(ugh) Politics

One of the promises I made to myself when I started writing this blog is that I would never mention politics. For one thing, it is so pointlessly divisive. For another, it turns my stomach.

Politics has always been a rough and tumble game, but in the last 10 years it has taken on a much uglier persona, one marked on all sides by venomous hatred of the opposition, where name-calling and character assassination passes for discourse.

I thought I had reached bottom in my cynicism, but the news this week about the bitter bidding war between the two leading democratic candidates for the endorsement of a prominent black pastor brought me to a new low. How can anyone believe in the integrity of the political process - or the church - when endorsements go to the highest bidder?

But I felt like I should at least make an attempt to remind myself and my children (and anyone else who cares to listen) of a few truths:

• “With whatever measure you judge, you shall be judged”. A recent letter to the editor in our local paper opened with , “…most Republicans and/or right-wingers I encounter are too intransigent and egotistical and seldom, if ever, willing to acknowledge errors, much less apologize for them”. What struck me was that I had just read almost the exact statement online – virtually verbatim, describing Democrats and liberals. I wish people could remember that intransigence, ego, arrogance, hypocrisy and stubbornness are hardly the exclusive domain of any political party; they are all very much ingrained in human nature.

• Demonizing the opposition is a cheap copout. I know both conservatives and liberals who are involved in political and social causes, who work very hard to educate themselves about current events, who care passionately for the downtrodden and weak, who make every effort to ensure that government does the right things for all concerned, and yet have reached completely opposite political conclusions from one another.

• The political pendulum always swings back. Always. The party that rides into Washington on its moral high horse to rout out the lying, egotistical hypocrites always find that, four or eight years later, they themselves have become the evil, lying hypocrites who are being ridden out of town.

Our desperation for government to fix all our problems becomes more shrill every year, yet our country continues collapsing in on itself. Will we never learn that government cannot fix our problems? Our social sicknesses are caused by our twisted and broken human nature. Our only hope is a new nature, and for that, Jesus is the only answer.