Category: [politics]
What man meant for evil God meant for good
Bill Moyers interviewed Reverend Jeremiah Wright, the former pastor at Barack Obama’s church. The very interesting interview is in two parts. The interview ranges from Jeremiah Wright’s background, to Black Liberation Theology, to Wright’s reaction to Obama’s speech in Philadelphia.
REVEREND WRIGHT: Where governments lie, God does not lie. Where governments change, God does not change. And I’m through now. But let me leave you with one more thing. Governments fail. The government in this text comprised of Caesar, Cornelius, Pontius Pilate – the Roman government failed. The British government used to rule from East to West. The British government had a Union Jack. She colonized Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria, Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad and Hong Kong. Her navies ruled the seven seas all the way down to the tip of Argentina in the Falklands, but the British government failed. The Russian government failed. The Japanese government failed. The German government failed. And the United States of America government, when it came to treating her citizens of Indian descent fairly, she failed. She put them on reservations. When it came to treating her citizens of Japanese descent fairly, she failed. She put them in internment prison camps. When it came to treating citizens of African descent fairly, America failed. She put them in chains. The government put them on slave quarters, put them on auction blocks, put them in cotton fields, put them in inferior schools, put them in substandard housing, put them in scientific experiments, put them in the lowest paying jobs, put them outside the equal protection of the law, kept them out of their racist bastions of higher education and locked them into position of hopelessness and helplessness. The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law, and then wants us to sing God bless America? No, no, no. Not God bless America; God damn America! That’s in the Bible, for killing innocent people. God damn America for treating her citizen as less than human. God damn America as long as she keeps trying to act like she is God and she is supreme!
That is a fuller snippet of the favorite single from Wright’s Greatest Hits collection. In the interview, he expounds on why his quote created such a firestorm. I think he overlooks that most of the airings of that clip included only a loop of: “No, no, no! Not God bless America. God damn America!” <cut to> “America’s chickens”…{and twirl}…”are coming home to roost!” [FIN]. Many would hate him even more if they heard the fuller quote.
REVEREND WRIGHT: I think I come at that as a historian of religion. That we are miseducated as a people. Or because we’re miseducated, you end up with the majority of the people not wanting to hear the truth. Because they would rather cling to what they are taught. James Washington, now a deceased church historian, says that after every revolution, the winners of that revolution write down what the revolution was about so that their children can learn it, whether it’s true or not. They don’t learn anything at all about the Arawak, they don’t learn anything at all about the Seminole, the Cheek-Trail of Tears, the Cherokee. They don’t learn anything. No, they don’t learn that. What they learn is 1776, Crispus Attucks was the one black guy in there. Fight against the British, the- terrible. “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal while we’re holding slaves.” No, keep that part out. They learn that. And they cling to that. And when you start trying to show them you only got a piece of the story, and lemme show you the rest of the story, you run into vitriolic hatred because you’re desecrating our myth. You’re desecrating what we hold sacred. And what you’re holding sacred is a miseducational system that has not taught you the truth.
A few times through the interview Rev. Wright lays the blame for many of the the failures of America to fulfill its promise on the educational system. With kids in schools that by many measures are very good, I agree there is something basic wrong in the educational system. Starting with the determined attempt to assume responsibility for the intellectual development of the children they are entrusted with.
BILL MOYERS: What does it say to you that millions Americans, according to polls, still think Barack Obama is a Muslim?
REVEREND WRIGHT: It says to me that corporate media and miseducation or misinformation or disinformation, I think we started calling it during the Nixon years, still reigns supreme. Thirty some percent of Americans still think there are weapons of mass destruction. That you tell a lie long enough that people start believing it….
Overall, the interview was informative and Wright is an interesting character. After watching the video, I expect Reverend Wright will be able to salvage his reputation and move on to a more interesting retirement than he otherwise might have had he not become a political pawn. Or maybe Americans prefer Bill Cosby’s liberation theology.
There is an open thread for comments on Moyer’s site. It is fairly civilized considering the topic.
politics &religion posted by: dan @ 26 Apr 2008 13:14 | Comments (0)
Anglo-American attitudes
The Economist has a recent article titled “Anglo-Saxon attitudes” about the past and future of UK-US and UK-EU relationships. In part, the article looks at the assumption, as Mark Twain would have it, that “[w]e have always been kin”. Most interesting to me are the results of the survey. I clipped some I thought were particularly notable below.
The poll results seem to illustrate the notion that European conservatives are generally more socially liberal than American Democrats.
foreign affairs &politics posted by: dan @ 02 Apr 2008 3:11 | Comments (0)
yes we can
will.i.am from the Black Eyed Peas wrote and produced the yes we can song after being inspired by Barack Obama’s speech the night he finished second in New Hampshire. Jesse Dylan, Bob Dylan’s oldest son, directed the video. will.i.am also wrote what amounts to liner notes explaining his rationale for the song:
[....]
no one on this planet is truly experienced to handle the obstacles we face today…
Terror, fear, lies, agendas, politics, money, all the above…
It’s all scary…Martin Luther King didn’t have experience to lead…
Kennedy didn’t have experience to lead…
Susan B. Anthony…
Nelson Mandella…
Rosa Parks…
Gandhi…
Anne Frank…
and everyone else who has had a hand in molding the freedoms we have and take for granted today…no one truly has experience to deal with the world today…
they just need “desire, strength, courage ability, and passion” to change…
and to stand for something even when people say it’s not possible…America would not be here “today” if we didn’t stand and fight for
change “yesterday”…
Everything we have as a “people” is because of the “people” who fought for
change…
and whoever is the President has to realize we have a lot of changing to doI’m not trying to convince people to see things how i do…
I produced this song to share my new found inspiration and how I’ve been moved…
I hope this song will make you feel…
love…
and think…
and be inspired just like the speech inspired me…that’s all…
art &politics posted by: dan @ 04 Feb 2008 12:09 | Comments (0)
Infidel
I recently finished Infidel, an autobiography by Ayaan Ali Hirsi. Hirsi Ali was born to a Somali Muslim family and raised in Somalia, Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia and Kenya. In 1992, she fled an arranged marriage and became a refugee in Holland.
The first half of Infidel is about Hirsi Ali’s youth in east Africa and Saudi Arabia. She focuses on her family and the clan system that dominates politics, culture, religion, and economics in the region. She writes very poignantly about her upbringing, but also explores the encroachment of modernity in rural Africa, the Somalian civil war and subsequent humanitarian catastrophe in the late 1980s, the Muslim Brotherhood, Islamic education, and social issues such as female genital mutilation and spousal abuse.
The second half of Infidel is about Hirsi Ali’s adaptation to modern secular Dutch life. She eventually earned her Masters degree in political science and became a member of the Dutch parliment. She studied and contemplated the major issues in Europe today: the integration of Muslim immigrants and the long-term viability of welfare states. She also became an apostate and the victim of violent threats by outraged Muslims. In reference to the 11 September 2001 attacks, Hirsi Ali wrote the following:
People theorized beautifully about poverty pushing people to terrorism; about colonialism and consumerism, pop culture and Western decadence eating away at people’s culture and therefore causing the carnage. But Africa is the poorest continent, I knew, and poverty doesn’t cause terrorism; truly poor people can’t look further than their next meal, and more intellectual people are usually angry at their own governments; they flock to the West. I read rants by antiracist bureaus claiming that a terrible wave of Islamophobia had been unleashed in Holland, that Holland’s inner racist attitude was now apparent. None of this psuedointellectualizing had anything to do with reality.
Other articles blamed the Americans’ “blind” support for Israel and opined that there would be more 9/11′s until the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was resolved. I didn’t completely believe that either. I myself, as a teenager, might have cheered the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, and the Palestinian dispute was completely abstract to me in Nairobi. If the hijackers had been nineteen Palestinian men, then I might have given this argument more weight, but they weren’t. None of them was poor. None of them left a letter saying there would be more attacks until Palestine was liberated. This was belief, I thought. Not frustration, poverty, colonialism, or Israel: it was about religious belief, a one-way ticket to Heaven.
I was living in Stockholm in 2001 and the issues described were and still are the major issues facing nearly every European country. Muslims have immigrated to Europe in great numbers, and generally isolate themselves in closed groups that retain the hallmarks of their clan-based societies. Hirsi Ali argues that Islam and Western values of personal liberty and equality are both unequal and incompatible. It is an argument I’m not sure I agree with entirely, but I admit that Hirsi Ali is more of an expert in the true nature of Islam. She scoffs at the media portrayal of Islam as a religion of peace and equality.
Overall, this book was exactly what I hoped it would be. The insight into clan-based societies and Islamic life were great. The insight into the adaptation of young Muslims to Western-style culture and governance will be a major issue for many years to come, especially in Europe. Sweden continues to accept hundreds of thousands of Muslim immigrants each year, to the point where the core of Swedish culture seems threatened by groups that refuse or are unable to assimilate. Even discussing the issue may lead one to seem unwelcoming or xenophobic, but it seems dangerous and willfully naive to hope for the best rather than investigating solutions that honor others’ cultures while also preserving our own.
books &foreign affairs &politics posted by: dan @ 25 Jan 2008 20:16 | Comments (0)
links
I’m running out the door on my way to Jackson Hole, Wyoming for five days. If you have any ideas for what to do there, send me an email or leave a comment. Before I leave, I wanted to post the following link that I think everyone should read.
Ramak Fazel’s Amerika profiled in the New York Times – Ramak Fazel is an Iranian born, American raised US citizen that attempted to visit the capitol of all 50 states. Midway through his travels, he noticed he was on a watch list. Who keeps the list, why he was on it, and how one gets off are all unclear.
As someone that has enjoyed the freedom to sleep in a van in many WalMart parking lots in quite a few state capitols and even more remote stretches of American highway, I find the entire story of what is happening to Fazel to be very important. The question that prompted Fazel’s trip seems more uncertain than ever: What does it mean to be American?
On a happier note, check out Jennifer Maestre very cool pencil sculptures.
art &politics posted by: dan @ 23 Jan 2008 7:20 | Comments (0)
A Great Beacon Light of Hope
While out for a drive this evening, a radio station played Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech from the March on Washington in 1963 in honor of his birthday today. The text is good but obviously King’s elocution and the crowd response add to the speech. Video is available on YouTube. I think it is worth listening to the whole 17 minute speech, but here are a couple great lines to peak your interest.
We have also come to his hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children.
Barack Obama has been referring to the “urgency of now” lately. It is one of a dozen great phrases in this speech. At 45 years old, this speech highlights how far this nation has come, but also how much there is left to to do to make justice a reality for all of God’s children.
I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.
Let us not wallow in the valley of despair. I say to you today my friends – so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”
After listening to this speech I’d like to be hopeful, but it seems unwise to refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt against such a preponderance of contrary evidence.
links &politics posted by: dan @ 16 Jan 2008 1:41 | Comments (0)