Politics

I do not write much about politics.  Framing my views about things over which I have no more than maybe the tiniest shred of a voice – if that – is too hard, too distressing.  I’d have made saltpeter in the old days, or knitted leg warmers or made a victory garden.  Over this world, and over some things there is nothing more than waiting and praying that can be done.  And about the efficacy of prayer in this case, I have my doubts – about which I will say more later.

In the last week several things have made me want to howl and rage.  The first of them was that stupid joke told by David Letterman, professional adolescent.  I imagine him easily as one of those really quick mouthed kids who just hated being “normal,” and made up for it by deconstructing anything and everything that anybody else thought was cool.  And when he’d finished with that, turning on the other “normal” kids.  Because he doesn’t seem to have grown out of it – yeah, you make a living interviewing people of singular and resounding fame and insignificance and poking fun at just about everybody who isn’t you.  Wow.  I hope my kids grow up just like that.

I’d only heard about the joke, so I googled it, and found myself watching a YouTube clip of an interview between some woman named Contessa (really?) and a way conservative commentator.  It wasn’t a pleasant interchange.  She was an idiot, and he – who I will say made some salient points – was smug and rude.  YAY for – wait, which one is our side? 

And how could anybody with a brain ask if the joke had really been that big a deal?

Let me just say this: let’s not make jokes about children, okay?  Not about democrat children or black children or white children or republican children.  Let’s not make “knocked up” jokes about other people’s daughters.  No matter who those people are.  Let’s not kick a girl who has already been publicly and nationally humiliated by a mother who had to drag her around in front of news cameras in all of her stupid and misguided glory.  Let’s just remember: it isn’t nice to make fun of people, generally.

Yeah, maybe the puffed up who put themselves in the limelight—maybe they ask for it.  If you take a public persona on, then you make yourself a target; comes with the job.  Make fun of Gov. Palin if you must – she’s a big girl.  But the word “slutty” is about as puerile and dull and braindead and adolescent a “joke” as I’ve ever slept through.  If the demos are so big on regulation, maybe they ought to start with late night television; watching it has GOT to kill brain cells.

At the time, this really made me want to hit my head against the wall.  Then North Korea happened.  Range of their nifty little Missile of Mass Destruction: 4500 miles.  Proximity to Hawaii: 4000 miles.

I do not throw around the word “evil” very much.  To me, the word suggests understanding and choice – a person who knows what is good and what is not, and who chooses to harm, to destroy, to laugh at suffering.  In other words, there has to be a twisted sort of maturity, an intelligence, for there to be evil.  There is another word, must be another word, for stupid people who are seduced by the promise (what promise?) of power.  But I can’t come up with it.  I am too amazed.  Too astonished. 

What do people propose to get out of power?  Sadam’s 200 unlived in palaces?  Wow, want those.  Are they sadists who thrive on inspiring fear?  They want somebody to cook for them?  Clean for them?  A whole country of people who will do this?  What is the point?  To get rich?  It doesn’t take much to get rich enough that you can’t even tell if you get richer.  They want, maybe, to make sure that they are never inconvenienced?  Never awakened by somebody’s music?  Their lawn never pooped on by somebody else’s dog – so they have to own EVERYBODY?

When I think of the North Korean government, the words “intelligent,” “complex,” “amazing,” “cultured,” “admirable,” “gracious,” “educated,” “aware,” “wise,” “grounded,” “mature,” “civilized”?  They never come up.  This is also true when I think of other governments, including Iran’s.  I think: selfish, bestial, short-sighted, testosterone poisoned, stupid, adolescent, repulsive.  Their missile won’t change that at all.  No display of “strength” is going to win from me any respect whatsoever.  I will still think of them as nasty, uncivilized, ugly and again, repulsive.  Even if they finally cause me to fear, I will hate and pity them.  And in death, I will lobby for their damnation. (See – I’m not a very good person, either, actually.)  The funny thing is, as far as I understand Eastern religions, Korea is not even justified by one.

This morning, I heard this phone call, from a young woman in Iran who had just witnessed an act of atrocity that equals anything achieved by Nazi Germany, anything within the chronicles of human horror.  And I sat for two hours afterwards, not even aware of the tears that just kept leaking out of my face.  Do not listen to it if your heart’s survival strategy in these days is to stay as far from the immediate realities as you can get. 

My heart swells with grief, with frustration – bordering on hatred of these men, these stupid, ignorant, selfish men who allow no limits to their own wills.  How could anyone desire to serve a God whose policy of dealing with the multitudes of levels of understanding in his children requires that everyone who is not on the “right” path should be beaten and slaughtered?

I’ll tell you what I want: I want God to come and kill them all.  I could stand in the back yard and scream this at the heavens, calling down the vengeance of the universe on those who impose their gross, bloated, disgusting pride and hunger on the innocent.  But I won’t.  The neighbors wouldn’t like it, and I’m not sure it would do anything but make my feeling worse.

Because I don’t think God is going to do this.  Not now.  Not yet.  Because of free will.  Because of that precious, dangerous gift that is at the root of this whole planet’s existence.  Because there are too many people who have not chosen sides yet, who wait in the shadows, unmoved by an over-arching code of ethics and morality, simply waiting to find the most comfortable place.  The field isn’t ripe until every grain takes shape.  The good need to stand for good.  And those too stupid to see light and joy and love?  They need to choose which circle they will stand in.  And I’m afraid the deep satisfaction and rejoicing I would feel at this moment if YouTube showed me a clip of a vast column of lightening decimating every unholy and cruel government – I’m afraid that would put me in the wrong circle.

This young woman finishes her phone call with the most passionate plea I have ever heard.  I have not heard many pleas—oh, from children, yes—“Can I use the car?” (answered with a modality correction: “May I use the car,”—“Please, can I go? Pleeeeeeeaaaase?” (answered in the same way).  I have never had to hear anybody plead for his life.  I have never heard an adult plead for anything – not outside of the movies. 

Now, I have heard it.

“Stop this,” she said.  “You must come and stop them.”

She meant us.

And, shoot – we’re doing the best we can:  that “president” of ours (I don’t hate him, but I will say that he seems to be living up to expectations) has been so moved that he actually de-listed Iran’s ambassadors from the 4^th of July party guest register.

Wow.

People on the other side of the globe are fighting for human rights, for freedom, for dignity and safety.  As we did once, and have since forgotten.  Thank God for France.  Without them, we would have perished in the attempt.  And what we were fighting against was over-taxation, not the chattelizing and abuse of women, not dismemberment, not religious oppression, not on this level.  This is like the Jews rising in Auschwitz.  This is magnificent and horrible.  And I sit in my safe little living room, writing about it, my heart frozen.  And all of this done in the name of religion?  What religion?  What truth allows one creature to savage another?

I’m back to prayer.  I have to aim the prayers at the people, at individual people – for their comfort, their courage, their safety.  I know no names.  I send the prayers without names.  I have no bullets.  I have no power.  The country has some.  God has enough of everything to do the job.  How long will we have to wait?  How long?