Dysfunctional Political Discourse

Certain people achieve iconic stature, despite the fact that most people don't know much about them. If you want to bash conservatism, disparage Rush Limbaugh. Want to do the same to liberalism? Take a swing at Ted Kennedy.

This is shorthand for true discourse. The vast majority of those who use this shorthand can't defend their statements with specific examples of a person's actual statements or actions. Reason? Because they have never read their subjects' statements, columns, testimonies, books, or other original source materials. They have never seen them in person, nor viewed them on television shows, interviews, or C-SPAN coverage. Any exposure they've had to these people is whatever the mass media has offered up in sound bites, small quotes out of context, or pundits' interpretations of their words.

Political campaigns distill this lack of discourse into an acidic brew of lies, innuendoes, and simplistic sloganeering. A truly hysterical send-up of this is a clip on jibjab.com (may take a while to load...you're warned). In this clip Bush and Kerry lambast each other in fine political humor that differs from real campaigning only by using more direct language, and in that the clip doesn't favor either one....

How many media clips of campaigning have you seen in which the candidate spouts something that boils down to a vapid "I stand for the American Way" or "I want to make this (country, state, city, etc.) great?" They state they have a plan to achieve all their jingoistic goals, but seldom get to the nuts and bolts.

Here's an example: I saw an ad for someone running for the Senate. In it, the candidate introduces his family saying his father is a minister, and his mother is the backbone and strength of their family. The candidate states he and his wife are bringing up their children with the values he was raised with.

Somehow this just isn't enough to get my vote. For all I know his genial father is a minister in a Satanic cult and his mother has a criminal record including public lewdness and animal cruelty. The "values" his kids are being raised with (the same as his, remember?) could include "do it to others before they do it to you."

The reason for this diatribe?

I'm sick of watching people trading accusations about their preferred politicians without any knowledge behind their words. This is a free and democratic country. We should all (myself included) take more time to read and listen to what our would-be leaders have to say. We should all (myself included) make a concerted effort to understand what the Other Person stands for and withhold judgment until we have something on both sides of the balance.

To do this we should demand that candidates explain themselves to us in plain English and in detail, in words they know we will hold them to.

If they can't do that, and if we don't make that demand before we elect them, then we deserve whoever we get..

The Word of God? Who told you?

Bible, Koran, Torah, whatever…. The Word of God? I don't think so.

So many people think they know the one and only Truth in the universe. Even though there are so many different beliefs, each holds fast to their own, knowing in their hearts that all those other poor people, the unfortunate fools, are lost because they don't see the same Truth.

All the stories told, describing events and conversations back to the dawn of time, the Creation of Everything, are said to be exactly as meant or even said by the Force that was both witness to and cause of those events.

So, who wrote all this down and when?

How much changed in the verbal retelling over so many generations after humans supposedly discovered, or were told, by that same Force, the Meaning of It All? How much of the original script was revamped, remembered incorrectly, revised to advance an ulterior motive, etc.?

You read all the time about religious scholars debating the true meaning of scriptures...and one group's views will win out and that will be their "unbroken line" back to a supreme being whose meaning they may have just misinterpreted. And how many times has that happened, in each faith, over centuries?

And how many times have hypocrites ruled the world's churches, acting as if they themselves were God, sending conquering armies out to destroy the world to remake it in their image? From the Crusades to street missions to young men in earnest white shirts, suits, and earnest pamphlets selling their brand-name one-size-fits-all belief; it's all a power play with humanity's own fears of nothingness as a weapon.

You'd better believe in Something or when you die it'll be forever. Or it will be Forever with Pain and Suffering! Or what it won't be is milk and honey and Serenity and Peace Everlasting, with everyone you ever loved (and maybe Fido, too!!) all united in Joy.

You don’t have to disavow a supreme being to to think if there was once a Way we have likely strayed from it. And that what is described at this moment in history as The Way simply must be wrong, even if only through unintentional distortion.

Or you could be a heretical unbeliever who thinks either fabrications or distortions are the framework the world's hopes are hung on.

After all the fire and brimstone ranting and all the calm persuasion, all the serene acceptance and the evangelical sales pitches, there is still only one absolute thing about religious belief.

Nobody knows the truth.

Belief is powerful. It is not Truth.

Johnny Grew Up To Kill The Abortion Doctor

Let’s see… life is sacred, because life is created by God and God is not to be interfered with by mere mortals; every life is as important as every other in the eyes of God….

How do people who profess that belief sanction killing another person?

Oh, it’s OK - and even a moral duty - to kill if the person killed doesn’t view the world in the same way?

The killer gets a pass from the higher authority of fanatical zealots who claim they know when it’s right to ignore God's will, even as they themselves understand it to be? The disjointed logic of their rollercoaster dementia will make you queasy.

Isn’t it like following Alice down the rabbit hole to say it’s ok to kill someone to protect the sanctity of human life? Or to maintain that only God can take a life and then, acting in his name, kill someone? Who appointed these people God's Vigilantes? Why, they did! And they think God told them to.

What, did God sort of take them aside one night into the shadows at the party? Put His arm around their shoulders and say "You trust me, right? And you know sometimes you just gotta do what ya gotta do, right? Well, I gotta do something, but I need your help. This is bigger than the both of us."?

Oh, I know what they say…better one abortion doctor be killed than allow him or her to kill hundreds of innocent babies. Frankly, Scarlett, I don’t give a damn for that argument. All it says to me is that these people think their own beliefs should rule everyone else.

Maybe medical science, including abortion, is God’s way of giving humanity Free Will.

People should have the right to act in accordance with their own beliefs, and struggle with their decisions the best they can.

And surely our society works best when no single group can hold others under the oppression of their Supreme Arrogance.