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Monday, June 11, 2012

PROPHESY: The Loss of Faith

I couldn't tell where we were. Some small enclosed room. It looked no larger than a room on a ferry or a train, but it was old and beat up. We sat there, talked. I was taken by how young, how beautiful she was despite the fact that everything around us was run-down and rag-tag. Rusty metal walls or bulkheads and old blankets adorned the place. She wasn't my girl, and, while attractive, not my objective. As we talked, a much older man came in. The thick glasses and white in his beard and hair painted him into his 60s, and the droll, sarcastic countenance lent him an air of annoyance, maybe even a slight narcisism -I couldn't tell yet. However, I could tell in her reaction to his entrance that she was equally annoyed, for, whatever the initial cause, this was her husband. She confessed in a dry and tired way that she had an affair again earlier that day with someone neither of them knew, the confession replacing the standard greeting. With that, I made my leave.

I left those quarters and turned right around a corner. A row of benches went back into some sort of large room, perhaps an old theater, church, or just a lounge. I went down the first row and found my old friend sitting there by himself amidst the coughing and smell of the inhabitants of the rest of the room. He sat quietly, donning jeans, boots, and an a-neck shirt, all of which were dirty from months of wear. A knife hung off the front of the bench from his belt at his right hip as he leaned forward to listen more closely to the display on the wall in front of him. I couldn't help but notice how much more muscular he had become since this all started, since he lost everything, everyone...

"What's the latest?" I asked him.

His eyes didn't move from the screen as he nodded, acknowledging my presence. "It's hard to make out. I can't tell where they're going next." He grabbed some sort of make-shift screwdriver and began prodding at the exposed wires in he wall underneath the viewscreen. He gestured to his left with an amused thumb. "That guy seems to be losing it, though."

I looked beyond him, across the aisle on the other side of the bench. In the flickering light, I saw the man he was talking about. He sat alone on a suitcase, almost hidden from view from a pile of duffle bags and clothing. A little more than middle-aged, he wore no shirt, and on his chest and shoulders I could see burn marks. They looked like a severe sunburn, except that they were in a pattern that would suggest an artificial cause.

He slowly rocked on his suitcase. "This wasn't the plan. This isn't God's plan. It's wrong. It's all wrong." His gaze was on nothing in particular, yet immovable in its focus.  I turned back to my friend.

"I recognize him. He was famous years ago. Years ago. He ran for president, even." I couldn't remember his name, but I did remember the news, back when there was news, when there was a governmet. I remember he wasn't too well-liked, and that his hair, which now looked graying and disheveled, was always immaculate. I also remembered his faith being a campaign issue. I wondered how it went wrong for him, and pity began to flow through me...

THOUGHTS: The Disfunctionality of American Government

Lately, I've been having very thought-provoking conversations and reading informative and intriguing news articles and editorials about everybody's favorite topic: politics. I've noticed a weird trend. No matter which side of the aisle people have been aligned with for the majority of their voting life, they're dishearted, disappointed, distrustful, and straight angry at everyone in charge, not just "their guy" or "the other guy".  Approval of all three branches of government seems to be at an all time low. A recent article I read somewhere (I can't remember where, but I think it was Esquire), basically called the current Supreme Court out, saying the judicial branch that used to be the last bastian of defense of the Constitution is now simply another tool for either party to push their agenda. Congress is virtually inept, spending more of China's money to make sure that their constituents, unknowingly in most cases (as the honest Congress-people surely wouldn't get re-elected), can sign as many bills into law as possible designed to destroy the middle class and enslave as much of the lower class as possible. The presidency: regardless of who's been in office since Lyndon B. Johnson, every single one of them has been driven by either a personal agenda, a party-bound lack of independent thought, or some paid-off security of future corporate wealth.

Throwing all of this into perspective, it's getting much easier to take seriously the rants of those like Alex Jones, Jesse Ventura, or Ron Paul. You know, the guys on the outside who make claims like 9/11 was an inside job or that the Gulf of Tonkin Incident never actually happened? (The latter was proven by declassified military documents since 2005.)

I don't know where you stand on this thought, and frankly, it doesn't matter.  It doesn't even matter is that you're reading this or some other more intelligent take on the state of affairs in this country UNLESS YOU TAKE ACTION.  Taking action isn't simply joining a party and going to the meet-and-greets and town hall meetings. Taking action is demonstrating. It's writing to your senators, reprasentatives, mayors, city council members and county commissioners so often that they know your first name. It's finding out what causes support YOUR stance and helping them. It's finding like-mended and unlike-minded people and having conversations with them to either deepen your beliefs or to learn that they aren't entirely accurate.

The hardest part, though, is learning to respect and fight for the other side. A guy is anti-abotion. Another guy is anti-gun. These two live in a place that's supposed to respect freedom. That means that if I'm anti-gun, i need to understand that as MY choice, not everyone else's mandate. If I'm pro-life, then I make that part of MY life, not by making abortion illegal for everyone. If I'm not gay, I need to respect that some people are, and they have the right to be free and in love.

Loving thy neighbor I one of the ten commandments in Christian theology. It's part of the Golden Rule, the Ethic of Reciprocity, the simplest most basic law, one that transcends Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, tribal spirituality, and even science and humanism. One of Isaac Netwon's Laws of Physics dictates that every action has an equal and opposite reaction.  Science has proven what phophets have preached for millenia.

But I digress from the theological tangent. The point of this rant is that we, the people, are losing this country to th few who would rob it and us blin for everything we're worth and it needs to stop. Do something. Change the world.