Calling the Kettle Black...

For all their constant bleating about being "strict constructionists" when it comes to interpreting the Constitution, those who call themselves "conservative" today struggle mightily when it comes to divining the concept of religion in government and society as expressed by the Founders.  This is obliviousness on so many levels...

The creator of Kwanzaa is fighting back against a Wisconsin GOP state senator who said “almost no black people care” about the holiday and that it’s spearheaded by “white left-wingers” who want to separate the country. 

In a statement released last week, Sen. Glenn Grothman said, in part, “Why are hardcore left-wingers still trying to talk about Kwanzaa? Almost no black people today care about Kwanzaa, just white left-wingers who try to shove this down black people’s throats in an effort to divide Americans.”

Apparently unless you celebrate Christmas, you are "dividing America."

First of all, who is he to speak for black people?  I'll bet he doesn't even know any black people well enough to know what they think about it

I personally have only had one interaction with Kwanzaa, where once I went to celebrate  one of the days, umoja, at a local church.  It was a relatively innocuous, but overall positive experience.

The Kwanzaa founder said he developed the holiday, which celebrates family, community and culture, to reinforce the principles of unity, self-determination, collective work and responsibility, cooperative economics, purpose, creativity, and faith.

Of those black folk who I have known to celebrate it, most of them celebrated Christmas as well.  And yet, for all of the negative activities people could be engaging in, why would anyone spew this level of fear and vitriol over a non-threatening holiday that, according to the senator, "almost no black people care about?  Karenga has the goods on this fool:

Dr. Maulana Karenga, a Cal State Long Beach professor who created the African-American and Pan-African holiday in 1966, told CBS2's Rachel Kim that he doesn't take Grothman's rants seriously. 

“He has some issues he’s working out. Anxiety about what he considers is the multi-coloring of America,” Karenga said. “He’s suffering from falsehood, ignorance and misinformation in order to discredit not just me and Kwanzaa, but black people and their right to choose their own special culture.”

Yet Grothman doubles down:

In an interview with CNN, he defended his comments by personally slamming Karenga. “I think the underlying problem here is not enough TV types when they talk about Kwanzaa, talk about the horrible, racist, violent past of its founder. And if they knew the past, I think Kwanzaa would die a quick death,” Grothman said.

If that were the case then Christmas and much of what we call "culture" in this country would be deserving of a "quick death" as well then.  And speaking of Christmas, the problem here is that Christmas and Christianity, in the hands of people like Grothman, is perverted from what is loving by nature into something hateful and ugly.

And the supposed "racist, violent past" of Karenga pales next to the past of whites who came to this country, committed genocide on indigenous peoples to steal their land, then kidnap millions of Africans and enslave them to build out the country they stole and generate wealth that they've enjoyed to this day, helped along by the false construct that is race to control and maintain the entire thing for centuries.

Now that is evil.  And that's not opinion, but historical fact.  And yet it is Kwanzaa that is supposedly "dividing America."  What a loon!

This reminds me of a conversation I had with a black cab driver years ago when I had traveled to another city on business.  Heading up the local news for the day was a story of a black man who had committed murder.  Asked if I had heard about it, he then went on to shake his head and say, "the black man is the most violent creature on the face of the earth."

In that instant I had a brief stream of conscious thought about the Native Americans, the development and dropping of the atomic bomb, chemical weapons, of the untold millions killed in world wars I and II, of Hitler and Stalin, the Klan, of the genocides that had occurred in the former Yugoslavia, and in that brief instance I felt sad for this man who had obviously been brainwashed to a self-hatred so ingrained that it could be expressed indirectly in such a matter of fact way.

"Dude, have you considered what the white man has accomplished on the scales of violence?"

"Naw, dog, that's different," was the response I got.

Little wonder then, that the Grothman's of the world are so oblivious and quick to double down on their hatred and feel so comfortable in their ignorance.