Is it just me or does it get increasingly more difficult to vote each election cycle?  I don’t know how it used to be 20, 30, even 100 years ago, but in the last 9 years, since I became eligible to vote, it seems like the political demagoguery has become even more juvenile.  Rather than seeing politicians with a plan and positive agenda to make things better in our local, state, and federal governments, what I see are young, immature preschoolers throwing temper tantrums and verbally slapping one another around.

Part of me keeps hoping beyond hope that someone will figure out that the American public is tired of these mudslinging campaigns, that political candidates will, in fact, remember that the best campaign is one that tells what they can actually do and contribute, instead of one that drags their opponents’ names and characters through the mud.  The thing that is so hard about voting is that no candidate ever seems qualified for the job anymore.  We know all too well why every candidate is wrong for the job – every campaign ad proclaims in large letters and loud voices why political opponents ought to be locked up in a jail cell in the deepest, darkest dungeon somewhere, why every political opponent is somehow personally responsible for high crime rates, high taxes, and poor public services.  No candidate seems able to tell, though, why they are best suited for the position for which they are running, let alone what their plan is to improve every service in their care, should they win that seat.

I know it’s too much to hope for, but the idealist in me persists – I’d love to see just one political candidate run on a platform that never once resorts to mudslinging and that focuses solely on telling me that candidates qualifications and plans for bettering his government for the people he (or she) represents.  I’d love to see even just one campaign that is built upon a solid foundation of truth rather than one slapped together on lies and misrepresentations.  Chances are good that candidate would have my vote in a heartbeat.

Two events in the news lately leaving me disappointed – but not surprised – in the reaction of the American and the world populace.  Ken Lay dies before going to trial, and Mel Gibson gets picked up for drunk driving and spouts a lot of anti-Semitic speech.  The reactions of the vast majority of people to both events has been unbridled sadistic glee.  In Ken Lay’s case, people were just sorry that he couldn’t spend time suffering in a jail cell for a while.  In Gibson’s case, people were ecstatic that this “pariah” finally got caught with his pants down.

It’s funny – for all the speech about how we as a species are bettering ourselves, improving our capabilities, broadening our thinking and our horizons, there’s an awful lot of low attitudes and childish behaviors going on.  I’m not really surprised at the reaction – the cynic in me has long ago given up the notion that people can ever actually be mature and civil toward one another.  I recognize that people would much rather act like spoiled children than remember that everyone has faults, that none of us can actually throw that first stone lest we condemn ourselves, that if the shoe were on the other foot we would want a little grace and mercy extended toward us.  No, instead we forget all that and heap condemnation, hatred, and bitterness on the heads of those who we feel have done wrong.  It’s disappointing to see supposedly high-minded individuals forgetting their self-proclaimed high standards of living to wallow in the same mire as those who have already wronged others.

I don’t condone either Lay or Gibson’s actions.  They both clearly did wrong and should have to answer for their decisions before the appropriate parties.  I do think, however, that before people spout off their own brand of hate speech and express their venomous attitudes, they need to stop and consider if such behavior is actually good and right and appropriate. 

Most won’t, though.  Critical thinking is such a lost skill these days.  I’m probably talking to a nearly empty choir loft.

WP: Wayans’ hip-hop line rejected – washingtonpost.com Highlights – MSNBC.com

Damon Wayans takes the phrase ‘owning the n-word’ to an all new level.  Of course, he’s not the first to try to get a patent on the word, but he is possibly the most recent and the most well-known.

Personally, I hate the n-word in all its forms.  There are two reasons for this.  One is because when a certain people group uses it, the word communicates unreasonable hatred.  Two is because when another people group uses it, it demonstrates an unfair double-standard.  For instance, when a white southern boy spots a black boy, he cries out the profane word, and we all think of white hoods, burning crosses, and lynchings.  The word is, indeed, a profanity because of the level of animosity it conveys.

It’s other use is equally hateful to me, that being its casual use in so many hip-hop, rap, and R&B songs.  Somehow, when black men call each other ‘my nigga’, it’s alright, but there’s hell to pay when a white boy tries to do the same thing, even when it’s with the same attitude of amiability.  The excuse I’ve heard from black people sounds something like this – “It’s not an insult or offense when we use the word because when we use it, we own it.” And this somehow makes the word better?!  That would be like saying it’s offensive when someone hatefully calls me a fu**er, but it becomes alright to call myself or a friend fu**er because when I do it, I own it, as if owning an offensive term somehow removes the offense from it.¹

I will honestly never understand how using an offensive term in casual reference among friends and brothers can be alright when the same term is not alright outside of that circle, particularly when such words as the n-word carry with them such high levels of hatred and animosity.  There’s an interesting double-standard and casualness at work here, and I do not mean that it is interesting in a good way.  I recognize the psychological and emotional need to remove some of the sting from an historically offensive term, but it seems to me that trying to own it is taking things just a bit too far.²

1. Oh, wait, I forgot.  People do that all the time already.[back]
2. For the record I am not black, so if I’m missing an important point in here somewhere, please enlighten me.[back]

Fred Phelps brought his rag-tag band of religious misfits to Lafayette this past Monday to picket the funeral of one our local GIs.  I assume you’ve heard of this group from the Kansas-based Westboro Baptist Church?  They certainly have made enough noise at so many of our soldiers’ funerals recently.  Well, apparently, it was Lafayette’s turn to play host to these misguided sectarians.  They brought their particular brand of religious hatred to our community and offended and angered a great many of our citizens.

It seems that Phelps and his flock are of the mind that the terrorist attacks on America and the loss of life in the war in Iraq are God’s judgment on this nation for harboring homosexuals.  Strange that God skipped passing judgment on homosexuals themselves and went straight to the ‘harboring’ nation.  I wonder if Mr. Phelps has ever actually read his Bible because his doctrine doesn’t seem to fit anything I’ve ever read in mine.

The only place I know of where God specifically passed judgment on a people for their sexual indulgences was on the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah.  In that case the entire city was given over to such proclivities, save for four individuals—Lot, his wife, and his two daughters.  They were the only ones spared the judgment, and that only at the request of Abraham.  Once they were drawn from the city, both Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed utterly.

I wonder how Mr. Phelps can rationalize and justify his belief that God is passing judgment on our nation when there is no comparison to the degree of ‘punishment’.  In fact, according to statistics I heard last night, the average loss of life for our soldiers in any war hovers around 7 percent.  In this conflict the death rate has been closer to 4 percent.  I’m not sure how that reflects God’s wrath.  Additionally, in history God’s judgment toward sin has been very clear—He has always made it abundantly known who and what He was punishing and why so that there could be no question as to its source. 

I don’t care what your political views are, and you certainly have the right to express them.  These fallen soldiers are testaments to that freedom.  But their funerals are not appropriate places to express them.  These are people who are grieving over the loss of a loved one, and the last thing they need or want is someone yelling in their faces, rejoicing over another death as a testament to a supposed judgment from God.  Go ahead, Mr. Phelps, drive that stake of grief and pain and anguish a little deeper into the hearts of these stricken families and friends.  I wonder, though, how much you would appreciate it if it was your son or daughter lying there in state to be given back to the earth.  If this is your idea of spreading the good news of the Gospel, of evangelizing, of sharing God’s love, then I know for sure that you don’t serve the same God that I do.  My God is patient and compassionate and long-suffering, slow to anger.  Yes, He is also a just God, having declared that vengeance is his, and He does meet out judgment when necessary to draw people to Him.  But I do not believe that anything we have seen so far is anything other than the results of living in a fallen world as nothing meets the scale of judgment that couldn’t be anything other than God’s wrath, and I believe that God’s wrath will be sated in the hereafter, when all chips are called in.

So, Mr. Phelps, take your people back home, actually open and read your Bibles, learn what a Christian is really supposed to look like, and learn what the fruits of the Spirit look like.  When you have learned some compassion and are ready to focus on growing the Kingdom, instead of spreading your hate and anger to all the places where it doesn’t belong (since it shouldn’t even exist in the first place), then come talk to us again.  Remember where your hope is, or at least where it should be, in the person of Jesus Christ the Messiah.  Right now, you are serving no one but yourselves, and doing it badly, at that.