Reality difficult for partisan religions
What we think we know via websites such as TPMCafe will, and should become suspect. Such outlets are why many look to history for contextual truth. Too many partisan mediators fail to deliver the big picture. Then come the partisan historians.
Like expert witnesses in trials, the partisan witnesses prove to be paid witnesses. Non-partisan people can't afford to pay the 'experts' what the parties pay and party organization can arrange. Therefore, in cognitive dissonance many join a party, legitimizing parties out of powerlessness. Leftward political connections have given this website its hit rate, and that has handed it advertising dollars. Established left leaning media have quoted this website where those media did not want to appear to stoop. And the people embrace the deception. 'That's just the way it is.'
There is little wonder so many people turn to faith in God: with people the lies just keep coming. Some say a moving, living, growing human life in the womb isn't a human life with no great foundational reason for the view than that the life isn't 'wanted.' We've got false veterans pretending to be veterans on these websites, swiftboaters, counter-swiftboaters and worse. Whatever lines the leftist wallet moves the leftward tine of the partisan forked tongue. Whatever lines the rightist pocket slithers from the rightward tine. I guess you can say the great bulk of the country's boat is tongue-tined by a small but destructive force that repeats the dogma: 'this is the best system' meaning the partisan plague.
Here we have absolutists for leftward ideology who lampoon those who believe in God while themselves laying their lives down for ideology that makes a religion of their latest utopian figure. It's faith in a god, really, based on the popular perception that this god is the god of the leftist bible.
Let's pretend for a moment that muckraking is a noble enterprise that only the drain plumbers of journalism are courageous enough to do. Yet if they only probe the pipes of right facing homes and not left, they do little more than encourage more of the same on the other side of the aisle. And this is part of the gridlock of spite and polarization in this country that keeps it non-progressive and vulnerable to outside powers in the big picture.
This website is funded by those who profit from gridlock and polarized politics despite that nowhere in the constitution is party required, recognized or necessary. One set of persons running for office are magically wonderful and the other set demonized in this fantastical regime.
If religious groups are to remain free from government, then government must remain free from organized religious groups that may discriminate against each other. However, our political parties are religions in this country, and that, not even very spiritual or humane versions of the real ones. Ideologic, yes. Humane, sometimes. Spiritual, very rarely. And the fact that these movements, their platform bibles and their idols control the path to the White House and national offices tells us that we are a layer away from actual constitutional government.
The reason that constitutional law may come to serve partisan ideologues is because parties run the electoral process that seats those who appoint those partisan justices. End the latter and install a more equitable, popular and accountable process and we will see the former disappear.
Power corrupts every institution, corporation, organization of women and men on earth. We have just elected a new brand, but nonetheless a fallen man to office. He will do some good and some ill. He will not solve all the problems folks expected him to, even if he becomes known as a great president. Leftists and Rightists alike continue their dualist religion, enforcing it on a hypnotized people, and telling them the system is constitutional. Opium rules again.





As has been discussed many times on this site... it is not about the left or the right or the center. It is about what is the true, best, fair, reasonable, but most of all best for our country, communities, families, and individually. Clearly there are billions of different perspectives on exactly what that is.
If what is best overall is a more conservative act, then I want that. If what is best is a very liberal act, I want that. I don't want to be locked into any position including 'non-partisan'.
For me one practice that is BEST for our country is separation of 'church' and state. Our country is made up of human beings and we have a multitude of 'belief' systems. That is just the way humanity works. As we grow and develop human beings go through various levels of attachment to belief whether it be in God or the Bible or environmental purity, whether the ideals are religious, spiritual, political or otherwise ideological.
Your criticm here presents exactly that you have your beliefs and attachments to them and that you believe that they are 'best'... such is human nature. However I suggest that this can be trancended and included as you may become less attached to them and find a new understanding... at least that is what happens in the best of human development. Humanity... in all of its perfections and imperfections...what an incredible mystery...
November 10, 2008 10:52 AM | Reply | Permalink
Mike, I have, admittedly, not been your biggest fan. You are one of the few people here who really pushes my buttons. Your latest is no exception. However, your criticism of blogs of the left is in some ways accurate. Those who are of like mind often insulate themselves, surrounded by people who agree with them. So, I respect that you keep coming back and presenting an alternative view. I hope that you are astute enough to realize that what you have said about the left is also true about the right.
As for religious ideology, spritual beliefs have no place in the political sphere. None. Zero. I accept that our politicians have to include prayer in some of their public events due to historical and current public opinion, but I don't like it. I've never liked it. Further, I find your lecture on abortion incredibly insulting.
That said, I hope you stick around. If you do, could you please put only the first couple of paragraphs in the body of your post and the rest in the extended tab? It makes room for more voices on the page. You could even go back and edit this one. Thanks.
November 10, 2008 11:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
Orlando, I like reading the whole blog without having to click to see more, and then back and forth.
November 10, 2008 3:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
Similar criticisms about Rightist blogs would garner defensive comments like those here.
Right and Left in this country are joined at the hip pockets so that lobbyists only have to pick pocket us once.
November 12, 2008 10:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
Easy to lie to your self when thinking you hear God, so there is no guarantee of discerning truth by worship.
The two-party system here follows from winner-take-all electoral voting. It yields partisanship as a product. If you want that to change, work for proportional electoral accounting. This does not require constitutional amending, since it is a state matter.
But the partisanship is not symmetric, and you do not have a strong argument. Look first to the Justice Dept, and political prosecutions and firing of prosecutiors not cooperating with that. Look to political hires with no professional skill being place in all agencies, to obscruct legal activity, mandated by Congressional legislation. Look to the bulldozing of our intelligence analysts to launch a goddam war.
Now let's agree that since all men are fallen, there is no point in emphasizing that the new one is fallen. He is like me, and maybe you. I am a father, and so is he. No one thinks Obama is a god, except the insane. No one thinks he is Satan, except the insane. No one on the Democratic side thinks he can deliver us from ourselves. (We are guilty of enthusiasm, tough shit.)
But there is a non-trivial number on the Republican side that think he is a deadly threat. The Secret Service has explained about the upsurge in serious threats after the GOP campaign invoked fear. I would say that 2x4 in your eye needs professional care.
Don't complain about TPM, which is not funded by the rich, or PACs, it is funded by Free Enterprise, thanks to our traffic and the advertisers that want to use it.
November 10, 2008 3:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
No, candidate selection is also dominated by party bosses who run backroom shadow conventions at their supposedly open conventions. That's just a hunch.
November 12, 2008 10:46 PM | Reply | Permalink