The Try-Works

I profoundly apologize for the rash of Snapple posts while I was gone.  I’ll delete them at some point, but now and then it’s nice to remind ourselves exactly how fucking lunatic the other side is, ain’t it?

And, hell, in the interest of tolerance, I’ve decided to respond to one of Snapple’s queries.  S/he would like to know what I think of certain recently unearthed statements made by Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama’s pastor of 20 years.

An ABC News review of dozens of Rev. Wright’s sermons, offered for sale by the church, found repeated denunciations of the U.S. based on what he described as his reading of the Gospels and the treatment of black Americans.

“The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing ‘God Bless America.’ No, no, no, God damn America, that’s in the Bible for killing innocent people,” he said in a 2003 sermon. “God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme.”

In addition to damning America, he told his congregation on the Sunday after Sept. 11, 2001 that the United States had brought on al Qaeda’s attacks because of its own terrorism.

“We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye,” Rev. Wright said in a sermon on Sept. 16, 2001.

“We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America’s chickens are coming home to roost,” he told his congregation.

The rest.

Well, my response is easy, Snapple.  While I admire Reverend Wright’s intent, I see no reason for the reticence and reserve of his statements.  It seems to me that given his insightful analysis, it might be indispensable to coin some snappy term for those who benefit as a result of US foreign policy choices.  Some way of describing the, well, banality of evil endemic to those in the upper echelons of, say, international trade.  Y’know, the folks who make their millions wiping their ass with the rest of humankind.  Particularly brown humankind.

Any ideas?

Update:  Charles Coulter of the Kansas City Star points out the obvious.

So the Rev. Jeremiah Wright made comments that some portray as hate-filled and anti-American.

So what? I think that’s covered by something called the First Amendment.

And some want Barack Obama to distance himself even further from his spiritual mentor. Why?

Rev. Wright has not said anything that has not been said or is not being said in bars, poolrooms, barber shops, hair salons or anywhere else more than three black people gather.

And don’t fool yourself. It’s not just the black urban poor, those without jobs, education or hope, who express these comments. Many members of the black middle class have the same sense of history; the same sense of anger.

The rest.

Not to follow Mr. Coulter in his rather slavish obviousness, but it ain’t just blacks.  A fucking third of Americans believe 9/11 was a direct inside job.  Not blowback for US foreign policy decisions, which is what Mr. Wright and Mr. Churchill argue, but a direct conspiracy to either commit or allow the attacks.  The only pinheads left on earth who deny that US foreign policy is the reason they hate us are either working for Fox News or sipping Metamucil over at Jim Paine’s place.