I should have written my reaction to Reverend Wright on Friday night. But it was a very revealing hour; the finer points of what seemed like a few hours in content are still fermenting in my young mind. He appeared across the table from a person I revere as a balanced and talented interviewer on the Bill Moyers Journal (PBS). Luckily for those of you who were occupied, the complete interview is viewable by the grace of a Holy Tube [1]. Everyone knows the preface to the interview. Having been swiftboated, this American veteran has been devoured by a ravenous corporately-owned media. That's my opinion. Here's Reverend Wright's perception:

“It’s to paint me as something: ‘Something’s wrong with me. There’s nothing wrong with this country . . . for its policies. We’re perfect. Our hands are free. Our hands have no blood on them.’ That’s not a failure to communicate. The message that is being communicated by the soundbites is exactly what those pushing those soundbites want to communicate.”

The other topic I think Wright aptly moved to discuss was the history of Martin Luther King, Jr. He didn't simple make references to him or establish a petty ethos among the black community. He drew, what I feel, was a larger link. A link between the current specificity of our news media in reporting the soundbites of Church sermons in 2008 to the underreported issues that MLK brought to the fold in the late 1960s. The War. The Vietnam fucking war, which he was morally and logically inclined to call the "tragic war."

Polls reveal that almost fifteen million Americans explicitly oppose the war in Vietnam. Additional millions cannot bring themselves around to support it. And even those millions who do support the war [are] half-hearted, confused, and doubt-ridden. This reveals that millions have chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism, to the high grounds of firm dissent, based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history. Now, of course, one of the difficulties in speaking out today grows the fact that there are those who are seeking to equate dissent with disloyalty. It's a dark day in our nation when high-level authorities will seek to use every method to silence dissent. But something is happening, and people are not going to be silenced. The truth must be told, and I say that those who are seeking to make it appear that anyone who opposes the war in Vietnam is a fool or a traitor or an enemy of our soldiers is a person that has taken a stand against the best in our tradition.

This is likened to the writing of David James Duncan [2]'s Citizen Dissent.

ANOTHER EXAMPLE of how the New America forces literature into a dissident position is Bush's presumption (stated in the National Security Strategy, page 5) that it is the New America's "clear responsibility to history" to "rid the world of evil." As a lifelong student of the world's wisdom literature, it is my duty to inform students that "ridding the world of evil" is a goal very different from any recommended by Jesus, Buddha, or Muhammad, though not so different from some recommended by the Josephs Stalin and McCarthy and by Mao Tse Tung.

And so we see the very rich culture of American dissent fly to the nest of a fledgling democracy. We see Reverend Wright's comments in a greater, more compassionate context. We see the inextricable link between a war in Vietnam (and a war in Iraq or any war for that matter) as a war against standard of living. As Martin Luther King, Jr. commented himself, "...you may not know it, my friends, but it is estimated that we spend $500,000 to kill each enemy soldier, while we spend only fifty-three dollars for each person classified as poor, and much of that fifty-three dollars goes for salaries to people that are not poor. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor, and attack it as such." I must admit I didn't know, before this media eruption about Wright, of the overwhelming dissent King had extended to this war. I think part of our mission as a society is educating people on the history of a culture. And I submit to you that is exactly what Reverend Wright has done. That's what he's already accomplished with the help of Senator Barrack Obama. What potential he can achieve in his presidency I can only dream. Shux.