Slamming His Critics, Not Praising Obama

To help put the following rant in context, there's this bit of drivel from Michael Gerson, one of Bush Jr's former speechwriters. Gerson has the unwarranted gall to tell the supporters of Rev. Wright just how their religious beliefs require them to act.

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The Perils Of Patronizing

After accusing Obama of "condescension", Gerson decides that the easiest way to escape his black hole of logic is to dig deeper, sinking his own easily-debunked BS further into the muck

Lower-income whites, he argued, "feel their dreams slipping away," and so they turn to resentment against busing and affirmative action, "anger over welfare" and "fears of crime." And Obama not only understands these angry and manipulated souls, he defends them. They should not, after all, be labeled as "misguided" or "racist."

This is the same argument, expressed more bluntly at a San Francisco fundraiser, that Obama made about bitter, small-town Americans who cling to guns and religion. He does not even admit the possibility that these folks might have actual convictions on issues such as affirmative action, welfare, crime, gun ownership or the meaning of the universe. The only thing more insulting than being attacked is being explained.

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Obama's response, I believe, provided a justification for Wright's media campaign to describe black liberation theology. Wright may be a camera-seeking egotist. He is certainly a showman, enjoying his moment. But his main argument seems to be: "No, Barack, I actually hold these theological convictions. You may need to attack me for political reasons. But don't you dare dismiss me as a batty uncle."McCain is now kissing up to the same morally & ethically bankrupt charlatans who slimed his own daughter in the South Carolina primary in 2000, but it's more important for Gerson to irrationally bash Obama.

Because who knows "black liberation theology" more intimately than a white former speech writer for President Bush Jr?

What's that Gerson, you say you need a bigger shovel?

It is a tribute to the power of the Christian message that there is such a thing as African American Christian theology at all. Christianity was the religion held by slave masters -- often distorted into an ideology of oppression. But African Americans found a model of liberation in the Exodus. They discovered that Jesus more closely resembled the beaten and lynched slave than their pious oppressors. And African Americans -- by their courageous assertion of God's universal love and man's universal dignity -- redeemed a nation they had entered in chains.

But for Gerson, THOSE African Americans were somehow unique in their perspective. Apparently, he believes the slaves couldn't possibly be angry about their brutal experiences at the hands of theological thugs. Even better, that "courageous assertions of God's universal love and man's universal dignity" somehow escaped our current President and his war-mongering, bloodthirsty, lunatic neocon backers when it came to dealing with Iraq, which, it's always worth pointing out, had nothing to do with the terrorist attacks which drew the initial US military response against Afghanistan.

It's doubtful Gerson lets Iraqi suffering be the benchmark which "redeemed a nation", be that nation Iraq or the US.

Then again, Gerson does typify an arrogance that's often on display with this Administration, namely the appalling mindset of "it's better to fight them (the terrorists) over there than over here." Just how infuriating must that Administration sentiment be which dictates Iraqi lives, limbs and minds as far more expendable than US lives, limbs & minds.

Why should the Iraqis be grateful to the US for dragging them, unasked, into the US conflict against Usama bin Laden, someone who NEVER set foot in Iraq?

But black liberation theology takes this argument a large step further -- or perhaps backward. The Rev. Wright's intellectual mentor, professor James Cone of Union Theological Seminary, retreats from the universality of Christianity. "Black theology," says Cone, "refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him." And again: "Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy." And again: "In the New Testament, Jesus is not for all, but for the oppressed, the poor and unwanted of society, and against oppressors."

This emphasis on the structural evil of white America has natural political consequences -- encouraging a belief that American politics is defined by its crimes, a tendency to accept anti-government conspiracy theories about AIDS and drugs, a disturbing openness to anti-American dictators such as Castro and Gaddafi. It explains Wright's description of the Sept. 11 attacks as a "wake-up call" to "white America."

Again, Gerson willfully ignores not only the US invasion and disastrous occupation of Iraq with those two paragraphs, he also ignores any role he played in Iraq's slow-dismemberment. Actions which make the spectacular arrogance of occupying Iraq all the more anger-inducing.

How does Gerson's faith/logic justify staying quiet about US sponsored dictatorships while insisting that strongmen such as Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro must be condemned at every possible opportunity and replaced at the first available opportunity?

Consistency is a quality absent from the Gersons of the world.

And the white Bush Jr speech writer STILL lectures other races about faiths he clearly knows nothing about.

But the deepest flaws in black liberation theology are theological, not political. Jesus did advocate a special concern for the rights and welfare of the poor and helpless. But he specifically rejected a faith defined by social and political struggle, much to the disappointment of his more zealous followers. The early church, in its wrenching decision to include gentiles as equals, explicitly rejected a community defined by ethnicity. No Christian theology that asserts "Jesus is not for all" can be biblical.

Gerson flamboyantly misses the central point about Christ, namely, Jesus never oppressed the poor, the sick, the powerless. Jesus DID get angry at the power structure, or perhaps Gerson never read Matthew 23, in which Christ excoriated the Pharisees and scribes in the temple itself, an example that still has relevance to today's US religious power structure. Accordingly, Jesus is more likely on the side of the slaves and the Iraqis than Gerson and ilk.

Gerson rages against those unwilling to sacrifice their blood, their honor, their treasure for his benefit, so he won't wet himself in terror on a constant basis.

It's a shame the neocon Bush Jr/McCain supporters engineer death, ruin, corruption and misery to keep their terror-fueled, overactive-bladders dry, especially when a simple box of diapers will keep the incontinent Bush Jr/McCain rat-bastard supporters just as dry.

Which brings us to the rant.

(NOTE: The Washington Post allows readers to comment on it's stories, and reading one Bush Jr lackey's fear-based, irrational slam without substance too many got me riled up against the McCain supporters posting fact-hating opinions. My response took the following form, which I didn't post there after all, instead expanding on it with Gerson's latest literary disgrace above.)

How could anyone think someone, like McCain, willing to trash his own daughter in this way-for pure political expediency-is fit in any way to be President?

Of the three candidates, Obama offends me the least, he's far too conciliatory to those who have driven our country into the ground since this President first slithered into the Oval Office-despite clearly losing the popular vote-via unelected, activist judges. The only reason I stick up for Obama at all is because of the totally off the wall hypocrisy shown by the criticism-ESPECIALLY the "elitist" charge-leveled by the McCain/Bush Jr supporters.

But while I may not vote for the Democratic candidate in November, there's absolutely NO way McCain is becoming President. This country despises Bush Jr, and all McCain can offer is more of the same, the same incompetence, corruption, ideology and unearned arrogance on display with Bush Jr and his political/media backers.

With a 71% disapproval rating for Bush Jr, it's obvious the term "bitter" is far closer to the mark than the term "beloved" as it relates to the voters mood.

Anyone supporting Bush Jr's regressive, oppressive, brutal, spiritually bankrupt, hypocritical, cowardly policies has lost the moral right to question anyone else's fitness or character to be President.

If the media insist on still giving air-time to Bush Jr/McCain backers, people who clearly have lost all ability to use logic or common sense, then make sure they have to share that time with critics who are as virulently anti Bush Jr/McCain as that crowd is virulently anti-US Constitution.

It's far past time those who have helped implement and carry out Bush Jr policies be exposed to harsh public ridicule and scorn on a constant basis, and finally shutting up for a change on their part does not even rise to the "least they can do" level to begin apologizing for the damage they've helped Bush Jr inflict on our country, our Constitution, our Military and our standing in the world.

The Bush Jr/McCain lackeys are the real radicals, the real extremists in our society, and they do NOT represent the political, social or religious mainstream in our society.

Case Closed.