Letters to the Editor
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I have one word for you - humility
As you yourself admitted, much of what Mr. Wright points at is true. The United States has perpetrated much evil in this world - ask the Indians, the blacks, the Japanese-Americans, the Vietnamese, the Iranians, the Iraqis etc, etc. It should come as no surprise that we have brought much good to the world also. In former times we were a beacon of hope and freedom to the world, we almost single-handedly broke the cycle of hate that brought the world WWI and WWII, we brought the world science, technology, and innovation that has saved millions of lives, and brought surcease and joy to millions of others, and so much more. It is a perfect example of my dictum that anything capable of great good is also capable, in equal measure, of great evil. Human intervention and human action determines what you get.
I say these things in the (probably forlorn) hope that Americans in general and in particular acquire the maturity to recognize their failures and mistakes and learn from them. In the hope that we'll stop being so cock-sure of ourselves and recognize that we aren't always right and that if we aren't careful we can screw things up worse than they are now, or we can hurt somebody badly, or both. Unfortunately, things don't look good for my hopes; one can but try.
But puleeze! Don't give me this redemption crap. The United States has done zero, zip, nada, nist to redeem itself for its past evils. Indeed, many of the evils are beyond redemption as those we hurt are long dead or close to it. As an example, the compensation given to the remaining Japanese Americans whose lives were ruined by Roosevelt's internment policy can only be described as pasties and a g-string for our consciences; a pittance offered after most of the people we screwed were dead and those that weren't were well into the autumn of their lives. Did we learn anything from what we did? Well, if the roundup of Arab and Muslim men after 9/11 is any indicator, the answer is no.
So back to Reverend Wright... The good reverend isn't wrong but neither is he right (yes, that's a deliberate pun). We need to get over our apparent world view that everything is black or white, good or evil, right or wrong. There's a lot of gray in this world and it doesn't just happen at dawn and dusk.