FROM A HERO TO A DEMON
His father left the family at age 2. He was raised without a father and the next and ONLY time he saw him, at age 10, Dad gave him a basketball. He loved that basketball and took it everywhere with him. In high school, his ability with it gave him esteem. Extremely brilliant, and with outstanding verbal skills, he worked his way through college and into law school.
However, there was always something missing in his life. Then, one day, he met a very successful man, also black, whom he looked up to. This man had been a university student, and a great admirer of John F. Kennedy. When JFK said, "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country", this patriotic young man gave up his deferment, and VOLUNTEERED to join the Marines, (unlike George Bush, Dick Cheney, or Bill Clinton). He was decorated for his service performed in providing medical care as a cardiopulmonary technician at the bedside of President Lyndon Johnson during heart surgery.
This man spoke to him as a father would to a son, addressed many of his questions and concerns, and led him to the church and Jesus. He baptized him, officiated at his marriage, baptized his children, and was a source of stability and wisdom to he and his wife and children.
Unfortunately, the world is not perfect. Forty plus years ago, when the Pastor completed his tour with the Marines, he returned to an America in which black people were treated much less than equal. Their hero, JFK, was SHOT DOWN. Martin Luther King, who marched for their rights and was their spiritual leader, was SHOT DOWN. Bobby Kennedy a strong supporter of equal rights for all, was SHOT DOWN. There were riots in the streets and blacks were being attacked with fire hoses in the South, and killed in Vietnam, both on tv with your dinner.
Like Tommie Smith, John Carlos, Muhammad Ali, and others, the Pastor was outraged at this injustice and became part of a generation of "angry black men", and justifiably so. But, did he turn his anger to violence? NO!
He established a church that assisted the homeless, AIDS victims, seniors, veterans and the poor of society. He was not only a hero in military life, he was a hero at home.
Unfortunately, a few of the things he said were and are not consistent with this writer's feelings, nor that of the young man of whom we are writing. By now, you know his name is Barack Obama and the Pastor is Reverend Wright.
The main source of the Reverend's criticism is his statement that the AIDS virus was developed by the U.S. Government to kill blacks. Did he make this up? Where did he get this idea. A little research turned up this information. I Googled "AIDS started by US Government" and got 496,000 pages in English, so he isn't the only one who has this opinion. Here is just one of hundreds I have found:
Did the US Government Develop the AIDS Virus?
The following is a complete verbatim transcription from a recent broadcast of "Network 23", a program shown on a local Los Angeles Public Access Cable Channel.
FULL TRANSCRIPTION FROM NETWORK 23:
Good evening, I'm Michel Kassett. This is Network 23. A couple of weeks ago we had a program on the subject of AIDS, addressing the question of whether AIDS -- the AIDS virus -- was created by the government; and I'm sure that some people were quite shocked by what they heard. We spent that entire program relating to you the evidence of a very substantial amount of factual evidence which supports the proposition that AIDS is a synthetic biological agent that was deliberately engineered by the US government as an instrument of depopulation. This is by far the most controversial and dangerous subject that we have ever addressed on this program, so I would like to review briefly the major points -- the most significant pieces of evidence -- that I presented two weeks ago.
The first point was that in the early 1970's, Henry Kissinger wrote a top secret document -- a National Security Memorandum ("NSM 200") -- in which he indicated that "depopulation should be the highest priority of US foreign policy towards the Third World." This Memorandum which can be obtained from the US National Archives, which was only declassified very quietly in 1990, was adopted by the National Security Council as official US foreign policy towards the Third World. Now, this is a classic example of the "secret government" in action, because of none of this was known to the Congress, and certainly, it was not known to the American people. Did any of you know that depopulation was considered a matter of US national security? Did any of you know that for the past 20 years, depopulation has been the highest long-range priority of US foreign policy towards the Third World? No you didn't, because it was classified -- it was a secret.
There is active debate on this issue internationally, including newspaper and magazine articles, several lawsuits, etc. I know it sounds outrageous to many, but not to black people who were familiar with the Tuskegee Syphilis experiment. Between 1932 and 1972, the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS) conducted an experiment on 399 black men in the late stages of syphilis. These men, mostly illiterate sharecroppers from one of the poorest counties in Alabama, were never told what disease they were suffering from or of its seriousness. Informed that they were being treated for “bad blood,” their doctors had no intention of curing them of syphilis. The data for the experiment was to be collected from autopsies of the men, and they were thus deliberately left to degenerate under the ravages of tertiary syphilis—which can include tumors, heart disease, paralysis, blindness, insanity, and death. “As I see it,” one of the doctors involved explained, “we have no further interest in these patients until they die.” TUSKEGEE SYPHILIS EXPERIMENT
"The United States government did something that was wrong—deeply, profoundly, morally wrong. It was an outrage to our commitment to integrity and equality for all our citizens... clearly racist."
—President Clinton's apology for the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment to the eight remaining survivors, May 16, 1997
Reverend Wright had and has every reason to believe that the U.S. Government is to blame. The media-fed attacks on Barack Obama because his Pastor, a dedicated leader of 8,000, and a decorated Marine veteran, speaks his mind on a subject he has every right to discuss, are typical of a media that is trying to influence this primary race. He earned it. Forty years after the death of Martin Luther King, is this STILL the way black people are abused in America, both in politics and the press?
We are told that unless Barack Obama renounces his pastor he is not qualified to be President. Obama earlier referred to Wright as the "crazy uncle" that says wild things but you still love him. Obama never really knew his father and it was Rev. Wright who provided the fatherly guidance that led him to Christianity. Does America really want to break up another black family? Isn't that what we did to virtually every black family that came here? It was called slavery. Their treatment was a form of genocide. Let's stop this racism NOW. A white candidate would not be treated this way, and, many forget that Obama is 1/2 white.
I, as a white man, APPLAUD Senator Obama for his courage and his loyalty. The attacks of Hillary Clinton (who also mentioned the name "Farrakhan" during the recent debate even though her loyal supporter, Governor Rendell, has praised him) to besmirch Obama, MUST STOP.
STOP THE CHARACTER ASSASSINATION OF BARACK OBAMA!
IT IS RACIST!
IT IS RACIST!
Thank you. Many people like to pretend that racism doesn't exist in this country. Unfortunately, it is alive and well in light of the results from the PA primary. Nearly forty years after King was shot down and we still have white ppl frightened to death at the possibility of a black president.
ReplyDeleteI would urge everyone to listen to Wright's speeches for yourself and not the snippets that are blaring in the media. Sure his message was a little sharp around the edges, but it was true. We are a racist society. The speeches he gave in his church to his local congregation were never meant for mainstream consumption. They were meant for his congregation.
I must confess that I fell for the media spin on the good reverend. Now that I have read this article, as a former Marine, I have had my eyes openeds, and I apologize to my Marine brother for comments that I have made to others about he and Senator Obama that I had no right to make.
ReplyDeleteI urge all former Marines to take another look at this man and at Senator Obama. Racism does still exist and it is time we admit it and do something about it, like elect Senator Obama President of the United States.
Semper Fi
Let me get this straight. Wright gave up his student deferment to join the Marines and serve his country while Cheney, Bush and Clinton did not.
ReplyDeleteWhile Wright was trusted enough to work on the medical team of the President of the United States to save his life, that same government was torturing and killing 400 poor black men in order to create a disease that could depopulate third world countries.
He earned his right to say and I will join him in saying God damn America.
Thank you for your compassion and common sense. Wright has been intentionally misrepresented and grossly taken out of context. His words were Biblical, not profane, and his strong statements are in the prophetic tradition of Amos (who would probably be called a self-hating Jew these days). His congregation seem to be more scripturally literate than most, and certainly many of them were able to understand the context. But, directly following the "inflammatory" statement, Rev. Wright said, "turn to your neighbor and say forgive him for the "God damn...". Obviously he knew it was shocking, but in the CONTEXT of the sermon, a Palm Sunday sermon whose message is that governments change, but God does not, it was an extremely effective prelude to the reassurance of God's unchanging and unconditional love.
ReplyDeleteAs for the AIDS controversy, it's absolutely ridiculous to take one statement and dismiss it as false, when the underlying Truth (with a capital T) is there. This was a sermon, not a political speech; not an academic lecture. If we required that everything spoken in a church be verifiably factually accurate, our services would last about five minutes and consist almost entirely of bulletin announcements.
How refreshing. I, also, have nothing but admiration for Obama for remaining loyal to an old mentor and friend. The man has character. I can't think of one teacher or friend in my life that I agree with 100% of the time. Can anyone else?
ReplyDeleteIt is an American tragedy that a black man can give up his college deferment to enlist in the Marines, become a hero by providing his medical knowledge to help save the life of the President of the United States, be decorated by the Government three times, complete his education and become a pastor of a church of 8,000 followers, and be ridiculed and condemned by both the press and the misinformed American people.
ReplyDeleteOnly in America!
I can relate to Sen. Obama's story as my own father lost his father at age 2 and it had a devastating effect on his life. With nobody to guide him, he was forced to drop out of school at age 14 to go to work, and had nobody to teach him how to get by in this society.
ReplyDeleteWe should all thank Reverend Wright for the counseling he provided to Obama to lead him on the proper path. To criticize this man, a genuine hero, for words he uttered in exasperation and frustration is to ignore the truth in his statements.
I pray for both Rev. Wright and for Senator Obama and hope that America will wake up.