He noted that we killed far more people, far more innocent civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki than were killed on 9/11 and "never batted an eye." That this statement is true is inarguable, at least amongst sane people. He is correct on the math, he is correct on the innocence of the dead (neither city was a military target), and he is most definitely correct on the lack of remorse or even self-doubt about the act: sixty-plus years later most Americans still believe those attacks were justified, that they were needed to end the war and "save American lives."

But not only does such a calculus suggest that American lives are inherently worth more than the lives of Japanese civilians (or, one supposes, Vietnamese, Iraqi or Afghan civilians too), but it also ignores the long-declassified documents, and President Truman's own war diaries, all of which indicate clearly that Japan had already signaled its desire to end the war, and that we knew they were going to surrender, even without the dropping of atomic weapons. The conclusion to which these truths then attest is simple, both in its basic veracity and it monstrousness: namely, that in those places we committed premeditated and deliberate mass murder, with no justification whatsoever; and yet for saying that I will receive more hate mail, more hostility, more dismissive and contemptuous responses than will those who suggest that no body count is too high when we're the ones doing the killing. Jeremiah Wright becomes a pariah, because, you see, we much prefer the logic of George Bush the First, who once said that as President he would "never apologize for the United States of America. I don't care what the facts are."

What Jeremiah Wright knows, and told his flock — though make no mistake, they already knew it — is that 9/11 was neither the first, nor worst act of terrorism on American soil. The history of this nation for folks of color, was for generations, nothing less than an intergenerational hate crime, one in which 9/11s were woven into the fabric of everyday life: hundreds of thousands of the enslaved who died from the conditions of their bondage; thousands more who were lynched (as many as 10,000 in the first few years after the Civil War, according to testimony in the Congressional Record at the time); millions of indigenous persons wiped off the face of the Earth. No, to some, the horror of 9/11 was not new. To some it was not on that day that "everything changed." To some, everything changed four hundred years ago, when that first ship landed at what would become Jamestown. To some, everything changed when their ancestors were forced into the hulls of slave ships at Goree Island and brought to a strange land as chattel. To some, everything changed when they were run out of Northern Mexico, only to watch it become the Southwest United States, thanks to a war of annihilation initiated by the US government. To some, being on the receiving end of terrorism has been a way of life. Until recently it was absolutely normal in fact.

What can we say about a nation where white preachers can lie every week from their pulpits without so much as having to worry that their lies might be noticed by the shiny white faces in their pews, while black preachers who tell one after another essential truth are demonized, not only for the stridency of their tone — which needless to say scares white folks, who have long preferred a style of praise and worship resembling nothing so much as a coma — but for merely calling bullshit on those whose lies are swallowed whole?

With tin foil molded properly on pate, with incense burning and adorned by a Cross, two Stars of David and several cloves of garlic, I journeyed yesterday to the Dark Side, just to take a confirmational peek at what the 15th-century minds of right-wing hysteria were likely saying. And sure enough, there it was, splattered all over the screen, in all its eerie irrelevance and screaming disproportionality.

Why isn’t the news media going after John McCain, forcing him to denounce John Hagee’s anti-Catholic bigotry? And if the anger of Jeremiah Wright is so threatening, what about the anger of John McCain’s other “spirtual advisor”, as John McCain called Ohio’s Rod Parsley at a campaign stop in Cincinnati recently? Here’s a video compilation of the homophobic, millenialist rhetoric that the mainstream media finds so uninteresting.

Some African tribes have devised an ingenious method of capturing monkeys. They cut a small hole in a coconut, large enough for a monkey’s hand but too small for a monkey’s fist. They then put a few peanuts inside the coconut. When the monkey reaches inside and grabs the peanuts, it is unable to extract its hand.

The monkey is then faced with two choices: let go of the bait and go free or hold on to the bait and be captured. Escaping with the bait is not an option. African monkeys, determined and single-minded critters that they are, usually hold-on until captured.

Hillary Clinton, it seems, is consumed with a monkey-like determination to become the 44th President of the United States, and with that consuming objective in mind, she fails to perceive the context and the likely consequences of her behavior. She has essentially two options: hang on to her determination to win the nomination by any and all means necessary, which, as I will explain below, will almost certainly result in the election of John McCain, or let go of her personal ambition and join a united effort to elect a Democratic President in November. Winning both the nomination and the general election is apparently out of the question.

In sum, this is Hillary's dilemma: Hold on to the bait, and both Clinton and the Democrats lose. Let go of the bait, and Obama wins. Hillary Clinton’s victory in November is not an option.

As a Democrat, I’m totally depressed. Another election is coming; another chance to put this country back on track, to right our wrongs, to finally let the people be heard. We’re the party of Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy, Franklin Roosevelt. We have a president in office that makes Richard Nixon looked beloved. So what are our choices? Barack or Hillary. Pepsi or Pepsi Light. Pepsi anyone?

Does anyone else get that creepy feeling we’re all meant to be here, like it’s a weird Twilight Zone episode? That our three choices for president are exactly what the powers that be had in mind? As the Cowardly Lion cried in the witch’s castle, “We’re trapped, trapped like rats.” There’s nowhere to turn. Whatever door we walk through leads right back to where we started, like an M.C. Escher painting.