Wright, the Black Church and cuddliness

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0508/10126.html

Although this piece is not especially well-written, it does make some interesting points.

'...the left, with its healthy skepticism toward religion, has shown itself to be cynically flexible over the past few weeks in response to the utter insanities emitted from the big mouth of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Sen. Barack Obama’s pastor, mentor and friend of 20 years. Suddenly, some liberals have discovered a newfound love for extremists who hide behind the cloth to justify their radical views.'

'...John Nichols is the Washington correspondent for The Nation. Like most of his comrades, he tends to be a vociferous critic of the religious right, regularly denouncing them for all manner of bad deeds... Nichols ended his ode to Wright by comparing the preacher to none other than Thomas Jefferson.'

If we cast our minds back to Nick Cohen and his 'Whats left?' tome, you will recall he spent quite a lot of time trying to work out why the Left will now get into bed with absolutely anybody, no matter how deranged, immoral, genocidal or antagonistic to the traditions and values of the left. The only proviso is that they must hate America, Britain, capitalism and white men. Hugo Chavez? Tick. Yusuf Al Qaradawi? Tick. Muammar Qaddafi? Tick. Mahmoud Ahmedinejad? Tick. 'Rev' Jeremiah Wright? Tick. Attilla the Hun? Er... Tick. Could we see this as a kind of dumbing down by the desperate, flabby, intellectually dishonest shambles that used to be the Principled Left Wing, now that pretty much the whole world has thrown Communism on the scrap heap of history?

The ludicrous attempts at historical comparisons point to the dumbness as predominant, I believe. So many of the arguments on the left are based on completely disprovable contentions. It would be one thing if they kept to reasonable interpretations of the commonly agreed facts, but they don't: much of what passes for debate on the left is based on fantasies and dreams; i.e. nothing. At least the old left did their homework before advancing policies and positions; they could then defend them before any reasonable person, or indeed the jury of public approval. But many, many arguments on the left at present are so stupid, based as they are on falsifiable conspiracy theories or virtually no solid data that it is not worth trying to debate them. Who out there will debate the merits of 'Rev' Wrights 'argument' about the US govmt inventing AIDS to kill black people?

A lesser-discussed part of this bloggers life was spent at a virtually all-black University in Alabama. One thing I can say with absolute certainty- a very large majority of the 'Black Church' in America has no time for Wright-style politics. The Church attached to the University I went to spent all its jolly and raucous church-time praising the lord, singing with vast pleasure and enjoying each others company. I feel secure in extrapolating from this evidence because I met virtually no Christian blacks like Wright in my travels around the US, and many many like the ones I went to University with. There was no evidence that they felt the need to mix in all the rediculous Wright non-Christianity into their worship.

I did meet blacks with Wright-style views- highly politicised, angry and hate-filled people. But not in Church. They were very often unemployed, perhaps even unemployable. They were often involved in illegal activities, and perhaps to give themselves a moral pass, blamed their lifestyle on whitey. We'll see how many of them there are when the general election comes around, as I'm sure they won't have a problem with Obama spending 20 years listening to Wrights vile rants. And they probably won't pick up on the complete inappropriateness of the historical analogies used by lefties to defend Wright. They will see that Obama is black, and vote for him simply because of that.

I to admit- I can actually imagine Obama being elected US President. He is depending on novelty, easy charm and an absolute absence of personal accomplishments; those will get you very far in America. Many millions of Americans will not care that he cannot give a coherent account of his economic policy, his social policy, his environmental policy or his foreign policy. The only foreign policy pronouncement I have heard from him, that he would happily go off to sit and talk with Americas enemies in his first year with no pre-conditions, was laughed at by pretty much everybody in America who knows anything at all about American foreign policy- but does it matter? The great vast unwashed of the US voting public have no mental machinery for judging one foreign policy suggestion from another. And what Obama does have is a kind of feel-good factor, a warm-fuzzy feeling, that voting for Obama will be morally like helping an old lady across the road- something that will get you an extra jewel in your crown come judgement day.

That may take him across the line. John McCain- I like him, but then he's like me in many respects (I haven't been a POW in Vietnam, by the way). Hilary Clinton- she's a hawk and knows her policy positions intimately, but she's no cuddly toy. Will the real virtues of the latter two win out against the ersatz virtues of the former? We'll just have to see.