McCain Denies Validity of John Lewis's Prophetic Words: Does McCain Know What He is Doing?

From TURNING POINT--The URGENCY OF NOW:

If anything else was needed as evidence that McCain and Palin seem utterly incapable of recognizing the dangers of the passions they are stirring up through the fear-mongering message of their campaign, the last week of terrorist-baiting language from the McCain campaign--even to the point of provoking hate-filled questions and howls from their own audiences when McCain dared to correct a woman who called Obama an "Arab"-- should be the final straw.

And while the corporate media are mostly too timid to call McCain and Palin out on the amazingly Orwellian specter they are raising-- of Obama as an "enemy of the country" and threat to the nation--even as the media offers apologies for McCain, and allows McCain to get away with criticizing the words of John Lewis for "going too far" (ie, for saying what needed to be said, what the media has been too timid to say), the words of Rep. John Lewis posted this weekend have hit the prophetic nail precisely on the head by naming the dangers of the passions that the McCain-Palin campaign is unleashing with its fear-mongering, terrorist-baiting rhetoric:

And while McCain himself remains obstinately unwilling to recognize or accept responsibility for the potential violence his own campaign is threatening to stoke up among crazy fringe elements in this country--through its desperate terrorist- and fear-mongering approach to the last weeks of the campaign-- Even some Republicans have been criticizing the dangerous tone of the McCain-Palin campaign. But rather than recognize the danger and renounce any further descent into this hell, McCain has chosen instead to criticize the prophetic words of warning uttered by Rep. John Lewis this past weekend--

Instead of recognizing the truth of the warning uttered by John Lewis, McCain has chosen to accuse Lewis of uttering absurd and harmful accusations against McCain!

We can find nothing more evocative of the ways the unjust kings of biblical Israel would condemn the prophets in order to justify their own oppression of their people than this kind of response from McCain: When the prophet speaks truth to power, condemn the prophet in order to cover your own injustice:

SHAME ON YOU JOHN MCCAIN AND SARAH PALIN! HAVE YOU LOST ALL SENSE OF HUMAN DECENCY?

You wish to deny that there is any justice to John Lewis's comparison of your campaign's rhetoric and tone with that of George Wallace?! Perhaps you need to take some time to refamiliarize yourselves with the kinds of language and rhetoric that Wallace and other fear-mongering and terrorist-baiting politicians of the past used to stoke up the hatred of individuals and crowds that ended up bombing and lynching blacks in the South, even as Wallace and politicians like him always denied having any such "intent..." Turning the blind eye to injustice, with a wink and a nod, has always been the way of white racist power in this country, as in many others!

But John McCain and Sarah Palin, you have been called out and warned--not only by John Lewis, but by decent and honorable Republicans in your own camp, of the potentially violent consequences of the approach you have taken--
And while you may deny you have any "intent" to stir up such violence, and we may all pray that the terrorist-mongering rhetoric of your campaign does not provoke violence, there can be no excuse for the way you and Sarah Palin are so unapologetically using the specter of terrorism in association with Obama to stir up the worst fears and passions of your followers.

Are you both truly so devoid of honor and decency as to stoop to this lowliest and most despicable of political tactics, and to refuse to reign in people in your crowds who shout such violent slogans as "kill him," and "bomb him"?!!

Any decent human being, hearing words such as these coming from an audience to which he or she is speaking, would do nothing less than immediately RENOUNCE and REJECT such sentiments and expressions! Yet only silence seemed to greet these expressions when they were uttered by people in the groups to which you and and Palin were speaking! Are you so in love with power at any cost that you have lost all sense of human decency and honor?!

I beg of you to demonstrate that you have not lost all sense of decency, by turning away from the terrible course you have taken your campaign in the last week. And please restore some basic sense of human decency and honor to your campaign by renouncing all such terrorist- and fear-mongering language for the rest of the campaign--

It's transparently clear from your speeches and ads that your campaign's fundamental goal has been to create the impression that Obama is not like most Americans, but is other, and is therefore to be suspected of all kinds of dark and shadowy things, including terrorist associations, and selfish intentions..... You seem to have studied the fear-mongering devices of the worst anti-semitic campaigns in setting up this kind of suggestive attack on Obama as the "strange Other," who is not to be trusted. Would you actually deny that this is the intent of your desperate campaign strategy? If so, then do not simply deny this is your intent, but show us you mean it by eliminating these kinds of fear-mongering tactics and rhetoric from your campaign!

And if you admit this is the intent of your campaign's strategy, can you not see how despicable and devoid of honor such a strategy is? If you need to take this kind of despicable approach to win this nation's most noble office, do you really think you deserve to hold the nation's highest Office? Is not this kind of Orwellian logic of denial and distraction precisely what has driven the Bush administration into such depths of darkness and failure? And while you seek to distance yourself from the Bush administration, every step your campaign has taken along these lines has only worked to confirm how a McCain administration would be even more desperately and darkly Orwellian, devoid of truth and honor, than the Bush administration has been!!

Power at any cost, words that deny and twist the truth at every turn of phrase, to the point where policy loses all grounding in reality, and the result is--as current reality is demonstrating--that reality itself rebels and turns against the system of lies by threatening to bring the entire false deck of cards crashing to the ground!

And to all those who listen to the words of McCain and Palin and say nothing or simply smile and let them get away with their dispicable accusations and lies, we ask: When will YOU begin to respond, and to ask, and to DEMAND that McCain and Palin respond, by asking them repeatedly, insistently, and constantly, until they respond--

"John McCain and Sarah Palin, What will it take for you to recognize the dark passions you are stoking? Will it take a bomb, or a hate-filled shot fired from a gun, before you recognize the dangerous consequences of the fire you've been playing with by constantly suggesting, over and over again, that Obama is someone who associates with, or accepts, terrorists, in the face of Obama's firm and repeated denunciations of all terrorism and terrorists?

Sarah Palin, and John McCain, What will it take for YOU to recognize the horror of what you are suggesting by this terrible and disgusting game of false association, in a political and war context that over the last eight years has constantly evoked the image of terrorists being killed?!

What kind of Orwellian game do you think you are playing by denying any respsonsibility for stoking violence by your version of the "big lie" that seeks to associate Obama with terrorists and terrorism?!

Far from being in any way outrageous or unfair, the words of Rep. John Lewis precisely hit the mark of the dangerous and violent passions your campaign has been working to stir up, whether you "intend" it to do so or not? Your personal "Intention" here is irrelevant, even if we were to believe you, since it is the FACT of the potential IMPACT of your campaign's approach and the passions it evokes that we all have to deal with. But when will YOU accept responsibility and uphold the honor and responsibility of "Country First" that you say you admire by restraining the dogs of personal violence and hatred that your campaign has been directly working to unleash.....

We at Policybusters thank John Lewis for his prophetic words, and unreservedly second them, and hope that all responsible and humane media outlets will do the same, for as Lewis concludes, "The American people deserve better."

Indeed we do deserve better! And if you--McCain and Palin--want to be treated seriously as people worthy of leading the American people, you must first recognize that we all deserve better, and reject and renounce the fear-mongering approach to politics in favor of something more honorable and decent, during the last weeks of this campaign.

Instead of rejecting and condemning Rep. Lewis's words, you should be thanking him for offering them, in prophetic warning, as the just kings of Israel thanked the prophets of old that warned them of the dangers of transgressing the laws of justice to which all nations and political leaders must ultimately be held to account--

Rep. John Lewis Responds to Increasing Hostility of McCain-Palin Campaign 10/11/2008

"As one who was a victim of violence and hate during the height of the Civil Rights Movement, I am deeply disturbed by the negative tone of the McCain-Palin campaign. What I am seeing today reminds me too much of another destructive period in American history. Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin are sowing the seeds of hatred and division, and there is no need for this hostility in our political discourse.

"During another period, in the not too distant past,
there was a governor of the state of Alabama named George Wallace who also became a presidential candidate. George Wallace never threw a bomb. He never fired a gun, but he created the climate and the conditions that encouraged vicious attacks against innocent Americans who only desired to exercise their constitutional rights. Because of this atmosphere of hate, four little girls were killed one Sunday morning when a church was bombed in Birmingham, Alabama.

"As public figures with the power to influence and persuade, Sen. McCain and Governor Palin are playing with fire, and if they are not careful, that fire will consume us all. They are playing a very dangerous game that disregards the value of the political process and cheapens our entire democracy. We can do better. The American people deserve better."

*****

So which approach will your campaign take, John McCain and Sarah Palin?

--the way of the unjust leaders of the past who condemned and sought to silence their prophets?

--or the way of all just leaders, who HONORED their prophets by CHANGING THEIR WAYS in accord with prophetic words?

This is the choice before YOU and the entire nation: Will you choose justice or injustice; Orwellian obfuscation, or the prophetic truth?

The choice is yours, and the consequences are those that YOU and all the American people will have to grapple with.....

[John McCain and Sarah Palin should watch Ted Koppel's one hour review of the history of lynching in the US being broadcast this week on the DISCOVERY channel]

The Patriotism of Stupid White Men?: Lapel-Pin Patriotism vs. Responsible Citizenship

As a person of European-Mediterranean heritage, the insistently shameful stupidity of white media pundits over this past week and weekend in response to the Wright controversy has made me so sick of heart that I've been compelled to write out some basic notes (for my own sanity’s sake, if nothing else) about what distinguishes the true patriotism of democratic citizens from the false patriotism of those whom Michael Moore has so appropriately labeled "stupid white men"—who often happen to be the most privileged and powerful in our society and politics.

(This suggests a new formula for the production of stupidity: whiteness + power = stupidity; and the more power and privilege one has--especially when that power is in the media or politics--the more stupid many seem to get....)

And PLEASE NOTE: since "stupid white man" is a state of being rather than a skin color or gender, you do not need to be either light-skinned or in possession of an xy sex chromosome to fit the category of "stupid white men."

Inspiration for these notes on patriotism: The white media pundits and corporate media structure cannot seem to get enough of asking Obama about his relationship with Rev. Wright. Instead of focusing on the real problems and policy issues confronting this country, they would rather focus on white noise, repeating the same dumb questions over and over again:

Why don't you wear a flag pin, Mr. Obama?

Why would your wife ever suggest she had problems with the way this country has been run, Mr. Obama?

Why did you wait so long to renounce your pastor, Mr. Obama?

Why didn't you hold your hand over your heart that one time when saying the pledge of allegiance, Mr. Obama?

No matter how many times Mr. Obama calmly (and with a straight face I could never maintain if I were faced with such blatantly stupid questions) answers these questions, the white pundits just keep asking them over and over and over again. It's at times like these that anyone who hasn't already recognized how most of the network news shows are dominated by clueless white pundits--who seem oblivious to how ridiculously out of touch and stupid they sound to anyone who is not protected by the insular power of the corporate media hierarchy--must be either comatose or blind.

After all, you would never hear Tavis Smiley asking such stupid questions!!! To the contrary, Tavis Smiley and Bill Moyers (a couple of guys who are not stupid) were the only major media pundits I heard criticize the way this whole controversy was being presented. Over the past month, since the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. King, Tavis has had some of the most significant thinkers on race and politics in America appear on his show to offer critical commentary that has, without mentioning the Wright controversy, suggested the complete absurdity and vacuity of what goes for political commentary in the dominant white media.

It’s the intensity of the corporate media’s barrage of stupid questions that provides another overwhelming source of evidence--for anyone who still needs more evidence--of the fundamentally racialized power structure supported by our current media set-up.

Yesterday, for example, two major Sunday news magazines hosted by white men continued to devote a large percentage of their time on Obama to the Wright controversy, to the neglect of all the other real issues--including the need for a real conversation about racism in this country--that they could have been exploring with Obama.

Wolf Blitzer, on his two-hour Sunday program on CNN, spent almost 30 minutes on the Wright controversy. In his second segment on Wright--where his producers at least had the good sense to interview three black commentators--even after all three of his guests criticized the stupidity of the way the media has fixated on the Wright controversy, Blitzer kept right on pursuing the same line of questions on Wright, as if he had not comprehended one word of what his three guests has just told him.

I'm not a believer in conspiracies, but when you hear the same stupid questions repeated over and over again by every major media station and pundit, you begin to understand why it does not take a conspiracy theorist to emphasize the need for some kind of structural explanation of why so much of the media seems to be following the same stupid script.

And for Obama's "exclusive" Sunday interview appearance on Meet the Press, Tim Russert spent almost twenty of his 45 minutes of show time discussing the Wright controversy with Obama, asking the same questions we had heard twenty times over during the previous week. Obama stoically answered every question with more patience than many saints could summon, and this alone should serve as a major qualification for his presidential candidacy--since such patience and reserve will serve him well in negotiating with the toughest foreign and domestic dictators and bullies.

All of this media bullying by stupid white men compelled me to ask the patriotism question in a new way:

What distinguishes the patriotism of stupid white men from the patriotism of real democratic citizens who value the future of our beloved country?

Here are some basic answers I’ve casually noted (and I would encourage everyone to come up with a similar list, so we can all provide the corporate media and politicians some desperately needed aid in discriminating real patriotism from the easy patriotism of stupid white men throughout the remaining months of this political campaign season, and beyond--since whoever gets elected will need the strong support of real citizens to make sure our government begins to enforce policies that strengthen rather than weaken democracy. The last eight years of rule by faux patriots of both parties has terribly weakened our democracy, and four more years of such lapel-pin patriotism may do it in for good):

1) Real patriotism understands the fundamental value of criticism and critical thought, for the preservation of democratic government and policies, since without criticism of prevailing policies, we would never have seen the Revolution against the British that founded this country; we would still have slavery; and we would never have gained the semblance of democracy that we have today-- we would have fallen into dictatorship eras ago.

Faux patriotism insists that criticism is unpatriotic; thus Michelle Obama is considered unpatriotic by stupid white men because she clearly has the ability to think critically about the previous history of this country, and even dared to voice a critical opinion in public.

2) Faux patriotism believes the most important sign of patriotism is to wear an easily recognizable symbol of patriotism on one's sleeve or lapel or car--and therefore the easiest way to identify the unpatriotic is to simply note whether or not a person is conspicuously sporting a symbol like a flag, a red-white-and blue ribbon, or an "In God We Trust" license plate, etc.

Indeed, this is why the Nazis insisted that every good German sport a swastika--since this made it easy to distinguish those with loyalty to the Fuhrer from those bold or stupid enough to suggest they lacked this kind of patriotism. The easier patriotism is to sum up in a symbol, the easier it is for demagogues and tyrants to manipulate patriotism in ways that destroy democracy.

Real patriotism values the substance of how one puts into practice one's love of country and democratic citizenship, rather than the symbols one wears on one's sleeve. Real patriotism cannot be worn on one's sleeve, or demonstrated by pinning a flag to one's lapel pin. Of course, those who would prefer to rely on symbols over substance would love to make wearing a lapel pin the substance of patriotism, since this would allow them to cover up a host of actions that betray the opposite truth. And wouldn’t patriotism be oh so much easier if all it required were a shiny flag pinned obediently to the lapel every day? Then one could just ignore the difficulties of having to actually put into practice the values of democratic citizenship.

3) Faux patriotism believes it is entirely proper to mix religion and politics, in spite of some troublesome principles contained in the U.S. constitution, which attempts to draw a wall of separation between religion and politics precisely because of a long bloody history of tyrannical manipulation of religion and political power, which the founders of this country had the wisdom to reject.

But never mind the wisdom of the founders! On this issue faux patriots of the twenty-first century believe they are much wiser than the founders. These patriots seem to believe we should return to some of the grand old practices of yesteryear: If you’re going to run for political office these days, you’d better be ready to submit to religious truth tests. Not only must you be ready to submit to probes of your own religious beliefs and associations, but now you should also prepare to be held responsible for the words and beliefs of your pastors, priests, rabbis, and imams. Perhaps the next step in this progress toward religious tests will be to begin requiring the FBI to conduct background checks on every member of one’s religious congregation… (or, excuse me, are we already doing this?)

Real patriotism understands the reasons current trends toward bringing religious tests back into politics are fundamentally threatening to the future of democracy, especially when these religious tests are combined with all the other trends that indicate we are losing hold of fundamental principles of democratic liberty (such as freedom from surveillance in private spaces--What’s wrong, after all, with abolishing privacy altogether?! Now that the Soviet Union and communism are dead, why should we worry about abolishing privacy or creating a gulag system, since surely our own system of government could never fall into forms of tyranny similar to those of the Soviet system! After all, we’re all good red-blooded Americans, and we would never let that happen! Historical note: The Germans continued to believe that something like National Socialism could never take over their country, even as that very takeover was occurring in the 1930s.)

So, in sum, if you believe that patriotism can be reduced to pinning a flag to your lapel, denying the validity of any criticism of past or present problems in our country, and insisting on your right to interrogate the religious background of your political representatives, along with the beliefs of their religious leaders (and while you’re at it, of any other associations with suspect persons they might know)—you win the right to sport the stupid white man patriotism label to your heart’s content. Wear it with pride!

As for the rest of us, well, we’ll just have to settle for the harder and less conspicuous work of creating a more democratic and just Republic—the signs of which we cannot wear on our lapels or sleeves. As for me and my kin, may this latter kind of patriotism, along with great suspicion of all flag-pin wearers, flourish!

The White Republic's Bitter Pill

From Urgency of Now: Turning Point Blog--

“People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster.”

These words were written, not by Rev. Jeremiah Wright in 2008, but by one of the most eloquent and famous American writers of the mid-twentieth century: James Baldwin (in his 1955 collection of essays titled Notes of a Native Son). After witnessing the frenzy with which the corporate media complex manufactured a major controversy out of a few poorly-chosen words by Obama during a private fund-raiser, we're now being forced to witness the explosion of the second phase of the manufacture of the Jeremiah Wright controversy.

We've seen how the corporate media has been struggling to structure this story in ways that set Obama and Wright against each other, so that our racialized Republic’s spectator-consumers can once again be entertained by the tragic spectacle of two black men fighting against each other. As Baldwin noted in the 1950s, “One of the things that distinguishes Americans from other people is that no other people has ever been so deeply involved in the lives of black men.” Baldwin’s words are being proven all too prophetically true once again.

But the American people, not the corporate media complex, are ultimately in charge of determining how this controversy plays itself out in the current presidential campaign. There is a clear alternative path to the one the media complex is trying to lead the American people down by manufacturing a racialized spectacle that positions Obama and Wright as combatants in a mutually destructive slug fest.

To follow this alternative path, Obama and Wright can refuse and denounce this racialized set-up by the media. But more importantly, all the rest of us--who value our democratic citizenship and don't wish to have our political future dictated by the corporate media--can reject and denounce the racist spectacle that is being manufactured for our consumption and corporate profit.

As citizens rather than mere consumers, we have the power to choose a different path by refusing to participate in the production and consumption of such a racialized spectacle. And we need to be urgently asking--with Baldwin's words in mind--whether the U.S. media is not now in the process of turning itself and its public (once again) into monsters.

Citizens of this country are being invited to participate in the production of a slug fest between two black men. Instead of cooperating with this manufactured and racist media spectacle, there is another option for all citizens who care about the future of this democratic Republic: REFUSE TO PARTICIPATE in the creation of this spectacle, and direct criticism at the structural sources of power in society and the media that are working to produce this racialized spectacle.

Jeremiah Wright is part of a long tradition of critique of the injustice of specific American policies, dating back to the time of slavery. From the long biblical tradition originating with the Jewish prophets who understood the bitterness of oppression, to the ringing cries against the bitterness of slavery that founded the American tradition of social protest and provided foundation to the great twentieth-century American civil rights movement, an understanding of the "bitter" fruits of injustice and suffering has had deep roots in American culture.

Yet our national media pundits and certain politicians, seemingly "innocent" of this history, have suggested that Obama must be terribly "out of touch" with reality. Because Obama dared to state bluntly that many Americans are "bitter" about the current state of our economy and country mired in an unnecessary war draining the resources needed to address much more important issues.

Just as media pundits focused on Obama's clumsy choice-of-words while ignoring the primary emphasis of his statement in San Francisco, they also seem to ignore a fundamental message of Obama's campaign--which is rooted in the historical power of previous successful efforts at responding to the sufferings of the American people.

Faced with a government insensitive to the needs of the majority of this country's people--not to mention the billions of people of the rest of the world who will be most impacted by the effects of global climate change--and unwilling to play its proper role in altering the way we do business in the world, the very roots of the American Republic are turning bitter.

James Baldwin frequently used the word "bitter" in his essays. In doing so, he was reflecting a long tradition of American commentary that had already made "bitter" a fundamental adjective for describing the fruits of this country's unjust and racialized structures of power and privilege. In 1955 Baldwin had begun to understand both the bitterness and passion that fueled the creative drive of the civil rights revolution in the 1950s and 1960s.

But bitterness in response to injustice was certainly not a new phenomenon in the 1950s. Nor is it now. And it should therefore not be surprising that a major political candidate IN TOUCH with the suffering of the majority of the American public, should NOW use specifically this word to describe the current state of many Americans. What IS surprising is that major media outlets and punditry appear so ignorant and "innocent" of this bitterness in 2008.

This pretended "innocence" continues to reveal just how deeply rooted are the racialized structures of power in our dominant corporate media. And what remains unexamined is how profitable the production of such racialized spectacles remains in our unreconstructed Republic. If there is any justice in the universe, one positive outcome of this 2008 campaign season will be a significant breakthrough in understanding that brings the public to the kind of turning point that caused it to reject overt forms of segregation in the 1950s. But to bring about such a change in 2008, all citizens of this Republic need to utterly reject the racialized spectacle in which the corporate media complex would like to embroil us in the name of profit.

Since this media complex is driven by profit, one clear way for the American public to reject this racialized spectacle, along with all those who stand to profit from its production, is to withdraw financial support from any media sources that seek to propagate this spectacle.

If the American public clearly rejects this racialized spectacle, and turns its criticism against the structures of media power that seek to profit from the manufacture of this kind of spectacle, perhaps this Republic will yet be able to build the foundation for a better future of opportunity for all its citizens--free of the kinds of racialized inequity that will otherwise continue to reproduce inequality and injustice.

The willingness of certain political currents to label Obama "elitist" because he dared to name the disease embittering the soul of this country--along with the new attempt of the media to manufacture a black-on-black slug fest between Obama and Wright--offers the American public the opportunity for a fundamental turning in this election. Which direction the majority of the American public chooses to allow itself to be taken will determine not only the outcome of this election, but the character of the American Republic for decades to come.

After we were forced to witness the ridiculous facade of the staged ABC "debate" on April 16, we can only hope a majority of the American public will note how desperately the corporate media are attempting to distract us from our interest in discussing real issues during this campaign. If the American public allows its corporate media to continue to lead it by the nose along this absurd path of distraction, our Republic will betray its own best hope for transcending much of what has plagued its previous history.

We can only hope that enough of our fellow citizens will have the wisdom to see through this racialized spectacle being offered up to the white Republic for its titillation. And we can work to ensure that our Republic turns the tables on the media by rejecting and denouncing this spectacle in ways that demand greater accountability from our media corporations.

And wouldn't it be nice if our collective rejection of this media-produced spectacle would help to draw the entire country back to what should be the central concerns of this campaign year--regarding the future of this country and all of its people:

How will our newly chosen President work together with, and inspire, the American people to rise to the challenge of successfully tackling the major problems of global climate change, the energy crisis, increasing poverty and war that otherwise threaten to draw the entire country and world into a century of chaos?

The character of our new President will be determined by the character of our own collective action in the months ahead. And where our new President takes us will determine the conditions, for better or worse, in which we will live out our shared future.