Reconciliation Is Not a Campaign Slogan

[McCamy Taylor]

I. Politics
Google “Obama” and “Reconciliation” and you get a third of a million hits. On the Friday, April 25, 2008 episode of Countdown one of the worst divide and conquer atrocities that Olbermann has engineered yet in his quest to bolster Obama by tearing down Clinton, we saw this video clip

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24352103/

SEN. BARACK OBAMA, (D) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I never believe in irreparable breaches. I‘m a big believer in reconciliation and redemption.

Followed by Rep. James Clyburn escalating his feud with former president Bill Clinton with some of the most shameful dirty tricks to come out of the Democratic Party since dead men voted for Kennedy/Johnson back in 1960.

On Sunday night, after seeing Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s speech at the NCAAP, I was filled with the urge to testify. Never mind that I was raised an agnostic and when I found religion, it was from a bald guy wearing black robes reciting the Heart Sutra sitting in the Lotus position. So I sat down at my key board and started writing about “Reconciliation”. I defined it. I quoted Rumi. I wrote about the war of words between Bill Clinton and Rep. Clyburn, who said what when and how the other responded and why neither of them would apologize---a sign of weakness--- and how they each keep getting more and more angry until they have forgotten that they are on the same side, the side of regular folks .

That is the worst kind of disagreement, one that makes friends so stupid in their thinking that they begin to think that their friends are their enemies, which means that their enemies (who are also their friends’ enemies) must be their friends. Everyone at Democratic Underground who believed the Matt Drudge doctored 60 Minutes interview with Clinton and everyone who bought the Fox News edited Rev. Wright sermons has fallen prey to this kind of divisive politics. That includes people in both the Obama Camp and the Clinton Camp, since both sides have sought to benefit from these media lies. That means that for all their talk of bringing people together and uniting the country against a common foe, both Clinton and Obama are engaged in a task that they believe is necessary in order to win. Label the opponent as “other”, “evil”, “corrupt”. Promise to deliver the people from that danger or corruption. Only with the Obama camp, we see a slight twist. People like Clyburn call Clinton an evil, corrupt woman who is unfairly portraying Obama as evil and corrupt---or rather, he says without proof in the New York Times that all African-Americans believe this .

Sigh. I am pretty sure that dualism is about as opposed to reconciliation as you can get.

This is not the only way to run for president and win. Jimmy Carter ran an all hope all the time campaign back in 1976, and he stayed on message. Nancy Reagan ran the phoniest hope campaign ever and it worked. There is no law that says that two Democrats have to engage in a knife fight. The corporate media has been the spark behind many of the fires. The RNC is a regular pyromaniac this primary. But though you can lead a candidate to the bonfire, you can not make him or her jump into the fire like a fool, dragging supporters in his or her wake like a bunch of baby ducklings.

What has made us so bitter? Why can’t we see the common ground? Engels said that the U.S. would never achieve socialism as long as the corporate masters could divide immigrants groups against each other. In Women Race and Class (yes, another plug for this book, the most important one you can read this primary) Angela Davis showed that the unified voting rights movement broke down when African-Americans got the franchise and women didn’t—even though Blacks did not really get the vote until 1964. What role did denying women the vote in the wake of the Civil War play in facilitating the laws that would prevent Blacks from exercising their rights to vote? American Industry was coming to rely upon cheap female labor. It did not want women to gain any political power, in the same way that it did not want minorities to have any political power. Neither could vote, but by denying them the vote in different ways, the elite was able to break up a movement that had succeeded in radically changing the country. Divide and Conquer scored a major victory when woman and minorities stopped working together. When the IWW or Wobblies were formed as the only union that accepted women and minorities, they were a major threat and so they were crushed. We all know what happened to Joe Hill.

At every turn , the corporations and the industry that runs this country seeks to drive wedges between the people who make up this country. We are divided by race, religion, gender, sexual preference, age, so that we can never work together as one united people because as even the Founders knew over two hundred years ago

We must all hang together or we shall surely hang separately.

Yesterday, I saw Keith Olberman and his side kick Richard Wolfe go about as low as they have gone. I watched them trash talk a liberation theologist, because he was not improving the political chances of their politician.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24369344/

After a discussion with Richard Wolfe and Howard Fineman in which Olbermann decides that Wright is 1) jealous of Obama’s attention 2) an aberration that does not represent the thinking of real American Black people 3) self promoting 4) throwing Obama under the bus we get this

OLBERMANN: And clearly, it‘s the conversation Reverend Wright wants to have because he‘s selling a book and it looks like he‘s selling a book.

If anyone ever fooled themselves into believing that Keith Olbermann was for the working class or for human liberation, you just found out the truth yesterday.

Central and South America’s political landscape has changed because of the work of the liberation theologists in those countries. The U.S. has lagged behind. Maybe we are too rich and complacent. Or maybe it is easier to get Catholics to buy in to the notion that Jesus wants us to embrace poverty.

Anyone who is not poor may become so through solidarity, and more, through identification with the poor. One feels full of compassion and gentleness for the inhuman situation that afflicts the poor and decides, through love, to love together with them, participating in the hopes and bitterness. This solidarity is born of a sacred anger and expresses a protest…
Leonardo Boff Saint Francis: A Model for Human Liberation

And if you identify the problem as poverty instead of as one of the markers of poverty such as minority race, female gender, physical disability, you recognize the universality of the condition, and apparent differences evaporate.

Sex and race according to Lucy Parson’s theory, were facts of existence manipulated by employers who sought to justify their greater exploitation of women and people of color. If Black people suffered the brutality of lynch law, it was because their poverty as a group made them the most vulnerable workers of all. “Are there any so stupid,” Parson asked in 1886, “as to believe these outrages have been…heaped upon the Negro because he is black?Not at all. It is because he is poor . It is because he is dependent. Because he is poorer as a class than his white wage-slave brothers of the North."
Angela Davis Women, Race and Class

Those who control the wages have done everything they can in this country to keep the wage earners from recognizing that they are all in this together.

II. Metaphysics

Why bother with religion? At Democratic Underground whenever I start a new thread about liberation theology, I know that at least half of the posts will be from atheists giving me some version of “Religion is the opiate of the masses.” Well, that is true. However, as a physician, I know that if I could only have five drugs with me on a desert island, morphine would be one of those drugs. It has uses that most people do not know about, including its effect in preventing heart attacks and relieving congestive heart failure.

Religion is like morphine. It does more than make people into good like corporate sheep. The mystical religious traditions, the ones that encourage meditation and contemplation of other ways of looking at reality and acceptance of other viewpoints besides the limited one that society may have given us are particularly effective in fostering compassion and a sense of brotherhood/sisterhood. Cold Darwinian calculation did not lead Angelina Grimke, a White woman from a wealthy ante-bellum Southern family to say of a “resolution linking the rights of women to the liberation of Black people.”

“I want to be identified with the Negro,” she insisted. “Until he gets his rights, we shall never have ours. I rejoice exceedingly that the resolution should combine us with the Negro. I feel that we have been with him; that the iron has entered into our souls. True, we have not felt the slave-holder’s lash! True we have not had our hands manacled, but our hearts have been crushed. “
Angela Davis Women, Race and Class

Children are born with this ability to feel the pain and afflictions of others so vividly that the loss someone else feels becomes their own loss. Most mystical religious traditions incorporate some type of return to a childlike state of innocence. Certainly, Christianity does. When another’s suffering is your suffering, then you must act to relieve it out of self defense. The artificial barriers that seem to exist between me and you are revealed as illusions, and all are connected. Fear evaporates, for how can one fear oneself? All becomes love.

To live humanly means to feel the warmth of someone who says to us, in spite of our physical and moral misery: “It is good that you exist, Brother. You are welcome. The sun is yours, the air is everybody’s, and love can unite our hearts.”
Leonardo Boff Saint Francis: A Model for Human Liberation

We are committed to changing the way we treat each other. The way we treat the latest immigrants because everybody in here who's not an Indian do be an immigrant. Some of you all came on a decks of ship and some of us came on the bows and hauls of the ship, but we all are immigrants. The way we treat non Christians and folks who don't believe what we believe, we're committed to changing the way we treat each other. The way Sunis treat Shiites, the way Orthodox Jews treat reformed Jews. The way church folk treat other church folk. The way speakers of English treat speakers of Arabic -- Maasalam al hal.
Rev. Wright at the NAACP

In the U.S. being poor is the most shameful thing you can be. It is worse than being Black, a woman and gay. A wealthy Black lesbian is treated better in this country than a homeless White veteran standing on the side of the road with a sign that says Will Work for Food. Never mind if he is poor and homeless and shell shocked because he was drafted to fight in an immortal illegal escalation of a war into Cambodia by Richard Nixon. He is poor . That is like being a leper. People do not even want to meet his eye. They prefer to think that he is standing out there because he wants to. He must be an alcoholic (by choice) or a criminal. It hurts too much to look at him and think that he might be someone’s father or brother or son. We have been brainwashed into thinking that God rewards his chosen ones with material wealth. Work hard and you can pull yourself up by your bootstraps.

That is religion that serves the corporate cause. Sometimes you can convince people to give up a dangerous religion like that and look at the world eyes wide open with nothing between them and the abyss except cold hard logic. But a lot of times, it is easier and more humane to show them that their corporate sponsored religion is a perversion of the real truth that they have been seeking all along. Because people do not come into this world looking for something to hate. They are not born saying "Gimme, gimme, gimme." They are born saying "Love me," and looking for a way to show their love. But that natural urge gets beaten out of them or lied out of them or neglected out of them or mocked out of them until all they have to cling to are objects and hate and then someone has to teach them how to do what once came naturally.

Only Love Can Explain Love
Jalalludin Rumi

Being a lover shows itself in pain of heart;
No evil is comparable to this pain in the heart.
The suffering of lovers is different from all others;
Love is the astrolabe of the mysteries of God.
Whether love comes from earth or from heaven,
In the end it draws us to the Beloved:
Whatever I say to explain or describe Love
When I arrive at Love itself, I'm ashamed of my words.
The commentary of words can make things clear-
But Love without words has more clarity.
My pen was rushing to write its thought down;
When it came to Love, it broke in two.
In speaking of Love, the intellect is impotent,
Like a donkey trapped in a bog;
Only Love itself can explain Love,
Only Love can explain the destiny of lovers.
The proof of the sun is the sun itself:
If you want proof, don't turn your face away.

Mathnawi

True religion is not about bowing down to a great big nobadaddy in the sky. True religion is about seeing through the apparent barriers that separate us one from the other and recognizing that we are all one family. Since we are all one big family, each of us dependent upon the other, true religion is not a lie, it is just a method towards enlightenment.

III. Conclusion

A lot of people felt hurt by what Rev. Wright said. They felt personally offended when he said that the U.S. military in Iraq was an imperial troop like the Roman occupying force in ancient Judea. They could not believe that anyone could distrust the U.S. government enough to wonder if it deliberately let AIDS develop or escalate---even though we know for a fact that the same government really did allow Black men to suffer the ravages of untreated syphilis as part of a “scientific” study and even though I have shown in my journal Mourning in America: The Regan Years Were Enough to Make You Cry that the Reagan administration really did deliberately withhold funding in the early days of the AIDS epidemic even though biostatisticians could tell where the epidemic was heading----straight towards minority and other vulnerable populations. Now, is it a crime to distrust a government which has given us reasons to distrust it? Is it an offense to say “I will keep my eye on the men and women in DC who have been bought and paid for by major corporations”? I am supposed to feel sorry for the wounded feelings of the politicians who accept corporate bucks but want to pretend that they are just plain folks? I am supposed to be offended that he said that politician Obama made a political move when he rejected Rev. Wright’s teaching?

Sorry, I am too busy being offended by the fact that in the richest country on earth people go to bed hungry every night, and our Democratic front runners are sparring with each other over flag lapel pins and Sniper fire.

You are a great man, Rev. Wright. Fox News and the corporate establishment which it represents made a dumb move when they decided to attack liberation theology in order to score some cheap political points.

The truth can never be told so as to be understood and not be believed.
William Blake from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell the poetic bible of reconciliation.

[blm]

1. And continuing to protect BushInc into the next decade IS a plan you can vote for?

Because that is EXACTLY what would happen IF we had another Clinton administration.

Thankfully that won't happen.

[Clintonista2]

12. Y'know it gets harder and harder to take you seriously

Aren't you the one who claims that Clinton covered for Bush I by carpet bombing Detroit with bags of cocaine? :eyes:

[blm]

27. No. I'm the one who noticed that when CIA drugrunning story came out in 1996, Clinton sided

with the secrecy and privilege of GHWBush and would not facilitate access to documents and instead downplayed the report. The Pulitzer Prize winning investigative reporter who uncovered the story was targeted for a takedown in the press who used 'official' sources to deny the story.

The other aspect to the story is that CIA was targeting black communities all over America dumping cheap IranContra cocaine into cities by the tons. The CIA drugrunning report in 1996 should have re-opened the books on IranContra so the unresolved matters including the drugrunning operations could be scrutinized.

But we all know Clinton had no interest in opening those books and putting Poppy Bush through renewed examination for his criminal operations, don't we?

Or are YOU claiming that Clinton DID cooperate and facilitated the access to documents so the CIA drugrunning crimes were held fully to account? And if that is your belief please show us in Bill's book where he discusses his handling of this.

You should maybe read this article about Webb -
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003785696

>>>>>
Webb was a prominent investigative reporter for the Mercury News when the paper published his series on CIA involvement in the crack epidemic in 1996. After the package ran, other news outlets began to criticize the work and attempt to poke holes in much of Webb's theory.

Eventually, his editors also found fault in the series, ran an apologetic editor's note, and demoted Webb to a suburban beat. He quit the paper in 1997, spending several years in a series of non-journalism jobs before taking up with an alternative weekly in Sacramento, Ca., in 2004.

But just months after starting at that paper, he was found dead from two gunshot wounds to the head in his home. It was ruled a suicide.

Since the series ran, and Webb's death, critics have continued to question his work and claim some of his reporting was off. But many others, including former colleagues and author Schou, contend he was unfairly treated and that his series was a good piece of journalism that exposed CIA misdeeds.
>>>>>

"We are once again making these deals with the Devil," Landesman said about today's government and CIA activities. "Gary had stumbled on something. Webb discovered this massive industry at the time that dove-tailed with the very thing our government wanted to snuff out with a war on drugs."

He said the fact that other news outlets took such harsh shots at Webb is also part of the story. "The New York Times, The Washington Post and the L.A Times came after Webb in a way that was deeply personal and politically agenda-ized and systematically destroyed him and his story," he said. "Webb had the audacity to report it like any other story, not understanding what the ramifications would be."
>>>>>>>>>


THINK about the side YOU are on, Lirwin. Does BushInc NEED any more Dems protecting them?

[papau]

38. For once we agree re Webb/CIA/drugs in 96 - but the FBI that refused to follow up was chasing Bill -

not covering up for him (but may have been covering up for Bush 41 - Louis J. Freeh, Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation from September 1993 to June 2001 because of a compromise forced by the GOP and conservative Democrats, got the Medal of Freedom from Bush43 - he should have got jail time).

[blm]

41. Bill took the heat FOR Bush1, as expected. You think they were in Rose Law Firm poring over boring

Whitewater files all those years? They went thru Rose Law Firm with a flea comb to scrub every file there for Jackson Stephens and GHWBush's many BCCI dealings. Stephens was Rose's biggest client.

Funny how none of his illegal dealings came to light from all the scrutiny of Rose's files, eh?

[anigbrowl]

2. Glad to K&R this thoughtful post.

[Two Americas]

3. beautiful and powerful and inspirational

One of the best posts I have ever read.

[chimpymustgo]

29. I agree. K & R.

[Ken Burch]

4. Look that's an eloquent post, and I agree with your views on religion.

What I don't get is how you go from understanding all those insights to backing HRC. She's completely disdainful of all liberation traditions, including liberation theology, and sees herself instinctually as part of the establishment.

Great OP, but how do you get from point A to point B?

And why the heck DIDN'T you support Dennis? He was the closest thing we had to a liberation theology candidate this year.

[McCamy Taylor]

5. I supported John Edwards. Now, I support the Unity Ticket.

Because at this point, if the two of them form a ticket, it will be an act of reconciliation for the Democratic Party, and it will blow Karl Rove's poor little mind.

[bpeale]

31. i supported John Edwards & i still support John Edwards

neither of the two remaining have earned my vote.

[papau]

39. I followed the same path to supporting the Unity Ticket - excellent article as always

[Ken Burch]

43. It would have to be Obama/Clinton, not Clinton/Obama

Since we both know that HRC as president would keep a vice-president Obama powerless and irrelevent.

[Two Americas]

36. two choices there

One could say that if such an intelligent person as the OP could support Clinton (if in fact she does), then maybe it is not completely insane to support Clinton and the over-the-top anti-Clinton rhetoric around here needs to be questioned.

Or you could say that since the person supports Clinton, therefore everything they say should be questioned or discounted.

The second approach is the approach that hate radio mouthpieces use all of the time - "of course you would say that, you are a liberal." See how neatly that avoids responding to what the person said? And what is the definition of "liberal" for them? Anyone who challenges the extreme right wing in any way. So a "liberal" is anyone who disagrees with them, and anything a liberal says is to be discounted - because they are a liberal!

We should be alert to that sort of illogical debate tactic, and avoid using it on each other.

[Ken Burch]

44. I was trying to avoid anything like a talk radio response.

My response was intended to be respectful to McCamy, since I truly did find the OP to be thoughtful and largely in agreement with my thoughts. My comments on candidate choice were driven by the fact that the candidate I mentioned has clearly shown herself to be disdainful and contemptuous towards all notions of politics as a moral or transformational exercise, seeing it strictly as bland, mundane retail transactions and incrementalism for incrementalism's sake.

If the HRC campaign had expressed any respect for the activist tradition, or for dissent and protest as a valid and spiritual form of involvement, I'd have much different feelings about her.

[Two Americas]

45. ok

Didn't mean to jump on you. I see what you are saying.

By the way, I too am opposed to "all notions of politics as a moral or transformational exercise." That stuff is best left to religion in my opinion, and religion is best left out of politics. I think you are accurately and honestly describing the Obama phenomenon, however, and who can argue with "moral or transformational exercises?" The problem is, the voters will soundly reject our "moral or transformational exercises" - it is the main reason that they vote Republican: to reject that. This is a shame - one might even say immoral and preventing transformation - because 70% or more of the public would support a very left wing economic platform - "bland, mundane retail transactions and incrementalism" along the lines of FDR and the New Deal. That would truly be transformational, for all of us, not just the insiders in the fan club, and would be the most moral thing we could do - actually pull together selflessly to help the suffering people, actually fight a political battle rather than obsessing over self-expression and personal choices. That takes a little more courage and hard work and self-sacrifice than merely making a personal expression of a personal moral stance, though.

[Ken Burch]

47. HRC isn't offering a left-wing economic platform. She's still a corporate Dem.

All she's done is to use false populist rhetoric and Agnew-style cultural divisiveness tactics to get her way.

I agree with the platform you outline. It wouldn't conflict with transformational politics at all. It would best be presented to the people as an appeal to be our best selves, to come together for the common good.

And the program you call for, a program I support, btw, would be moral.

But we can't build support for a program like that by nominating someone who expresses contempt for idealists and activists.

[Two Americas]

48. Clinton?

I am not promoting or supporting Clinton.

You are illustrating the problem and proving my point.

What do we stand for? First we were "not Republicans" and we hated all of them. Then we became "not anyone who votes Republican" so we hated all of them. Then we were "not Clinton" and hated her. Then we were "not Clinton supporters" and hated all of them. Now we are "not those people who refuse to get on the Obama bandwagon" and we hate all of them. All of those people in all of those categories are now talked about in the same damning and self-righteous terms.

"All she's done is to use false populist rhetoric and Agnew-style cultural divisiveness tactics to get her way."

I can't stand the politics of Senator Clinton and have been opposed to her politics and also to her husband's presidency for decades. But what you are saying here is nonsense. It is propaganda that, by being repeated and repeated and repeated, has come to be accepted as true. I don't care - tear Clinton down. I was an outspoken critic of her candidacy months ago when it was not so popular to be. But this is an "ends justify the means" propaganda effort, and does far more damage to the party than it does to Clinton. It is so bad that it gets a Clinton opponent such as me to defend her, out of a sense of decency and fair play and for the sake of the survival of the party.

"...someone who expresses contempt for idealists and activists..."

I will tell you what, the activists and so-called idealists have driven this party to the right and left us wide open and vulnerable to an extreme right wing ascendancy to almost absolute power while we squeak about "speaking truth to power" and wring our hands and pat ourselves on the back. I do not agree that we, the activists on the left, should be immune from criticism or that we have any right to our self-righteous posturing and arrogance. I think that 90% of the fault for the state of the country lies with us.

I also do not think that this election should be turned into a referendum on or a validation of the activist community - and that is what many are trying to make it. I think we suck, and I think it is long overdue to re-examine what we have been doing and to ruthlessly look at our own mistakes. We are missing in action, far to the right from the general public on true political issues of economics and power, self-absorbed and shallow, weak and cowardly. We are the ones who do not have the back of politicians like Obama - he is far better than we deserve. We are the ones who refuse to hold representatives accountable, instead we run around like little groupies representing them. We are the ones who beat down our own friends and our best people for being "too radical" or "impractical." We are the ones who urge caution and moderation. We are the ones who sabotage the Democratic party and make it impossible to rebuild the New Deal coalition.

I will not join you in thinking that our shit doesn't stink, and I think the politicians SHOULD ignore us until and unless we can get any 5 of us on the same page at the same time and show some courage and clarity of vision. We have influence that is way out of proportion ot our numbers, and we have badly misused that influence and millions of people are paying the price for our mistakes and cowardice.

Of course "we are better than the Republicans." Fire fighters are "better than arsonists" too, but that does not excuse them from failing to out the damned fires out, does it?

We are, as Malcolm said so well - house Negroes - and THAT is the problem, not the people, not the Republicans, and certainly not "Hillary."

Message To The Grass Roots
Malcolm X

To understand this, you have to go back to what young brother here referred to as the house Negro and the field Negro -- back during slavery. There was two kinds of slaves. There was the house Negro and the field Negro. The house Negroes - they lived in the house with master, they dressed pretty good, they ate good 'cause they ate his food -- what he left. They lived in the attic or the basement, but still they lived near the master; and they loved their master more than the master loved himself. They would give their life to save the master's house quicker than the master would. The house Negro, if the master said, "We got a good house here," the house Negro would say, "Yeah, we got a good house here." Whenever the master said "we," he said "we." That's how you can tell a house Negro.

If the master's house caught on fire, the house Negro would fight harder to put the blaze out than the master would. If the master got sick, the house Negro would say, "What's the matter, boss, we sick?" We sick! He identified himself with his master more than his master identified with himself. And if you came to the house Negro and said, "Let's run away, let's escape, let's separate," the house Negro would look at you and say, "Man, you crazy. What you mean, separate? Where is there a better house than this? Where can I wear better clothes than this? Where can I eat better food than this?" That was that house Negro. In those days he was called a "house nigger." And that's what we call him today, because we've still got some house niggers running around here.

This modern house Negro loves his master. He wants to live near him. He'll pay three times as much as the house is worth just to live near his master, and then brag about "I'm the only Negro out here." "I'm the only one on my job." "I'm the only one in this school." You're nothing but a house Negro. And if someone comes to you right now and says, "Let's separate," you say the same thing that the house Negro said on the plantation. "What you mean, separate? From America? This good white man? Where you going to get a better job than you get here?" I mean, this is what you say. "I ain't left nothing in Africa," that's what you say. Why, you left your mind in Africa.

On that same plantation, there was the field Negro. The field Negro -- those were the masses. There were always more Negroes in the field than there was Negroes in the house. The Negro in the field caught hell. He ate leftovers. In the house they ate high up on the hog. The Negro in the field didn't get nothing but what was left of the insides of the hog. They call 'em "chitt'lin'" nowadays. In those days they called them what they were: guts. That's what you were -- a gut-eater. And some of you all still gut-eaters.

The field Negro was beaten from morning to night. He lived in a shack, in a hut; He wore old, castoff clothes. He hated his master. I say he hated his master. He was intelligent. That house Negro loved his master. But that field Negro -- remember, they were in the majority, and they hated the master. When the house caught on fire, he didn't try and put it out; that field Negro prayed for a wind, for a breeze. When the master got sick, the field Negro prayed that he'd die. If someone come to the field Negro and said, "Let's separate, let's run," he didn't say "Where we going?" He'd say, "Any place is better than here." You've got field Negroes in America today. I'm a field Negro. The masses are the field Negroes. When they see this man's house on fire, you don't hear these little Negroes talking about "our government is in trouble." They say, "The government is in trouble." Imagine a Negro: "Our government"! I even heard one say "our astronauts." They won't even let him near the plant -- and "our astronauts"! "Our Navy" -- that's a Negro that's out of his mind. That's a Negro that's out of his mind.

Just as the slavemaster of that day used Tom, the house Negro, to keep the field Negroes in check, the same old slavemaster today has Negroes who are nothing but modern Uncle Toms, 20th century Uncle Toms, to keep you and me in check, keep us under control, keep us passive and peaceful and nonviolent. That's Tom making you nonviolent. It's like when you go to the dentist, and the man's going to take your tooth. You're going to fight him when he starts pulling. So he squirts some stuff in your jaw called novocaine, to make you think they're not doing anything to you. So you sit there and 'cause you've got all of that novocaine in your jaw, you suffer peacefully. Blood running all down your jaw, and you don't know what's happening. 'Cause someone has taught you to suffer -- peacefully.

The white man do the same thing to you in the street, when he want to put knots on your head and take advantage of you and don't have to be afraid of your fighting back. To keep you from fighting back, he gets these old religious Uncle Toms to teach you and me, just like novocaine, suffer peacefully. Don't stop suffering -- just suffer peacefully. As Reverend Cleage pointed out, "Let your blood flow In the streets." This is a shame. And you know he's a Christian preacher. If it's a shame to him, you know what it is to me.

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/malcolmxgrassroots.htm

[Zhade]

46. "how do you get from point A to point B?" Self-delusion?

I mean, the OP still supports a documented, undeniable liar.

[Missouri Blue]

6. Being one of those Atheists,

I would like to point out that the purported purpose of Christianity is to bring souls to heaven. Manipulating Christianity to achieve political goals has its limits, and can become a dangerous game of creating factions and splinters. Yes, I know religion inspired abolitionists and Martin Luther King, however, it has also led us exactly to where we are today.

Devout Christians are ultimately going to have separate goals than the liberation that you hope for.

[McCamy Taylor]

9. The Catholic Church is not Christ. Nor is the Baptist Church. There are many sects.

Look up the Cathars and see what they thought about the soul and the resurrection (there was none, they believed that people got reincarnated until they got it right and then they were freed from the misery of attachment to corporeal existence).

The Catholic Church formed a crusade to stamp out this "heresy" and formed the Inquisition to eradicate it. These were Christians who lived in an early kind of communism, with poverty, no marriage, no wars, no capital punishment back in the Middle Ages.

They were massacred. And yet they were Christians, too.

There have been many forms of Christianity over the years. The Church of Rome and the Church of Constantine can be seen as attempts by imperialists to use Christianity as a political/imperialist tool for conquest.

[Missouri Blue]

40. And the Cathars lost because they were total pacifists.

Meaning they left their admirers to fight for them. It didn't work very well. At one battle, the supporters outnumbered the crusaders seven-to-one. The crusaders still won, as the Cathar friends bolted, deciding that pitched battle to save their friends wasn't worth it.

Thus the "communism" didn't work, though it was destined to fail from strict celibacy at any rate.

As for Christianity being bent to imperialist aims, I have to question whether a monotheistic religion explaining life with a despotic Deicrat ruling the universe could really be used any other way.

[JeffR]

7. Wonderful post.

:toast:

[cali]

17. What's thoughtful about this?

"Followed by Rep. James Clyburn escalating his feud with former president Bill Clinton with some of the most shameful dirty tricks to come out of the Democratic Party since dead men voted for Kennedy/Johnson back in 1960."

The OP doesn't give any examples of Clyburn's infamous dirty tricks that are so notable they top anything seen in close to 50 years, and she makes other claims equally suspect.

[McCamy Taylor]

19. Cali, I have all the documentation in another thread which I will now post

because you asked for it. You will not like the thread or the documentation, but you asked for it, and I will be sure to mention in the OP that Cali requested it.

I had decided that the information was too divisive, so I was only going to post it if some person from either side decided to get cute and say "But you do not give any proof."

I never make claims without having lots of documentation, as you well know. Next time, maybe you will let sleeping dogs lie.

[cali]

20. So it's cute to ask for evidence to back up a claim?

And btw, I don't ask for proof. I do ask for reasonable documentation that would lead you to such a startling conclusion and one that is in direct contrast to posts you've made of late where you claim that there haven't been any dirty tricks played in this dem primary.

And I have found that your idea of documentation is lacking. Your claims on such come up short. Opinion is NOT fact.

And save your silly threats for someone who's more easily daunted.

[Jakes Progress]

33. So you said "prove it"

and when the OP says okay. You say don't bother, I won't read it and I wouldn't believe it anyway. Pretty good avoidance mechanism you got going there.

[guyanakoolaid]

8. Why blame the "corporate establishment" when it's Hillary pushing the Wright crap on superdelegates?

[McCamy Taylor]

10. Obama and Hillary are both corporate candidates. As Democrats, their voting base

is made up of people to whom they must answer in four years, and therefore, they will provide solutions for health care, the economic problems affecting the working class, education and a host of other problems that a Republican corporate candidate will not since his voting base prefers to see the oppression of the poor continue since it validates their Calvinist belief that the affluent are God's chosen and the poor are that way because they are already among the damned (some of them will phrase it differently, they will use the pseudo scientific language of a survival of the fittest argument but it will all amount to the same thing).

The nation's Chambers of Commerce made an example of John Edwards by publicly putting a $60 million bounty on his head for talking about poverty and no one in the press or the Democratic Party and neither Obama nor Clinton said a damn thing about it.

All hail the holy dollar.

[guyanakoolaid]

13. Speaking of which...

You have to at least admit Obama will do more for government transparency than Clinton. In debates he has called for making every dollar in and out accounted for, and visible to Americans on the internet. And he has called for C-Span televised meetings on important matters like energy policy.

I haven't heard Hillary push for any of those things.

[McCamy Taylor]

15. He also says he takes no lobby money but takes STATE lobby money.

This little "misrepresentation" of his allowed him to collect much more money than Edwards and Dennis, both of whom truly did avoid lobby money and who suffered for it with a limited ability to raise money and campaign. That meant that Obama could outperform them early on by advertising to a wider audience about how pure and uncorrupted he was compared to his rivals.

I do not call that transparency. I call that fast talking. I learned a long time ago not to trust anything that a politician says. I look to see what they do.

[guyanakoolaid]

16. But I've still yet to hear a substantive argument about how a "state" lobbyist can effect DC

The point is not taking money from people who are going to try to sway him.

[McCamy Taylor]

18. I have posted this before a bunch of times in other journals. Check them out.

[Two Americas]

37. do you support Obama?

Or is this just a game for you? If you really do, your tactics are doing more harm than good to his candidacy. I have watched you dismiss, ridicule and antagonize some of the best people here. Why? How does that promote Obama's candidacy?

[rodeodance]

11. you obviously need to work on your reading comprehension skills.

[guyanakoolaid]

14. You need to work on making your criticisms make sense.

seriously, what are you even trying to say?

[symbolman]

21. Nothing really

all this person does is post vile loops of words that in the end make them sound a lot like Tarzan, Tonto, or Frankenstein, "Obama BAD.. Bread GOOD!!"

I have no idea why they're allowed to constantly insult just about everyone when a lot of the time no one is even talking about a candidate..

I think its broken, another Issues person that identifies with Obliteration Tough Lady who acts like Obama is the ex husband that LEFT Her for a younger woman.. Its why the unloved older women back her I think..

Sadly they are invisible in our culture that celebrates Youth, so now they have a chance to "get even"..

So their bile flows freely as you can see, while they only make sense to themselves, and each other in their Imaginary Reality Construct..

:)

[Jakes Progress]

34. Wouldn't help.

She didn't read the OP. She just slammed it.

[DeanDem10]

22. If you have watched Olbermann from the beginning,

If you have watched Olbermann from the beginning of this campaign, you would know that he once gushed superlatives over both Clintons. But you do not ask what did she do to lose him (or us). I think that despite your wonderful articles, some masterpieces, that you still cannot see that not everything that has happened is a media construct. (Much is, however.) If we hear Hillary at the debate, we hear the tone and the sniping and innuendo in her interviews, and speeches, that doesn't mean the media did it. If she downright ridicules and diminishes beyond belief my candidate, do you think my defenses are not engaged? If the media choses to run a 30-60 second clip, then they engineer mightily. But when Hillary does what she does, why do you not call her on it? I ask again, why do you not ask what Hillary has done herself to lose us?

[DeanDem10]

23. forgot to add

that I said the above as one of the sharpest media critics you'll see anywhere. Disclosure: Up until last August I had no favorite in this race. Then I leaned Obama (primarily, but far from exclusively due to the war) but liked what Edwards was saying. I did find the "two Americas" to be pretty divisive. And the fact is that all Americans are better off (not necessarily, in the case of the well-heeled, with more dollars in theie pockets, but better off in in other ways)when the poor are served better by policy. Someone has to articulate the myriad ways all of AMerica is better off when that is the case. Edwards didn't do that. But I admire what he did at least try to do.

I vacillated to leaning Edwards in Sept. through Jan I did take Obama to task in a blog article in January. But I very shortly thereafter, about a week before Edwards left the race, endorsed Obama. But watching the contest evolve and not really having a big personal stake (leaning, but not working for any candidate) for many months has allowed me to focus on my passion -- outing the abuses of the corporate media, which I do regularly. And so I appreciate your emphasis on numerous occasions on what the media is doing to our candidates.

But I have to tell you that I think a huge injustice has been done to Obama. As I spent more time listening to his speeches and reading website materials, policy statements, and press releases, as well as documents the put out in pdf format (before I endorsed him, I also did the same for Hillary's), I found that Obama much more than Hillary had been misrepresented.

I feel that is still the case. And part of the problem is that there is an almost seamless enmeshing of Hillary's (or Bill's) talking points (e.g., "Obama can't close the deal," "it's just a speech") with words employed by "news" reports). Why is that? What is the media motivation for doing that? Many think Obama got a free pass early on. I did not. But I think the media was licking its chops as Obama sored. Tehy were prepared (ala the 2004 campaign) to take him down as surely as they took down Howard Dean. There are sharp and numerous similarities to the tactics. Back then I saw first had what the other candidates did to contribute to the Dean slide. I saw him being conflated with OBL in ads of other presidential wannabes, just as Obama was by Hillary. And it makes me sick.

Yes, sure, no candidate of the Dems will be sharply different from the corporate Dems. Unlike you, I'd even argue Edwards was much like the others. He too was rich. He too came upon the scene as a corporatized because he ran as NC Dems do, as DLC democrats, because in his previous races he did not reject the funding that he did this time. Edwards also had some repentance to do. At least he expressed remorse for his support of the war. Hillary cannot do that much. But my point is that we will never have more than a barely left of center candidate in the Democratic Party. This is so because of almost a half century now of denigration, re-labeling, re-framing liberals as something terrible.

Try as we might, we cannot get enough Democrats to try to reframe things. And by that I am not saying merely word-smith. We have to quit hiding behind "progressive." WE must embrace those rich liberal traditions and accomplishments (few enough as they were, they were significant) and not let the GOP continue persuading us we should not be proud of them. They current DLCers are so overwhelmed by a near-phobic and desperate attempt to dispel the ghost of George McCovern (McGovern Syndrome)that any prayer we ever had to move the party from the tentacles of the DLC are lost. As one of the leaders in the DLC, Hillary Clinton represents a major step backwards.

You remind me that they are all corporate Dems. True enough. But it is really untrue that the two remaining candidates aren't materially and substantively different. And there is a huge difference in how they conduct themselves in this campaign. Media excesses, yes. But they have had special assists from the Clinton camp.

[susankh4]

24. Insightful and helpful!

I too, support a unity ticket. I have had my Clinton/Obama buttons for months now! Even when Edwards was still in the race.... and Biden etc.

I am not as forgiving of Rev. Wright as you are, McCamy. I was raised within a Catholic Liberation Theology tradition. My uncle was a Jesuit in Peru .... in the early days of the movement. I, myself, lived for some time in a lay commune here in Cincinnati. We did inner city outreach that drew heavily upon Gutierrez's teachings.

Even so, I feel some of what Wright said to be over the top. His "Riding Dirty" sermon sickened me, to be honest. I think Liberation theologians need to separate themselves from that sort of cheap shot. Personally, I think the UCC needs to do some damage control around this man. Liberation Theology deserves to be taken seriously..... and I fear that the kinds of things being attributed to it now will make it even more of a black sheep than it is.

Still.. I honor you for trying to understand Wright and the tradition of Liberation Theology. Not many on this board will be so generous.

Peace and Liberation.... always,

Susankh4

[DeanDem10]

25. susankh4

susankh4: I agree with what you said about McCamy's article and the issue of liberation theology. I do not completely agree with McCamy that the attacks on Wright are attacks on liberation theology, though.

However, on the matter of "unity," I might add: The unity buttons nearly always favor the one who is not leading thus far. Why is that? Can you not see how your calls for unity appear to Obama supporters? He has been the frontrunner for some time. And yet you call for a ticket with him in the second position. That's offensive. You implore us to bail on our candidate? How can we not suspect your motives in calling for a unity ticket when he leads? There is little mathematical way Hillary can win. You claim to want unity, but only on your terms. If we called for Hillary to get out of the race, you'd be every bit as angry with us. But you are pretending to value unity above all else. Instead you are a Hillary supporter. At least we are making clear whom we support. We think Obama is a better candidate. You are hiding behind "unity."

[susankh4]

26. I don't care which person runs in which position...

and I bought these buttons at the start of the season... before we knew anything about who would win what caucuses or primaries.

I strongly believe that neither of our candidates can be elected without the other.

As for Wright... he is giving Liberation Theology a bad rap. And I am sad to see that. It is a serious theology that deserves intelligent examination. Linking it with "God Damn America" or "Riding Dirty" is a disservice to the tradition.

[Two Americas]

35. depends

All of us who supported another candidate - the overwhelming majority of people at DU - are asked in no uncertain terms, and often with ridicule and bullying, to put aside what is imagined to be our "personal favorites" for the sake of the party.

How is this different? You can say that Obama is winning, but that is a different argument. Success in the primaries does not necessarily equate with success in the general, or we would never lose a general. You can say that the majority of Democrats now favor Obama, and that is true, but it is a very slim margin and is only true in the context of being matched up with Clinton - a very polarizing figure.

I am not certain what is best for the party or the country now. Are you? Should we not consider all options?

[The Night Owl]

28. Jeremiah Wright does not "wonder" if the US government created AIDS...

He is sure of it. Pure crackpottery.

[bpeale]

30. you need to stop watching Olbermann

your life will become much more serene. i do not watch any news on television. i tend to get my news from the local paper, the Guardian online, Al Jazeera online & Hotline's Blogometer. you should try that sometime. you will see much more objective reporting.

[McCamy Taylor]

32. You can get the news even from Fox if you know how to read the bias.

It is also good to watch some MSM to see how the corporate narrative is going. The journals in which I wrote about MSNBC's election night coverage of Monster Super Tuesday and then Wisconsin were very enlightening to me. I paid extra close attention and noted a lot of tricks that I might have ignored had I not been keeping track. Like the way that they were assisting the RW in the Brokered Democratic Convention stratgy. Nora O'Donnell was actually telling Republican voters in Wisconsin that they could go to the polls register the same day get a ballot that would let them vote for either Dems or Republicans and that they could then select the Democratic candidate who was down in the delegate count (it was Hillary at the time) so that the Democrats would not have a nominee at Denver, increasing the chances that they would repeat Chicago 1968. All of this while the Wisconsin polls were still open and would be open for a couple of hours more. It was one of the most shameful things I had ever seen. The details are in my journals. And another time Tom Brokaw warned Republicans to get in line behind John McCain so that they would not have their own Chicago 1968---which was also telling them that if they interfered with the Dems and voted for whomever was down that the Dems could have a Chicago 1968. This was months before Rush talked about riots in Denver. This stuff was happening at least a couple of times a week every week at MSNBC for months all through the early parts of the primary. This is why Republicans would cross over to vote for first Obama and now for Hillary.

If you watch the TV news, you can pick up a lot of things like this.

[DeanDem10]

42. Agree with McCamy that monitoring media is important

Kissing off the media isn't the answer. We have to know what they are doing and how they are doing it. Furthermore, if we don't get some re-regulation of corporate media, we have little prayer of reversing the wrong-wing debacle that is the Bush tenure.

I have seen much of what Mccamy describes. Night after night the talking heads have been coaching Hillary to go negative. They were nearly salivating. But they went further, giving detailed tactics in how to take Obama out.

This week, the media is feeding the Wright controversy. Next week, they'll have another agenda. All things considered, though, it's manipulation.

The biggest challenge is persuading liberals and progressives that NPR and PBS are slanted toward the GOP. They are especially so since the Gingrich takeover of Congress in 1994. The Jim Lehrer News Hour is produced by the same right (wrong) wing production company which makes The McLaughlan Report. Ultra conservative media mogul John C. Malone owns the production company. Though I monitor other TV media, I no longer watch the sham Lehrer News Hour. As needed I rely on transcripts.

When the escalation (not "surge") was being debated (such as the "debate" was) on News Hour, pro-surge "experts" outnumbered opponents 5 to 1. And it is said to be "liberal." Both PBS and NPR use numerous right-wing think tankers as so-called experts. Some of these are thinly disguised partisans earning big pay checks from sources like Exxon, Sun Oil, Coors, Scaife, Bradley, etc. Did you know that Pew is funded by the heirs to Sun Oil?