Obama’s Peak is Past (March 19, 2008)

Obama’s pastor of 20 years, the fiery Reverend Wright, would have us damn America for the many sins he so energetically and repeatedly points out. He further claimed in 2006 that racist America, run by rich white folk, could never countenance a black president. Now that he has co-opted brown Obama, born of a white mother and Kenyan father, as his great black hope to rearrange America’s soul, he may have, by his increasingly contaminating and close relationship with Obama, both cursed Obama’s presidential chances and given Obama’s supporters pause. Pause to examine the presidential hopeful’s views and his many influences, a primary part of which derives, as Obama himself acknowledges, from Reverend Wright whose anti-White, anti-America, anti-Israel and pro-Farrakhan diatribes are now filling the TV screens across America (mainly Fox News as CNN, NBC and CBS are unsure, it seems, how these revelations fit in with their clearly ambivalent agendas).

The irony is that all those who could not be proud of America, as Michelle Obama has stated, all those like Reverend Wright who present America as hateful, racist, deserving of 9/11, and all those others who present a depressing, negative, paranoid and nasty version of America, by their support of Obama, with his opposing view of positive hopeful America, will indeed bring him down, will damage ultimately his chances by their virulently negative views so clearly in opposition to Obama’s optimism and belief in a great America.

For Obama to bridge the increasingly obvious divide between his source, his influences and that which he is “selling” in his campaign to America, he is playing more and more the politics of victimhood. This is a great shame as he seemed to be the one candidate capable of optimism, of looking forward, of focusing on the positive in America and enhancing it further for the good of all America.

Obama, when confronted with queries surrounding his relationship to Reverend Wright and the Reverend’s inflammatory remarks and strong support of Louis Farrakhan, that notorious provider of anti-Americanism and of anti-Jewish hate speech, has quickly condemned any statements that are anti-American or anti-Semitic. He has however, with worrying consistency, failed to absolutely condemn both Reverend Wright and Farrakhan, as though his relationship to and admiration of both reverse racists can withstand the controversy and protect his clearly deep sense of loyalty and brotherhood; as though the appalling remarks and virulent attitudes of both are not somehow representative of their character, as though these defining core values and political mantras have not been consistently and openly espoused by these hate mongers for the last 20 years and more.

When you condemn a man’s words and not the man himself, you make light of the seriousness of these words, you dilute its significance. Obama claims the impossibility of disowning Reverend Wright, even as he could not his own white grandmother for certain of her racial epithets. If Obama was of Italian ancestry would his all-inclusive relativity prevent him from disowning Mussolini? If Obama as a kid was taken to and initially belonged to the same church that David Duke frequented, would he similarly castigate Duke’s words whilst breaking bread with him?

Most dictators have had their pet charitable projects, have been good to some portions of their citizenry. Both Hezbollah and Hamas, designated by the USA as terrorist organizations, have effective and surely laudable social programs, albeit with strong political agendas. Obama explains, in mitigation, the good work by Reverend Wright in the church, his active social justice, as though Hitler’s sincere commitment to uplift the poor of Germany can wash away his genocide, his Mein Kampf, his evil. Now Wright is obviously no Hitler, however, one can’t help being reminded of the old adage, that if one sleeps with dogs one will undoubtedly arise with fleas.

Obama clearly, as they often say, wants to have his cake and to eat every bountiful portion thereof. He would have America believe in his all-encompassing ideology, his unlimited inclusiveness, his soporific hope and optimism for all of America. Yet the person he is married to, the church he is a member of, the intimate advisors he has cultivated in Wright and others, the people he seems to have respect and loyalty to, all do not share the worldview he is selling the electorate – they all seem clearly to have an abiding animosity to America, a deeply negative animus about its people and its policies.

Which is it? Who is Obama? Is it the origins, the source, the influences of his life or the newly minted fresh and powerfully convincing and inspiring Obama? When will we get detail and substance on his views, philosophy and plans, when will we be privy to what is more reflective of and essential to Obama – his wife’s profoundly negative views, his relationships with dangerously toxic “uncles” (read Reverend Wright), confidants, mentors and advisors or indeed the perfection he so brilliantly is now espousing.