Analyzing the Election

The election of Barack Obama, the first African American, to be elected president of the United States, was an emotional event for many, especially for the “people of color” and descendents of former slaves.  I too found it quite emotional.  I can remember well the racial fights in my high school and the tumultuous racial tensions of the 1960’s and 1970’s.   To see a nation rise above its prejudices and foibles is really something.  Seeing the joyous tears on the faces of some of the black Americans at Obama’s rally and hearing the emotion in the voices of the various African American television commentators was very moving to me.  I can only imagine what it must be like to be a minority set apart by skin color and to see enough Americans rallying behind a black man to elect him president.  I do feel proud at this American achievement.  For in how many nations of the world could a minority person arise to an elected presidency? 

I do think the election of an African American is a paradigm shift for our nation – at least in terms of racism.  I don’t believe it has reshaped the politic views of many, but it has brought into the political process more voices and votes.   I think the result will be that more African Americans are likely to become flag waving Americans, and I think their views will diversify and both political parties will gain new supporters, and both parties will rethink their relationship to minorities.

I think the claims of redrawing the political map in America are a bit overstated.  It is true that Obama won an electoral college landslide.  But in the actual voting population, there was not the dramatic shift in numbers that one might have expected in a year when the incumbent president is so totally unpopular.    Bush’s approval ratings are as low as any president has ever received – around 22%, which means even many Republicans are displeased with him.

The actually voting numbers however tell a slightly different story.  Barack Obama received 52% of the votes cast (63 million) while McCain received 46% of the votes (56 million).    In 2004, Bush beat Kerry 51% to 48%.   So really we are talking a shift in maybe 5% of the voters.    More people voted in 2004 than are currently being shown to have voted in 2008.  So discussions of bringing many new voters into the process have to be weighed against the fact that less people bothered to vote.  Bush beat Kerry in 2004 62 million to 59 million.   Obama gained about 3 million votes (a sizable number, but not a great percentage change) over Kerry, but McCain got almost 6 million votes less than Bush got in 2004 (a significant loss in numbers). 

What that would tell me is that there was not a great mandate for Obama, though his win was impressive.  One could just as easily make the case that McCain simply didn’t excite the Republican voters enough, or the negative impact of Bush on McCain kept voters away from supporting the Arizona Senator.  As the Democrats take control of the white house, they will need to exercise some great self restraint and wisdom in their first 100 days, and not interpret the election results as a demand for extreme Democratic ideology.   To go for the extreme will be for them to learn how little the voters have really changed, and they will pay the price in the mid-term elections.  We will see how far sighted Obama will be as President.   Americans wanted change, but a change from Bush, not necessarily an embrace of the Democratic extremist left ideas.

For Republicans the risk will be that they will interpret McCain’s defeat as a repudiation of centrist policy rather than a rejection of the failed policies of Bush and will retreat further to the right thinking that is what Americans want from them.  (As an Orthodox Christian, I would advise the Republicans to consider Orthodox spirituality.  When a time of disaster strikes – natural or human made – Orthodox prayers tend not to blame their enemies or the natural forces, but rather to look at themselves and their own sins as the cause of the problem and to call for repentance and internal change.   Rather than blaming Obama, the liberals, the economy or some extraneous force, this year would be a good time for Republicans to look at their own faults, their own policies and leadership choices, and to work on change from within for that is one factor which is really under their control).

The relative small change in American voters shifting away from the Republicans over to the Democrats is indicative of how centrist Americans really are.  Despite the overwhelming disapproval of President Bush (78%), there was a relatively small percentage change in which party the voters supported for the Presidency.  What to me was more obvious is that Karl Rove didn’t really change a big percentage of American voters from supporting the Democratic to supporting the Republican party in 2000 and 2004.   Rather he stitched together an electoral majority – carefully crafting which states to win in order to come up with the electoral majority.   The Obama campaign didn’t completely alter the political identification of Americans as some pundits would have us believe.  They did however put together a very effective campaign which swamped the Electoral College numbers by bringing about a relatively small percentage change in which party the voters were willing to select their candidate; that small change in voting numbers translated into huge change in the electoral voting.      

That being said, I still think what America was willing to do – elect a black man as President – does reflect America’s ability to creatively change in order to renew itself.  And I think this will have a positive change on U. S. politics as both parties begin to see minorities and people of color as mainstream Americans.

This World is Passing Away – The Next President Can’t Change That

Presidential campaigns, especially tight races, tend toward ever more vitriolic claims against their opponents.  The intention seems to be to reach the undecided voters and/or the party members who tend toward the middle and might be tempted to vote for “the other guy.”  The campaigns appeal to fear if not outright dread – it will be horrible for us all if “the other guy” wins.  The intention is to try to force those drifting away back into the fold by appealing to their basest fears and to try to scare those in the middle to come in and join the party where things are safe.  

The campaigns are willing to lose sight of reason and fact and to appeal to the worst fears of the wavering or undecided voters:  the world as we know it is about to end.   Which as it turns out is a biblical truth, but not exactly what the campaign gurus have in mind, because they actually don’t believe the world is going to end but rather believe it is going to continue on which is why they are trying to win the election and prevent their opponents from winning.

That the world is going to end and that we need to consider what this means for our life in this world is a biblical truth.  St. Paul for example writing about marriage, not politics, offers thoughts that could easily apply to our current election worries:

From now on, let those who have wives live as though they had none, and those who mourn as though they were not mourning, and those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing, and those who buy as though they had no goods, and those who deal with the world as though they had no dealings with it. For the present form of this world is passing away. I want you to be free from anxieties. (1 Corinthians 7:29-32)

St. Paul does not advocate anxiety as a way to deal with this world; he advocates adjusting our thinking about this world by realizing the world is not eternal, it is passing away; there exists the reality of God’s Kingdom which lasts forever.  So don’t be terrified by what is happening in this world, fear God who is the ultimate judge of all things.

Regarding who might win this year’s presidential election, and who we FEAR might win, I offer contrasting thoughts from St. John’s First Epistle:

At the same time, it is a new commandment that I am writing to you, which is true in him and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining.  (2:8)

For all that is in the world- the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions-is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever. Children, it is the last hour, and as you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come. Therefore we know that it is the last hour.  (2:16-18)

Whether the next president ushers in the true light or turns out to be an agent for the antichrist, the reality is this world is passing away.   Political victories are of a transitory nature and don’t resolve the world’s problems once and for all.  Shall we be so afraid of our next president?    As our Lord Jesus said, “I tell you, my friends, do not fear those who kill the body, and after that have nothing more that they can do. But I will warn you whom to fear: fear him who, after he has killed, has authority to cast into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him!”   (Luke 12:4-5)

Some are especially afraid of what an Obama presidency might mean.  However if history is an indication, it might not mean what people fear.  Jon Meacham writes in his October 27, 2008 Newsweek article, It’s Not Easy Being Blue ,

 In introducing his classic 1948 book “The American Political Tradition,” Richard Hofstadter quoted John Dos Passos: “In times of change and danger, when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present.” … Hofstadter encapsulated the center-right point about the country better than most, writing: “The sanctity of private property, the right of the individual to dispose of and invest it, the value of opportunity, and the natural evolution of self-interest and self-assertion, within broad legal limits, into a beneficent social order have been staple tenets of the central faith in American political ideologies; these conceptions have been shared in large part by men as diverse as Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, Cleveland, Bryan, Wilson, and Hoover.”

Meacham certainly believes McCain and Obama are safely within the mainstream of American values.  As Meacham reminds us: 

The first two years of the Clinton administration gave way to the Gingrich-led Republican landslide of 1994 (one of the GOP victories that night: George W. Bush’s win over Ann Richards in Texas). … The lesson is one with bipartisan relevance: parties nearly always overreach.

Political parties in America learn the lesson that America is a centrist or center right country the hard way –  by losing elections!  If God wills, there will be another election in a few years, and another chance for Americans to correct their course again, no matter who becomes president this time around.  No matter who wins, the truth remains that this earth is passing away and only in God’s Kingdom will there be no more sickness, sighing or sorrow, meanwhile we sigh and eventually face another election, if God so wills.

What is the Purpose of Government?

In an election year lots of people question government – big government, small government, government that doesn’t do enough, and government that overly controls everything.  New Testament scholar N.T. Wright offers a few words about government, especially in a fallen world where government officials can be as much a part of the problem as anything else.

God wants the world to be ordered, to keep evil in check, otherwise wickedness simply flourishes and naked power and aggression wins. But the rulers of the world are themselves answerable to God, not least at the point where they use their power to become just like the bullies they are supposed to be restraining…All this is based, of course, on a creational monotheism which, faced with evil in the world, declares that God will one day put it all to rights, and that we can see advance signs of that in systems of justice and government even when they are imperfect. This leaves no room for a dualism in which pagan rulers are thoroughly bad and can be ignored, or overthrown without thought for what will come next. Nor does it allow that kind of pantheism in which rulers are simply part of the fabric of the divinely ordered world, requiring unquestioning submission to their every whim.

The Jewish political belief we find in books like this was based on a strong theology of creation, fall and providence: the one God had in fact created all the world, including all rulers, and though they were often exceedingly wicked God was overruling their whims for his own strange and often hidden purposes, and would judge them in their turn…. The rulers are wicked and will be judged, especially when they persecute God’s people.  But God wants the world to be ruled, rather than to descend into anarchy and chaos, and his people must learn to live under pagan rule even though it means constant vigilance against compromise with paganism itself.                                                                       (N.T. Wright,  Paul)

Time Change Good for Your Heart

A reminder to my parishioners that this weekend before you go to bed Saturday night, turn your clocks back one hour.  Our clocks “fall” back one hour on the first weekend of November – officially at 2am Sunday morning.

The good news is that reasearch shows turning the clock back one hour in the fall and gaining that one hour of sleep is good for the heart.  Some scientists do think it is the extra hour of sleep which his good for the heart, some priests think it is the fact that the extra hour gives parishioners the chance to get to church on time that is good for their hearts. 

Unfortunately the “spring forward” time change when we return to Daylight Savings Time is associated with an increase in the number of heart attacks.    For our election year this research might suggest:

1) All candidates are promising change, but as research shows, not all change is good for you.

2)  Don’t lose any sleep over the election.

Election Levity for CamPAIN Relief

A headline that has appeared in my Internet Explorer home page claims that Presidential Candidate John McCain’s aids are complaining that Vice Presidential Candidate Sarah Palin is “going rogue” by getting off the carefully scripted stump speeches and inserting more of her own ideas into her talks.  What did they expect?  They picked her because she is a “maverick.”  She’s a soccer mom, not a stay at home mom!  She is used to yelling at her team to kick a little asphalt.  She is being true to form, and they are not happy with the turn of events.  Politics – go figure.   If they wanted someone who was going to support the status quo, it is strange that they picked someone who has shown a willingness to buck her own party at times – an image that John McCain touts about himself. 

I know of some dyed-in-the-wool Democrats and Republicans  who cannot imagine how or why people would ever vote for a candidate from the opposing party.  There actually is a good reason to have lots of candidates from the opposing party be in office – it gives your party someone to blame when things go badly.  So both Republicans and Democrats benefit from a two party system in which both parties are viable and strong – you can always blame the other party for what is wrong with the economy, foreign policy, domestic policy and your insurance policy.   Many dictatorships do offer one party democracies, and we know these as tyrannies.  Besides having someone to blame for what is wrong, true democracies have competing ideas which tends to improve the rationale and policies of all the political parties.

The Party in which Democrats and Republicans Reveled

My efforts to understand the economic meltdown have led me through a maze of articles with lots of people willing to point the fickle finger of blame at different people and agencies.   And I have come to understand the economic crisis in terms of two analogies, mixed metaphors to be sure: a home alone teen party and an implosion to demolish a building.

 One factor that many point to is during the Clinton administration of the 1990s, policies were enacted to push the banking/lending industry into sharing the good times and the wealth with people who normally didn’t qualify to get the big loans to buy homes, cars or other big ticket items.  This according to the NY TIMES seems to have been the particular brain child of President Clinton’s  HUD Chief Henry Cisneros, who admits that many blame him for the crisis, but who like many of the big names in the financial collapse deny that their role was the key role.  From what I can tell, if one wants to find a “beginning” of the problem, Cisneros’ policies are as good as any place to start.  But like with the demolition of any huge structure using implosion, it takes more than one charge to bring a building down – and those charges must be strategically placed for the collapse to be successful.   This certainly is the case of the U.S. and global economic collapse.  Alan Greenspan is another key player who comes to mind: he too denies he is to blame for the collapse, though his policies certainly were a key to shaping what happened – he strategically planted some of the charges, though he acknowledges only one “mistake” in an assumption he made.

If the encouraging or forcing (as some charge) of banks to make riskier loans is to be blamed on Cisneros, Clinton and the Democrats, it also seems true that President Bush not only did not stop this program but expanded it.  In fact Bush made the “ownership society” a key part of his 2004 election campaign and Republicans voted for Him and his policies.  What the Democrats began, the Republicans expanded and even made a cornerstone of their own policies (at least in as much as Republicans these days claim Bush’s policies as their own – the McCain campaign is certainly trying to distance him and the party from Bush).

My analogy of what happened would be something like this:  ever hear about a teen being at home, knowing the parents are gone away, and invites a couple of friends over for a party?   And each friend invites a friend, and pretty soon the house is filled with party goers, and the original teen no longer knows who all has joined the party, or how many have joined, and certainly has no control over what is happening.  And the party gets out of control as the revelers get increasingly drunk and do more outrageous things because it gets harder and harder to entertain the growing mass who want the party to really rock.  The partiers consume everything, and before long their consumption becomes destructive and party becomes a riot.

And some would say it was the fault of the parents for not being home in the first place to exercise supervision of their teen.  For had there been more oversight from the beginning, the riot police would not have been needed to bring the situation under control.  And as often happens in those situations the parents have to go down to the jail to bail their kids out.

Well, that’s my analogy.  There were plenty of people who were more than willing to join this party.  In fact it was the one party to which both Democrats and Republicans were willing to belong.  Talk about bipartisan co-operation and reaching across the isle!  And whatever force was used to get people to join the party, quite a few quickly became revelers as it all seemed to be part of the ever growing and expanding U.S. economy.  And why not? If people could keep getting richer – main street got more home owners and wall street got more wealth to speculate on and gamble with.  And whatever the fault of these riskier mortgages was, they soon got swallowed up in Wall Street leveraging and derivatives, bundling huge amounts of loans into products that apparently no one could control or understand. 

And the charges were all being placed into their strategic locations, and the implosion occurred as one might expect, and suddenly all the big name participants denied they had been laying the charges and everyone began looking for ma and pa (more affectionately known as Uncle Sam) to bail them out.

All of the economics and finance people could write a better explanation than I, but I have to write by analogy because the reality of American economics is too great and too marvelous for me.  And the revelers are all now feeling hung over, and like alcoholics are shocked and dismayed by the damage they have left in the wake of their party.  (I would also like to say shamed, but alcoholics feel shamed, brokers and CEOs seem only to register dismay and shock not by what they have done, but at what has happened).

So what’s the bottom line?   I think in the same way that many joined this profligate party, many are going to be needed to fix it.  The aftermath of the party-become-riot is serious devastation.  Strangely two men – McCain and Obama – want to become responsible for the clean up (well to be honest it is not exactly why they sought out the presidency, but it is what they are going to step into).  It seems doubtful to me that either Democratic or Republican ideologues will fix the problem.  This seems to me to be a situation where truly co-operation of all parts and parties of the U.S. are going to be needed.  Partisan politics will be nothing more than a divorce occurring at the teen’s home at the very moment when parental intervention is needed.    It is not the candidate who can polarize who is going to be the best man for the job, but rather the one who can form a strong parental coalition to deal with the mess.  The economic problem is a real ongoing crisis – the next president is not going to have to wait for his first crisis to occur, we are already in the middle of it.  And this crisis is not one to be resolved by the military or by the president reducing his role to Commander in Chief.   This time the president’s role is going to be to insure domestic tranquility, not to declare war, but to find the way back to peace and prosperity for the entire nation by restoring order to the family, getting all the family members to cooperate, and getting all the members to shoulder their share of the chores that need to be done for the good of the nation.

Obama Nation or Obamination: Voters Divided

In my previous blog, Presidentolatry,   I commented on Gene Healy’s 28 August 2008 Christian Science Monitor article A President, Not a Savior.   Healy notes that the ever rising expectations as to what a president can or should be able to do has caused voters to expect our presidents to be Herculean semi-gods.   Hercules according to Wikipedia “was renowned as having ‘made the world safe for mankind’ by destroying many dangerous monsters.”  So too, our presidents make such claims for themselves and the voters come to expect them each to wield such invincible powers.

Treating the presidents and presidential candidates as some kind of semi-gods certainly creates the Presidentolatry which seems to control the emotions surrounding a campaign.  Such idolatry of a person is certainly dangerous fumes for a candidate to inhale as he stands before the screaming, name waving supporters and perhaps comes to believe his own mythology.

Walking my dog through our neighborhood yesterday, I noticed how recently a number of Obama signs have appeared in what was up to this point an area populated by mostly McCain signs. 

As I paused to realize that the Obama Nation has reached even this strongly Republican area, I couldn’t help but combine my thoughts on Presidentolatry with Barack’s more publicly displayed support in the area and have a little pun.   Why are the Republicans so negative about Barack’s  election?    They think it an Obamination.

Presidentolatry

Gene Healy, a vice president at the Cato Institute and author of “The Cult of the Presidency: America’s Dangerous Devotion to Executive Power” wrote in the 28 August 2008 Christian Science Monitor that in the nation this year we are electing  A President, Not a Savior.   Healy notes that the U.S. Constitution’s Article II aimed at curtailing the imperial aspirations of presidents, whereas in recent years both political parties endow the presidency with more real and symbolic powers than the founding fathers would have ever imagined or been comfortable with.  “… as presidential scholar Jeffrey K. Tulis explains, unlike ‘polities that attempt to shape the souls of their citizenry and foster certain excellences or moral qualities by penetrating deeply into the “private” sphere, the founders wanted their government to be limited to establishing and securing such a sphere.’”  If Tullis is correct, it was not the vision of the founding fathers that the state would create the aspirations and morality of its citizens and then impose it on them, but rather the state would only insure that conditions were such that the citizenry could debate and work out these issues.  In this thinking the president doesn’t set the moral agenda and aspirations of the nation’s citizenry, but works to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution” so that the citizens can go about their business of exercising their consciences in a democracy.

The image of the President as the most powerful man in the world has been fed by the media making presidents and candidates into the equivalents of superstars, television stars, movie stars and rock stars.  And the media professionals who run the presidential campaigns have taken full advantage of this pushing the meteoritic rise of candidates to stardom.  And the rocking, screaming masses at every political rally continue to feed the transformation of elections into personality cults and that of candidates and presidents into Herculean semi-gods as well as demagogues.  It is true presidentolatry.

As Healy describes it:

But there’s a reason candidates talk the way they do. Their rhetoric faithfully reflects the public’s outsized expectations for the office: Grow the economy. Give us better, cheaper healthcare. Protect us from hurricanes. Stop global warming. Bring peace to the Middle East. Lead us. Inspire us. We crave a spiritual superhero, not just someone who will “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution.”

Healy says that what has emerged in U.S. presidential politics is “the notion of president-as-spiritual-warrior” which has resulted in presidents as seeing everything they do as a spiritual crusade.  “That helps explain why Washington doesn’t just attempt to solve problems; it launches wars – on drugs, poverty, terror, disease.”       This has resulted in such anomalies as the U.S. having more people in their prisons than China, a not so democratic regime with almost four times more citizens than the U.S.  But presidents and presidential candidates are only responding to a demand by voters that government, especially the president do more – “when terror strikes, hurricanes ravage, homes foreclose, the stock market drops, and food prices rise, we inevitably blame one person: the president.”

Healy writes, “The week after 9/11, Bush announced that we would not only answer the attacks, we would also ‘rid the world of evil.’”   A major undertaking indeed even for a president, but in his bravado he only imitated the claim of some Roman emperors before him, and perhaps some of the gods of ancient pantheons.  (see my Can Evil be Killed?)  Hercules, according to Wikipedia,  “was renowned as having ‘made the world safe for mankind’ by destroying many dangerous monsters” – certainly a claim that our modern presidents love to make for themselves.  Hercules of course is mythical son of the gods – it is harder to understand why presidents claim to have his same power.

When voters come back down to earth, and realize the president is a mere mortal human, then perhaps they will put the election back into a proper perspective – we are electing a president, not a savior.

The Downside of a Negative Campaign

  In a previous blog, The CamPAIN, I commented on the presidential campaigns spinning out of control – and with all of the spin doctors (both the campaign spokes people and the media talk show hosts), the imagery of campaigns spinning out of control is a most appropriate one.

One event which caught my attention was McCain’s own supporters booing him when he tried to defend speaking respectfully about Obama.  The negative irony of the very people claiming McCain is the candidate they would follow, booing him when he tries to the lead them should not be lost on anyone. 

Booing their own candidate is a natural result of a negative campaign, for the negative campaign is not so much about getting passionate for your candidate as it is about  getting passionate against the other candidate.  The passion of a negative campaign is hatred for the other.     What happens in negative campaigns is that people are not so much for “their” candidate as they are riled up against the other candidate.  It becomes a hate vote.   You are not for someone, you are passionately against someone else.

I think that is what you see in the reaction of the crowd to McCain’s calling for them to be respectful.   McCain’s party base is not passionate about him, but they can be riled up against Obama.  And so the campaign aims for what it believes is the best appeal they have this election – keep the other guy out of office even if you aren’t for our candidate.  On the other side, many Obama supporters seem genuinely to be for him, not just against McCain.  Obama has excited his supporters in a way that McCain has not been able to excite his own base.  This says nothing about who would be the better president but might give some indication about which man might enjoy more positive support once elected.

Appealing to hate, which is what negative campaigns do (though they would deny that is what they are doing), has many risks.  Among them is that after the election the electorate is polarized into adversarial and antagonistic antipathies with no hope of the bipartisan cooperation politicians so like to praise.  So when after a divisive election the country needs to be brought together again, the hatred fed during the campaign takes a life of its own.  Hatred is a powerful emotion which has become stirred up during the campaign.    As the FBI webpage on hate crimes notes, “Hate itself is not a crime-and the FBI is mindful of protecting freedom of speech and other civil liberties.”  Campaigns push freedom of speech to the limits, and respect, reason and responsibility right out of door.

For my fellow Orthodox, I continue to advocate tuning out all of the negativity which I personally do not think is in any way helpful to our country or to our spiritual lives.  Negative campaigns are an effort to manipulate your feelings – to create heat not light.

As I mentioned in the sermon this past Sunday, remember the words of the prayer before the reading of the Gospel:

Illumine our hearts, O Master who loves mankind, with the pure light of Your divine knowledge, and open the eyes of our mind to the understanding of Your Gospel teachings; implant in us also the fear of Your blessed commandments, that trampling down all carnal desires we may enter upon a spiritual manner of living both thinking and doing such things as are well-pleasing to You: for You are the illumination of our souls and bodies, O Christ our God, and unto You we ascribe glory, together with Your Father who is from everlasting, and Your all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit: now and ever, and unto ages of ages. Amen.

We are to fear God and to fear displeasing Him.  We do not need to let the fear of a presidential candidate overwhelm our reason or our hearts.  We are to both do and think such things as are well pleasing to God.  Many of the passions stirred up in a contested election are not pleasing to God, and do not bring us to think and do things which are godly.  Let us not give leave to our senses because of the claims of a presidential campaign.   God is the Lord and has revealed Himself to us.  No candidate can change that truth.

The CamPAIN

There are only about 21 days left in this year’s presidential campaign – thanks be to God!  The campaigns throwing aside goodness, reason, and hope, get reduced to campains – the effort to inflict as much pain on the opponent and upon all voters so that they are truly terrified about who might win the election.  But the campain is never about who is going to win, it is all about who should lose, as if in losing the candidate will be assigned to oblivion never to have a place among humanity again.

We have entered the campain in which the candidates and/or their organizations endeavor to sling every spurious, and scurrilous slur they can imagine, or get away with.

And though one can develop vertigo watching  the precipitously dropping stock market, both party’s campaign’s truth and ethics levels are falling even faster in the uncontrolled spin of an out of control heavier than air object.   Gravity may accelerate the fall of objects at 32 feet/second/second, but the truthfulness and morality of negative campaigning drops a whole lot faster.

In a surreal sign of where things are, when John McCain tried to stop some of the outrageous and Obamaphobic comments of his supporters at one of his rallies – when he tried to re-establish respect, reason, rationality and reality – his supporters booed him!  They are enjoying their phobias, anger and hatreds so much that they don’t want their candidate to take away their fix.  And partly this happens because in the negative campaign they are no longer voting for McCain, they are really and only voting against Obama – so they do not want to hear McCain calling for respect.  He is already irrelevant to what the campaign’s negative efforts have achieved.

In the rational world of stock markets, when the market hits a point where values are falling faster than is sane, markets suspend trading.   Would that the presidential campaign had a similar sanity check, and the campaigns of the candidates would be suspended once they hit a critical free fall speed of negativity.   I mentioned before that in France in the week before the election, campaign advertising is suspended – a wise move in our media dominated negative campaigns. 

I certainly would encourage people to turn their TV’s and radio’s off for the next couple of weeks anytime a campaign ad comes on or anytime a talk show host or commentator starts spinning the negative nexus of nonsense.

Don’t let these phobia driven campaigns take away your hope, your humanity, your rationality.   Respect for one’s opponent is a good thing, no matter how stimulating and satisfying you might find the irrational emotions of hating and fearing others.