Rant on Obama’s Midterms--Doesn't really matter which, as nothing has changed as of today, October 15, 2022 two weeks away from Biden's first midterms.

Ah I shall put in my morning 2 cents and just remember this is after only two sips NOT cups of coffee, either of which is not conducive to civil discourse. I always appreciate the optimists in my life even if I tend to hang out at the other end of the spectrum. Have a bit of pity for me please, a liberal Texan living in red AZ and even redder Yavapai County. SO the Marching Morons take control while scientists shout themselves hoarse in an attempt to rescue our perspiring/expiring planet. Religious fanatics keep us in the Dark Ages. Inclusiveness and Compassion go begging at the locked aeries of Big Money. Now that President Obama is the lamest of ducks and the GOP controls Congress, will the gridlock ease now that they can call the shots and their nemesis will be kicked to the curb in two years? OR will they simply squabble, posture, drag their feet, obfuscate and fill the air with inane pontification while all of us burn both literally and figuratively?

And the electorate, such as it is in terms of % of the population. Will they ever bother to educate themselves? It is a mystery to me how on earth TV ads (Thank God I don't have TV) and the vast amounts of money spent on them could actually influence people to vote! How can a robo call, someone knocking on my door possibly get someone to the polls? We are a nation of imbeciles putting blind trust in people, powers, and institutions that don't merit that trust. Yet we blithely hand over our very existence to them. Without inclusion, compassion, and an educational system that would attract the sons and daughters of even the wealthiest and most gifted among us as well as those who need the greatest assist-- without intelligent, thoughtful elected officials who have an idea of how terribly complicated every aspect of our world is-- who listen deeply with the possibility of understanding another viewpoint and shifting their own-- who have the balls to speak truth to power, tell Big Money to hit the road Jack and don't come back no more, no MORE!...Without all this and so much more, well Doom seems an inadequate word to describe where we are headed. Hell is anemic! Hell in a Handbasket even more so! Apocalypse...hmmm. Let's face it; nothing works. Barring the wandering asteroid that might take us out, we need only look in the mirror to find the author of our extinction. And now more coffee please!

Democracy is indeed hard work. Or should be.

Post Script  Found this while cleaning up computer files; so on the blog it goes for posterity.

 

 

 

Idle Thoughts 

 

Years into adult hood I realized that I would have cherished dinner table conversations—well on anything really—but especially on current events, ideas, beliefs.  The one time my husband and I tried to take a sort of exploratory/historical/academic  approach of the text of the New Testament in a suburban Methodist church in Houston, we were told that the Sunday School class wanted a charismatic approach…their word.  This was back in the 1970’s.  Fair enough.  But the effect of that experience has been long lasting.  Grew up in the Southern Baptist church, Father’s family was Catholic, Husband comes from a long line of Methodist preachers, hence the Methodist church home mentioned above.  The minister there was the first minister I’d met to that point who seemed like a human being on a path that was ever evolving and that his search grew out of the many facets of the Self as fully human.  I can still see him sitting on a chair in the fellowship hall, unconsciously tearing an empty Styrofoam  to bits as he searched for the rights words to precisely express himself.  Pontification was not in his DNA.

 So I continue to hunger for learned discourse  among men and women of faith-- and of no faith --who simply seek to grapple with the mystery of humanity.  These men and women have another characteristic that I so admire.  They do not ask and certainly do not demand that I join them in their belief.  But they do share their thoughts freely, without strings, without thinly veiled criticism without calling me an Infidel.  And then wonder of wonders someone in this group, after articulating his/her thoughts, turns to me and asks, “And now tell me about your own beliefs, thoughts—your own evolution.”  And he/she listens…What a remarkable fantasy!