Chris Herz: Elections and the Mysteries of Religion

VHeadline commentarist Chris Herz writes: Dear friends it is a wonder that folks born in sensible countries ever understand anything about US politics. And this weeks Sturm und Drang over just what it was that presidential hopeful Barak Obama's priest or preacher said or didn't say must be a mystery to anyone outside of the imperial motherland.

Certainly many underlying attitudes among the US majority have been nicely exposed. And the controversy has surely had the effect desired by those who started it. Let's look at what happened.

The willful destruction, especially in the minority African community here of secular, civic institutions like labor unions, political clubs and non-oligarchic political parties has left churches with a political influence unparalleled in any other large modern country.

Among the majority Anglo population, that deriving from Northern Europe, the organization over the last quarter century or so of reactionary protestant cults has been a prime mover of this population into the conservative camp.

But few outside of this country appreciate just how offensive were the civil rights struggle of the 1960's and 70's and the allied anti-war effort to this group. Between the inveterate anti-African racism of this racial majority and its separation from all other social influences but those provided by a corrupt and often wealthy pastorate, added to that of the reactionary and mendacious corporate media, the election of all the conservatives since Richard Nixon in 1968 has been made possible.

Naturally, this group is not thrilled by the public exposure of their real attitudes. No one knows better than themselves just how dishonorable are such feelings, and still more, how immoral it is to act upon them. They do not want to hear anything that upsets their smug feelings of white supremacy.

I've said in other columns here that when President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1965 he remarked to the onlookers that he had just cost his party the Southern part of our country for a generation. He was quite wrong of course. For this action cost his Democratic party the South forever, and the Anglo ex-urbanite suburbs, just as racist as anywhere in this country, as well.

The results for the African community can hardly be overstated. At this moment one-ninth of the male population between the ages of 18 and 35 is in prison. Often at sites as far removed from their homes as were Vorkuta or Belomorsk from Moscow in Stalin's day. All major economic entities other than the drug trade have been removed from the areas wherein dwell most Blacks. Civil rights organizations and political entities such as the late Black Panther Party have been legally repressed. Even illegally repressed.

It is with no difficulty at all that an educated person like Obama's Pastor Wright can point scathingly to these realities. Hardly too do we find it a surprise when the authors of this social calamity decide they do not even want to hear about it.

Pastor Wright's remarks were first "exposed" by the super-reactionary FOX news organization and this report acquired the momentum that it did precisely because it indeed hit a nerve. Obama was forced to try to distance himself from this accurate historical analysis in a nationally telecast address. And an eloquent one, if I may say so, despite his determined avoidance of saying anything specific about anything.

The result is now apparent; a majority of Democratic voters are moving back toward Hillary Clinton's more conservative candidacy, or even over to that of the Republican conservative John McCain, a member of an hereditary military family.

But for us this is a very good thing. As President Obama might have been able for a time to mask the essential, corrupt and predatory nature of the US polity for some little while. Clinton, and even more so, McCain, will be much less able to do so.

As Winston Churchill once said at a similar moment, "Reality is better than dreams."

From the Imperial Capital

Chris Herz
cdherz44@yahoo.com