this sez it all

A proud member of the 40 percent of Americans who still support Bush. Well, now that I've been called a moran, I'm definitely switching teams. I've been obtuse, with my liberal elitist spellcheckin' and thinkin' and whatnot. The time has come to stop swimming against the tide.

I'm off to buy a do-rag.

willful women of the world unite

We have nothing to lose but dirty diapers. Here is a fascinating little article by the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, in which he bemoans the "epidemic of chosen childlessness." He's damn tired of people not fulfilling their Godly role as procreators. Worse, these people get together and TALK about how much they enjoy not having children! How clean their houses are, and how much time they have to travel! Godless Heathens! Don't they know that "the biblical formula calls for adulthood to mean marriage and marriage to mean children. This reminds us of our responsibility to raise boys to be husbands and fathers and girls to be wives and mothers. God's glory is seen in this, for the family is a critical arena where the glory of God is either displayed or denied. It is just as simple as that." People who "willfully" choose not to have children "want to have the joys of sex and marital companionship without the responsibilities of parenthood." And that is WRONG, don't you know! How can you enjoy sex without the heady thought that it might result in a joyful pregnancy? How can you? It makes Jesus weep.

how the other half thinks

Like most politically attentive people these days, I self-select my media, which winnows out the crazy apocalyptic Cons and reduces my rage load. This means I end up reading sites and blogs of people who hold views that are similar to my own. I haven't worried too much about this, to be honest. "Fair and Balanced" is a slogan, and a deceitful one at that. Coming across a reference on Kos to a site called Red State, I thought I would check it out. Kos was referring to a post on Red State which called Cindy Sheehan a "left-wing media whore." That particular comment has since been grudgingly retracted but following the comments was illuminating, and disheartening. I'm just not sure where political discourse can go in this country when Republicans consider all positions besides their own the product of "brainwashing" by the "left wing media." Because Cindy Sheehan has talked with Michael Moore, she has been brainwashed. She is part of a "cult" of "left-wing America haters" who believe "terrorists are patriots." Just for fun, I looked up "cult" in wikipedia and found the following checklist:

1. A movement that separates itself from society, either geographically or socially;

2. Adherents who become increasingly dependent on the movement for their view on reality;

3. Important decisions in the lives of the adherents are made by others;

4. Making sharp distinctions between us and them, divine and satanic, good and evil, etc. that are not open for discussion;

5. Leader who claim divine authority for their deeds and for their orders to their followers;

6. Leader and movements who are unequivocally focused on achieving a certain goal.

I'm sure you see where I'm going with this: I can see where the Red Menace sees the left as a cult, except for numbers 1, 4 (since most people on the left emphatically believe in open discussion--because, pragmatically, discussion and education benefit our side), 5 (who said he was appointed by GOD to the White House? Not Bill Clinton, you know), and 6 (because we don't have a clue what our "certain goal" is. We can't even get together for party line votes most of the time, much less take over all three branches of government and facillitate the Second Coming. Our problem, if you want to call it that, is that we have too many goals. The Cons, on the other hand...) So okay, sometimes I do find myself demonizing the other side. There are pictures of Karl Rove and Dick Cheney that frighten me and small children.

The thing is, if we both see the other side as brainwashed mindless cultists, we've got problems.

present nostalgia

At dinner tonight with a group of people from my cohort in graduate school, I thought about the friendships formed in grad school and how they seem qualitatively different from other friendships I have had. Not better, necessarily, but different, like friendships one has before a war compared with the friendships developed during a war, in the midst of the battle. In some way, in graduate school, we often see each other at our worst, at the bottom, the days when we have taken a beating and our vision is blurred and obscured. These are the days when I have been grateful just for witnesses, and even more grateful for those who offerred a hand, and lifted me up. Sometimes all we need are those who have seen what we have seen.

I like to think about how I will remember the times I'm living through now. It's like instantaneous nostalgia--(try it)--and induces this reverie about how we wish things wouldn't change, and how they always do; how we want to keep people the same, and ourselves the same, and just find some kind of firm ground beneath us. It's always denied, but we never stop seeking. When I look back, what--and who--will I see?

Parting poem:

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

--Mary Oliver, from "The Summer Day"