Rev. Wright is Right! - Democratic Underground

The Doctor.

(1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore

Sat Mar-15-08 06:37 PM
Original message

Rev. Wright is Right!

I asked some http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=5084233&mesg_id=5084233">legitimate questionsabout Reverend Wright. It would seem that there is very little Wright has said that the majority of DU doesn't agree with. What he's apparently done wrong was use 'inflammatory' language.

Now, as has been made quite plain in these last few weeks, DU is really not a bastion of decorous speech. Has Wright used 'inappropriate' language? Well, not by DU's standards. Certainly by campaign standards Wright was out of line. He should not have crossed the line into promoting a political candidate. In that, he's joined the ranks of over-the-top pastors who've stumped for Republicans. The difference? Rarely have any of those pro-Republican preachers faced consequences for their outrageous rhetoric.

Oh, and here’s another important difference; Wright’s rhetoric is reality based.

The three pertinent questions that I asked were;

-"Does Jeremiah Wright have cause to speak with such anger?

-"Is there any point of substance that he is dead wrong on?"

-"When he said "God Damn America", was it because of her people or because of her actions?"

The answers to these questions reveal something fundamental not only about Rev. Wright, but about the stark inability of Americans to engage in introspection. Americans are far more inclined to respond to style rather than substance. Substance can be very uncomfortable, and Americans hate being uncomfortable.

It’s comfortable, for instance, for an American to hear someone explain how our foreign policy is making us insecure and respond by saying, “You’re blaming America!”

To avoid facing simple yet uncomfortable truths, we will focus on sound-bytes, indulge in soothing rhetoric, and pick up on any offensive word or phrase that gives us an excuse to ignore a profound yet difficult message.

Through the magic of the media, we are managing to miss an enormous opportunity to break out of the superficial world of packaged opinions sold back to us as though they were our own. We are missing an opportunity to have a real conversation about American principles and history because we have been forcibly focused on the use of “Bad Words” and angry inflection. We are deliberately being led off the trail of substance which could otherwise have brought us to a state of introspection…

But instead of talking about the substance of Wright’s speech, we wind up talking about the style of it.

Substance, in this case, scares us as Americans. What’s truly disappointing though is that this is Democratic Underground where the issues Wright has spoken on are discussed daily. Sheesh!

We all know that Wright went over a political line, but he’s said nothing that is substantively wrong… at least not that I’ve heard yet, and I’ve been asking around.

Now we have a candidate who, as a close personal acquaintance of Wright’s, we can assume is aware of the serious issues that America is facing that Wright has discussed.

Perhaps now is a good time to talk about how those issues relate to the candidate. Perhaps it is a good time to look at how Barack Obama views the substance of Wright’s speech… and not the style.

I don’t think that’s too much to expect of a board like DU.