Get up, brush off the dirt, lets get back to work

Frank Zappa once said, "You can't always write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say, so sometimes you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whipped cream."

Well, that's how I felt yesterday. But as I have said before and will undoubtably say again is, "being a Cubs fan prepares you for continual and humiliating loss. But it also reminds you that there is always next year."

The only thing that I'm really having a hard time with is this whole evangelical thing, this religious right, this fundamentalist trip. Today, Bush was told that Arafat had died (we later found out that that was not true, well, at least not yet) and asked what he thought about it. His first words were, "God bless his soul." The inference from his flagrant proclamation of his religion was that he didn't believe that he was going anywhere good. Hey, if you don't believe me fine, go listen to the tape yourself and make your own conclusions. Fundamentalists fighting fundamentalists. Hmmn, doesn't really sound like "a battle for freedom" anymore, but more like a religious war. The good thing is at least our guy believes in the right God.

How should liberals and progressives evade this wedge issue (a good example of how the Republicans have used this as a wedge issue see SpinSouth's post). My best take on this is to look to Barak Obama the new Senator from Illinois (I used to hate this state but looking at the way it votes makes me prouder and prouder). Here we have an intelligent young man with firm Christian beliefs and values who is also progressive (Harbs, where did you get the information that Obama was "fairly conservative" I have seen and spoken to the man and you are no... well your just wrong) Obama is quick to point out that while the Republicans are really happy to hop on the Christian train they are completely out of touch with what is Christianity. Christianity (I have read a little about this... for about thirty years) is based on compassion, generosity, love for your neighbors and many other good things. Unfortunately Christianity in America has taken a decidedly inquisitorial turn. Harbs, you have told me numerous times about the problems with modern day Christianity (intolerance, a nasty predisposition to judge, hypocrisy, and the like). Are not these the qualities that the Republicans seem to embrace? Are not the values that true Christianity upholds more in tune with what the Democrats hold dear. Sure there is serious power in pushing intolerance and ignorance. But it is the wrong kind of power, and never leads to anything good. Here in Illinois nothing illustrated this fact more than Alan Keyes (Obama's opponent, someone who more blatantly expressed the basic truths of this new neo con way of thinking). Obama was able to capitalize on this. He was able to take what Keyes said and to draw the conclusion that voting for Keyes was a vote against tolerance, against common sense, and against Christianity. I feel that the Democrats need to look to the black churches for a way to push this point. Martin Luther King embodied this kind of thinking.

The idea behind this all is not to push those that we think are sinners farther away from us, but to welcome them in. To say that while I do not believe that your lifestyle is right, I want to show you the truth through love and dialogue, rather than judgement and condemnation.

That is all for now. But everyone who does care for this country, and leans to the left, and wonders, "what the hell is going on with this country?" Let's all get together, not wallow in our sorrows, but look for ways to remedy this.

This is another quote from Frank Zappa, I found it while I was looking for the quote above. This is pretty anti Christian, which I don't exactly believe in but it says something I really hadn't thought about.

The essence of Christianity is told to us in the Garden of Eden history. The fruit that was forbidden was on the Tree of Knowledge. The subtext is, All the suffering you have is because you wanted to find out what was going on. You could be in the Garden of Eden if you had just kept your fucking mouth shut and hadn't asked any questions.
-- Frank Zappa, interview, Playboy, May 2, 1993