I love today’s Non-Sequitur:¹

It does seem like we elect government officials based on emotions and popularity and how pretty we think they are, rather than electing them based on whether or not they’re actually qualified for the job. 

I don’t really care much for politicians.  By and large I think they’re all a bunch of crooks and liars.  I’m sure that most of them have convinced themselves that they have the best interests of their constituents in mind, but I think they just like to tell themselves beautiful lies to justify poor judgment and bad decisions.  It seems to me that the honest politician who is wise in his decision-making, aware of his constituents’ needs, and sensitive to those needs and desires is a truly rare breed.  I also think that this type of politician, the one with true integrity, also rarely makes it to a higher political office where he (or she) is most needed, possibly because the other screwed up politicians make it impossible to do so.  And so our political system suffers under the clumsy paws of unqualified leaders while the good ones are kept under boot and heel.

I know, I know – this is a very cynical outlook on politics in our country, but the more I see of politics in general and politicians in particular, the more disgusted I become with the antics.  They still remind me more of a bunch of squabbling 8-year-olds fighting over a ball on the playground rather than grown adults who should have enough sense and maturity to behave like the leaders of one of the most powerful nations on Earth.

Of course, we really only have ourselves to blame for our leaders since most people don’t really seem to care two bits about the qualifications of their candidates, choosing instead to focus on how much they seem like they’d be good for the job. 

Ok, this is my one political rant for the year.  I’m good to go until 2009.  As you were.

1. Though I have to admit that most days I do find the comic just plain strident.[back]

I’m having a day of snark – one of those where everything I want to write about involves some sort of sarcastic response toward ridiculous opinions and viewpoints.  Hazards of coming off a couple of sick days, I suppose – I tend to be a little less patient and tolerant.

For starters, in response to the shooting at Virginia Tech the other day, gun control outcriers have cropped again.  And they’re welcome to their opinions, of course.  But I still think they’re wrong.  There seems to be this mentality that allowing people to own and carry weapons will only cause the crime rate to increase, since guns will be that much more available.  Almost without exception, though, I find that those opinions come from folks who have had very little exposure to guns.  For those of us who have grown up with guns and have been taught how to safely handle them, we know that those folks who make the decision to 1) own guns and 2) earn the license that gives them the right to carry said guns are far more likely to handle them safely.  These are the people who respect these weapons enough to, get this, keep one with them at all times.  The people who go on these shooting sprees usually acquire their weapons by illegal means or, if they’ve acquired them legally, haven’t bothered to learn how to use them properly or gained the licenses necessary to carry them.  In short, shooters like this do not respect the laws that govern the use and ownership of guns.  It places those of us who actually do respect these laws in a difficult spot because the resultant fear from tragedies like these threatens the right of American citizens to own and carry guns. 

Recognize this – psychos like this Virginia Tech shooter will always be able to find guns when they want them, no matter what sort of legislation is in place to make it “impossible” to do so.  The black market will never be shut down.  All these gun control laws do is make it more difficult for honest citizens to put a quick end to a shooter’s spree should such a crisis arise.  Personally, I feel much safer with a licensed-to-carry citizen next to me than without.  But then again, I realize that said citizen has been trained in how to use that weapon and would never casually use said weapon unless there was no other option. 

The other thing that has my snark up right now involves Fox News apparent posthumous besmirching of Kurt Vonnegut.  Apparently, Fox News ran a story the other day that wasn’t terribly flattering to the late science fiction author.  Ultimately, I couldn’t care less what Fox News thinks of the author or how people are reacting to the news story.  I deliberately tend to avoid the news in any form exactly because the news seems to bring out the worst in people.

What I am a little bit surprised by is Fox News’s deliberate mention of Vonnegut being a ‘leftist.’ Well, of course he was a leftist – most science fiction authors are.  Read just about any science fiction novel, and you’ll see worlds in which religion is all but dead, with God having been debunked and traditional and historical forms of morality having been given up in favor of less restrictive and more ‘liberating’ personal values.  These are worlds where anything goes, guilt-free, so long as others are not harmed in the process.  This is the ideal of 21st-century man, to live as he desires rather than being bound to a set of rules set down by a third party, whatever that third party may be.  This view is liberal and leftist, and for some reason this viewpoint, this hopeful future, goes hand-in-hand with science fiction.  The shirking of religion, with all its rules and regulations, is seen as progress for mankind, and science fiction embraces this hope with vigor, eagerness, and passion.

What I’d like to see is science fiction where the future world doesn’t look all that much different to the world we see today, with the obvious exception of more advanced technology.  I’d like to see some science fiction where, if anything, morality and religion have become more entrenched, just to see what that kind of world would like.  I wouldn’t mind seeing such worlds built in both a positive and negative light, since either outcome is equally likely, in my opinion.  Essentially, I’d like to see a more deliberate exploration of such universes.  And just once, I’d like to see a world of the future where religion isn’t the demon that it’s made out to be today, where religion is actually beneficial and productive.  Stephen Lawhead attempts this in his Empyrion set, and Orson Scott Card presents another version in his Ender series.  But these are the exceptions, rather than the rule.  I just tend to think that science fiction does not necessarily need to be divorced from religion and morality in order to be good and exceptional.  But since many times science fiction expresses the ideologies of each writer, they tend toward a certain brand of preachiness against religion that grows wearisome after a while. 

So that’s a bit of the snark factor bouncing around in my brain today.  And now that it’s out there, perhaps it’ll leave me alone.

I had a dream last night – I was sitting in a church, listening while the pastor rolled off a diatribe against Hillary running for president and how we, as Christians, need to stand against her so that she cannot attain the office.  What the pastor somehow managed to miss was that Hillary was actually sitting in his congregation this day.  Someone who noticed got up and went to her to apologize and explain that it isn’t usually like this in this church, bringing the whole service else to a screeching halt.  The pastor was unrepentant for his words, but was embarrassed only because his speech blew up in his face.  Everyone else simply felt guilty because they agreed with what he said and now were faced with the very person against whom their feelings were directed.

The whole dream was somewhat unsettling and kind of sad because it was, in my opinion, a fairly accurate reflection on reality.  I suspect that if this scenario was to play out in real life, it would probably look much like the way it happened in my dream.

This was just something I felt like sharing.  There’s actually a couple of related thoughts that spawn from this, but I’m not sure yet if I’ll actually write them up.  I tend to try to steer clear of political topics as much as I can, simply because they tend to make me feel stressed.  But we’ll see – sometimes I don’t really get much of a choice in these things.