Watching the political race now under way, I see more and more propaganda filling the commercial spots on TV.  I often hear young people regurgitating the arguments of their heroic candidates, half-baked arguments that are nothing more than fear and vitriol wrapped in patriot’s flags.  How is it that people can get away with bending truths, twisting stories and outright lying on national television?  Too busy first with work and families, and then with other more frivolous obligations, we get distracted. We are barraged by images and sound-bytes, but nothing resembling a strong argument is provided.  Thus, rather than choosing carefully what we feed our minds, many of us pick over processed bits and pieces from the smorgasbord presented by various fast-news franchises.  Perhaps if we were to find a variety of places to get our substance from, we might assemble something like a balanced opinion, but many of us do not have either the time or the inclination for this type of piece-meal observation.  We simply allow ourselves to be told what to feel and try to avoid thinking about the situation altogether.

We want to find a reason to explain the situation we find ourselves in.  We begin with goodwill, as we reminisce about the good times and explain how we lost everything because of politician X.  We look to our leaders to return us to the way things were, when there was prosperity along with values and morals!  What we really mean is that, when the economy was good, we lived in a world where we could ignore scandal, but now that things are more difficult we find more reason to get outraged.  The thing is, evil did not just arrive.  We find fault in others because we can no longer ignore the consequences of our actions and cannot bear to accept the blame ourselves.

I once had an exchange with a good friend that nearly ended our relationship.  I am sure my friend would give another story and, in truth, I am not naïve enough to believe that either of us was wholly innocent.  What gets me, though, is that, through it all, the presence of darkness was so near.  I loved this person and wanted the good.  Still, after a number of interactions, I felt betrayed.  When witnessing the failure of my hopes I began to question my motives, emotions, needs, and everything else that it was possible to scrutinize.  Even after self-searching and “owning my part,” I felt pain.  I wanted someone or something to blame and I sought out the fault in the other.  As I found my friend’s true sin, I began waiting for an apology.  With this waiting my own heart began to darken, throwing the truth into shadow.  Before long I went from seeing the goodness present in all things to focusing on the evils present in the shadows and hidden folds.  In my search to find the reasons to blame, I became unable to forgive the wrongs that I perceived.  The more I saw, the more anger I felt, and the more I found myself confused by whether or not the goodness of God was truly part of the picture.

Who is your enemy?  Conservative Oilmen?  Liberal Media Moguls?  Whoever it is, the baseline is the same: we are all afraid of getting attacked and losing what we have.  We want to believe that we are doing the right thing, but we also want comfort.  When we look to the world, we realize that at this point in history, it might be difficult to get both.  So, we blame the administration and we vilify the media.  We blame politicians and find fault with corporations.  While all of these groups bear a significant amount of blame for the deterioration of our infrastructure and the erosion of basic trust that has occurred in the last couple of decades, we cannot overlook the simple fact that we, my fellow Americans, are equally to blame.  By prolonging this war, we have agreed to the murder of thirty times the number of civilians in Iraq as died in the twin towers.  We say we “support our troops” even when we have lost the same amount of American soldiers as died in the Trade Centers (and seen 10 times that number wounded), and done nothing to provide for the psychological well-being of these men and women when they return.  We promote environmental practices that cause irreparable damage to our country’s natural resources in hopes of finding a small amount of oil.  We kill our unborn, and then we ignore cuts in health-care and education, the very things that are intended to create physical and intellectual growth in those kids who live.  I find it difficult to imagine that anyone who supports a culture of life, when he or she stops to think, is really in support of any of this.  Yet it is our country that supports these things.  We make this OK.

Where are the small still voices that ground us?  Have we been warped by our own desire to point out the sin in others?  In the process of rooting out evil so that we have someone to blame, are we becoming the very thing that we profess to despise?  I sometimes think that, before long, we might realize we have become the enemy that we profess some other parts of the world to be.  Have we lost the capacity to believe in the goodness of others?  Where is our willingness to actively, and also gently, pursue positive ends rather than filling the sky with hot air or simply sitting by as we watch the world slip violently toward some scorched-sky future that we believe is inevitable?  What happened to our willingness to pursue change and fight for something we believed to be good?  Is there a solution that makes sense, or have sound bites impeded our capacity to devise a reasonable solution?  Are we able to navigate our personal emotions and still find the good, or has our emotional, white noise drowned out the voice of God?

Photo: “Quiet Exclamation” by thorinside from Flickr (Used under Creative Commons license)

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1. What You Will
2. Whatever Makes You Happy