If on November 5 we have crossed a historical threshold and elected our first black president, I will eat crow, feathers and all, but I don’t think it will happen. In a previous post, before the blasphemous blowhard Jeremiah Wright arrived on the scene, I thought, like many Americans, Republican or Democrat, that Obama was a nice, smart guy. He was a refreshing change, if only in style, from the brain-dead liberal elders in his party. He was, most emphatically not the craven lamp-and-ashtray throwing heir to a decade of moral rot that is Hillary Clinton. If there was ever a Democrat that would change the tone in Washington, if not his political positions, it was Obama. And if he happened to be black, who cares, I live by a code of a (capitalist) meritocracy and it matters not a whit the guy’s skin color.
Picture George Washington sitting in the colonial era Falls Church in (now) Falls Church, Virginia. It is not far from Mt. Vernon and he was known to frequent the church as it was located near the falls of the Potomac River. Washington was a pious man and loved his country with every fiber of his being. Would he have selected a man such as Reverend Jeremiah Wright as his pastor, a racist America-hating “clergyman” who talks about someone “riding dirty” on an intern while executing pelvic thrusts that would make Elvis blush. At the risk of beating it to death, watch again and put Washington in the congregation.
Theodore Roosevelt, the hero of San Juan Hill, commander of the Rough Riders, and Medal of Honor recipient would have, upon hearing “God damn America,” strode up to the altar, grabbed Wright by the collar and belt and heaved him out the back door. He would have then turned around, pushed up his pince-nez, glared around the church daring someone to make a move, and strode his stocky body purposefully out the front door.
Dwight D. Eisenhower, Five Star General in the United States Army, Supreme Commander of the Allied forces in Europe, Planner of the D-Day Invasion, and Nazi-Slayer, would have heard Wright’s sermon, thought of the brave boys of Pointe du Hoc dead on the beach at Normandy, shook his head and wondered if he was stuck in a bad dream in Berlin circa 1941.
Would any of these men have chosen Rev. Wright to marry them to their sweethearts Martha, Edith, or Mamie? Would they have had their children baptized in that church? Would they have continued to subject the children to caustic sermons brimming with rage against their own country?
Barack Obama did. America doesn’t elect people like that.
Bill Dupray is a lawyer living in Northern Virginia.