About Me

Murray, Utah, United States
I am Average-Joe, Middle-America. Cogito ergo sum. I think therefore I can blog. That's my only qualification and my only motivation.

Monday, December 10, 2007

Politics 101 in the 21st Century

I’ve heard many a person comment of late that we are living in a messed up time and the dirty business of politics is one of the reasons. We’re all entitled to our opinions and that’s one that is valid for the nonreaders.

If you have studied politics much you’d realize we ain’t seeing nothing like the past. Politics has always been kind of a dirty business, and certainly is today, but compared to some previous campaigns everyone is on their best behavior.

George Washington was revered in his day as much as he is now but his political opponents had no problem trashing him – and most did it anonymously. That way you could say anything you wanted.

It got so bad in John Adam’s presidency, that this famed signer of the Declaration of Independence, convinced Congress to pass the infamous “Alien and Sedition Acts.” This allowed him to lock up in jail anyone who spoke negatively against the President or the government. He could also kick anyone out of the country who made similarly libelous comments. Imagine that in our day. “W” would love that one. We can’t even keep the aliens out of the country let alone kick citizens out for their big mouths. Bye-bye Rosie sounds real good.

In the 3rd Presidential race, Aaron Burr tied with Thomas Jefferson and the House picked Jefferson so Burr became the Vice President. He was so ticked off at personal things a Cabinet Member, Alexander Hamilton, had said about him, he eventually challenged him to a duel. He killed him. Then he left the country to the West and tried to be made king and emperor of the Louisiana Purchase lands and was eventually banished to Europe.

One more example was when Andrew Jackson ran for the 6th Presidency. This race was so nasty on a personal level directed toward Jackson’s wife, Rachel, she passed away from the stress of it all. He won the popular vote and the House picked his opponent for President and for four years the ugliness did not stop; very specific personal ugliness most of which flying both ways was not true, or relevant.

So our day is pretty calm. Swift Boating is whimpy - forgetting the fact that it was true. But we do have a serious problem that is new and troubling. Our society’s inclination toward celebrity worship and “political correctness.” I put that in quote marks to differentiate it from legitimate politeness. In the last two weeks I’ve looked up close and personal at some things going on that show this.

There was the Mitt Romney speech, a speech by Hillary Clinton, a three hour interview with Newt Gingrich, a two hour interview with Bill Clinton, and the first Oprah introduction to Barack Obama including his talk. What a rush. Here is what I observed.

The most qualified man right now for the Presidency is Newt Gingrich. Mostly because he isn’t going after it. It is becoming more and more true that somebody who wants the job ought to be automatically disqualified. He is articulate and right on, on most of the issues. Being a historian he’s actually studied the stuff and is forming opinions based on research and facts and not jut barfing back trite clichéd politically correct drivel. I watched three hours with the guy and he has this crap-eaten grin to go along with his educated answers and is unflappable. Both characteristics are a necessity when deranged people are calling in and asking the most absurd questions on earth. Three hours went by like a minute.

Bill Clinton is amazing. He is the most gifted liar, maybe, to ever live. Cain was a wimp. I think he lies just because he can. And he gets pretty much a free pass, so he does it. One of these days, I suspect he’s going to tell us he’s really a Martian and came from outer space. And he will do it with passion, and he’ll say it with a straight face, and if questioned, he’ll lean forward and repeat it, and in his mind he’ll be thinking, “You’re all a bunch of dummies letting me say anything I want and letting me get away with it.” I’m sure in his diary he records that he is shocked at what he says and gets away with. Some liars convince themselves that they are really telling the truth and then just live in a dream world. Not Bill. He doesn’t believe a word he says but says it anyway. I almost respect him. Kind of like I respect Nehor.

Mitt Romney’s speech was great. It had nothing to do with religion and had everything to do with America. If he made his entire campaign like that speech, he’d hearken us back to the Reagan days when American meant something and we were once again proud of our country. What scares me worse about his whole situation is those who would never vote for him because he’s a Mormon and those who are voting for him simply because he is a Mormon. Frightening perspectives. He won’t make it and that’s good because I don’t want the Church trashed by imbecile’s simply to attack him. It’s tiring. Just like the atheist idiots who are criticizing his speech for not reaching out to them. Get a freaking life. He didn’t reach out to the Neo-Nazi’s either. Or the murderers. Or the Buddhists. Or the illegal aliens (a third of the country at last count.) Or the Lost Ten Tribes.

Hillary Clinton. I listened and didn’t turn the channel just so I can say I did. It is painful. I’ve had multiple root canals and cists removed without anesthesia that were more pleasant than listening to her. I wish it weren’t so painful but the sound of her voice grates on something in my inner ear and creates the same physical reaction as bad perfume does to my eyes. They bleed. And what she is saying is irrelevant because it is all so freaking, filthy, wrong. She lies, no doubt, but her lying is out of ignertrance (I’m combining ignert and ignorance together into a new word.) In the speech I heard she was defending her latest and greatest (# 226) socialized medicine proposal and she said – I kid you not – quote, “There are tens of hundreds of millions of people in this country who do not have health care.” Unquote. Huh? Tens of hundreds of millions is one billion. Who the freak is she talking about. There are only 300 millions of people in this country counting the illegal aliens. Picture my ears bleeding at this point.

Oprah and Obama. What can I say? Lightweight Obama ought to be introducing Oprah as the candidate. If people are so for a woman President and some all for a black President, there you go: Oprah. Now she has done nothing to qualify herself for the job, just like he hasn’t. But at least she has all the money in the world. But listen to what she says about him: nothing. She is just using the power of her celebrity to back him.

Her introduction was moving and her delivery makes you want to jump up and be saved but she says she’s endorsing him for the first time endorsing anyone for very personal reasons … Wait for it … Wait for it …. Wait for it …. It doesn’t every come what those very personal reasons are. And nowhere in her introduction does she tell us one issue he is for that is bring her out in support of him. She says he’s got the answers. She says that Washington needs someone like him. She says it’s time the country elect someone who isn’t just talking but doing. But what? I am not hearing one single issue or thing he’s done or for that connects the dots. Oh, she does say one specific thing. He was the first one to come out against the war in Iraq. Great. So now it’s a race to see who can not support something first and that’s who we back. Well folks, I didn’t support abortion first. Pick me!

What a world. It’s portends a scary world if the power of celebrity gains inroads into the leadership of this country. But as long as this next presidential race has been going on, maybe they do need to turn it into a reality show. And we’ll eliminate candidates each week based on something or other. And eventually after the celebrity panel of Oprah, Natalie Maines, and Elizabeth Hasselbeck, narrow down the field based on their pithy insight, the rest of the country can call a number and vote as many times as they are willing to pay, for which every candidate they choose.

For me, I hope the millennium gets here soon.

Sunday, December 2, 2007

Mindsets

In preparing to teach Sunday School next week (yea, I have to stay in the game periodically so I don't forget how) I ran across an interesting thing I used to use. I would always use it to introduce Isaiah or in the case of next week, The Book of Revelation. Let me explain.

Beloit College (some place in Wisconsin) puts out a list each year for the entering freshman and professors to show how different their world perpectives are. The point is for everyone to be sensitive in the learning environment to assumptions made because they are very different based on life experiences.

I use it to demonstrate that if the worlds are that different for someone born in 1985 and us old timers, how different is our world from John who wrote Revelation a couple thousand years ago.

Here is the mindset list.

Most of the students entering college this fall, members of the class of 2011, were born in 1989. For them, Alvin Ailey, Andrei Sakharov, Huey Newton, Emperor Hirohito, Ted Bundy and Abbie Hoffman have always been dead.

1. What Berlin wall?
2. Humvees, minus the artillery, have always been available to the public.
3. Rush Limbaugh and the “Dittoheads” have always been lambasting liberals.
4. They never “rolled down” a car window.
5. Michael Moore has always been angry and funny.
6. They may confuse the Keating Five with a rock group.
7. They have grown up with bottled water.
8. General Motors has always been working on an electric car.
9. Nelson Mandela has always been free and a force in South Africa.
10. Pete Rose has never played baseball.
11. Rap music has always been mainstream.
12. Religious leaders have always been telling politicians what to do, or else!
13. “Off the hook” has never had anything to do with a telephone.
14. Music has always been “unplugged.”
15. Russia has always had a multi-party political system.
16. Women have always been police chiefs in major cities.
17. They were born the year Harvard Law Review Editor Barack Obama announced he might run for office some day.
18. The NBA season has always gone on and on and on and on.
19. Classmates could include Michelle Wie, Jordin Sparks, and Bart Simpson.
20. Half of them may have been members of the Baby-sitters Club.
21. Eastern Airlines has never “earned their wings” in their lifetime.
22. No one has ever been able to sit down comfortably to a meal of “liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.”
23. Wal-Mart has always been a larger retailer than Sears and has always employed more workers than GM.
24. Being “lame” has to do with being dumb or inarticulate, not disabled.
25. Wolf Blitzer has always been serving up the news on CNN.
26. Katie Couric has always had screen cred.
27. Al Gore has always been running for president or thinking about it.
28. They never found a prize in a Coca-Cola “MagiCan.”
29. They were too young to understand Judas Priest’s subliminal messages.
30. When all else fails, the Prozac defense has always been a possibility.
31. Multigrain chips have always provided healthful junk food.
32. They grew up in Wayne’s World.
33. U2 has always been more than a spy plane.
34. They were introduced to Jack Nicholson as “The Joker.”
35. Stadiums, rock tours and sporting events have always had corporate names.
36. American rock groups have always appeared in Moscow.
37. Commercial product placements have been the norm in films and on TV.
38. On Parents’ Day on campus, their folks could be mixing it up with Lisa Bonet and Lenny Kravitz with daughter Zöe, or Kathie Lee and Frank Gifford with son Cody.
39. Fox has always been a major network.
40. They drove their parents crazy with the Beavis and Butt-head laugh.
41. The “Blue Man Group” has always been everywhere.
42. Women’s studies majors have always been offered on campus.
43. Being a latchkey kid has never been a big deal.
44. Thanks to MySpace and Facebook, autobiography can happen in real time.
45. They learned about JFK from Oliver Stone and Malcolm X from Spike Lee.
46. Most phone calls have never been private.
47. High definition television has always been available.
48. Microbreweries have always been ubiquitous.
49. Virtual reality has always been available when the real thing failed.
50. Smoking has never been allowed in public spaces in France.
51. China has always been more interested in making money than in reeducation.
52. Time has always worked with Warner.
53. Tiananmen Square is a 2008 Olympics venue, not the scene of a massacre.
54. The purchase of ivory has always been banned.
55. MTV has never featured music videos.
56. The space program has never really caught their attention except in disasters.
57. Jerry Springer has always been lowering the level of discourse on TV.
58. They get much more information from Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert than from the newspaper.
59. They’re always texting 1 n other.
60. They will encounter roughly equal numbers of female and male professors in the classroom.
61. They never saw Johnny Carson live on television.
62. They have no idea who Rusty Jones was or why he said “goodbye to rusty cars.”
63. Avatars have nothing to do with Hindu deities.
64. Chavez has nothing to do with iceberg lettuce and everything to do with oil.
65. Illinois has been trying to ban smoking since the year they were born.
66. The World Wide Web has been an online tool since they were born.
67. Chronic fatigue syndrome has always been debilitating and controversial.
68. Burma has always been Myanmar.
69 Dilbert has always been ridiculing cubicle culture.
70. Food packaging has always included nutritional labeling.

Imagine what John would think, showing up in this world of the class of 2011. Imagine us showing up in his world. And we wonder why it's a little challenging to figure out this book.