Carefully Connecting the Dots

  Although inferencing is inherent in our personal selections for those seeking public offices, this election cycle poses a particularly more challenging task among the undecided in casting a conclusive vote for president. In this high stakes arena it is a given that competitors will deliberately obscure rival messaging, but the oddity of a candidate obscuring his own is rare, if not unique. In the event that such campaign calamity is of no consequence (while it certainly cannot be perceived as an effective strategy) and happenchance yields a victory, political rhetoric based on substance and truth risks being diminished even further than it is already, eroding ideals in democracy along with it.  However, the clamor for more specificity from candidates speaks to the health of an informed citizenry, and keeps hope alive. Albeit candidates will offer voters a paint-by-number method of presenting themselves, the electorate should stand to gain a more qualitative democracy by carefully connecting the dots.

Debate Etiquette

  The unpleasant experience of having someone with an opposing view point poke a hole in the comfortable bubble of my own has, on occasion, widened my knowledge base and helped to recognize my own biases.  In some instances it has provided a greater understanding and in some cases reinforced my resolve, but gratitude in both.  Being less of an activist nowadays has curbed many direct confrontations, and moreover sheltered me from the frustration of futile attempts to be persuasive.  However, I've come across a helpful tool in the research by Yale law professor, Dan Kahan, who classifies individuals as either "hierarchical" or "egalitarian" in their cultural values, and frames each in what he calls "motivational reasoning."  For those who sincerely seek to represent their viewpoints in articulate and respectful ways, it's worth reading his work.  I found his advice in avoiding the "culture war of facts" by speaking to value first  (giving the facts a fighting chance) to be valid.

  Lizz Winstead uses the American apple pie's old school recipe as an exemplary metaphor for the making of a president; both are a  made from scratch process. One who values good old fashioned ways should appreciate how the road to the White House is a slow and methodical process founded on substantive leadership; and how back-in-the-day electorates were given more opportunity to slow cook their consideration and think more deeply about their representative choices at the ballot box. In contrast, today's technologies have accelerated this process much in the way microwave ovens have made apple pies quick, easy and less delectable.  In an election cycle politically charged with  sound bites and tweets, they have empowered fractured broadcast journalism and social media to outpace that of print journalism, quantitatively richer in detail. Syndicated columnist, Bob Franken, points out that in such a climate, process has also been undermined by well financed distortions that obscure core themes in campaign rhetoric via massive infusions of money and negative advertising.

  In this way, an egalitarian thinker may find an inroad toward a more effective discussion with a hierarchical one, by addressing a conservative value at its forefront. Hopefully a more amiable and fruitful dialogue will ensue.

  In Defense of the Affordable Care Act

  The institution of healthcare in the post modern era has become problematic, much like that of slavery during America's revolutionary period.  With equality and human dignity the battle cry in the Age of Enlightment, our founding fathers excluded addressing the issue of slavery at the Philadelphia Convention, although some colonial governments and state constitutions had taken small steps toward curbing it.  During the immediate post revoluionary decades a growing consensus among the nation's leaders (including some slave oweners themselves) that slavery was a doomed institution of labor, failed to materialize legal measures to universally end its practice. James Wilson, of the Pennsylvania ratifying convention  predicted the inevitable emancipation of all slaves in the nation, and in 1774,  Benjamin Rush thought "there will be not a Negro slave in North America in 40 years."  Nevertheless, this enormous problem of democracy was left to fester until its catastrophic end.

  Is  a similar mistake being made by pursuing the repeal of the Affordable Care Act?  Who can deny that the rapidly accelerating cost of healthcare is not monumental?  Will our nation's leaders (both present and future) really dismantle this comprehensive effort toward a solution, for the sake of those who profit from the status quo? Really?  Does the "Now is not the time; let's rethink this thing" argument not resemble the attitude held by many lawmakers  prior to the Civil War in regard to slavery and those who stood to profit from it?

  The vestige of racism in the aftermath of emancipation lingers today, but one can only imagine the ramifications brought about by the absence of a national healthcare system that insures us all with medical coverage.

President Washington's Farewell Address

  After finishing Chapter 5 of Gordon Wood’s Empire of Liberty; A History of the Early Republic 1789-1815, I had to find “Washington’s Farewell  Address” to read for myself, which used to be required reading for public high school students.  I had yet to read it. I wouldn’t have been able to read it in high school, besides understand and appreciate its scholarship (It used to be read in the U.S. Congress frequently, probably during filibusters); however, I was awestruck by how much it meant to its author to publicize the advice derived from his deeply committed concern for the welfare of the infantile republic.   I’m curious as to whether presidential candidates would be able to identify their favorite parts.  

  I found much of it be useful for both our major political parties to keep in mind.  The address emphasizes the importance of eliminating debt during peace times, and revenue.  He also names religion and morality as indispensible supports to free republics, and the primary importance of institutions to diffuse knowledge as an enlightened public is essential to the structure of government.

My favorite clause is pertinent to today’s election year political wrangling:

 “There is an opinion that parties in free countries are useful checks upon the administration of the government and serve to keep alive the spirit of liberty. This within certain limits is probably true; and in governments of a monarchical cast, patriotism may look with indulgence, if not with favor, upon the spirit of party. But in those of the popular character, in governments purely elective, it is a spirit not to be encouraged. From their natural tendency, it is certain there will always be enough of that spirit for every salutary purpose. And there being constant danger of excess, the effort ought to be by force of public opinion, to mitigate and assuage it. A fire not to be quenched, it demands a uniform vigilance to prevent its bursting into a flame, lest, instead of warming, it should consume."

The Role of Righteousness

God depends on the absolute value of righteousness and actively pursues it to justify himself.  Without righteousness he could not be a living god. He is the finite universe, the alpha and omega; therefore everything lies within. Our human souls are small functional parts of him, from which his righteousness is determined and sustained. They stream as variables in a diametric scheme either lost in obscenity or won in virtue.  He must perpetually strive to assure that the balance is tipped in favor of goodness; otherwise its antithesis could not serve its purpose of fueling the process in the eternal paradigm.  Our souls are energetic; they cannot be destroyed. They are either manifested in renewed life with light energy potential  or terminated in life as heat energy.

Winter Dec. 25

The departure of the time when frost-on-the-pumpkin crosses over to frost-on-the-pine cone invokes thoughts of biblical references to seeds / seedlings, and how the gospel of Jesus Christ may have affected the culture of cold climate communities in the coniferous forests of Northern Europe. Pagan customs associated with winter-solstace activities suggest that these  bountiful arbolic inhabitants lacing the valleys and hillsides were religiously revered, as were the mammals and fish in sustaining their lives during the pre-Christian eras.

It's fascinating how the Christmas tree, juxtaposed to the dreidel, has endured in the Judaic-Christian tradition. Its symbolism of survival in the depths of Winter has become a cultural mainstay far from Rome, Constaninople, or even Bethlehem.

Let Us Eat Cake

  Newt Gingrich may have the wherewithal to unify the conservative base. If such a success results in a sweeping victory, attaining a stronghold in both the executive and legislative branches of government, he will have secured his status as a major figure in American History. The piecemeal way history is subjectively fashioned eventually crystalizes in some form of objectivity. Like a fully baked cake that is photographed and published in the pages of time, political watersheds ultimately become catalogued wherein it can be said that, "it was what it was." It would be a curious turnabout  in the wake of the Occupy Movement, and brings Richard Harris' lyrics in McArthur's Park to mind; "..Someone left the cake out in the rain. I don't think that I can take it cause it took so long to bake it, and we'll never have the recipe again..."