Political Gadfly Designed to Make Everyone Miserable

Watching the debate last night made me angry.  I've been busy this morning so I don't know how it played with the rest of America and frankly, it's irrelevant.  I don't shift my mood to suit the country or my party. 

Neither man showed themselves to have a strong enough or steady enough moral compass to be given the power the Executive branch now wields.  I know as a Pro-lifer, I'm not supposed to upset the apple cart when Mittmomentem is surging toward Election day.  But a person who talks openly about killing with Drones, is not pro-life.  A person who designed the government health care program used in Massachusetts that used state taxes to fund abortions, is NOT pro-life.  A man who keeps "modifying" or "evolving" his position on being Pro-life, is pro-life only on some occasions, which is the same as Not Pro-life.  He keeps saying he'll defund Planned Parenthood.  Absent a line item veto (unlikely in the extreme, didn't someone else propose this, doesn't everyone before now propose this and then not get it and not be upset about it because it lets them sign whatever such that now it's not even been proposed), how is he planning to do this? 

 I can hear my friends in the Conservative Political blogoshere's heads exploding. "SHHHHHHHHH! SSHHHHHHHH! He's better than the alternative."  It is a question of degrees. 

I can't think my friends on the liberal side of the political spectrum are so happy either, especially when the guy in charge for the past four years keeps pretending none of us pay attention to his actions or words and how they disconnect...often.   I know they aren't happy with the employment rate.  I know they're troubled by Fast and Furious, by the Drone strikes, the complete break down in security in Benghazi, the continued existence of the prison in Guantanamo, the 2000th death in Afghanistan, 900 + executive orders to end run Congress, and the erosion of civil liberties including religious civil liberties.  Not to mention the trivialization of women as the sum of their parts. 

So I'm mad because while the moderator tried to ask about foreign policy, the men stayed on their stumps, got out their sound bites about bayonets and budgets.  We didn't have a mature discussion in the arena of ideas. We had two grown men trading high school smug shots at each other while preaching to their laundry list of followers about the Bogey man the other one was and all the goodness that would follow in their elected wake. It made both men look small and the world much more than either could handle. 

Part of our problem is not so secret substituion of the 4th estate with Folger Crystal versions of journalists.  Do we honestly believe we'd be in this state if the media hadn't picked a political side rather than to serve truth first? We've been living on a fast food diet of op-eds from talking heads that sing to our own personal tastes so long, we don't know how to recognize anything but our own choices as having any validity in application of policy or politics.  

Where are our real political gadflies that sting everyone?  Shouldn't the press be discussing the total abdication of duty by the Senate to pass a budget in now 4 years?  Shouldn't the press be discussing the true unemployment rate and why what is political is not what is right, true and necessary for the country's growth. 

Shouldn't someone argue that while all spending may be stimulus, if it is a zero sum game, then for the government to expand, the private sector must shrink.  Shouldn't someone ask beyond slogans of paying your fair share and cutting taxes for small businesses, what is the limit/scope of government and what should be the limit/scope of taxes to ensure maximum liberty while fulfilling civic obligations?  Shouldn't this be somehow, discussed?   If all spending is stimulus for the economy, doesn't that argument eliminate the acknowledgement of any government waste?

 Likewise, anyone who says they'll balance the budget but there will be no pain is also woefully wrong or disingenuous.  It can't happen without actual pain.  It is a bit much however to see a leader who presideded the past four years over a stratospheric surge in spending, talk condescendingly toward anyone who proposes that anything done in the past four years might possibly have been rash, wasteful or excessive.  You can't say you will work to ballance the budget when the budgets you've proposed didn't garner even one vote in the Senate....from your own party.  You're not serious. You're not even trying.

 Lastly, an unpopular question to be sure, why would anyone who doesn't pay taxes, vote to have some? Shouldn't everyone have to kick in at least a dollar?  If everyone must pay in something, then everyone feels keenly the need for the government to be a good steward of our treasure.  Our government has been a poor steward.  We have a 16 trillion dollar deficit and we didn't even get invited to the party.  If we're serious, really serious about this, we need to know what we bought with that 16 trillion. 

Shouldn't the press be screaming Screaming, SCREAMING about the Executive having a KILL LIST?  Shouldn't the press be camped outside the home of every person involved  in the decision not to provide security or send help in the 7 hours after the initial attack on our embassy?  Shouldn't the press be investigating the 2,2 million in illegal donations and why a 15 million dollar loan was needed from Bank of America?  Shouldn't these things be the subjects of investigations from our supposed "Truth detectors?"  Do we have any way of knowing if subsequent scandals and problems for whatever administration follows will be covered up or blown up to suit the political ideologies of those doing the investigations?  If we continue to devolve into having right and left fact checkers, we might has well simply surrender the ground. We're going to be entitled to our own facts. All other facts will be ignored. In which case the slogan for our new Non-representative republic should be: Vote ignorant. Vote often. 

Sigh.  
The checks and balances of our system have all bounced.  

I know, put not your trust in princes.  But I'd like a better option than what we have and a diet version what we have, where you get the same things but with 25% less conviction.   Who wants to vote for ME or me too? 

Yeah.  The debates depressed me. Go Vote Anyway and pray for our country regardless.  Yay America.  Rah.  

Facebook Chicken

Something I've noticed about debates on Facebook. 

They don't create friends. Politics in social media are more like a game of chicken on a two lane highway.  This past week, the entire Facebook community seemed consumed by Chick-Fil-A, and yet I do not recall a single post of a single person being converted heart or mind from one side to the other. It was really a sense of tribal camps.  Camps that had good reasons for being, but camps that could see the multitude of reasons on its own side for joining, and none of the thought process of the other. 

The nature of the debate on Facebook shrinks rather than expand the arena of ideas.  It just divides us into the us and them, the like and don't like, the R and the D, the Yeah We're Great and Good and Wise and the Evil Other side is stupid...we do not see our own planks in our own eyes, but those splinters, WOW, they're big.  Let me help... Click "Like" and share is not the same as give love and sharing. We aren't doing much giving if all we are doing is standing on a soap box and saying anyone who doesn't agree with me is a doof and I'm unfriending.  

Facebook politics don't allow for much nuance, so there is much opportunity for hurt. But real relationships must change us, or they are not real. Because we do not see face to face, we miss the smiles, the eyes, the heart that comes with having a discussion about real things with real people. There is far more nuance in the motivations of our thinking than our political ideological monikers reveal.   It is a hard thing to recognize, that in this age of most people having 200+ followers, and over 500 "friends," true relationships are being lost in the cross fire of expecting that all friends shall be mirrors unto ourselves. We have to be willing to open our eyes even in the virtual world, to the bigger souls that are shrunk by our limited vision in cyber space, and to how we might be shrinking our own in the process. Friends are not mirrors, they are facets of God's eyes, that show back to us, the pieces we won't otherwise see. 

Pray for peace in all our hearts, in all our actions and in all we think and say everywhere.