Letters to the Editor
Uncle Fester
Published Letters: 1346 Editor's Choice: 12
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@MaddieP Karma and US
[Read the article: Clinton's nondenial on Obama pastor]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'm a big believer in Karma, though I distrust generally accepted views of it. It's easy to see Instant Karma, where you get angry and stub your toe, and a generalized personal karma where your emotional state attracts and repels certain experiences, if only for the fact that self-absorption in misery tends to prevent one from recognizing and following the cool things in life. Beyond that, who knows?
I would think that you could extend the notion of Karma to a Nation as a whole, though it's hard to calculate exactly what that means. I don't think I'm the guy to add up all the good, the bad, and the ugly karma. Not in that business at the moment. I hear the assignments are tough, customers are ungrateful for the most part, but the benefits can be great.
And there's also the notion of Free Will to contend with, the idea that we can change ourselves,and therefore twist our karma. If it's one of those days where you believe in free will, then Karma is being constantly created and destroyed by our actions. To me, that was one huge but overlooked point in Obama's speech. The nation is not static. We are changing as a people, although some of us get stuck in the past. Widely held views from the 50's are no longer viable. Most think that is a good thing.
This election can be viewed through a lens of change. Choose McCain, and we continue down the current karmic path. Choose the dem, and there will at least be an effort to go in a new direction.
Last but not least, I think it's pretty easy to see how certain of our foreign policy actions have not exactly turned out they way we wanted. For example, the CIA coup in Iran in 1953 that put the Shah in power. Didn't really work out for us in the long term. Training the Mujaheed through the 1970's and 1980's wasn't too good either. Our relationship with the Saudis and their Wahabist religion is mixed. We got a lot of oil cheap, but they got beaucoup petrodollars to spread non-mainstream Wahabist thought throughout the Muslim world.
Is there lingering bad slavery and conquest karma? I think its the choice of the nation as a whole to figure out if we remain stuck in the ditch or not. Is there lingering bad karma from dropping atomic bombs? I have no idea. It might have been better than an invasion of Japan, both for us and the Japanese if you look at the estimated casuality rates from that period which were huge. Like I said, not really my line of work.
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Ok then
[Read the article: Clinton's nondenial on Obama pastor]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]But that does not excuse Wright from anti-white bigotry.
His good deeds in those areas no more excuses his sermons than acknowledging the real pain of racism his has undoubtedly personally felt.
Racism is wrong, no matter the source.
Obama's fault lies in not confronting this.
So you are going to disregard the works of anyone who fails this purity test? I don't think anyone would be left standing.
Acceptance is not the same as absolution or even forgiveness.
Don't you think this is confrontation:
[...]we’ve heard my former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike.
[...] I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy.
[...] Reverend Wright’s comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems – two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.
[...] The profound mistake of Reverend Wright’s sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It’s that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country – a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old -- is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know -- what we have seen – is that America can change. That is true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope – the audacity to hope – for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.
Are you unhappy that he didn't renounce Rev Wright long ago according to your purity test? Obama's words going to at least 2000 give me the impression that he had already rejected the Path of Rev Wright.
"We have more in common with the Latino community, the white community, than we have differences, and you have to work with them, just from a practical political perspective," he says. "It may give us a psychic satisfaction to curse out people outside our community and blame them for our plight. But the truth is, if you want to be able to get things accomplished politically, you've got to work with them."
http://www.chicagoreader.com/obama/000317/
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Lot's of technical difficulties not discussed with revoting in MI
[Read the article: Michigan revote "dead"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It looks like a lot more going on than belly bumping between candidates in MI revote.
http://www.mlive.com/news/kzgazette/index.ssf?/base/news-28/1205851812198890.xml&coll=7
Also, the Obama camp discusses what they see as legal problems with the revote process:
http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/03/in_new_memo_obama_camp_effecti.php#more
It would be nice to have some sort of legal opinion on that (hint hint)