This editorial is from the Baltimore Sun from November 3rd -- the day after the election. It gets at some of the problems of putting what we want into the context of what we actually want to pay for or invest in.
After devoting long minutes to careful analysis of Tuesday night's election returns, I now know what Americans want:
We want roads and bridges that are always in good condition but do not require tax money for upkeep.
We want world class schools with teachers who are so dedicated that they will work for minimum wage. (Note: the best one should be in my neighborhood)
We want 60-inch plasma TVs that cost $200 and are produced by workers in Ohio making at least $30 per hour.
We want our military to win every war, every heart and every mind, everywhere, at no cost in lives or money.
We want cheap, clean, efficient mass transit that goes through someone else's neighborhood.
We want no-fat triple-decker hamburgers that are good for you and taste great.
We want fast, efficient, friendly government services provided by clerks who work happily for free.
We want "clean" coal and domestic crude that does not produce pollution or require digging or drilling.
We want SUVs that get 100 miles per gallon and produce jobs in Detroit.
We want Social Security benefits to go up and Social Security taxes to go down.
We want cheap labor from legal citizens who don't mind living in poverty.
We want clean drinking water and pristine parks and the right to dump anything, anywhere.
We want colleges that are inexpensive and not too hard but produce world class leaders.
We want football where every hit is brutal but no one gets hurt and baseball where everyone hits 40 home runs but no one uses steroids.
We want government to deliver all these things — then cut taxes and then cut taxes some more. Mostly, we want what we want, and we want it now.
Personally, I want leaders who will tell us frankly that all these things are not possible, that the blessings of infrastructure and education given us by our fathers are wearing out. I want thinkers who can paint a picture of a greater America that could exist in 50 or 100 years, and then unite us with a roadmap to get there. I want America to have a shared vision and an understanding that we all benefit when we all contribute, and that we all suffer when we demand only for ourselves. I want leaders who will tell the truth: that there is no free lunch.
But then, I also want the World Series to end in early October, yet I know that some things are just too grand to even wish for.
Pastor Jenny, at Anchor Park and East UM Churches in Anchorage already posted this before. But, I'll do it here too. I'm sure there are others out there that have drawn attention to this speech where a comedian stops being funny (more or less) and tries to get serious about our need just to be civil...decent...with each other. And he puts a lot of the blame on the media which, for all of the political talk, seems to be the one constant villain in Stewart's shtick.
I've highlighted some of the text below that I think is pretty important as we discuss our discourse.
Here's a video.
Here's the transcript with highlighting.
And now I thought we might have a moment, however brief, for some sincerity. If that's okay - I know that there are boundaries for a comedian / pundit / talker guy, and I'm sure that I'll find out tomorrow how I have violated them.
So, uh, what exactly was this? I can't control what people think this was: I can only tell you my intentions.
This was not a rally to ridicule people of faith, or people of activism, or look down our noses at the heartland, or passionate argument, or to suggest that times are not difficult and that we have nothing to fear--they are, and we do.
But we live now in hard times, not end times. And we can have animus, and not be enemies. But unfortunately, one of our main tools in delineating the two broke.
The country's 24-hour, political pundit perpetual panic conflictinator did not cause our problems, but its existence makes solving them that much harder. The press can hold its magnifying glass up to our problems, bringing them into focus, illuminating issues heretofore unseen. Or they can use that magnifying glass to light ants on fire, and then perhaps host a week of shows on the dangerous, unexpected flaming ants epidemic. If we amplify everything, we hear nothing.
There are terrorists, and racists, and Stalinists, and theocrats, but those are titles that must be earned! You must have the resume! Not being able to distinguish between real racists and Tea Party-ers, or real bigots and Juan Williams or Rick Sanchez is an insult--not only to those people, but to the racists themselves, who have put in the exhausting effort it takes to hate. Just as the inability to distinguish terrorists from Muslims makes us less safe, not more.
The press is our immune system. If it overreacts to everything, we actually get sicker--and, perhaps, eczema. And yet... I feel good. Strangely, calmly, good. Because the image of Americans that is reflected back to us by our political and media process is false. It is us, through a funhouse mirror--and not the good kind that makes you look slim in the waist, and maybe taller, but the kind where you have a giant forehead, and an ass shaped like a month-old pumpkin, and one eyeball.
So why would we work together? Why would you reach across the aisle, to a pumpkin-assed forehead eyeball monster? If the picture of us were true, of course our inability to solve problems would actually be quite sane and reasonable--why would you work with Marxists actively subverting our Constitution, and homophobes who see no one's humanity but their own?
We hear every damned day about how fragile our country is, on the brink of catastrophe, torn by polarizing hate, and how it's a shame that we can't work together to get things done. The truth is, we do! We work together to get things done every damned day! The only place we don't is here (in Washington) or on cable TV!
But Americans don't live here, or on cable TV. Where we live, our values and principles form the foundation that sustains us while we get things done--not the barriers that prevent us from getting things done.
Most Americans don't live their lives solely as Democrats, Republicans, liberals or conservatives. Americans live their lives more as people that are just a little bit late for something they have to do. Often something they do not want to do! But they do it. Impossible things, every day, that are only made possible through the little, reasonable compromises we all make.
(Points to video screen, showing video of cars in traffic.) Look on the screen. This is where we are, this is who we are. These cars. That's a schoolteacher who probably think his taxes are too high, he's going to work. There's another car, a woman with two small kids, can't really think about anything else right now... A lady's in the NRA, loves Oprah. There's another car, an investment banker, gay, also likes Oprah. Another car's a Latino carpenter; another car, a fundamentalist vacuum salesman. Atheist obstetrician. Mormon Jay-Z fan.
But this is us. Every one of the cars that you see is filled with individuals of strong belief, and principles they hold dear--often principles and beliefs in direct opposition to their fellow travelers'. And yet, these millions of cars must somehow find a way to squeeze, one by one, into a mile-long, 30-foot-wide tunnel, carved underneath a mighty river.
And they do it, concession by concession: you go, then I'll go. You go, then I'll go. You go, then I'll go. 'Oh my God--is that an NRA sticker on your car?' 'Is that an Obama sticker on your car?' It's okay--you go, then I go.
And sure, at some point, there will be a selfish jerk who zips up the shoulder, and cuts in at the last minute. But that individual is rare, and he is scorned, and he is not hired as an analyst!
Because we know, instinctively, as a people, that if we are to get through the darkness and back into the light, we have to work together. And the truth is there will always be darkness, and sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel isn't the promised land.
Andrew Peterson is a Christian musician. He wrote a post about money over at Rabbit Room, reflecting, in part, on his experience in going to Bolivia with Compassion International. This is just a small section of it. I've highlighted what I think is a very cool part of it.
What I envied about the Bolivians wasn’t poverty. It was simplicity. They didn’t choose it. It’s a necessary result of living in poverty, the silver lining on a dark cloud. That’s why people come back from Africa with that infectious gladness–not, of course, because of the terrible smell or the sickness or the injustice–it’s the simplicity. It’s a life uncluttered by television and power bills and traffic jams–a life enriched by the intense joy of interacting with other souls at a profoundly deep level, which is what we were meant for. What we miss when we come back from mission trips and church camps and spiritual retreats is life at its simplest.
American culture is one extreme (a land of plenty at the cost of simplicity) and the Third World is the other (poverty with the gift of simplicity). Each has its blessings and its curses. This point of this isn’t to get to the bottom of which of these extremes is better, but to propose a better way. A Christ-centered life of intimate fellowship unharried by either sickness and starvation or the chaos of a capitalistic rat race might be a good picture of the order of the day in the New Jerusalem. We don’t want to thrust electronics and trinkets and McDonald’s fries on Elba’s family any more than they’d want to thrust their dirt floors and malnutrition on us. What I wish for Elba is clean streets and sturdy houses, good food and warm clothes: hope. What I wish for us is walks in the woods, good friends, a tight community with a loving church at its heart: peace.
If you like some of the stuff I've been posting, stop right now. Really, stop. And click on over to Richard Hall's blog, Connexions. He's a Methodist minister in Wales and he reads the books I wish I was reading and he writes the posts that I wish I was posting. I've generously borrowed...each time citing where I've found it...but it's good stuff.
The following is his post from earlier today, all about American Christianity...which is just wild since he's writing from Wales. It's a very large excerpt from Bill McKibben's “The People of the (Unread) Book”. I'm just going to quote bit of it. You'll have to to to Connexions to read the whole thing. Really. Go and check it out. Stop reading and click here....
But, if you're still here, this is the quote:
“Only 40 per cent of Americans can name more than five of the Ten Commandments, and a scant half can cite any of the four authors of the gospels. Twelve per cent believe Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife. This failure to recall the specifics of our Judeo-Christian heritage may be further evidence of our nation’s educational decline, but it probably doesn’t matter all that much in spiritual or political terms. Here is a statistic that does matter: Three-quarters of Americans believe that the Bible says ‘God helps those who help themselves.’ That is, three out of four Americans believe that this uber-American idea, a notion at the core of our current individualist politics and culture, which was in fact uttered by Ben Franklin, actually appears in holy scripture. The thing is, not only is Franklin’s wisdom not biblical, it’s counter-biblical. Few ideas could be farther from the gospel message, with its radical summons to love of neighbor. On this essential matter, most Americans - most American Christians - are simply wrong, as if 75 percent of American scientists believed that Newton proved gravity causes apples to fly up. Bill McKibben, “The People of the (Unread) Book”, in Peter Laarman, ed., Getting on Message (Boston: Beacon Press, 2006), pp. 13ff.
So, here we are in America. Many of us are pretty sure this is a country that sits at the right hand of God, or, at least it is more Christian than most of the other godless nations we can think of in the world. But our Christianity is in trouble because it is so interwoven with the American story and American values -- hard work, self-actualization, the free market -- that Jesus, at times seems co-opted by some sense of nationalism. And it's not that we shouldn't pray for our nation and try to hold our leaders accountable and work to be more Christ-like in our social and political realms. We should. And it doesn't mean we shouldn't love and appreciate the blessings of where we get to live. Hey, it's a great place. America had been good to me and I pray I've been good for it. However, we need to ask whether or not this we're starting from an understanding of Jesus and holiness and faithfulness and justice that has been shaped by who we are as a nation. (This almost sounds like it could be some of Shane Claiborne's thoughts as well.)
And, as said above, go over and check out Richard Hall's blog. I'm enjoying the exercise of checking it out.
photo © 2010 Dennis Hamilton | more info (via: Wylio)
