I have been unable to post any comments over at Protein Wisdom today. Odd. Here is the post I have been trying to get published over at the Pub, with some extensions...
It was suggested at the Pub that Obama is trying to sell a watered down version of liberation theology to whitefolks and that his nebulous mouthings are really a trojan horse for his core beliefs which are driven by Jeremiah Wright (hater & traitor). I countered that it is not fair to suggest that of Obama because nobody suggested that GWBush was a stealth agent of his church and reverend, whomever that may be and that his Compassionate Conservatism, a direct manifestation of his Christian ethics has done nothing to pervert the Church / State boundary.
It may surprise many of you to know that I am in favor of Bush's compassionate conservatism and that I think there is something monumentally important in the 'under God' phrase in the pledge of allegiance. God help us lest we become godless commies. And so I expect fully that there is some measure of transcendent morality present in those who run our secular state who understand implicitly that they have a moral responsibility beyond the ability to perfect government itself. Government should not be our Leviathan, but our own moral selves subjected to an even higher authority beyond what government can see. Otherwise if our morality is only secular and defined by government oversight then it becomes our duty to legislate morality, perhaps even panoptically. But I don't think that GWBush pushed the statist envelope - even the most cynical opponents said more about Halliburton than whatever GWB's church was. America essentially gave GWB and Jimmy Carter for that matter, the benefit of the doubt. JFK didn't have it and overcame. Romney didn't have it and did not overcome. Obama has now lost it and may or may not overcome.
I have no reason to believe that Obama is any more beholden to his minister than Joe Lieberman is to his rabbi whomever that may be, and I'm not going to go digging around to find out. (Andrew Sullivan has the right idea) That is because there is nothing in the man's policy or proposals that suggest to me that he must be. I think the presumption is prejudiced and it is one that I would not entertain. What's to stop us from asking for a dossier on everyone's spiritual advisor? Why stop there? Why not check up on their doctors and mental health? I'm not the legal expert but I think some measure of probable cause has been defied here.
Beyond that, on its face, what is the point of selling black liberation theology to white voters? Can anyone suggest with any credibility that those things Obama believes to be true about black victims does not inform his appeal to whites? It seems to me quite obvious that if you can remediate black dysfunction you learn more about human dysfuntion than you do about 'black' humanity. Where is the evidence that Obama would suggest a dual-track racialized approach to policy? It's one thing to say that his Christianity is victim-centered, it's another to say that it is racialized as well. Either is a good enough reason to doubt him, but I find it difficult to believe he is hiding a racial agenda directed by the more extreme soundbites we have heard - there being no better evidence than the fact that everyone recognizes how different Obama is from the class of race hustlers we already know.
Consider Baldilocks on Shelby Steele. I am thus inclined to believe that Obama is in fact purchasing some blackness in a rather radical chic way. But we all know how easy it is for stunned middle-class people to be aghast at Patty Hearst.
I welcome any and all critique on Liberation Theology. Having adopted some piece of that during a polytheist point in my own life, I understand something of its purchase on progressive thinking. Think of it as advanced multiculturalism, religious division. But I think anyone would be hard pressed to get James Cone on the phone and trip him into admitting what all the newbs seem to be swallowing, that he is a black supremacist. Again, this is all part an parcel of ministry to the sick, the friendless and the needy.
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You might all do well to find out the nature of African American opinion that is not knee-jerkily seduced by Obama's rhetoric or candidacy. I for one have been a McCain supporter since Fred Thompson quit, but it doesn't change my feeling that a large number of Right critics have protested too much. As I have said, no honest supporter or critic of Obama should view his candidacy as a referendum on American race relations, and yet here is the full bloom of dishonest 'disinterest' bending over backwards to demonstrate absolute faith that Wright is a prima facia racist and that black strains of liberation theology is the coming of the Fourth Reich. Is there anyone serious at all in this criticism, people who have, perhaps read Obama's book?
Calmer heads will realize that the materiality of Wright's bigotry is nothing more or less than offensive speech for oversensitized people who feel like they have to claim their race and gender victimhood validated. All those who last week were telling us that Multiculturalism was crap are now reminding us that they are white men. I said to hell with those afraid of Imus and I say to hell with those afraid of Wright.
It is an embarrassment to see people who have in the past three years, written perhaps 1000 words or less about the black church in America suddenly appear so prescient.
All that said, while I am not particularly interested in the worst soundbites of the past two decades played out in excruciating detail any more than I am in finding out what Spitzer's professional paramour actually looks like - I do recognize where the outrage is coming from. Jeremiah Wright is outrageous. As somebody who has spent several years asking whitefolks if they were willing to make racism illegal, I understand fairly well what people consider crime and what they consider piling on. Some consistency would be in order. This is class three racism. Next.
Just wow. One final thing. There is some part of my interest which is vested in the symbolism of Barry to shake some cobwebs out of both black and white heads about what's possible and likely in this nation specifically to bring to the fore what the cream of my generation of black men is like (I am two months older than Obama). To the extent that he has been forced to make his big race speech with this burden is a disappointment. That some fraction of America requires an explicit disclaimer means that the presumption is that this black man, of all people, is suspected of having a hidden racial agenda. It's stupefying to me and it must be absolutely humiliating to Obama. The honeymoon is ending real hard. It is patently obvious that a good number are determined to label him a racist and have done with him. Anybody remember Kanye West?
