Wright Was Right. (Kind of.)

It was weeks into the Reverend Wright shitstorm that I finally figured out what it was that the guy had said that got people so riled up . . . And I agreed with about 99% of what he had to say. Now Wright has returned to the public eye and Barack Obama is once again being interrogated about his pastor’s words.

So what is it that he said. Let’s take a look.

First of all, from a sermon shortly after 9/11:

“We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and The Pentagon, and we never batted an eye… and now we are indignant, because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought back into our own front yards. America’s chickens are coming home to roost . . . Violence begets violence. Hatred begets hatred. And terrorism begets terrorism. A white ambassador said that y’all, not a black militant. Not a reverend who preaches about racism. An ambassador whose eyes are wide open and who is trying to get us to wake up and move away from this dangerous precipice upon which we are now poised. The ambassador said the people that we have wounded don’t have the military capability we have. But they do have individuals who are willing to die and take thousands with them. And we need to come to grips with that.”

The media interpreted this as him saying that the people who died on 9/11 deserved it. I’m not sure exactly how they did that. What he was obviously saying was that the American government has been forcing its will on the rest of the world for decades and the 9/11 attacks were what probably should have been expected after such countless years of international douchebaggery. Which is a pretty logical opinion.

In another sermon - entitled “Confusing God and Government” - Wright listed a long series of injustices committed by the American government, and stated that a government who lies and mistreats human beings can’t claim to represent some holy force as Bush and the rest of the neo-cons would like to believe.
Again, I don’t find any of what he said unreasonable, except perhaps for his suggestion that the US government created the HIV virus. I haven’t yet seen any convincing evidence to prove this, but I find it understandable that a civil rights leader from the black community would feel that way, it’s an issue that runs deep. And while I don’t think the government created HIV, Reagan and Co. certainly ignored the AIDs crisis with much enthusiasm for as long as possible, since it was a problem mostly affecting African Americans and Gays, and therefore didn’t actually matter to them.

I get the feeling that Wright is what you can call a “Howard Zinn patriot”. Basically, you can hate the government, Capitalism, the whole structure of America, but love its people. I feel the same way quite often. The US government has done awful, disgusting things, but the American people are an incredible bunch with some of the most inspiring stories of any nation or culture.

The Wright controversy is media-engineered. Sure, Wright’s comments are quite a bit too left of center for the average American, but there’s nothing there that should be so horridly offensive to any person unless they’re a high-ranking government official. I’m sure most people don’t even know what the man said. I’m an avid news watcher and I’ve still never seen more than out of context soundbites from his sermons, and pundits sputtering with rage about how evil and radical and unpatriotic he is.

So to sum up:

1. Wright isn’t a crazy radical. His comments are pretty Left-y, but a lot of what you hear about him just seems to be media bullshit.

2. Stop worrying about Obama being some secret liberal infiltrator. He’s not a radical either and I believe in his sincerity more than any other politician.

3. While we’ve all been freaking out about Wright, John McCain has been completely getting away with having this guy back him up:

God help us all.

- Sean, Master Pastor.

May 08