What happened to Pastor Wright**

Otherwise known as why Pastor Wright didn't keep his mouth shut.

So many people are wondering why Jeremiah Wright shot his mouth off at the National Press Club .  First of all, let's review what happened.  In a fiery sermon, Pastor Wright made divisive comments about America, 9/11 and so on.  The video was replayed thousands of times across various news outlets.  Mostly, because to-date this was the most controversial thing to come out of the Obama camp.  The media needed something to run him through the wringer with.  Fair enough as today’s media doesn’t report the news, but merely spouts opposing opinions from wing-backed chairs.

Very shortly after that controversy, Pastor Wright was asked to step down from his church, canceled several speaking engagements and basically holed himself up in his house with whatever thoughts.  Barack Obama responded with diplomacy and one of the best speeches in modern history.

Fast-forward to Pastor Wright speaking to a meeting of Black pastors. Instead of being recalcitrant, he moved forward with even more rhetoric about the black church and how he was speaking for Black America and his defense of Farrakhan saying when Farrakhan speaks, Black America listens (really we do?  I must not get that radio station on my black channel).  Why did he do it everybody asked themselves, unable to understand why he could not understand how his remarks would further damage Obama’s campaign?

My response is that Wright has simply lost all touch with reality.  Pastor Wright has been Pastor of Trinity for over 35 years.  The church has thousands of members, and anybody who has ever attended a mega-church can tell you how much of a sacrifice the head pastor has to make.  It’s your life; it becomes your reason for living.  Imagine day-in and day-out for over 35 years, you are responsible for leading thousands of people in the way of God.  You have to make executive decisions.  Vacations are far and few between.  It quite literally is your life, your identity, who you are, what you do.  Then, suddenly it’s gone.  It wasn’t a planned exodus like retirement.  A retirement is a choice you control.  You know it's coming.  You can transition power, responsibilities, etc.  You can deal with it. (Wright was actually planning on retiring according to a member of his church)  Wright's exodus was a choice he had no control over.  Imagine having to leave for a choice forced upon you for speaking your mind.  You felt betrayed by the very people you were sheparding because someone leaked that tape.  If they had followed you, you could have led them straight to the kingdom of Heaven.  But they sold you out.

My grandmother thinks Wright may be in the first stages of Alzheimer's. It happened to her pastor as well. 

And now, everybody is calling you racist, unpatriotic even though you served in the military.  A betrayer of the Black race even though you were one of the first.

What happens?

Your mind snaps.  You have lost your identity and no longer know who you are.  You can’t make the connection between your rambling remarks and how you are damaging not only Barack Obama, but the hundreds of other pastors leading the Black church.

In psychology when someone undergoes an event so traumatic that the mind can’t process it, you get multiple personality disorder at worse and post-traumatic distress syndrome at best.  Either way, your reasoning capabilities are severely diminished.  The brain has a charge to protect itself.  It’s why it’s easy for us to recognize behavioral patterns in others, but not ourselves.  We are wired to protect us first.

So while I’m not excusing Pastor Wright, I’m simply saying, not only did he figuratively go crazy, but he also went figuratively crazy.  He has completely disassociated himself from his common sense and reality.  I would expect more shenanigans from him the future unless he begins to learn how to see himself as Jeremiah and not Pastor.

*while I have many more opinions about the election and Hillary and everyone, the scope of this essay to strictly Jeremiah Wright.  Please limit your comments to that scope.

**Updated thanks to feedback from my Grandmother and D. Hill