Out of the Darkness. It is a strange world that we live in these
days. One man’s morality is another
man’s intolerance. One woman’s tolerance
is another woman’s immorality. It is
oftentimes insufficient to be tolerant and respectful of another’s unconventional
behavior; it seems instead that they now demand a personal endorsement of their
lifestyles. Simple tolerance is no
longer sufficient; total embrace and acceptance is required.
The
media, of all varieties, upon which we have spent a lifetime relying for our
news and information, has proven to be biased, unreliable, unprincipled,
unethical, and downright dishonest. In a
quest to satisfy our own personal beliefs and biases, we can go to the internet
and with a modicum of effort, find numerous sources that validate exactly what
we are thinking. We can retreat into our
own smug corners of society and feel secure that we know exactly what is
happening and who is doing who.
Our
president, a charlatan who is more interested in self-aggrandizement than
national welfare, flits from notion to notion with an ever-widening breach
between his actions and reality. Our
Congress is so paralyzed by partisanship and corruption (a product of our career political class) that it is not only
dysfunctional, but it actually sees itself as more important and essential than
ever before. The Congressional sense of entitlement
in today’s Washington is truly repugnant. Our court system, judges top to bottom, being
led by a capricious Supreme Court, has become full of itself and its lifetime
appointments, making rulings that reflect their own private beliefs about the
way things should be; not the way
things are.
Our
democratic master plan of checks and balances, our magical balance of power theory, has been obliterated by raw power grabs
and political ambitions. The art of
diplomacy and the grace of statesmanship have become as weathered and
unrecognizable as the great pyramids of Egypt.
Into this morass of mayhem, this ball
of confusion, the nation embarks on selecting a new national leader; one
who will assume the helm that will be vacated, and has been desecrated, by
Obama. And while the world looks on, not
so much in awe of the American experience as it once was, America seeks to find
its way in this new international cauldron of chaos that bubbles and boils with
barbarism, anarchy, religious zealotry, and open warfare. Nations with leaders who have assumed power
based not on their ideals or abilities, but on their degree of ruthlessness,
are once again resurrecting old ambitions of territorial glory and regional
domination.
Some
say that these are dark days indeed;
others say that we are entering a new age of tolerance and enlightenment. Some say that neither the world, nor this
country, any longer desires the traditional leadership of America in the free
world. Some say that our country, either
consciously by leadership or unconsciously by evolution, is now simply a
bystander on the world stage or is, at best, an equal to the other national
partners that exist on this globe. One
can cling to their faith in God, their church or their community, for the
guidance that is necessary to get up each day and face this world; but very few
are strong enough in spirit to maintain a moral compass that can be
sufficiently reliable in the volatile environment that exists today. Who can be trusted to tell us the way? Is it the preacher in the pulpit; the
President behind the podium; the talking head behind the camera; the legend in his own mind on the internet; an
old friend or parent with trusted advice; or the man or woman we voted for and
elected to represent us in Washington?
I
went through elementary and high school with a friend who I still see on
occasion. After discussing whatever
business might be prompting our meetings, the conversation naturally migrates
to either politics or current events.
His stock reply when this change in direction occurs is always the same;
he says “I don’t have any answers…just
lots of questions”. The wisdom and
humility of this statement is so rare these days. It reflects the simple recognition that each
of us is so inconsequential in the big picture and so inadequate to make the
judgments that we so often make; with, I might add, supreme confidence and certitude. At the end of the day, when all things are
considered, there is probably only one wise path to living in this crazy world
of ours. Each of us, in our own separate
lives and networks, are presented each day with a myriad of choices. Those choices impact far more people and are
so much more consequential than we can imagine; yet we make the overwhelming
majority of them in a knee-jerk fashion, with little regard to disparate impact
or unintended consequences, in an effort to just get through the day. We run
from one thing to the next, never realizing until it is too late how important
the previous stop on our journey was. In
times like these, when anchors have become dislodged, perhaps the best approach
is for each of us to view the landscape before us and simply try, one person at
a time, one decision at a time, one day at a time, to improve upon it.
