Wright or Wrong?

I met with my dad the other morning and like usual fell to talking of American politics and specifically the presidential election. My dad supports Barack Obama. He thinks that he's the only candidate able to actually change the country's destructive course.

I, of course, beg to differ. One person isn't going to change over 500 years of violent history, power and domination. Obama isn't the messiah people think he is. If he was president he would approve air strikes around the world, he would deny climate change (though not to the degree of his predecessor) and he would maintain the marginalization and everyday violence visited on the poor and visible minorities in his country. The United States would cease to exist without these core truths.

If he was revolutionary and tried to actually change this system he would be dead on his second day in office. That's a fact.

My dad knows all this but he still recognizes that Obama would be the best of the three choices offered Americans (remember voters don't choose, they just confirm). The biggest threat to Obama is that white voters will be scared away by his skin colour. This seems to be happening today with the media scandal around Obama's reverend's "fiery" sermons.

Reverend Wright has lambasted American foreign policy and injustice at home. He has spoken out against the deliberate systematic destruction of black Americans' communities. He has challenged the religion of capitalism. He has recognized that 9/11 was just blowback from American crimes abroad.

In short, Wright tells the truth.

My dad thinks he'll ruin Barack Obama's chance to be president. He knows he's speaking the truth but doesn't want to hear it and wants Wright to shut up. Are those of us that agree with him in this belief merely deluding ourselves? Are we ready to challenge the hidden, rotten foundations of our lives? Or do we have faith that the same system that sows death and injustice will somehow transform through the election of one man?

Either way if Fox News (and the rest of the gang) is calling you un-American you know you're doing something right!