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I know there are the atheists and the agnostics on this board who will inevitably post something to the effect of "There is no god, therefore no one to either bless or damn us." And, I will say that I have always upheld everyone's right to believe or not believe in a "higher power," "creator," "god," etc. without judging them. I also expect the same consideration from those who don't believe to allow me my right to believe in a "God." Therefore, if you don't share my belief in a God, that's OK with me, and this post isn't directed toward you other than to say "if there was a God why should that God bless America?"
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God bless America? Yeah right. America spends more money buying cut flowers than it gives in charitable donations to organizations that feed hungry children. 35,000 children in our world die every DAY from the preventable conditions of poverty, while there is an obesity problem with American's pets. 35,000 children die every day from the preventable conditions of poverty. That's almost 12 times the amount of people who were killed on 9/11/2001. It happens every DAY. And, America does little to change that statistic for the better. God bless America? Yeah right.
Forty five million people, most of them children do not have health insurance, nor adequate health care in America. Meanwhile, the pharmaceutical companies, the insurance companies, the medical industry rakes in profits hand over fist. Young women die while waiting for their insurance companies to agree to cover the medically necessary liver transplants. God bless America? Why should He/She/It?
America, nearly 150 years after the civil war still discriminates against people of color in hiring, in wages, in education spending, in health care, in law enforcement/punishment, etc. God bless America? Uh huh.
America attacked a sovereign nation that had done nothing to us and which did not present an immediate threat to us. America, in that illegal immoral war has killed thousands upon thousands of innocent civilians, most of them children, and has left 1 out of every 5 children in Iraq orphaned. People are living in horrible conditions. No sanitation, worms in their drinking water, no electricity, no adequate health care. Not to mention that we've lost 4000 of our own military personnel for absolutely NOTHING. God BLESS America? You've got to be kidding.
America has tortured prisoners, even killing some by torture by waterboarding them, raping them, electrocuting them, etc. etc. etc. God bless America? Give me a friggin' break.
America alone produces enough food to feed every man, woman, and child in the world an adequate balanced diet. Yet, while there is a huge problem with obesity and the effects of it---diabetes, cancer, cardiovascular disease---because we eat too much and exercise too little in this country, millions of people go to bed hungry in our world, and in our country. Silo upon Silo of grain is allowed to rot, and subsidies are paid to millionaires in our country to NOT grow food in order to keep prices lower for us, and to make it damn near impossible for farmers in other countries to sell their products, thus keeping them in poverty. God bless America? Really?
And, yet, we all have a caniption fit, and feign horror, and some try turning it into political advantage when anyone dares to say that, instead of God blessing America, that God might actually damn America. God knows America deserves to be damned. Nationalism with it's "my country right or wrong" attitude" is what got us into this mess in the first place.
The horror, though, that a person of color who has struggled against the evils of racism directed toward him by America starting with being called 3/5 of a person, and treated like farm animals, then moving on to Jim Crow laws and the martyrdom of the civil rights struggle, and now the more subtle but still dangerous forms we see today---the horror that he would stand in a pulpit and point out those inequities done to people of color, that continue to occur, and say, "God BLESS America? No, God DAMN America!"
If there is a God, why shouldn't God damn America? It's my prayer that God forgive and have mercy on America, for we desperately need forgiveness and mercy. But, I would imagine that if America keeps treating the people of the world with injustice, and keeps refusing to stand up against REAL injustice (anyone remember the slow reaction to Rwanda, and now the genocide in Darfur)---that if America keeps refusing to SHOW forgiveness and mercy, that there would be no way that God would forgive and bless America.
God bless America? Why? Because we're such a moral, caring, loving, unselfish, giving, just nation? Bullshit.
Rev. Wright speaks from the experience of a black man who has worked for justice for people living in the Southside of Chicago for years and years. And, yet, we hear him using hyperbole to point out those injustices---saying what a black woman who was principal at my daughter's school once told me--that I will never, as a white man, have to explain to my children why total strangers would call them a "nigger"---and to say that, as Americans we have no right to expect God to bless us. That we should be worried about God damning us---and, we want to condemn him. For what? Speaking the truth?
I thought Democrats were more progressive in our attitudes about race, gender, sexual orientation, etc. etc. etc. I guess we aren't as enlightened as we would like to think.
God bless America? Yeah, right.
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