THE AMERICAN EXPERIENCE
As AS notes, the Al-manar Radio in America crowd has started in, one faction of the Taliban wing of the Republican party, if you will allow a mixed metaphor.
They have no boundaries, do they? Hugh Hewitt's name is on the list - don't we expect more from people who have positions as teachers? Would he play this video in his classroom? Is that how he teaches constitutional law, one wonders? Does his University ask black students if they reject 'black power' before they are admitted?
COARSENING THE CULTURE
We started with Limbaugh singing the disgusting "Barack the Magic Negro", and getting condemned for it. They now feel they have permission - and it is a moral permissioning - from the rest of us to do all they can to whip glass shards, to stick pokers into the collective sub-conscious, to brazenly stoke the racial divides in America in hopes of ... political power (white political power, one may ask?).
Who knows if there will be backlash to it. The ruts of this kind of stuff are worn deep.
To get it going, to stoke the flames, they want to say the most outrageous things (anonymously, if they can). Here is one from FreeRepublic
Life can be tough. Life can be filled with disappointments. Deal with it.
ANDO.J. Simpson was when I first realized the racial chasm.
STAY CLAM - I CHOOSE TO JUST SAY 'GOODBYE TO ALL THAT'
Well, they won't get my goat. I refuse to be baited into their game of pre-emption, confusion and escalation (that has worked so well among the poorly educated vote?).
It's not easy. Laura Ingram today said, ""Improved race relations hurts the career of Jesse Jackson...[and others]". I happen to think that Jesse might well give his life, if he thought it would bring an end to the race problems in America ... She (and her host, O'Reilly) have no idea how disgusting they appear, as they fumble around on race like two kids in the backseat of a car for the first time.
Anyway, I imagine their hope is that enough people will say enough horrible things that sooner-or-later, no one will remember who started it. And we will be back to square-one, the face-to-face on race, hijacked by those who insist on the low-road, the rut.
CREDO
- 1. I accept wholeheartedly Michelle Obama's statement, on her own terms.
Who am I to judge her feelings of patriotism? If she has taken a different path to the same place, she is not less to me because of it, one iota. Those who would sit first, will sit last, right? - 2. I believe every American action is not God blessed.
Only puerile patriotism requires that the Nation be Perfect, in order to care deeply about it. Even the Church in time is not perfect! Only the smug, pampered patriots among us think we have no "sin" (or that it is Wright alone who must be made to atone, somehow). - 3. I reject American exceptionalism in foreign policy
America was not given dominion over the world. As for the specific issues they raise, what does your faith teach you about Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Who funded the mujahedeen and helped to organize them into a fighting force in Afghanistan? Does that act come with no consequences, no responsibility?
Resisting the Cariacature of James Cone
