"Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom."
-- Mitt Romney
This is America in the year 2007. A Mormon running for president, whose God prevents him from ever removing his special long johns, even if vacationing in the Caribbean, has the nerve to state that Freedom requires religion.
Mind you, immediately before this he brought up the battle versus the Islamic terrorists, who, last time I checked, are having no trouble conducting their religion in less-than-free societies and governments. A war he supports along with the Patriot Act, a measure that has done more to threaten our freedoms and civil rights than any terrorist.
Mitt? Are you really so blind that you can contradict yourself so easily, seamlessly, spectacularly? Are you composed atomically of such nuclear pandering that you can’t help it, and when religion comes up you detonate and didactic debris of trite hits us all?
I suppose so.
We are entering an age of infinite information-availability, yet our political discourse has increasingly been reduced to simplistic emotional sloganeering. The confluence of these events is curious. I keep waiting for the Age of Google to set off the next enlightenment.
I’m no longer holding my breath.
Christmas time is here. Along with the lights, the boughs of holly, the poinsettias... The time of year the retailers pull out all the stops trying to finally turn a profit for the year. I think of the After Thanksgiving hordes lined up outside Best Buy and Wal-Mart with vacant, tired eyes, gift lists folded in their pockets, and I can't help but think that this has nothing to do with freedom or religion.
What would happen if the entire country had a quick conversation with Christ in the pantry, or the garage, or office, (wherever one has quick conversations with Christ) and went out this year and donated their entire Christmas budget to charity instead of toys for the kids, sweaters for the husband?
The economy would quiver helplessly in backstock of Guitar Heroes and Nikes.
This is nothing new, it just makes me think about religion and freedom and war and consumerism and what it all means through the prism of a presidential campaign. And what a weird prism it is.
I was down in Australia in October and witnessed a debate between Rudd and Howard and it was a refreshing exercise in democracy. Sure, they had their one-liners, and they evaded some questions, but they discussed policies using arcane things like facts, and statistics, and they spoke with an educated tone, not dumbing down their language to seem ‘authentic’. Afterwards the newscasters even compared their debates to ours, by way of patting themselves on the back. And that too shocked me, and proved how important this process is; that folks down in Australia watch our candidates equivocate and demonize and triangulate and sermonize; they’re paying attention too, probably more than us.
After Katrina my family decided to give to relief funds instead of to each other. The next year we kept it up as well. I’m not sure what we’re going to do this year. I feel like donating to Obama.
I often think of what would happen if Jesus did come back to Earth, and didn’t tell anyone. If he were walking around Wilshire and Rodeo in Beverly Hills he would get hassled by the cops. If he were walking around Main Street, Red State, he would get called names from passing cars. If he came back as a Mexican immigrant he would be attacked and vilified by his followers.
Weird times.
Romney fired his gardeners because they happened to be born in a foreign land, that just happened to have vast unemployment and a suffering economy, and this individual happened to be starving and happened to love his family enough to not be able to stand to see his children’s hungry faces grow taut and weak. So he came here, to mow Romney’s vast green lawn, and be made a scapegoat by his boss; the man who preaches to the voters about his faith, and how "it opens the window of the soul."
Ah... Christmas at the Romney’s. It must a magical, patriotic time of year.
If you’re like me, and not really a hall decker or someone who feels jolly in tis' season, you better enjoy it, or rather, not enjoy it, while you can, because next year, if Mitt gets elected, having a case of the bah humbugs might get you a 5 year stint to Gitmo.
Screw the gifts, this year I want a Democrat to stand up and lead, to bring the nation together, to put the last 8 years to rest for good. Obama can do it, once he gets passed Hillary. Stuff that in your stocking, Mitt!
As always, thanks for listening. ArtofStarving gets a little grumpy this time of year. Sit him in a chair with It's A Wonderful Life on and ignore him, it'll pass.
What's on your wish list this year, folks?