Mitt’s Mormonism: The Body Politic Meets the Body of Christ
I’ve written before on Mitt’s Mormonism and presidential politics (here and here). The comparison with John Kennedy is obvious: Kennedy was the first Roman Catholic to achieve the presidency in American history. But he wasn’t the first to try. Al Smith did that decades before. And he lost, due in large part to a vicious anti-Catholic campaign in the same bible belt that will probably sink Mitt. For Al, that bible belt stretched from sea to shining see, much to our shame. Our self-realization resulted in national repentance. Thus, Jack Kennedy, an incarnation of national penance.
Ironically, Mitt’s dad, George Romney, whom I supported for the presidency, might have been Mitt’s Al Smith. But George did something his too-slick by twice son did not do. George told the American people the truth about Vietnam, and why he was changing his position (see, e.g., Mitt’s conversion to deny women the right of choice regarding their own belly, the right under Roe v. Wade to make their own decision, with their doctor.). George said, truthfully, that “I was brainwashed.” The American people often don’t want the truth. They admire those, especially in war, who lie, cheat, steal and kill in God’s name. George Romney instantly lost any chance for the presidency. George was not as bright as his gifted son. But he had a great heart and people knew it. Too bad for Mitt. Had his dad lived long enough, politically, to draw the still-festering infection, the third of our people, nationally, to fear a Mormon president; the pus in the body politic, that potentially fatal boil within our body, would have been lanced. And Mitt could have been judged on his own quite substantial merit. Truth tellers rarely succeed in politics. We kill those prophetic leaders who do bear witness to truth.
From several months ago until now, Mitt’s Mormonism has been both the conscious and subliminal issue, the backyard gossip of our national political dialogue. This is the Freudian delight. Sex, polygamy, special underwear that’s well designed to make sex impossible; or even better, a Mormon Kama Sutra, the Yin-Yang Butterfly of Mormonism; the garment that gives a whole new meaning to the Missionary Position.
Getting into what my heart wants to say to Mitt is about impossible to this old man steeped in the faith of my youth and my life. Let me drop my Libra nature to never reveal the main points of my heart, my gut, my brain. Let me shout my end point in italics or capital letters: MORMONISM CAN ONLY WIN BY MITT’S ENTRANCE INTO PRESIDENTIAL POLITICS. No matter what he says, no matter what he does. He’s much to fine a man to do anything that would dishonor his faith or his party or his family. I do not believe there is any act, or even fantasy, hiding in the closet of his soul.
What he will do for his faith, I’ve tried, with no political or ecclesiastical power, and no mandate by anyone, always failingly, to do. From the Mormon position on race, sex and gender, to the arms race and the MX missile. I failed completely to change the nature of my church. Mitt has the chance to stand upon and speak through the world’s most gigantic bully pulpit since the Caesars of Rome: an attempt to win that bully pulpit, for a time, four or even eight years’ running. The Mormon church can only win, and win big. I hope they know that.
A wit once said that there is no bad publicity. Just spell the name right. This is true. A photo of Mitt in his temple garments now appears on this and many other websites. This will cause many Mormons gas pains. My advice? Fart and forget it. It’s open season on Mitt. And the Mormons. Such a photo is funny. Not to Mormons. But in today’s Tribune, and in every other news media in the world, there appears an Englishwoman who named a teddy bear Muhammad. Hundreds of thousands of crazed Muslims called for her whipping, beheading, and jail time as well (after beheading, that might be called piling on). Just who is holding the Muslim faith up to ridicule? Why, the only ones who ever can, for any faith, any time. The True Believers. Those who always threaten their faith and world peace. Witness the Crusades. And the Mountain Meadows massacre.
No outsider can lay a glove on anyone’s faith. By their fruits ye shall know them. As a wily politician said about a cruel libel, “just spell my name right.” There is no publicity that can harm a candidate. I know. I ran for Congress and couldn’t get my name in a paper, let alone a television program, even when I ran
stark naked into the tabernacle and they caught me by the great organ.
Now, to Mitt’s church and state speech. Remember, Mitt, you now must do what I’ve never ever seen or heard you do. Humor, particularly when you poke fun at yourself, will help your wooden image enormously. Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee has stolen your thunder, Mitt. Not because he’s smarter. And surely not because he has a fraction of your personal fortune and your professional money-raising capacity. Huckabee will beat you for one reason. He’s real. He comes across as he really is. He needs no professional managers to prepare him for what he’s been doing, all his life.
I do not believe people vote, in the main, on the basis of this or that position on an issue. A truly deal-breaking issue rarely, if ever, exists. People know, or at least intuit, that the issues of the next four years, or eight, are not necessarily the issues of the moment. History may not repeat itself. Paraphrase, maybe. But tomorrow’s issues must be faced as the Good Book says:” sufficient to the day are the evils thereof.”
Mitt, I feel like shouting in italics again, but I’ve been warned that surfers of the net don’t like screamers, unless sex is in progress. Get real. You come across as pre-programmed. A public relations creation. Something like you’re the result of virgin birth. Someone who came about when a public relations genius slipped, once, and impregnated a totem pole, or perhaps Phyllis Schafley.
In a very real sense, Mitt, you’re being anti-Mormon. Or, at least, non-Mormon. Since we both come from a religion that abjures a professional clergy, we’ve both spoken tens of thousands of times, virtually since we were in our mothers’ womb. You’ve held about every position a human being could hold in our Mormon faith. You need no speech writers. Really. Fire them. Save money. Give those millions to fighting poverty, homelessness, and opposing those who support this dreadful war. Our Doctrine and Covenants, section ninety-eight, verse sixteen, directs us to”denounce war and proclaim peace.” Pope John XX!!! couldn’t say it better.
I don’t fear someone, at least in the United States of America, who allows his faith to inform his politics. And vice versa. God suffuses the Village Square. This is so whether we want it or not. This always has been and always will be. There is no division between church and state that cleaves through our soul, walling off the right from the left brain, or severs our heart in two. I fear someone who is so pre-programmed that he or she does what is obviously against her faith. Like Hillary Clinton has done. Senator Hillary Clinton is a believing, bible-carrying Methodist. Her church’s Bishops supported our anti-nuclear fight and issued a statement, just like the Roman Catholic Church did. And the Mormon Church, in three successive statements by the First Presidency: an Easter message, a Christmas message, and then the final statement in May, 1980, condemning the MX missile by name and all nucear weapons: and praying and exhorting peace. Hillary, read what your Methodist Bishops said. Sadly, Hillary has supported every war in sight. She always has. She’s never seen a war she didn’t like. But she’s even brighter than you or, for that matter, her husband, Bill Clinton. And you’re clearly the brightest candidate in the Republican Party’s batch of presidential candidates. But Mitt. You’re slick. The question is whether I should buy a used car from you.
Now, stand up on Thursday and do what you’ve done, on your mission, and before and after. Throw away your script. Tell your huge listening audience that you have a text. Then rip it up and speak from your heart. You were my Dad’s counselor in a Brigham Young University ward, decades ago. You are the only candidate of either party to have far more experience as a religious stump speaker than my favorite in the Republican Party, Mike Huckabee. ( I’m hoping against hope that John McCain and Mike Huckabee will be the Republican standardbearers. I simply do not trust any of the others.)
The capacity to laugh at oneself is the true sign of coming of age, as individuals and corporately. And yes, of course that includes our garments, or pajamas, as our friends not of our faith call them. If we can’t take the heat, as Harry Truman used to say, get the hell out of the kitchen. We Mormons will benefit for the next three hundred years for this chance at prime time. Corporately, the Mormon Church of today is right where Mitt Romney is. That is, the church, and Mitt, have a public relations man at the helm. A very good PR man, Gordon Hinckley, whom I met at about age twenty when he came to my home in Provo, Utah, to solicit me to give a speech or two on KSL radio. Public relations experts like Romney and President Hinckley have a great challenge. They are so articulate, and such natural wonderful leaders, that sometimes they confuse ethics, particularly corporate ethics, with public relations. As if, so to speak, corporate ethics were an oxymormon.
I suggest you watch and listen to Huckabee. Then do what you’ve always done. You got to the top without public relations gurus. Fire them all. Then read the 12th chapter of 1 Corinthians, verses 12-20. We all have a role, Mormons too, in the body of Christ. And the fourth chapter of Ephesians, verses 3-3:13. All people of the book are part of this building, fitly framed together. I would apply these words to the people of any book. ( And to people who think, with much evidence to sustain them, that god is a bad joke. They prefer the Marlboro Man. ) You know your bible by heart. Say it. Secularize it for the very real separation of church and state that is one of the glories of the American Constitution. Just as did St. Paul, to gentiles, Jews, Greeks, Romans. You might also copy Thomas Jefferson, to most of the world the opposite of St. Paul. To me, they are brothers joined at the brain and the heart. They both spoke to a common humanity. Read the Declaration of Independence. And then the entire book of Romans, and the second chapter of Ephesians. A common humanity. The very epitome of the Enlightenment. Like Abigail and John Adams, Martha and George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Martha, and Sally Hemmings, and Dolly and James Madison. All incarnations of the Enlightenment. And all quite capable of citing chapter and verse, in most books in their enormous libraries; and most important, in the temple of their own soul.
Let your humanity out of that stiff box. You’re in the Village Square. Use your fifteen minutes wisely. To die, politically or physically, with influence unspent is a tragedy, a wasted life.
Mormon church, it’s time and past time that you grow up. Quit whining. Stop excommunicating your best and brightest. Stop this anti-Darwinian survival of the least fit. Treat your polygamous offshoots as your own children, for they are indeed that. Grow up and ordain women to the clergy. Grow up and treat your homosexual sisters and brothers, quite a few being amongst your own general authorities and their children, as your children, not as your bastard progeny. Follow your Thirteenth Article of Faith. Believe all things. Wait upon all things. Become the ecumenical and indeed inter-faith corporate body of Christ that you claim to be. I do not believe in a restored church. Past tense won’t do. I do believe in a perpetual never ending restoration of all humanity. The big tent. Do this now. Or kiss this splendid opportunity of Mitt Romney’s candidacy goodbye. Then, assuming Mitt loses, we Mormons can wait for a woman, a person of color, with three children and divorced, to run successfully for the President of the United States. And when she finishes her eight years, we can all sustain her as the president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Edwin Brown Firmage bio, website
Samuel D. Thurman Professor of Law, Emeritus
University of Utah
Salt Lake City, Utah, USA
December 5th, 2007 at 1:52 pm
…and E. Power Firmage, @ the organ
December 5th, 2007 at 2:57 pm
Tomorrow we’ll know what’s in that big speech. This morning, Willard’s wife told MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski that he wrote it himself. My guess is, Romney won’t make the mistake of assuming Americans are generally as fascinated with the LDS Church as everyone in Utah seems to be. Rather than delve into specifics, he’ll just try to talk about religion like Mike Huckabee. Unlike Huckabee, I hope Romney has heard about the Iran NIE.
December 5th, 2007 at 4:51 pm
What about Romney’s associates ties to “Blackwater” mercenaries and his support of torture and imprisonment of possibly, (probably), innocent people?
December 5th, 2007 at 7:55 pm
Nuthing to see there Lar. It’s really all about the blessed underoo thread quality. Associations with the Blackwater mercenary group hierarchy wouldn’t mesh correctly with his saintliness.
Anyway we must be more forgiving…these people would have us believe they don’t know what they are doing.
December 5th, 2007 at 7:56 pm
Larry, thank you for telling me that Mitt has some connection to “Blackwater.” I didn’t know that. Can you tell me more, or guide me to the motherlode of information? Blackwater I know; Mitt’s connection with Blackwater I didn’t know. Educate me, please. ed firmage
Richard, I’m with you, 110 per cent. ed
December 5th, 2007 at 8:04 pm
pp.s. Larry, Mitt’s statement on torture made me damned near throw up. Our Senator from Arizona nailed him perfectly. Mitt earned the slicing and dicing he received. He was too cute by half. ef
December 5th, 2007 at 8:26 pm
Mitts’ counter-terrorism advisor = Mr Prince, Blackwater muckity-muck. Google is your friend.
December 5th, 2007 at 8:31 pm
Ed, I love your writing. It will be interesting to see just how much Romney takes your advice. My guess is that he’ll continue with more of the same. He and the LDS church would be better off if they took your advice.
December 5th, 2007 at 8:53 pm
Hi, Mike. They did take my advice. Twice. They came to oppose the MX missile, at least when it was in their (our) backyard. And recently, in telling at least more truth about the Mountain Meadows massacre. Other than that, life can be very very lonely. ed firmage
December 5th, 2007 at 11:20 pm
Ed, someone whom I admired above many others quoted this in a speech at the great BYU in 1958: ” “From the cowardice that shrinks from new truth, from the laziness that is content with half truth, from the arrogance that thinks it has all truth - O God of truth deliver us’.”
O God deliver me too…
December 6th, 2007 at 6:57 am
It was in the last Republican debate, when Romney said he couldn’t answer a question about whether waterboarding was torture until he consulted his adviser Cofer Black, formerly of the CIA Directorate of Operations and now with Blackwater Worldwide.
J.M. Bell has blogged about this. So did I, in an update here. Senator John McCain nailed Romney with sarcasm: “Well, Governor, I’m astonished that you haven’t found out what waterboarding is.â€
Some people wonder if Blackwater’s CIA connection is not entirely coincidental.
December 6th, 2007 at 7:17 am
Oops! Richard has it right. My bad.
December 6th, 2007 at 9:40 am
Why the removal of the other candidates and leaving Mitt? Were the other photos offensive to you Ed? BTW a Hillary sign will be in my yard this coming year.
December 6th, 2007 at 9:52 am
Can’t we all just get awong?
Is it too much to ask the weewigious nuts to just find dere gawwd and and what they think is duh twuth, and make nothing of it?
Do we have pile up woks to pwoove we’re wight?
?Mitt has a pwetty big pile of wocks, that his faithful says is the pwettiest pile of wocks in the whole wide world.
I’m voting for Hiweewy too!! A wabbit in evwy pot!
December 6th, 2007 at 10:36 am
What does a dyslectic agnostic do?
Stays up all night wondering if there really is a Dog.
December 6th, 2007 at 11:03 am
I had hoped to find something more substantive in the long -verdue speech of Mitt Romney’s speech. Instead, there is more of the same - carefully-crafted placating soundbites. Who is the REAL Mitt Romney? That he is LDS is not the issue for me - I must confess to being formerly/lapsed or something like that - what does disturb me is how slickly he was elected in Massachusetts. The campaign was manipulated and an amazing PR coup. He pandered to liberals by purporting to be pro choice and now claims to have had some sort of mid-life epiphany. Now I am all about epiphanys - particularly being a 40 something woman who has been around a few states and countries - but this seems to be pandering of the worst kind. Are we truly to believe that Mitt/President Romney - as in President of the United States, not Stake President of the Mormon/LDS Church will be an independent in the White House? Will he really not take any directives from church members/hierarchy/leadership? I think not - then again, Is that a pig outside my window? My money’s on Huckabee - at least we know who he REALLY is.
December 6th, 2007 at 12:41 pm
De mock mock mock mock crazy?, Bidi bip bidi bip bidi bip, are your sure?, Tha tha da tha, that’s all Folks!!
Hey, here is question from Porkys’ spokeshuman. Is a quorum necessary in each state of registered voters to legitimize an election or a candidate that “wins” by extreme minority? Point being, if so we just don’t vote, bush can’t stay in, and the presiduncy stays vacant, until we “do it again”. By then maybe the sleeping giant of the public will wake up.
Sidenote: Were you aware that Ben Franklin was an advocate of a unicameral legislature of the Parliamentarian variety, and a very weak executive? He really was the Father of our country.
Porky for PRES!! At least he will bring home the bacon everyday, and sit on it.
December 6th, 2007 at 1:04 pm
Anyone parading out their religion as a qualification for leadership are all keeping some pretty rotten company. It is a fool that claims to know God, or his Will.
John 5:37, 38 The Father which? I guess God doesn’t look like us, He? I guess
God is guy. Love scripture, it is such total nonsensical filler, for the empty headed.
Jhn 5:37 And the Father himself, which hath sent me, hath borne witness of me. Ye have neither heard his voice at any time, nor seen his shape.
Jhn 5:38 And ye have not his word abiding in you: for whom he hath sent, him ye believe not.
Bombs away America…him ye believe NOT!
..,and here we have a prominent secularist, despite any belief he may have had, I’m with him.
“In every country and every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot … they have perverted the purest religion ever preached to man into mystery and jargon, unintelligible to all mankind, and therefore the safer engine for their purpose.” — Thomas Jefferson
Whatever romneys virtues, his choice of voluntary stupidity with regard to faith, strikes me as no different than any other religious nut. Just perhaps a tad more reflective and restrained, shows in his underwear.
We are in sooooo much trouble as a Nation, that’s what think…., the sgetty monster tole me.
December 6th, 2007 at 1:22 pm
WP, you are quoting, I think, my maternal grandfather, Hugh B. Brown, First Counselor to President David O. McKay, of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He married my grandmother, Zina, who was a granddaughter of Brigham Young. I used to haunt grandpa’s huge library. He allowed me to “borrow” many of his books, with the wink and nod between us that recognized the permanent shift of his library to mine, as grandpa aged and became blind. “From the cowardice that shrinks from new truth, from the laziness that is content with half truth, from the arrogance that thinks it has all the truth, Lord God protect us.” Vintage HBB.
Grandpa Brown was chairman of the Democratic Party in Utah, and a protege of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. As Chairman, he went into rural southern Utah to speak to hundreds of active Democrats (obviously an earlier and better time…my family and I now constitute the largest block of non-Republican voters in the state….), largely farmers. He spotted a rise in the ground. He mounted it, a compost heap, in today’s politically correct speech: to the rest of us, a manure pile. He began his speech with these words: “Citizens, sisters, brothers, please forgive me for speaking from atop a Republican Platform.”
Franklin Roosevelt heard him speak once. He said: “That man can have any Cabinet post he wants in my administration.”
Grandpa was passed over, four times, for a calling to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, even though his god-father, President Heber J. Grant, presented his name, four times, every time one of his colleagues of the Twelve died. Grandfather would have been president of the Mormon Church for many years, had he not proposed, as the youngest stake president in the Mormon Church at that time, the ordination of all people of color, including Blacks world-wide, for full priesthood participation. He was opposed each time President Grant nominated him, by Joseph Fielding Smith. Smith’s major reason was Smith’s support of the ban on ordaining Black people to the Mormon priesthood. His other reason was that Smith, like many religious leaders of the time, believed that the earth was created literally as Genesis says, in six days, or at most, 6,000 years. Grandpa said that we have two records of creation: the inspired poetry of Genesis, and other books of holy writ of many other faiths; and the record of the finger of God in the geology and earth history, the astrophysics of God’s finger in the strata of the earth. Grandfather was an ardent Darwinian. Much of his vast library contained the science of the day, particularly the cutting-edge speculations of the greatest minds of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He loved history and biography. Very little theology interested grandfather. Though he was a loving disciple, and often the companion, of Brigham H. Roberts, the most famous Mormon thinker, scientist, historian, and General Authority of all time. See the book, published by Signature Books, by B.H. Roberts, The Truth, The Way, and the Life, edited by Stan Larson, with an introduction by Sterling McMurrin. The BYU version is…well, what BYU is to real academic freedom. Something like military music is to music; or military law is to law; or the White House version of truth in Iraq is to CNN (pre-1991).
Hugh B. Brown said, “keep green. Green things grow. ” He rebutted each of Ezra Taft Benson’s talks at BYU, or in Mormon General Confrence. Benson was a major figure in the John Birch Society. Grandfather was a genuine liberal Democrat and Mormon apostle. My book on his life, in his own words, taped by me, is : Edwin B. Firmage, The Memoirs of Hugh B. Brown: An Abundant Life; Signature Books.
Grandfather put it this way: “The Gospel of Jesus Christ teaches the universality of God’s concern for men, and that obedience is a universal fundamental law of progress, both temporal and spiritual. The aristocracy of righteousness is the only aristocracy which God recognizes. (This could have been said, and was, by Thomas Jefferson or John and Abigail Adams…ef) This leaves no room for self-righteous expressions in words or actions of being “holier than thou.” There is a real unity in the human race, and all men have a right to equal consideration as human beings regardless of race, creed, or color.
“For any church, country, nation or other group to believe that it is the only people in whom God is interested or that it has special merit because of color, race, or belief, that they are inherently superior and loved by God, without regard in the lives they live, is not only a great and dangerous failure but is a continuing barrier to peace. This is demoralizing, whether it is the expoded and presumptuous myth of an Aryan race of supermen or disguised in more subtle forms. Let us steadfastly avoid such demoralizing arrogance.” Hugh B. Brown
The library and writings of Hugh and Zina Young Card Brown are now in large part in my collection, the Ed Firmage Collection, in Marriott Library at the University of Utah. This includes many books had by Brigham Young, Joseph Smith, all the maternal line of Mormonism, from before Joseph Smith to the Huntington who presided over the First Continental Congress, a forebearer of my maternal line of Zinas, starting before Zina Diantha Huntington Smith Young,married first to Joseph Smith, when she was fifteen; and married to Brigham Young, at eighteen, after the murder of Joseph Smith and his brother, Hyrum. Also in the collection are my papers from my time with Hubert H. Humphrey, Roy Wilkins of the NAACP, Whitney Young of the Urban League, and Martin Luther King, Jr., of Southern Christian Leadership Confrence times. And more recently, many writings about, to and from, H.H. The Dalai Lama of Tibet, in exile, with whom I now work
December 6th, 2007 at 1:31 pm
WP, I didn’t remove the other figures in the photo of Mitt. I lack the sophistication to make images appear and disappear. I’ll vote for Hillary with glee if she receives the nomination of my party, the Democratic Party. I suppose the original shot, which is still up, of many of the candidates, still being up, led whomever edits this blog to parse the photo down to that which was relevant to my particular piece. ed firmage
December 6th, 2007 at 1:35 pm
glenn, I’d guess our libraries, and our thoughts, are remarkably similar. Right on! We need a Jefferson, an Adams, a Madison. Dolly, Abigail, and most especially Sally Hemmings as our candidate right now. NOT tweedle-dumb and I mean dumb. And tweedle-dee. ef
December 6th, 2007 at 3:18 pm
Yes Ed; and in their absence I’ll take a Johnny Stark, ANYDAY!! At least that way the knobs will be turned off their hinges.
Yes, the unsung Asskicker of the Battle of Breeds Hill(Bunker), meeting the brits, with WHAT FOR! All he needed was a split rail fence, some hay, some rocks, and some men that had had it and would stand, and the 40 yard marker to let the troops know when to let ‘em have it.. He led them well, and died an an old man peacefully.
Can’t forget his wifey pooh, Molly, she raised 11 kids mostly alone, and they all made it to adulthood, I believe, much more famous that her man. Many women have that measure, hilary ‘aint one of them Ed, we’ll be disappointed.
Back to John, when asked at the near end of his life what the measure and lesson of the Revolution was he said…
“Live Free or Die, there are evils worse than Death”.
December 7th, 2007 at 9:25 am
[...] rejection leaves a deep void within the human psyche, one filled by garments. Here on OneUtah, Ed observed A photo of Mitt in his temple garments now appears on this and many other websites. This will [...]
December 9th, 2007 at 12:59 pm
It is a thoughtful pass through the strange world we live in. Your basic advice is straight on, Mitt’s image is well polished. It would be more helpful for him to have a real fireside chat than a presentation. But, I doubt that he has that in his nature.
I think he is a good man, but I think also he has been running for this office since he was a child at his father’s knee. I don’t know what officiating over the Olympics gives one to be the President of the United States, but neither do I think that being an erstwhile spouse of one who occupies the Oval office, for whatever reason, has the vaguest relevancy to real leadership, she too is ALL image and a scary one at that.
So, with you Huckabee looks real and vibrant– he believes, I believe, what he says. The D’s I favor are at the bottom–like Biden. It would be good to have an honest soul somewhere in Washington, they have all sold their birthright souls for a tiny mess of pottage that is now even stinking.
Mike Deaver, Dorothy’s son is helping with the Republican campaign, and sometimes has been with Romney. Several weeks ago I prepared a list of questions for him to give Romney, real questions, the foundation questions that will rule the next twenty years, not the political junk that feeds the media of any age. Where is he with regard to the REAL Bush and Cheney and the hijacking of the Constitution, stealing its precious virtues in the middle of the night then casting the jewels as marbles before the public to ‘prove’ he is macho by scratching out signing agreements, and directives to do a ‘makeover’ of himself into ‘man of real power’ NEVER. His projections are so astounding, imagine being ‘ THE DECIDER’ or the “Unitary Executive” bullying the larger neighborhood of the world. And where will this country be in five, ten, twenty years for our children when FREE trade is emasculating any sense ‘again’ of accountability from our economic rapacious system that steals children from their foreign playgrounds to work as slaves to provide the brothels of the world with exotic wares made of plastic, all kinds of plastic–nothing with the real metal of life.
The Gods we worship are so visible, consumers on our knees to literally anything and everything –our soul flowing out through the gaping pores of our body politic, as well as our personal integrity. Seems we have come to 1984, next is the double-sided screens of cable tv.
Bush has wrought us a Western EU selling the infrastructure—our roads, public treasures, water, ports, the “rights” that give us physical as well as political life—prostituted it to the highest bidder, while the press and media chew on Britanny or OJ. Bush is an adolescent throwing tantrums for what he wants, his toys ( gathered by Cheney) are puppets hanging from the strings of his father’s far-reaching hand, an evil profiteer from a fascist house born decades ago in Germany. His son, the great George II is a mouse wearing imperial robes that I hope soon will wrap him and his dangerous hunting friend in impeachment proceedings—-if the Congress can ever discover a back bone. I have written literally dozens of letters to goad our illustrious representatives into some kind of accountability themselves; they are handing him the Constitution on a bloody platter–the balance of powers now but a dream lost somewhere under the seats of the Capitol. The whole lot needs to be rolled out and replaced by homegrown folk who really live life, not the bubble house called Washington the dynasty builder of celebrity and its perpetual lobby retirement fund.
Where are you Concord, a memory of April 19th, 1775 and a bridge that spoke to the world two 227 years ago? The British indeed are coming, remnant royal leanings brokered through time, but now– in privatized gear marching the paved roads of Everytown USA,. . . .The King is the loose again. Where is our Paul Revere?
Well enough rant. Sorry I should never start writing on this subject. A suggestion. Allow your audience to grow by not throwing sacred things in their face, no need to offend when there is so much to gain by restraint. We are all hopefully growing in consciousness, a more honest consciousness of the ‘whys of nature and life. What we wear and why is of our own regard, tolerance is what we all should wear more often. Some times that tolerance is spoken by silence and honor.
Anyway, we agree on some things. I fear, really fear for the next decade for our children, the odds of a house cleaning are not too bright, I pray God is listening to all of our hearts and will create His own political miracle, but I rather think—this is one of our tasks-to learn what accountability really means in the crunch. It feels a bit like MX days when the odds were 74% against. The sleeping giant is waking I pray, I hope in time to find the way home out of OZ.
December 10th, 2007 at 12:27 pm
Gloria, don’t expect Courage of cowards. Courage marches forth, despite its fears, despite the prospect of losing everything, despite the look of an invincible enemy. History shows sometimes, this is all it takes. To quote Nancy Reagan, “just say NO”.
Here is a little poem on conviction and courage…let it ring. Freedom that is.
Oh, the life of Johnny Stark
planted a stick and made his mark*
though his times seemed so dark
The Freemen rallied, no walk in the park
The tyrants of the tory army
british officers wigged and smarmy
held no sway for Hampshire Grants
or Patrick Henry, in his rants
The ground was cold, the move it bold
the measure of a fledgling nation
way beyond its given station
borne of enough, aggravation
So he told his men then, to STAND UP!
The muskets cocked, the stick traverse
by tyrant army, full perverse
the lads of Starks’ adopted defense
pour their measure, forth, from the split fence
and scattered the once most powerful foe
they then bleeding, in tyrannies woe
tyrants machinations rarely done
they rallied up, marched as one
only to meet the Will of Freedom
locked and loaded, we wait, they come
To get some more, of Liberty’s delight
to thrash a tyrant, with all her might.
though that day was not clearly won
the Stand was made, and tyranny was done
to find its slobbering way through time
it’s here again, don’t give it a dime.
*the “stick” was placed by Stark 40 yards from the fence, upon which, when the crownies arrived upon it, at his order, his Boys were to stand as one, and blast tyranny to Hell. They did this 3 times at the Battle of Bunker(Breeds) Hill, and like any tyrant, the Battle moved away from resistance.
“Live Free or Die, there are evils worse than Death”. That or go “shopping”.
Man, Woman, have we come to this?