Drunken Mystic

Well, I haven’t written anything on political subjects here on my blog in a while (on purpose), but been thinking about a few things and wanted to put a couple of those thoughts down here.

For those who were listening, the backlash against Obama and the Democrats shouldn’t surprise you.  Some can blame it all they want on misinformation and misunderstanding or anger, but the basic truth is that the majority of the country just doesn’t agree with the general direction the current administration and Congress is going.  A vast majority didn’t like the stimulus or choice of how health care would be reformed and a host of other things.

But unfortunately for the country, the Republicans haven’t appropriately taken advantage of this opportunity.  While the sentiment against the incumbents is similar (in some ways stronger this time), the Republican leadership in ’94 was able to make a list of things they would do if elected.  They were elected and then enacted most of them while the president of the opposing party, Clinton, takes credit for a lot of that good government to this day.

The modern Republicans are still in the midst of some serious soul searching.  They cant agree on the color of the sky, it seems like.  True conservatives are vying for a some real candidates to get behind, the result being the Tea Party movement, which if they were standing for socialistic or communist principles would be hailed as progressive revolutionaries (by the majority of the media except for FOX) but since they want such unreasonable things like lower taxes and controlled spending they are scary racists.

Other Republicans are trying more to save their own skin and careers than most anything else, so instead of trying to bring the party together, it is dividing at a time when it needs to stand for better government than we’ve seen over the last six years or so (that’s right, I’m including the last four years of the Bush administration, too).

So while I understand how abysmal the Democrats are running things, I’m also not sure the Republicans are unified enough to do much better … just maybe not as bad.  The choice seems to be the Democrats running our country into the ground at 100 miles an hour or the Republicans doing it at a modest 75.  Not sure I like either choice.  And the constant Republican message of “hey, we’re not as bad as those other guys!” is disappointing.

And as an aside … a lot of people seem to be frustrated with the amount of negative ads on TV.  The last few election cycles I hear it again and again.  Here’s at least two reasons why the negative ads are constantly run.

First, you set yourself up for criticism if you talk about what you’ve actually done or what you’re actually going to do.  It’s much easier to just put down the other side, and both parties do it mercilessly.

Second, it works.  I think it is funny how every two years now we hear how bad the negative attacks are and yet they just keep pumping them out.  These campaigns pay people to watch the polls and see how the ads do.  A sad statement about our society, but they work.

My encouragement is to vote … Vote according to candidates and not for or against a whole party line.  That can be dangerous … there’s some bad candidates on both sides.  And vote even if you feel it is the lesser of two evils, whatever your conscience dictates there.  Hopefully you get to vote for someone you think has already done a pretty good job or you think will really do a better one, but that choice isn’t always available.  Vote anyway.

In conclusion, my predictions:  The Republicans will gain control of the House but not the Senate.  I know that’s a safe prediction, but some of the Republican candidates, especially Tea Party related ones, aren’t as strong in the Senate races.  It will be a huge upset if the Democrats don’t hold at least a 51 seat majority there.  I also predict at least one or two races being drug out for months while votes are counted (or recounted) so we won’t know for sure about the Senate for a couple months.

Peace.

If anything convinces me that I don’t want to be a liberal or a Democrat, it is the way they treat others who happen to disagree with them.

Ironic to me that those supposedly dominated by compassionate ideals would say such horrendous things about another human being.  And the only true distinction made is political beliefs.  Rapists and adulterers are defended ad nauseum if they happen to support liberal causes, and perfectly fine people, at least as far as we know, are accused of the most horrible motivations.

I’ll give an example.  For some reason, Sarah Palin is the beneficiary of such hate in ways that would appall liberals if the same actions were levied against one of their own.  How would they feel if conservatives made T-shirts calling Pelosi or Hillary Clinton a “c*nt” or hacking in her private email or burning down the church building she attends?  This doesn’t include the constant references to her being “stupid” or an “idiot” or her abilities as a wife or mother, which again, would be a reprehensible attack against feminism if done to a liberal female political leader.

Of course, the way George Bush was attacked for 6 or 8 years was borderline insane.  It is not insane to disagree with his political ideas, even all of them, but insane to interpret everything he does as not only wrong but motivated by some deep evil intent.

As I’ve made my own observations or opinions known, I’ve been accused of just blindly accepting all conservative beliefs, and someone who is supposedly my friend recently implied that any misgivings I might have about universal healthcare is related to a desire to see more poor people die.

Others might be different, but for me, that’s probably not the way I’m going to begin to consider a differing view, and that’s for two reasons.  Number one, it shows a lack of an ability to truly hear what another is saying, which by nature means that no intelligent conversation or exchange will take place.  And two, if you have to insult others to make your point, you don’t actually have one.

All of this has led to my stubborn refusal to question Obama’s deep motivations while disagreeing with his policies and ideas.  Because seeing the ugliness of that level pervasive in the media, I choose not to step down to it.

It is my right, and some might even say duty, to disagree with leadership where conscience dictates, and it is the duty of citizens and educated people to critically analyze the ruling power, but I cannot know the deep motivations of the heart of another man … unless God somehow reveals them to me.

There were things Bush did that I did not think were wise, but for all I know he did them out of a desire to help and do a good thing, as wrong as those things might have been.  I feel the same way about Obama.  He truly believes that doing certain things will help others.

And even my stubborn refusal to question Obama’s deep motivations have gotten dirty looks from my conservative friends at times.  Of course my conservative friends are just as capable of saying the same types of things.  Like “Obama wants to destroy our nation” or other things.  And when I open my big mouth to make sure I don’t take part in questioning aspects of character I can’t know, then an awkward vibe settles on the room.

And where Obama has done things that I think are good or positive, I have and will continue to acknowledge those things, something most liberals were not able to do for 6 years or so for the previous president.  And I will not oppose something just because Obama does it.  That is also a sign of closed-mindedness that is unhealthy in life, not to mention a republic.

To be honest, I kinda feel for Obama at times.  While I disagree with 90% of his policy, the dude can’t swat a fly at a speech or try to encourage students in education without someone making more out of it than it is.  So this is also a suggestion to my more conservative friends to disagree on issues of substance and be willing to listen and weigh things out before reacting.

And to those of my liberal friends who are willing to engage in real life and realize that politics is largely forgettable in the grand eternal scheme of things: thank you for listening to me express my view at times without questioning my character or intelligence.  I hope to continue to make informed decisions of my own and respect the rights of others to do the same.

Peace.

Been a while since I’ve weighed in, for various reasons, but it seems like Pelosi and the Democrat leaders won’t have the votes to get a public option.

As I’ve said before, I don’t mind a public option in the health care bill.  If all there was to worry about was a public option, I wouldn’t be so worried.  In fact, I would fully support a bill that ONLY had a public “option.”  The conservatives are making way too big a deal about the public option.

But the part that concerns me is the part that remains in the bill.  Penalizing people for NOT having health insurance?  It is in the bill even though a few months ago, Obama said he was against it.  Of course there are several other measures that limits the freedom of the public to make choices (or penalizes or taxes them for them), and puts the power in the hands of the government to choose those limits.  In other words, if it were just about more or better choices for the citizens, then fine.  But there is too much associated with this bill that goes beyond that to control over others, and I just can’t agree with that.

I’ve lived in a country with socialized health care.  And the Korean system was great.  But it didn’t seek control over people as it provided health care.  I’ve seen a system where you can have socialized health care without the communist control, and it was fine.

Peace.

Obama isn’t a socialist or a communist.  He’s a neo-communist.

Now, before you think I’m calling him names, I am using these terms in their true sense.  I’m not trying to put Obama down as if he’s a “commie”, or even criticize him, but the correct terminology of his political philosophy and practice is neo-communism.

Socialism and communism are close enough that people get them confused.  They do overlap to a degree, but there is a significant difference between them.

Socialism is, simply, a political belief that it is the job and responsibility of the government, the state, to provide basic amenities for its citizens, especially for those that have not.  Things like housing, food, clothing, education, and now health care are all in this mix.  As many conservative Christians might find it hard to believe, many Christians were involved in the early stages of what socialism looked like in the West, i.e., the Social Gospel.

Communism differs on a couple key points.  While communism also sees the role of the state to provide, it goes even further to guarantee complete equality of station.  One person possessing more than another is inherently wrong, in their view.  In order to insure this, the state must have an inordinate amount of power to enact these changes and force compliance with their view, including the suspension of many of what are human rights, or the rights inherent in any free society: free speech, free press, freedom of religion, etc.  Communism is completely atheistic.  Communism believes it takes a revolution, usually violent, to achieve at least begin down the path towards utopia.

After WWII and through the Cold War, the initial manifestation of communism has utterly failed.  it’s been a failure everywhere it has been attempted.  Some of the most dismal places on earth are communist countries.

What about China and Vietnam? you might ask.  Good question.  Those two countries were extremely depressed economically until they began to embrace capitalistic ideas and morph them into their own.  In an ironic turn of events, China recently encouraged our current president to enact some free market solutions.  Hopefully he listens.

So as traditional communism failed worldwide, communists in democratic nations adjusted their methods, but not some of the basic belief system.  Gone are the notions of violent revolutions and atheism.  Communists realized they could slowly, step by step and without making a big deal about religion, achieve their goals by working within the system to overthrow it from within.  And as long as religion can be manipulated to move them down that path, all the better.

This is not, then, traditional communism.  So calling Obama a communist is not accurate.  But neither is he simply a socialist.  He is of this newer philosophy that I call neo-communism.  Others might use the term, but I haven’t heard it used before.

While the focus on a violent revolution, a revolution is still the goal, however evolutionary the revolution might be.  Behind this evolution are still very strong communist beliefs: the increased power of the state over individual freedoms that will insure equality of station.

The first liberal/leftist response is to call such a notion paranoid or some sort of conspiracy theory nonsense, but it doesn’t take much digging to see that the extreme left, while offended to the public eye, admits such things openly among themselves.  In an unprecedented time in history when everything is recorded and put on youtube, you can hear much of it from their own lips, or read it from their own books.

Obama and the extreme left believes, wholeheartedly, that it is in the best interest of the nation to have more control over the banks, private corporations, and the health care sector.  If there is a problem, or more specifically, if they feel there is a problem, the solution is always more regulation and government control and spending.  In spite of evidence of the failings of such things, things like public education and health care are sacred.  All dissenting opinion is dangerous and must be marginalized as much as possible.

This belief does not make Obama and other neo-communists evil or bad people, necessarily.  They act according to a strong conviction and their own perspective.

But if it looks, talks, and acts like a Marxist, it’s a Marxist.  And no amount of outrage at the term, which is Cold War loaded, i agree, changes the facts.  Obama and the extreme left are neo-communists.

And while the notions themselves are held by more of a minority in our country, because the bulk of the media and the entertainment industry is on board with these principles and the direction, it seems more prevalent than it is … and cooler than it is.

But despite the propaganda to the contrary, many still oppose these principles, both citizens and elected officials.  Even people within Obama’s own party oppose the most extreme of them.

Which is the beauty of a republic.  Differing opinions can exist freely.  And dissent keeps a republic healthy.  The pendulum will swing again and dissent will be healthy then, too.

Peace.

but it was on my heart to share it again.  Penn (from the Penn and Teller act) has some video blurbs on youtube.  If you haven’t seen this, as a Christian, it really encouraged me to “speak the truth in love” to others and not be so afraid of offending.

Watch video here.

Penn also has some good things to say about the “party of hate” … I have to say I agree with his line of thinking here as well.

Watch the “party of hate.”

Peace.