I've been sitting with two ideas. These touch on 1. the ongoing electoral process and on 2. the intense passions that move us to hunker down and cling to what we decide is best. If nothing else, these are interesting times.
That being said, I grow more and more amazed, both at myself and at the processes that bring us to shout this or that candidates name. What amazes me most is the myriad ways that process itself takes root and, on some level, actually replaces truly free thought so that passion does not merely motivate us but instead becomes an unwilled internalized force.
I support Bernie, that remains true. I want those of you who do not support Bernie to know that I do consider your point of view and question my own, often. I understand your reasons for your choices.
But still, I always come back to this: it is the same reasoning that has motivated my own thinking every four years. This reasoning uses catch phrases like, "don't throw your vote away," and "but this time the stakes are so high." The same old story every time, with little variation. This time around I have chosen to reject this reasoning as I have decided it is a recurring lie.
I, probably like you, embrace Enlightenment principles, and the notions about what it means to be Human that underlie the tenets of Liberal Democracy. Think Locke, think John Stuart Mill, think William Godwin, the curmudgeonly Rousseau or the great Voltaire, think John Dewey. And so as I search my conscience, I am comfortable with my position.
As part of that introspective search I take into account the fact that this is a new century and that, as far as my peers go, we are aging, dear friends. And not all that long from now, yes, even within the foreseeable future, we will be dead. Those now young will take our places, and the world will pick up the eternal conversation where we left off just as we once moved into the conversation our parents and their parents were having before we arrived on scene.
Hillary Clinton is competent. It is true. I will not argue that she is not.
And with the same forthrightness, I acknowledge that the fact that Donald Trump has gotten as far as he has, well, that fact does not speak highly of what we've made of Enlightenment principles at all.
If being competent is all that is required, we should remember that Mussolini's metaphoric train certainly ran on time.
In my thinking, I choose to focus on the subtexts of policy, subtexts I base on a kind of moral impulse. As I examine my own thinking, I invite you to examine your own. Why not Bernie? Why not Trump? Why not Hillary? Is there anything more than expediency available to us in the overshadowing arc of our new global reality? Is there anything remotely great to be had? Is there anything rich that looks beyond mere survival and that encompasses instead a great inclusion and says "no more" to our Puritan exclusivities, on race, on gender, on class, on what it really means to be Human? Are we our prejudices and limitations? I like to think better of us than that.
Today I read Richard Rohr, a Franciscan priest. My loving partner Beth and I both check in with him from time to time. And some of what I read today--simple, not overly "profound"--follows:
"Deepen awareness of “stinking thinking” as the universal addiction.
"The primary addiction in all of us—discovered by serious spiritual seekers and
the world’s religions, at the more mature levels—is to our own ways of thinking!
"All meditation and contemplation and all true prayer, are designed to help us recognize and overcome our universal addiction to our dualistic, judgmental, repetitive, and fear-based minds."
Any tradition we think of as "religious" raises awareness of ego's ubiquitousness, and focuses on time-proven methods whose aim is always the diminishment of ego. In every and any such case, the central issue is always the weight and enormity of the ego-based self. Freud and Jung, of course, raise awareness regarding the ego's mercurial nature as it constantly evolves, mutates, and reconstitutes itself in our motivations and our thoughts. The ego, then, plays a part in many of our decisions. These, I am afraid, include our political decisions.