Right after the 2004 election, the "most trusted man in America", Walter Cronkite, emerged from retirement to pronounce American democracy dead. He said that we no longer have the critical reasoning ability to choose wisely between an overqualified candidate and a transparent nitwit. He then went back to sailing around the world.

I was raised in the midwest by rednecks, which is different from wolves in that they are smart. I escaped from there and only looked back enough times to know they never progressed beyond race resentment and proud, defiant willful ignorance. When I recently tried to Snope them about Barrack NOT being Muslim, they wouldn't even read it. I then asked them if his pastor's troubles proves that he isn't muslim and it was too hard of a question. These are good, well-meaning folks but it pains me to tell you that they are mean enough to enjoy sticking it to libruls without even considering that they are (always) voting against their own interests when they do. This has been thoroughly vetted in Europe (though taboo here) and they too have pronounced America dead of ignorance.

Could it have been different? Well like you perhaps I still mourn Dr. King and Bobby and am warmed yet chilled by the new Bobby. The power of redemption is a force unto itself but we may be beyond redeeming after such wanton slaughter is still not even recognized by brain-dead, soul dead and morbidly obese America. Europe sees the unheard-of phenom of morbid obesity as a metaphor - not even a pig is stupid enough to eat itself to death.

You cannot even counteract their vile slanders since they pirated every major talk radio station in the country and broadcast lies without challenge 24/7 on the top 3 signals in every city large and small. Witless Dems didn't even realize what had hit them, even after the country's top communications school (funded by the conservative Annenbergs) warned that talk radio was duping 50 million Americans and swung 5 elections. Given another chance in 06, Dems just gave ownership another pass, so ratings-clunker nut Dennis Miller (#77) is rolled out in 100 markets while ratings winner lib Ed Schultz (#6) is pulled down in a third of his markets by GOP-colluding station owners. The game is rigged, and the people are too dumb to save themselves. I wonder if it is too late to turn it all around. The rest of the world is unanimous that we are finished, yet enthralled with the very man who has the ability to turn it around. They wish they had a leader like Barrack.

Obama and His 'White Grandmother'

By JAMES TARANTO

March 18, 2008

Barack Obama took the stage this morning to give what was billed as a "major speech on race." It was, of course, an attempt to rescue his campaign from the revelation that his so-called spiritual mentor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, espouses a virulently anti-American and antiwhite worldview called "black liberation theology."

Here is the part of the speech that bothered us most:

I can no more disown [Wright] than I can my white grandmother--a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

Our first thought was that it was pretty low of Obama to exploit his (still living) grandmother in this way. Is it really necessary for the whole world to know about her private expressions of prejudice? Doesn't simple decency dictate that a public figure treat embarrassing facts about loved ones with discretion?

Obama was trying to accomplish something very specific by dragging his "white grandmother" into this political mess. He was trying to diminish Wright's hateful theology by implying that it too is a private matter. Said Obama:

For the men and women of Rev. Wright's generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years.

That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table. At times, that anger is exploited by politicians, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician's own failings.

And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Rev. Wright's sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning.

Note how Obama elides the difference between a comment at the "kitchen table" and a sermon delivered to a congregation of thousands and recorded on DVD.

Obama rightly faulted his spiritual mentor for using "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." But he tried to treat Wright's most outrageous comments as if they were aberrations rather than the most extreme expressions of an extreme ideology:

I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Rev. Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain.

Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely--just as I'm sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.

But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren't simply controversial. They weren't simply a religious leader's effort to speak out against perceived injustice.

Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country--a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America, a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.

What Obama is evading is that this "profoundly distorted view" is not just some passing emotion. It is what Wright himself, in the "talking points" page of his congregation's Web site, describes as "systematized black liberation theology." As we noted yesterday, Wright credits James Cone of New York's Union Theological Seminary with having undertaken this systematization. Here again is Cone's description of black liberation theology:

Black theology refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him. The task of black theology is to kill Gods who do not belong to the black community. . . . Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy. What we need is the divine love as expressed in Black Power, which is the power of black people to destroy their oppressors here and now by any means at their disposal. Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject his love.

So here we have, on the one hand, an old white woman who would be completely ordinary and anonymous but for her grandson's astonishing political success, and who harbors some regrettable prejudices; and, on the other, a leader in the black community who uses his pulpit to propagate an ideology of hate.

Obama said this morning, "I have asserted a firm conviction--a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people--that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice if we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union."

But if he cannot speak out unequivocally against the public, organized bigotry of his spiritual mentor, how can he possibly live up to this promise?