Inessentials

I’m not sure if I can do it.

I’ve been following the political conventions fairly closely these last couple weeks. I’ve watched the speeches. I’ve read analyses. I’ve tried to figure out what was truth, what was spin, and what was flat-out lying. That’s meant I’ve given a lot of my attention and mental energy over to politics. Now I’m exhausted mentally, and I’m having trouble bringing myself to watch Senator McCain’s acceptance speech.

In addition to the media overload, I think part of the problem was watching Governor Palin’s speech, which went beyond working to present herself as an experienced, trustworthy candidate and went into clearly misrepresenting her past and Obama’s record. But the single thing that has made me want to throw up my hands and walk out of the room and cry until the world changed was one simple line: “I guess a small-town mayor is kind of like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities.” The shameless hubris that it takes to say something like this, to ridicule the people who have chosen to work protecting our nation’s most vulnerable people, and then to hear that get the largest cheers and applause of the night, makes me so angry and so sad that I just can’t bear to hear if McCain did something similar.

It’s been a not-well-hidden theme of the Republican convention this year that military service and running for office as a Republican are selfless acts of putting others first, while actually working with poor people or running for office for any other party is a self-promoting life-journey-step-in-the-road. But to come right out and say that working in a community through non-political means is pointless and laughable, and not have a single member of the Christian Right say, “excuse me, but that’s what churches do - they are religious community organizers,” is just more than I can take.

I don’t think I’m alone in mourning what has become of the Republican Party. I want a strong conservative party that upholds traditional values like thrift and self-reliance and prudence, is wary of centralized power and opposes corruption, and that is willing to eliminate useless government programs. But the GOP is not that party by any of these measures. I know some people will vote Republican this fall just because of abortion (even though until January of this year McCain opposed overturning Roe v. Wade), or because they earn over $250,000 and don’t want to see their taxes revert to 2000 levels, or some other reason they think is especially significant. But the corruption, the arrogance, the lack of ideas, the inability to balance a budget, the war-mongering and sabre-rattling that continues to infuse the GOP (at least at the national level) make it impossible for me to be a well-informed citizen without my brain exploding.

So there you have it - you need to personally put the GOP on the right course or Tim’s head will explode. I lay this on you.