Staying Awake

It's been a while since I've posted here, and I figured that the best excuse for getting back to it was the eighth anniversary of the September 11th attacks.

So where are we right now? Does it ever strike you as interesting that the very reason some people cringe a little bit when people get emotional about that event is because it hasn't happened again in eight years?

Let me explain what I mean. To talk a lot about the importance of 9/11 seems a little bit heavy-handed these days, even to me sometimes. Just like comparing people to Hitler has lost all meaning, because people with little rhetorical skill jump to that analogy far too often and far too soon. So we're left with an event that really did shake the nation to its very center, and has still somehow lost the power to affect us very deeply. We'll think about it today, but we'll forget about it tomorrow.

And it's because we haven't seen anything like it on our soil for eight years. That's a miracle. I can assure you that the Islamic extremists do not hate us less. Nor have their efforts to kill as many of us as possible slackened. No, it's just that we've put an enormous amount of pressure on them--to the point that they haven't been able to pull off anything so large scale since.

I don't want this post to be partisan. There are things that we've done that have been effective, and things we've done that have been almost unforgivably stupid. Important, smart, and verbose people fight bitter battles over the particulars every single day of each year.

Instead, I want to talk about our morality. I believe in God. And I believe that he blesses nations according to their righteousness. I'm not talking about religion, I'm talking about human goodness. Nations that are filled with and led by people who are honestly seeking the best for each other, who are selflessly serving their fellow human beings--those nations prosper. The further we stray from that basic decency, the closer we come to being destroyed by our own inhumanity.

I don't believe God typically destroys people. I believe that when they walk far enough away from their innate sense of right and wrong, He simply lets them destroy themselves, or He stops protecting them from their enemies.

Self-destruction is something we can almost taste in this country right now. If the economy were to cease suffering and just die, then we would very quickly come to an understanding of how very bad life can be for the living. Our immorality is a sword hanging over our heads.

And so is terrorism. We've been lucky. Blessed is the term I prefer. But our safety is not a given. Mark 14:7 (in the Bible) states, "For ye have the poor with you always." The terrorists are a similar bunch in that way. There will never be a day when we lift our hands to the heavens in a celebratory gesture and declare, "They are defeated." If anyone does say those words, they are mistaken, mislead, or misleading. Terrorism is not something one nation can ever stamp out totally.

What we can do is continue to fight it, but more importantly, continue to hold onto our values. We must be a loving, honest, selfless people. If we continue on in our trend toward permissiveness, moral relativity, insatiable appetite, and utter disregard toward or open rebellion against the consequences of our actions, we will not be able to stop either sword from falling. Whichever comes first will be the only uncertainty.

I will never say that we deserved what happened on September 11th. Certainly the innocent victims of the attack did nothing to bring upon themselves a violent and untimely death. But it is absolutely incumbent upon each one of us to wake up to the realities of our world. On September 11th, we woke up. But then, as always, we fell back to that deep sleep of apathy. Each year, on this day, we have an opportunity to reawaken. This year, let's stay awake.

Iconography

This is a really helpful, eye-opening video:

http://www.pjtv.com/v/2317

You'll have to register to be able to see the video, but it's very worth it. Here's one of the wonderful things I gleaned from it, though:






This is the "icon," according to the video, that would be the most effective opposition to Obama's powerful image. Please, download it, share it with your friends. It might actually turn out to be important to tear down the personality and start focusing on the actual presidency.

Further, I'm pretty enthusiastic about getting a really effective brand onto Mitt Romney. It will need to be done if he's to have any kind of chance in 2012--I know, he hasn't said he'll run, but I'm certainly hoping he will.

So, any ideas for a good Mitt Romney brand?

Something Deep

Admittedly, this has little to do with politics. It's more about perspective.

Also, it's just really cool. Please enjoy.



The guy who was responsible for posting this runs an interesting website called Deep Astronomy: Better Living Through Astronomy. I've perused it briefly and feel I can safely recommend it.

Why We Elect Liars

I was having a conversation with my mom the other day, something that naturally occurs on an eleven-hour road trip from Arizona to Utah, and the discussion turned, as it inevitably does, to politics.

My mom and I agree on most things political. She might be a hair more conservative than I am, which is ironic considering her status as a single-mother, country music hating, artistic feminist of the old school...but anyway.

We mutually realized during the course of our conversation, that politicians are dishonest because people are dishonest. I posited that the majority of Americans will tell a lie when the benefits seem clear and the risks seem low. A lie is like an investment--when the returns are assured, and the risks are minimal, most people will make that investment. Morality ends up being calculated right out of the equation, and our culture continues its steady decline.

So what if we were all a lot more honest? What if lying was much more socially unacceptable? What if, when we caught a politician in a lie, he or she was immediately removed from his or her office?

As it stands right now, we forgive lies among politicians remarkably easily. Obama has kept almost none of his campaign promises, and yet, almost uniformly, we respond with resigned acceptance of this dishonesty. "What politician doesn't make promises they know they can't keep?" many ask in his defense. Since making a promise you know you can't keep is just another form of lying, those who use this logic are essentially justifying dishonesty by its very prevalence.

Which is, sadly, somewhat fair. Politicians lie, and so do we. Incidentally, my counter-argument to this defense of Obama, in particular, is that he was supposed to be different. He built his campaign upon being different and bringing "change" to Washington. That's the only definite selling point he had. So if he's no different, then his unfortunate voters have been roundly duped. They elected a very standard politician who's defining characteristic now seems to be his astounding ineptitude and lack of essential experience.

But I digress. The point here is that we are in a position of great danger. We hate our elected officials, but we have no one to blame but ourselves, as a nation of ignorant and/or apathetic citizens. With prosperity comes apathy, and with apathy comes bondage.

The complaint is that we can't know politicians' true colors as we vote for them because they lie too well. But the truth is that they lie to us no more often than we lie to each other. Politicians' moral bankruptcy only reflects that of their constituents. We want our politicians to be better people than we are, but not only is that impossible, it's unreasonable.

We want to be outraged when our leaders lie to us, and sometimes we even pretend to be. If we truly are outraged, however, then we are hypocrites, because at the end of the day, we keep electing them.

If we want our leaders to change, we have to change. We have to start living our lives more honestly, and following our consciences more closely. We have to make hard decisions, guided by our inconvenient moral compasses. We have to be better. Each of us and all of us must be better. Only then will we be able to find within our ranks those who are fit to lead us.

The Wrong Way

I support the war on terror. Before anything else, I have to say that.

And the next most important thing I have to say is that I hugely, HUGELY admire "This American Life." I have neither seen nor heard better journalistic endeavors or integrity. Ira Glass and his ilk are the real deal. These guys do it right.

As an example of how seriously I endorse them, I'll tell you that I donated ten bucks (I am very poor) a few weeks on their website. See, it's a free podcast, and a non-profit. That means they need donations to survive. And I very much want them to survive.

You might be wondering what it is I'm even talking about. If you haven't heard of this brilliant program, go here, here (this one has some neat video clips), here (wiki!), or here (buy it.)

So anyway. I heard something today that disturbed me pretty deeply. This is the description of this weeks radio show:

The U.S. government spent two years on a sting operation trapping Hemant Lakhani, whom they suspected of being an illegal arms dealer. In the end, they got him red-handed: the only problem was, nothing in the sting was what it appeared to be.

The short of it is that it really looks as though many of the terrorists we've caught and prevented from performing acts of terror were basically set up. That they were the kind of people that probably wouldn't have done anything, but who were guided into compromising, incriminating situations by informants who are desperately eager for a catch.

I would strongly advise you to listen to the whole program. If you don't, what I say won't mean much because it's too easy. What these guys have done is gone and talked to all the integral people in their story. They did the hard work, went the distance, and brought back facts from the actual sources. There are interviews with the convicted terrorists, with those who prosecuted them, and those who defended them. And they cite extensive external resources to fact check every possible element of the narrative that they can.

For now, all I can do is give you my conclusions. We, as a nation, want badly to stop terrorists from terrorizing us. They kill men, women, and children indiscriminately. Civilians are primary targets because it hurts us more. The price we're willing to pay to see acts of terror against our country are very high, and appropriately so.

But they're smarter than we are most of the time. It's too difficult to catch them, and we are too easily infiltrated. We have a President who's dead set on cutting defense costs, making it ever more difficult to strike effectively outside of our borders, and, I have come to learn, a domestic defense plan that is strikingly negligent and woefully misleading. We don't have the knowledge or capabilities we need to effectively catch most of the dangerous terrorists who are within our own borders (and there is no dispute as to whether they exist), so we catch fools instead. Malignant idiots or psychos who are basically harmless until equipped (by us) to appear otherwise.

It's a sobering truth. The most unsettling aspect of it is that it makes more sense than anything else. We're new at this game. We've been fighting terrorists for a handful of years. They've been terrorizing for much, much longer. They're better planned, and they're task is easier.

I'm not condemning those behind the incompetent policies. What would you do? You're trying to keep a nation of 300 million people from panicking, what do you do? You have to put someone in jail, for heaven's sake. So you fake it. But that's not all--you do such a good job of faking it that you even begin to believe that it's right. There are interviews with Chris Christie that are chilling because the man honestly believes what he's saying. He's not feeding you lines, he's just dangerously mistaken.

There's a war on, and if we pour our energies and confidence into dysfunctional, corrupting policies, we're going to lose.

Rethinking Carbon Emissions

"Global Warming" is a hot-button issue. It's been politicized to the point that people define themselves by whether or not the believe in it, as though it is some kind of religion or god. This would be hilarious if it didn't have the potential of being so broadly destructive--there are good reasons behind our collective shunning of theocracies.

This topic has been discussed at obscene length by an enormous number of people, many of them much smarter and better informed than I am. I only wanted to point out a recent article and use it to defend my position that whether or not our globe is warming (or cooling, or whatever) really shouldn't be politicized as much as it has been.

I read this first here, via FuturePundit, and then decided to check out the whole article.

The short of it is that scientists are becoming better informed of what causes the natural cooling and warming cycles of the Earth. They're also starting to think they might be able to predict future temperature developments: it's partially based on other solar movement, such as Jupiter and/or Saturn tugging at Earth's orbit.

The article goes on to say that carbon emissions may or may not be responsible for accelerated warming, but if it is, we might want to reduce emissions now in order to save up fuel for increasing them in the future--to avoid a future ice age.

That's an interesting talking point you won't hear in all the hysterical politics surrounding the most evil of all elements. People are too busy with idiotic things like this, this, and this. And then, in case you still have faith in humanity, this.

Climate change is a valid topic of concern. Problems arise when people cling to the issue as either a weapon or measure of defense.

An Introduction

Your first question should be, and probably is, "What the crap is up with the title of this blog?"

If you know me pretty well, it's likely that you already know my favorite band is Thrice. They have a song called "That Hideous Strength." It's super heavy, a bit emo, and the lyrics go as follows:

Oh, that I could scream,
And the world would stop and listen
And these scars could speak in volumes.

But who has ears to hear?
Or eyes to see?

Again I scream,
But my voice is buried in an unearthly silence,
Like in nightmares when ghosts steal your breath.

I pray that power be not in my words,
But in truth that supercedes the mind of man.

And our dead hope,
And our blind faith in means that look to justify the ends--
I feel a presence in the room
I feel cold fingers close around my neck.

Without you I am lost...
Let mine eyes not fail with looking upward.

Dustin Kensrue, Thrice's lyricist and lead singer (and one of my heroes), was referencing a book by C.S. Lewis with the same title. The quote under the title of this blog comes from the following paragragh in that book:

Have you ever noticed that the universe, and every little bit of the universe, is always hardening and narrowing and coming to a point? ... If you dip into any college, or school, or parish, or family - anything you like - at a given point in its history, you always find that there was a time before that point when there was more elbow room and contrasts weren't quite so sharp; and that there's going to be a time after that point when there is even less room for indecision and choices are even more momentous. Good is always getting better and bad is always getting worse: the possibilities of even apparent neutrality are always diminishing.

I have a passion for politics which is motivated by my love for humanity and my love for my country. As a tiny, insignificant particle in the sweeping vastness of world history, the most I can do is inform and be informed. I try to learn about what's going on in the world--the ins the outs and the whys--and then try to make sense of it. I try to figure out what matters the most, what I should love, and what I should hate.

My conviction is that everyone has the sacred responsibility of fashioning an educated opinion about the world around them. Opinions motivate words and actions, and those words and actions are what improve or diminish the conditions of homes, communities, and nations.

Apathy is the great hideous strength. The worst crimes of humanity have been perpetrated by a very few amidst an ignorant, apathetic many.

"Therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding. Exalt her, and she shall promote thee: she shall bring thee to honor, when thou dost embrace her." (Proverbs)

To that end, I'll keep myself abreast of what's happening in this world, and this country. And out of what I learn, I'll share what seems to be most important. This blog is my meager contribution in the war against that hideous strength.