We Have Been To The Mountiantop

“America will be ready for a Black president in 40 years!”

Bobby Kennedy 1968



America’s Promise

It was an hour before midnight on a warm summer night. The nation was already duly immersed within the throes of an unprecedented political season and all of a sudden history would pause for just a moment in order to take note of a remarkable convergence of time and space. It would all ultimately come together high upon the summit of a mile-high mountaintop over-looking a nation facing an extraordinary crossroad. This was the fulfillment of prophesy set to the innovative rhythms of a unique cosmic rendezvous. Forty year ago, none other than beloved Bobby Kennedy had accurately predicted that this day was certain to arrive. He assured us back then that he had seen it for himself. It was exactly three years since the wrath of Katrina. It was 53 years to the day since Emmett Till’s gruesome murder, and 45 years to the day that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stood in the stately glare of the seat of American governance in order to tell the world about a dream that he had. Decades later, wide awake and perfectly on time, in a speech that is sure to go down in history for all of its soaring eloquence and complexity, Senator Barack Obama accepted the Democratic nomination for the Presidency of the United States.

Two generations ago, while standing steadfastly upon the shores of a nation woefully engulfed within the violent throes of yet another effort to once more to remake itself, perhaps even Bobby Kennedy may not have truly imagined that Dr. King had an even greater purpose in mind. Like some kind of time-traveler, just moments before he died, King as well had assured us that he too had already surveyed this very same singular space and time. He urged us back then to have faith that we would ultimately get to the Promise Land; even if he could not be there with us. He knew this he said because he had been there and seen it for himself.

In the midst of Campaign 2008, on this particular day, history would recall a young political golden child from Chicago, who would seem to set up a stately seat of governance of his own. In time, he would lead millions of people from around the world to a higher place way above the nation in order that we too could view just what it was that Dr. King had actually seen when he himself had stood upon the mountaintop and looked over. Here was King’s witness upon the mountain. Nevertheless, then and now, it still remained up to us alone to create the Beloved Community. Gandhi was indeed correct. We were the change that we were looking for. The time was at hand. This Obama counseled was America’s Promise.

One year previous to the day that a lone assassin’s bullet would cut short his life, in the spring of 1967 Dr. King became the first prominent leader to forcefully speak out against the Vietnam War. From that moment on, he was variously vilified throughout the country. J. Edgar Hoover deeply hated him, as much as he hated nearly every prominent Black leader since Marcus Mosiah Garvey. He never hesitated to use the enormous resources of the United States government to prove as much. Dr. King would live the last year of his life under the constant ire of certain death looming evermore as a threat to him and to his young family. Racists called him “Dr. Martin Luther Coon”. He seemed to provoke the deepest levels of psychopathic racism, and many of today’s aging cabal of civil rights leaders who have made their fame and their fortune posing as the fateful and dedicated lieutenants of Dr. King, during his greatest hour of need, they were no where to be found. Many who now claim to have been amongst his most ardent supporters simply----‘got somewhere’ when he needed them most. However, King never tired in his quest to build The Beloved Community. Over just the last few years King’s Tomb has become one of the nation’s most traveled destinations, as people from all over the world have come to discover in him a universal symbol of spiritual probity. His enormous egalitarian spirit would ultimately come to captivate the entire world.


Country First

“This election is not going to be about issues!”
Rick Davis, Campaign Manager John McCain for President

A candidate campaigning for President of the United States is actually auditioning at every moment for their job. It is the most public interview in the world. They will have to motivate and move enormous resources on a daily basis. The way that they manage and run their campaign, the way that they organize their party’s convention, and who they choose to ultimately be by their side as Vice President are but a few measures that provide the public an opportunity to gaze into the window of their judgment and ability to lead. In time, both Barack Obama and John McCain would face their next test in the organization of their respective conventions. Suddenly, just days before the Democratic Convention conservative evangelist Stuart Shepard stood in Invesco Field and boldly asked his followers to pray that it might rain upon Barack Obama’s acceptance speech that coming Thursday. Ironically enough, one week later, Hurricane Gustav aimed its sights on New Orleans and threatened to become a new Storm of the Century. The Republicans were forced to take the unprecedented step of canceling the first day of their own convention. However, never one to weary for wear Bubba could still be found making his own brand of mischief in his backyard.

On Wednesday night day three of the Democratic Convention, Barack Obama made a surprise appearance on the stage after Joe Biden’s acceptance speech. The Vice Presidential nominee appeared to be genuinely surprised. However, among other things, Obama casually told his world audience that on the following morning they would be moving “everything” across the street, down the road and to the Mile High Stadium. This was mentioned as if it was simply no big deal. Yet, numerous crews would need to be organized and enormous resources and materials would have to be carefully packed up as Obama’s team essentially would have to create an enormous megalith and carefully carry it to Mile High Stadium. Furthermore, this was to occur during what was essentially a non-stop national event. It was to happen during what is for some a rather special time every four years when the national media is aggressively dedicated to filming every single moment of what has actually become a 24 hour event. On a much smaller scale of course, this was somewhat akin to a chef interviewing for a job and preparing a meal for his potential employer directly in front of his watching eyes. All of this would appear to have gone off without a hitch.

Early that following morning, cameras from around the world were anxiously fixed upon what had suddenly become for the Republican opposition an oddly controversial event. Contrary to the traditional protocol of political conventions, whereby each side normally respects the other’s event, the Republicans acted out with total indifference and disrespect to Barack Obama and the Democrats. Nevertheless, with the exception of Jack Cafferty of CNN and columnist Carl Bernstein no one seemed to notice. Throughout that entire week, the Mc Cain Campaign constantly made rude and unprecedented attempts to beg themselves into the coverage of the Democratic Convention. Each day, they sent out press releases first seeking to constantly create controversy and then in an attempt to dramatically tease the idea that John McCain was soon to announce his Vice Presidential choice. After a time, their often oddly irate and borderline juvenile attempts to disrupt the Democrats went well beyond all established bounds of common decency. To seasoned observers it easily revealed a deep-seated incompetence and sense of desperation in the McCain Campaign.

Suddenly, at the dawn of the very last day of the convention, the Republicans appeared to become truly unhinged. As Obama’s crew was busy working like a small efficient army in full view of the entire world neatly assembling the stagecraft for the day’s event. With remarkable efficiency large white columns were being erected framing what was to become an elaborate blue stage protruding from a backdrop replica of a stately seat of governance. This was reminiscent of the scene of Dr. King facing the Lincoln Memorial as he delivered his speech 45 years earlier.

The McCain Campaign immediately went on the attack and began to childishly mock the construction of this backdrop as a Greek style Parthenon, a “Barackalopolis” they called it, in a coy attempt to show this in evidence of Obama’s by now notorious ‘elitism’. In purely political terms, the Republican’s behavior reached beyond disrespectful into the absurd. Yet, what was left unspoken was actually just how cleverly this backdrop was assembled; with all of its lights, sound, and fireworks ultimately going off without a hitch.

Hurricane Gustav ultimately bucked the mounting anticipation that it was sure to deliver a level of destruction reminiscent of Katrina; as it only caused moderate damage to the Louisiana swampland. For many though, this would become a queer opportunity for the Republican Administration to redeem itself after displaying such appalling ineptness which ultimately had caused the senseless death of so many lives on that fateful day three years earlier. When it was over, one conservative commentator was even so bold as to claim that “Gustav trumps Katrina!” ---- Whatever that was supposed to mean.

Nonetheless, the McCain Campaign shamelessly exploited the collective angst over this storm as an opportunity to unveil the new brand of their campaign. ‘Country First’ was a slogan meant to distinguish the ‘ultra-patriotic’ Republican Party from the ‘other Americans’; symbolized by the new African American Democratic nominee. This attitude was exemplified by John McCain’s accusation that Barack Obama would rather “win a campaign than loose a war!” Yet ‘Country First’ was only able to thinly veil the blatant cultural worldview of ‘Race First’; which easily revealed a recalcitrant White skin privilege that simply sought to use patriotism like a bludgeon.

For many observers however, the notion put forward by an almost totally White national convention that somehow they alone had the best interest of the entire country in mind, was strangely reminiscent of the racist barbarism that had become a vicious deadly staple of American life and culture for more than a century. It is what a gang of White men must have had in mind on that very same date decades ago in the summer of 1955 when they kidnapped, tortured, lynched, and mutilated a 14 year old Black child named Emmett Till in Money Mississippi, simply because they believed that he may have actually whistled at a White woman.

Left unspoken, mangled, distorted, and perpetually hidden from public discourse is the fact that for more than a century after chattel slavery had officially come to an end, the sheer barbarism and utter immorality of the ‘Peculiar Institution’ was shamelessly projected on to the newly freed Black community; which was still desperately seeking to regain a human footing in the world. This is what Fredrick Douglass was ultimately alluding to when he said that “The struggle for freedom in America is a struggle to free Black men’s bodies and White men’s minds!”

While the need for a true Human Rights agenda for African Americans truly begs for international oversight, what has also been left unspoken is the very vicious and viral psychopathology of racism. It remains a terribly acute neurosis throughout the country; such as would inspire millions of White Americans to act out in such savage acts of atrocity upon countless innocent Black Americans generation after generation. With this sick widespread culture of ‘us’ against ‘them’ left unchecked it is no wonder that this nation produces more serial killers than all other nations in the world combined.

After two remarkable weeks, the world was witness to two conventions and two campaigns, together presenting two very dissimilar views of the American Dream. After Katrina and in the midst of Campaign 2008 it would appear as if the nation was regurgitating some of the vilest aspects of its racist past. It would now become quite clear that the struggle of the 21st Century is the struggle between civilization and barbarism. It is about whether or not this nation will ultimately embrace an innovative multicultural globalized future, or simply remain mired in a bizarre xenophobic past.