Out of the Darkness.

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.