Joshua Minton’s Online Pulpit : When Dead Comes to Town

Posted by Josh in March 25th, 2008

To the States or any one of them, or any city of the States, Resist
much, obey little,
Once unquestioning obedience, once fully enslaved,
Once fully enslaved, no nation, state, city of this earth, ever
afterward resumes its liberty.
–Walt Whitman, “Leaves of Grass”–

I finally got through all of Obama’s speech the other day and while I was impressed, I don’t see how it’s the modern day Gettysburg Address that so many are claiming it to be. It’s no secret we’ve still got race problems in our country. Hell, our entire species has a problem with race and it’s because nine-tenths of the human beings on this planet are still animals, concerned only with the primary occupations of all other animals–health, wealth, progeny and securing victory over others. These are the things that obsess the people we elect and they are the things that possess the people we work for. We still very much live in a sex and money centered universe. So why should it be such a big surprise that in everyone’s race to become 54th best, we still discriminate against others using the easiest things to scratch up from experience–the way others look and live?

Another thing I don’t get–the conservatives who are up in arms about Obama’s use of the adjective “typical white person” to refer to his grandmother. Of course he means old white woman who uses The N Word to refer to black people. What white people do you know who don’t have septo- and octogenerians in their life who toss that word around like they’re asking for a butter pass at the dinner table. Their experience is far different from ours and their grips of control over the world are waning by the minute. Why not afford them their choice to disparage others in the privacy of their own families?

I say at least a politician is speaking honestly about race. Yes, it’s a problem but there are far greater mountains to climb in the years ahead. We in America are in extreme danger of losing our Republican Democracy to the blood tide of corporate-sponsored war focused on securing the few remaining fossil fuels so they may control the camp fire’s blaze as it dies in the night. At least we’ll be able to see the stars again while we’re freezing in the shadowed myopic indifference that once threatened to light the last best hope of mankind.

Perish from the Earth? Shit, in the long run we’ll all be dead. And words don’t matter when dead comes to town.

photo credit: St Stev