THE saddest aspect of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s tirades is neither his dishonest charges, nor his egocentric claim to speak for all black churches, nor even the harm he’s done to the dreams of his best-known parishioner.
The sorrow and the pity of it all is that the Chicago pastor, who’s reveling in his 15 minutes of fame, is only one of many demagogues in all races and creeds who foster cults of victimization around the globe.
And nothing is more certain to keep those at the bottom down than self-appointed messiahs who assure them they’ll always be victims.
I haven’t sat through 20 years of Wright’s sermons, but the most striking aspect of the pastor’s rants that I have heard is that – like demagogues on every inhabited continent – he prefers assigning blame to making progress.
Blame is delicious. And easy. Progress takes work.
Nor is it in the interest of demagogues to see their followers graduate from society’s margins toward the center. Social, economic or political success undercuts their fundamental argument that their poor will always be with us.
It gets tricky to portray your followers as eternal victims when you live in a multimillion-dollar mansion (smack dab in the midst of your oppressors), one of your flock is a likely presidential nominee of the most powerful nation in history – and his spouse holds an Ivy League law degree and earns over $300K a year.
In a situation like that, any demagogue has to renew his call to arms – to dismiss any success he can’t spoil outright.
What the media have missed is the ideological company Wright keeps. If you listen past his magnificent rhetorical skills, he makes the same the-evil-government’s-out-to-get-you arguments as white supremacists, polygamist child molesters, UFO cults and all the less scrupulous “advocates” for troubled minorities.
The demagogue’s bottom line is always: Your failures aren’t your fault – it’s all their fault. Whitey’s to blame, or people of color, or the Jews (those Elders of Zion sure do stay busy) or black helicopters from the UN. It’s a formula for the perpetuation of failure.
Fortunately for us, this paralyzing cult of victimhood is the antithesis of the ethic that allowed the United States to achieve the quality of life the vast majority of us enjoy today. What built our country was the get-up-off-your-butt belief that God, by any name, helps those who help themselves.
We’ve always had blame-mongers on the margins, but, blessedly, that’s where they’ve usually remained.
The Wrights of the world aren’t really interested in helping those caught on the outside looking in. Instead of encouraging their followers to grasp the opportunities before them, they preach that all those opportunities are illusions, that the system is stacked so cruelly against their own kind that there’s no chance of getting ahead.
I’ve seen this in the Middle East, where every dead car battery is the fault of the Great Satan America (and of Israel, of course), and in Latin America, where politicians steal everything in sight and blame every shuttered bakery on the Yankees who long since went home.
I’ve seen it in India, where Hindus blame Muslims or members of other castes for every ill. And (God help that tortured continent) I’ve seen it again and again in Africa, where blame is the currency of politics.
The global refusal to shoulder responsibility is a strategic issue of the first order – although you’ll never hear it briefed in Washington.
As I write, the Chinese are in full dudgeon, blaming foreign devils yet again, this time for embarrassing their Olympic efforts – utterly unwilling to admit that Beijing may have created a few problems on its own.
Russians are again raging at the West for their self-wrought squalor, while Europeans blame Israel (those pesky Jews again!) for their homemade problems with marginalized Muslim immigrants.
In Venezuela, Presidente Hugo Chavez still blames every problem on el Diablo Bush, while wrecking the future of a wretched population. In Iran, fanatics blame everyone but themselves for their country’s stagnation, while al Qaeda rages that America has caused the 1,000-year decline of Arab civilization (demagogues have chronic difficulties with dates).
And just to remind us that we aren’t fully immune to the seductive appeal of blaming others for our personal disappointments, in marched the Rev. Wright, fists clenched and rhetoric ringing.
His name is Legion. Wright is part of a global phenomenon plaguing every major faith and every civilization. He’s not a problem for any one race, but for every race – for all of us who believe in a loving God and who maintain that every man and woman deserves a chance to succeed.
Preaching hatred and vengeance in the name of religion: Heard that from anyone else recently?
Ralph Peters’ latest book is “Wars of Blood and Faith.”