Some Post Election Musings I found on my computer.

       Mitt Romney was not my choice at the outset of this long campaign, but in the end I think he was one of the best men to ever enter politics, graceful, elegant, a living testimony to honesty, charity and integrity.  The fact that he was so soundly defeated says everything about successful demagoguery. I left for the polls at 5:00 a.m. full of hope and dragged myself home Tuesday night stunned, my tail between my legs. 

        But then I remembered that I had prayed earnestly that the American people would put the right guy in the White House, and Obama was re-elected by a significant majority.  One of two things is true.  I was wrong, and in a second term Obama will be the president we hoped he would be 4 years ago.  Maybe he really will call on Mitt Romney and John Boehner.  Maybe this time he really will address the fiscal cliff.  Maybe his will become the most transparent administration ever. 

         On the other hand, it could as well be true that he will continue to preside by fiat and executive order.  Maybe the most onerous predictions of our founding fathers will come to fruition.  Alexis de Tocqueville said 250 years ago: “The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money.”  Actually it’s worse than Romney’s 47 percent.  The truth is that in California, for example, only 37 per cent of the people work at all and only half of those working make enough money to pay taxes.  The odds are pretty bad, 1 in 8; and if we hike taxes and hype regulation it will be worse.    Maybe we have to slip into the darkness of despair in order to find the light again.

         We don’t find a George Washington in the light of day.  George Washingtons emerge out of the darkness.  I am confident, however, that the idea of America, the ideas that created the founding, will emerge again because all people want to live free; it’s the nature of man and the intent of God.  As Ma Joad said in The Grapes of Wrath, “We’re the people that live.  They can’t wipe us out-they can’t lick us. We'll go on forever, Pa, 'cause we're the people.” I hate to see my grandchildren have to face the darkness caused by my lack of attention to important matters, but they will find the strength.

           America was born in a conflict with the most powerful force on the face of the earth; we survived a bloody civil war and managed to defeat both the Third Reich and The Empire of the Rising Sun.   As Bill Whittle says,  “If you think a Botox  harpy from San Francisco, a greasy used car salesman from Nevada, the dumbest man in Delaware, and a thug from Chicago can destroy the idea that is America you are out of your mind. “

           When the credits began floating up the screen at the end of Darren Aronofsky’s “Noah,” my sister Diane said, “Boy, I’m glad that’s over.”  It was not an easy film to watch.  Having been charmed by the sunny Sunday school pictures of Noah and the happy ark, we are disturbed by his bringing to life the darker images that lurk at the margins of those pages of scripture. Noah did get shamelessly drunk, and it could very well have been because he blamed himself for his inability to carry out what he assumed to be God’s grand plan to “wipe mankind from the face of the earth” (Genisis 6:7). 

               And that’s one thing I liked about the film, that God speaks to Noah the way he speaks to me, ambiguously, through suggestions of the spirit rather than directly, unequivocally.  And I liked the giants.  They are mentioned in the scripture, and how else would Noah have been able to build an ark large enough to house 2 of every kind and seven of every kind, both clean and unclean?

               I did object to the environmentalists themes. I know the environment is important to Aronosfsky, but to insert that theme where it doesn’t belong is rude and disrupting. To suggest, as illustrated by the tortured tree trunks and the barren land, that the few people who populated the earth at that time could have caused such devastation of the planet was blatantly absurd.  I also objected to the suggestion that man’s eating of flesh demonstrated the height of his depravity.  On that issue, however, I returned to the text and discovered that after the flood God blessed Adam telling him that everything that lives and moves will be food for you. Just as I gave you green plants, I now give you everything” (Genisis 9:3) which suggests that pre flood flesh was forbidden?   

               According to the scripture, all three sons brought their wives onto the ark.  Perhaps Noah’s refusing to rescue Ham’s chosen was simply to add conflict.  It probably didn’t seem sufficient that Ham should be cursed simply for seeing his father’s naked body, but I reckon it is important for a son to come to terms with the sins of the father.

               It was a disturbing film, but maybe we need to be disturbed, dislodged from our complacency, forced to reckon with the tumult of the day.

               The “Reverse the Roles” cartoon in the April 11 edition of The Yuma Sun perpetuates a pernicious myth.  In the first place, it is a misleading, false factoid; and it’s embarrassing when our President and leaders in congress perpetuate it.  The 23-cent gender pay gap only reflects the difference in earnings among all men and women working full-time. It does not account for differences in occupations, positions, education, job tenure, or hours worked per week. When all these relevant factors are taken into consideration, the wage gap narrows to less than five cents. That’s a pretty narrow difference when you consider that women take more sick days in deference to family and children.

               The myth the cartoon perpetuates is especially pernicious because it attempts to make victims of women.  We are not victims.  We make choices, and for the most part, we celebrate those choices.  “I am woman, Proud and free, More to me, Than what you see.  I stand alone, A world apart, Just holding fast, To wayward heart. I am healer, Poet too, I see colour, Rainbow hue. I am fire, Burning gold, Cold as ice, If truth be told.  I am spirit, Pure and bright, Rising up, To meet the light, I enter there, The realms of love, It’s all around, Below, above. My kindred souls, Enfold me there, Full of joy, Bright and free, For I am woman, I am me.”  (Linda Harnett)

I saw two movies this weekend depicting the life of Christ, Christopher Spencer's Son of God and Johnny Cash's Gospel Road.  I found Gospel Road to be the most moving,  It portrayed Jesus as fully man, joyfully experiencing the glory that is life on earth.  He and his crew of merry men jest and laugh and joke as they travel the dusty roads of the Holy Land.  He builds sand castles with children and blows blurpie bubbles on their bellies and makes them laugh.  We sense the joy he experiences while fishing, sharing a meal, loving his companions..  By contrast, the Jesus in Son of God is removed, ethereal throughout.  . He watches with detached amusement as Peter hauls in the fish, The film fails to capture the joy Jesus must have felt, the love he felt for those who walked with him. The cinematography of the Son of God was stunning, the sweeping panoramas of the Holy Land, the Sea of Galilee, The Sermon on the Mount made me once again ache to visit Israel,  I liked the intense close ups that draws the viewer into the scene.....until the end.  Those final Crucifixion scenes were much to graphic to be spiritually moving. The mind can imagine a horror more vividly than the bloodiest picture, The imagined whip, the sound of the hammer hitting the nail, the suggested torture is much more moving than the gory details Spencer incorporated into his film. The viewer walks away repulsed rather than uplifted.   

Condoleezza Rice: A negative roll model?

            The faculty council  at Rutgers university passed a resolution that would prevent  Condoleezza Rice from speaking at commencement.  Their reason?  She mislead the American people about the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and  condoned waterboarding as an interrogation technique. 
          But  they would accept Hillary Clinton.  Apparently blasting suspected enemies with drones, taking out the "enemy" and accepting additional deaths as unavoidable collateral damage, is more humane than scaring them by pouring water over their faces.
          "Being  a commencement speaker both conveys honor on her service and offers her as a role model for our students. Rutgers can do better."  Besides   "Condolezza Rice has no office."    
             Shouldn't Hillary's misleading the American people about Benghazi give them pause?  "We're historians.  We wait two to three hundred years to pass judgment." 

McCain Embarrassed Again.

       I have long admired Senator John McCain, his service, his survival, his dedication to country, but more often than not, lately I just want to spank him.  I watched the CSPAN discussion yesterday about a  House appropriations bill that would provide  a billion dollars of economic assistance to Ukraine. The problem in the Senate is that the White House tacked on a measure that would reform the International Monetary Fund. Republicans say the measure decreases U.S. influence with the IMF.  They also object because part of the cost of implementing the IMF measures would further cut U.S. military accounts.

       Senator Rubio said, "I won’t support flawed legislation that is divisive and actually undermines our efforts to provide quick support to the Ukrainian people in their hour of need." Rubio is right. Bills should be clean and purposeful, but they often become an amorphous glob of tacked on agendas as they work their way through committees and congress.

       Senator McCain issued a long tirade, refused to address the IMF issue at the core of the argument and  made it sound as though his colleagues were refusing to come to the aid of the Ukraine. "I will say to my friends….You can call yourself Republicans. That's fine, because that's your voter registration.   Don't call yourself Reagan Republicans. Ronald Reagan would never, would never let this kind of aggression go unresponded to by the American people."

       Now I know nothing about the IMF issue and understand little about what’s happening in the Ukraine, but I understand words and their meanings, and for McCain to dishonestly warp the discussion to make it seem as though Rubio and Cruz are the ones at fault is offensive.  Pass a clean, honest bill for a change.

       McCain once again says he has “never before been so embarrassed by members of his own party.”  I could say I have never before been so embarrassed by my dear senator, but then I remember how he lambasted Senator Cruz for shutting down the government. 

      It was, of course, the  Democrats and our president who shut down the government.  Republicans offered compromise after compromise.  Democrats refused to move an inch, and now look at the mess they left us. 

          The pièce de la résistance of the McCain tirade was his announcement that would leave the chambers after his speech because he already knew what the “gentleman from Georgia” would say and he wasn’t inclined to listen to him.  He tossed a bomb and left the room.  Democrats do that to me all the time.  Go figure.  Maybe he’s a Democrat. 

       Congratulations to the Freedom Library. The time we spend with Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry was delightfully entertaining and instructive. And the debate rages on. How do we create a more perfect union, a system of self-governance for people who, although “noble in reason, infinite in faculties,” are so wretchedly imperfect? Our founders faced a challenge that no other leaders had ever cared to face.
         “Patrick Henry” and Bill Bubbert argued for a return to the Articles of Confederation.  They admired it for its inefficiency.  I was quite convinced.   A federal government so loosely held together could not have become the behemoth that threatens us today at every juncture.
          In the end, I was swayed by arguments made by “Thomas Jefferson” and Mark Greenough defending the constitution.  Jefferson’s pivotal claim?  The Articles were “Godless.” The fact that our rights are endowed by our creator makes all the difference.  Abraham Lincoln’s arguments for emancipation would not have had teeth or legs under the Articles of Confederation.
           The other fault of the Articles is that they are based on a faulty idea, that man is essentially good and did not need much government to manage affairs. Jefferson understood that man was not essentially good, and that given a chance, given the power, given the opportunity, he would walk all over the rights of others.
          The balance of powers built into the constitution was devised to prevent that from happening.  No one can be trusted with power, so one’s ambition must be held in check by another’s ambition. Likewise, the ambitions of each branch of government were to be held in check by the other branches.  It was ingenious, a delicate balance.  The only problem with the constitution is that we have not been vigilant.  And you say, “Oh no!  Not that again.”
             But it has to be said again.  Jefferson and Madison and Franklin and Washington and Mason and Wythe, all of them,  gave us a government by the people, and they hoped that we would remain an informed and attentive people.  They kept it simple because they knew that a “country swimming in laws would be drowning in corruption.” They wrote 2 pages of laws.  Now the EPA codicil alone numbers 25,000 pages of laws.
         We have been much too involved in bread and circuses and have let their carefully crafted vision nearly drown in excrement.
It was great fun.  Thanks.

May 16, 2012