for the Republican nomination, Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) frequently pointed out that the United States had engendered the hostility and the hatred of foreign nationals, including many in the Middle East who happen to be Muslim in their religion, for those very reasons. Yet Rudy Giuliani, the former Mayor of New York, who campaigned as the hero of 9/11, suggested that Paul's explanation was absurd. And yet, as Paul replied, even The 9/11 Commission Report (2004) outlined reasons of this very kind in its attempt to explain the events of 9/11, which, even on the official account of The 9/11 Commission, resulted as "blowback" for unjust foreign policies.

Wright's claim #9: "We started the AIDS virus . . ."

Accuracy: Mixed. A variety of theories have been advanced according to which AIDS has been created deliberately as a disease intended to harm or even eradicate gays and blacks or as a mean of population control. According to Wikipedia ("AIDS conspiracy theories"), Jakob Segal, a biology professor at Humboldt University, has proposes that HIV was engineered at a military laboratory at Fort Detrick, by splicing together two other viruses; TIME magazine reports that Nobel Peace Prize laureate Wangari Maathai has theorized that the biological agent causing AIDS is not natural; and Dr. Alan Cantwell, author of AIDS and the Doctors of Death (1992) and of Queer Blood: The Secret AIDS Genocide Plot (1993), alleges that HIV is a genetically modified organism developed by US Government scientists.

Similar theories have been advanced by other experts, including Dr. Leonard G. Horowitz, author of Emerging Viruses: AIDS & Ebola (1996) of the DVD, Death in the Air: Globalism, Terrorism and Toxic Warfare, who has offered the theory that AIDS virus engineered by U.S. Government defense contractors for the purposes of bio-warfare and population control. In Horowitz case, he believes that Jews, blacks, and Hispanics are prime targets of these attempts, which exemplify American preoccupation with eugencis and even the practice of genocide. If Rev. Wright is mistaken here, as elsewhere, he appears to be in good company. He is not obviously wrong.

The Score Card

Without attempting to be exhaustive, the pattern that emerges from research into the truth of the claims that Rev. Wright has advanced indicates that most of them are true and that even the most controversial are not obviously wrong. #1, #2, #3, #6, #7, and #8 are true. #4, #5, and #9 are not obviously wrong. Which raises the obvious question, if Rev. Wright is right or at least not obviously wrong-and, for the most part, establishing these points is not rocket science-then why has this become such an inflammatory issue in the current campaign?

The current pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ, Rev. Otis Moss III, has suggested that it is a matter of character assassination ("Obama's church accuses media of character assassination", 16 March 2008). This is not wrong. After having taught logic, critical thinking, and scientific reasoning for 35 years, I have found that the use of fallacies in advertising, the law, and especially politics knows no bounds. An appropriate example here is the fallacy known as "popular sentiments", where a belief that is widely held is therefore supposed to be true. This creates opportunities to deceive and mislead the American people.

Most Americans would balk at the suggestion that the US is the greatest aggressor nation in the world, that the CIA is deeply involved in trafficking in drugs, or that the AIDS virus may have been deliberately created as a means for eradicating specific segments of the world's population. We desperately want to believe that America is the greatest nation in the world, with, for example, the world's best health care system-even if, in 2000, the World Health Organization ranked the US health care system first in responsiveness and in expenditure, but 37th in overall performance and 72nd in overall level of health ("Health Care in the United States", Wikipedia). We pay more for less.

Obama appears to be making a surge that Clinton probably cannot stop. The GOP fears running against him and would vastly prefer to run against Hillary, whose strengths and weaknesses make her far more vulnerable. Fallacies are the court of last resort when neither evidence nor logic favor your side. What is acutely distressing here, however, is that Rev. Wright has said nothing wrong. And Sen. Obama has no good reason to abandon him-unless, of course, he is unwilling to slug it out when the truth is on his side. If he is the different kind of politician he would have us believe, he should stand with Rev. Wright and use this as an opportunity to confront painful truths about ourselves and our history.

"God damn America!"

Perhaps the statement receiving the most attention in the press that Rev. Wright has made, however, is "God damn America!" We all like to think this is a great nation and that God should bless America, not damn it. But when you consider our history and the extent to which we betray our own avowed principles-when you put his comments in the context without which they cannot be understood-it is difficult to fault him. Anyone who believes in confronting painful truths about ourselves should agree: In the respects that cause him concern, God should not grant us an exemption. When our leaders betray us and damage the well-being of ourselves and of others, they deserve our forceful condemnation-and God's!

As Wilmer Leon III has emphasized, Wright's words cannot be understood as sound-bites separate from historical context and personal experience. Even the Constitution incorporates the institution of slavery in several of its provisions, reinforced by subsequent Supreme Court decisions and Congressional actions. He knows from experience, "the government gives [African-Americans] the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strikes law, and then wants us to sing, 'God bless America'! No, no, no; not 'God bless America'! God damn America . . . for killing innocenet people; God damn America for treating its citizens as less than human . . .". His sentiments fit the context.

The hypocrisy of the right wing also knows no bounds. Frank Schaeffer, the son of Francis Schaeffer, one of the founders of the Relgious Right, has observed that he and others of his ilk, including Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, have condemned America for tolerating abortions, homosexuality, and even sex education ("Obama's minister 'hates America' but when my father said the same sort of thing, he became a hero to the Republicans", March 23, 2008). Their condemnations of America have been every bit as forceful and direct as those of Rev. Wright. But the right wing continues to praise them, not condemn them. A unique candidate offers a unique opportunity for us as Americans to engage in a thoughtful conversation about race relations and the history of our republic. Let us hope we are equal to the challenge!

by Jim Fetzer (23 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 36 comments) on Monday, March 24, 2008 at 7:55:52 AM