Uncle Jeremiah

Jeremiah Wright's latest public performances have drawn him back precisely to where he serves no constructive purpose: the center of the presidential campaign. Having heard much of what he has had to say, I am left with the impression that this man is both very intelligent and unforgivably narcissistic.

The most controversial statements that Wright has made and has been challenged to defend are two in number. 1) The American government invented AIDS 2) The American government practices terrorism. These are comments that Obama obviously has to disown, even if Wright insists on inferring that the Senator is doing so for purely political reasons.

But what of these two issues? The problem is that the media has lumped together the patently absurd (the American government invented AIDS) with the objectively true (the American government practices terrorism). This slight of hand serves nicely to lump in any who would dare assert that American can do any wrong with those who are utterly delusional and hateful, as one would have to be to believe that our government invented AIDS.

Here's the problem with asserting that the government invented AIDS: there is no evidence. I'm old-fashioned, perhaps, but I like evidence. It makes beliefs more believable. When challenged this week to explain how he could believe such a thing, the highly-educated and articulate Reverend retreated to an intellectually stunted and lazy position of, "well, I think our government is capable of doing something like that."

It is true that our government, and every other government, has done indefensible things. It is true that our government has carried out medical experiments on American citizens. We are capable of those things, yes. We are also capable of eradicating polio and landing on the moon.

But if I were to say, "I believe that the Nazis invaded Switzerland and that the Boston Red Sox won the 1986 World Series", one would ask me, "how could you believe those things?" If I were to retort, "well, the actors involved were certainly capable of those things", one would (hopefully) call me an idiot.

And ask yourself this: if the United States government had invented AIDS to infest the black community, why would it tailor its biological weapon to be carried and transmitted primarily by homosexual white men? That would be a bit like trying to infiltrate the Muslim Brotherhood with Orthodox Jews, no?

The disappointing and self-destructive aspect of educated and respected men like Jeremiah Wright spouting this filth to his community is that it paints our government in the worst light imaginable, as an utterly unredemptive and evil outfit, aimed only at persecuting black folks. Is there any more potent recipe for despair and self-pity and anger?

As for the assertion that the United States practices terrorism and that 9/11 was a case of "the chickens coming home to roost", there is no intellectually honest way to refute this. Readers of my blog know that I am not a moral relativist. I have seen that insidious faux-ideology destroy people I love, and I harbor no illusions about its damage on our society as a whole.

That being said, however, I am also stubbornly empirical in my approach. During the Gulf War, for example, our military targeted and destroyed water purification plants and electrical plants. The ensuing water-borne disease and hollowed-out hospitals caused tens of thousands of civilian deaths. That's targeting civilians. That's terrorism.

Also during the Gulf War, thousands of Iraqi civilians were killed directly by American bombs. We say this was collateral damage, that we never intended for those folks to die. But, if we choose to drop thousands of tons of bombs repeatedly onto a city of millions, are we not choosing to kill civilians?

What if bin Laden had said after 9/11 that, for what it was worth, he had sincerely hoped that the civilians in the World Trade Center would manage to escape? Would we give that credence?

When American warplanes fly thousands of bombing missions over Baghdad, we are choosing to kill civilians. We may say we don't want to, but we do it anyway. 90% of the dead in Iraq since 2003 have been civilians. That's targeting civilians. That's terrorism.

During the anti-Soviet jihad of the 1980's, the CIA funneled massive quantities of money and arms to that mujaheddin. Midway through the war, our government went a step further; it agreed to train the mujaheddin in assassination techniques, car bombs, bicycle bombs, poisoning, and so forth.

That's terrorism, and those are the terrorists that came home to roost on 9/11. These are objective facts, and only something as subjective and yes, morally relativistic, as the American civil religion could castigate these truths as "hate speech."

The most disturbing thing about Wright is the sense I get that he is invested in Obama's failure. If Obama were to win the presidency, it would shatter Wright's lifelong and static view of American racism. Now, one may think that Wright would be happy to be disabused of his notions, but it's not always that simple.

Some folks are so invested in their worldview that they would rather be miserable than acknowledge that things are not as complicated and bad and unmoveable as they had insisted. I have experienced this truth in my personal life, and my heart and brain are considerably older for it.

People with a pessimistic view of life's and love's possibilities are often unwilling to accept that this pessimism may be misplaced. Rather than liberate themselves from their negative notions and live freer and fuller lives than they had imagined possible, they sabotage the evidence of their misplaced negativity and lash out in a self-destructive way, so as to be saved from sacrificing their precious preconceptions, even though abandoning those preconceptions would open the way to a better life for themselves.

Wouldn't Wright want Obama, his friend, to be America's first black president? One would think so, but do not underestimate the corrosive effects of the mentality I tried to articulate above. If Obama wins, that means Wright was wrong about America. Some people would rather sabotage progress and happiness than be proven wrong. I fear that Wright is such a man.

In Wright's worldview, there is no place for Obama unless Obama is an Uncle Tom. After all, how else could a black man ascend to such Olympian heights in such a racist country? Rather than be happy for his friend and his community and glad to have been proven wrong about how evil America is, Wright seems invested in sandbagging Obama in the interest of protecting his narrative. I had that done to me by a woman once, a child now I'm told.

But of Senator Obama and Reverend Wright, which black man is actually behaving like some sort of cheap caricature? Which man is using his bombast to serve the interest of "the man"? Which man is hamming it up for the cameras, tearing down his brothers in this process? If there's an Uncle Tom here, its the Reverend, not the Senator.