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Edited on Tue Apr-29-08 07:38 PM by omega minimo
I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it. -- Voltaire
Were folks concerned a couple months ago when Barack Obama praised Ronald Reagan's propaganda skills and his "trajectory" for the nation? No. Did folks talk about that propaganda or that trajectory? No.
Folks went online and on air and started talking about talking about and arguing about talking about what he meant and what he meant to say when he said what he said.
Instead of talking about what he said.
The current kerfluffle is not over what Jeremiah Wright said, its validity or relevance. All the excitement is about how it can be spun and interpreted to fit various political and primetime agendas. Catapulted.
Not that long ago -- we were a nation capable of allowing discussions of issues that were not controlled by paranoid McCarthy-esque lunatics passing as opinion and/or policy makers. Currently, our candidates have to swim those shark infested waters of televised insanity.
The last debate between Hillary and Obama shows how totally lame we have become. That slick, sick parody of a political event with those two slick, sick clowns pretending to be journalists and our candidates pretending to take them seriously. Joe McCarthy and P.T. Barnum went to Hell and cooked up that absurdist nightmare.
How far we've regressed is proven by Rush Limbaugh whining about his own handiwork. Complaining that dumbed down, miseducated youth don't care about history, he doesn't take enough credit for dumbing down the nation for two decades. Mr. Puffballs deserves a lot of credit for the demonization and degradation of discourse.
As for history, Barack Obama chose to play Pied Piper to the generations who don't remember life before Reagan, before the "trajectory" that led to these Orwellian times. He's old enough to know better. He wants to "transcend" race by pretending that it doesn't matter -- by ignoring how and when and why it does matter -- just like those who want to pretend gender in marriage doesn't matter. It's a youthful, hopeful, head in the sand approach, which might work, except that things like Reality keep coming up.
The Founders did not intend for us to be blind to the consequences of our actions. Our system of government has the flexibility to allow for corrections, when it is recognized that African Americans are whole, not 3/5ths of a person and that women are people, deserving of self-evident and inalienable rights. If we were ready to have an Equal Rights Amendment, the nation might even be ready for gay marriage. If we race didn't matter, Americans would not have accepted watching abandoned, black American bodies floating on their television screens.
Reverent Wright reminds us that it is not so easy to walk away from history or consequences or national legacies. Hiding your head in the sand only works for a while.
Reverend Wright is the antique clock in the soulless, streamlined shopping mall -- you may think he's cuckoo or oudated, but he's still telling you what time it is.
It's time, children, to grow up. To return from Reagan's Never Never Land and awaken from Bushco's Through the Looking Glass Opposite World.
Reverend Wright has a historic perspective, some attitude and a wry smile, as he holds his cuckoo clock. He is passionate and fiery as he points to the returning chickens, watching all those heads pop up out of the sand -- or just pop. He knows this is the Theater of the Absurd, although he told Bill Moyers otherwise. The Clothes Have No Emperor, the catapult is spewing emptiness, the Tuskeegee Airmen were betrayed by the country they proudly served.
Courage for reality or a legacy of lies. You decide.
edit: this OP intends no insult to lunatics
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