Blogging about politics makes me miserable

I just had to put that out there. There's a certain "ignorance is bliss" factor involved in all this. I'm just having a hard time keeping my head in the sand.

Years ago on Bravenet I published a post comparing political ideologies with various developmental theories.

One of the things I looked at was Piaget's developmental stages:

The other was Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs:



It was no surprise to me that conservatives function on the lower level of both Maslow's and Piaget's models: they focus on personal property and it's acquisition, safety, individuality, and concrete items... Liberals deal in abstractions, community, and growth/development. It seemed to me that Liberals are more complex and mature humans than conservatives.

While I'd love to appear more tolerant, accepting, and generally softer on the conservatives, I can't see myself denying any of this. I would have liked to find more common ground between the two political sides, but instead am finding greater and greater rifts.

As I delve deeper and deeper into the conservative mind, I find more and more evidence that there is a fundamental difference in the thought processes of liberals and conservatives, and while liberals can understand and choose to reject the ideology of conservatives, conservatives can't understand at all the liberal ideology, rather they live Peter Pan lives, terrified of losing their individuality in a grown up, complex, and at times abstract world.

One example of this involves the very idea of liberty.

in Liberty and Tyranny: a Conservative Manifesto, Levin writes:

In the civil society, private property and liberty are inseperable. The individual's right to live freely and safely and to pursue happiness includes the right to acquire and possess property, which represents the fruits of his own intellectual and/or physical labor. As the individual's time on earth is finite, so, too, is his labor. An illegitimate denial or diminution of his private property enslaves him to another and denies him his liberty.

Conservatives I've spoken to this past week so strongly equate freedom with private property, that it was impossible for them to even argue about things like self expression. The closest I got to a discussion of self expression was a situation where a conservative felt he was being censored by a local newspaper who did not publish his endless letters damning various government officials for usurping the constitution and trying to develop either a socialist government or a monarchy (depending on the issue).

This same individual later expounded on the personal property = liberty issue with the example of light bulbs. Global warming and the need for energy conservation, he reasoned, was the lie GE told to the public. Since Democrats are in bed with General Electric, they're going to line both their pockets with increased profits and taxes from the sale of "these new light bulbs"... meaning, of course, compressed florescent lights. This was a way to deny the individual their God given right to freedom... their God Given right to buy and use any light bulb they see fit. So strongly did he feel about this issue that he pointed out that when a government official comes to his door to take away his incandescent light bulbs, he has a 16 gauge shotgun at the ready to "remind them of his second amendment rights" and to defend his rights under the constitution.

One of the interesting things about the whole discussion is that while the conservative often argues that there are laws and that one must obey them, he also believes that some laws are not "legal" or infringe on his Constitutional Rights, and that these laws are determined not by the "Liberal Court" but by his own interpretation of the Constitution.

Again, when you look at the interpretations of individuals who equate "property" with "freedom" for example, you get a pretty skewed and simplistic political ideology, rather the type of egocentric rules you'd see from a child.

Inspiration and Revival

I've been on a road-trip these past couple weeks. It contained a lot of great experiences, but it also rekindled my rage. While I've been sitting back with a sort of smug comfort in the Democrat majority government, the conservatives have not been so complacent. This trip was an eye opener for me, in a number of ways. Right now I have more to blog about than I could possibly blog about in a year.

I knew that I would be in for it when I arrived at my destination to see a banner exhorting me (and the rest of the city) to watch Glenn Beck on Fox News attached to the outside of the house.

Here are some inspirations for upcoming blogs:

Liberty and Tryanny: A Conservative Manifesto, by Mark R Levin.

I don't know whether to laugh or cry. This is probably one of the most outrageous books I've decided to force myself through. Each page provides enough misinformation to blog about for weeks on end. The beginning of the book starts with redefining just about everything, from equating "secular" to "communist" and "freedom" with "personal property". Of course the book makes all sorts of assertions with no studies or proof, although conservatives find it scholarly because it quote mines a few items from the Founding Fathers.



Unlimited Acess: An FBI Agent Inside the Clinton White House, by Gary Aldrich.

I can't promise I'll ever get to this, considering the richness of the previous book. I almost shudder to think of what it contains, considering the pile of conservative propaganda that this was pulled out of before being gifted to me.


Driving through the "heartland" just reminded me how isolated I am in Albuquerque. We get all kinds of music, ethnic diversity, and a wide range from serious science to outright woo, but we don't have a huge majority of knuckle draggers trying to cast us back into the dark ages and set up a theocracy. We aren't constantly bombarded by narrow minded extremism, and although we do have our share of conservatives here, they aren't the kind of far right wingnuts I'd thought had crawled back into obscurity after the election.

Oh, and please notice the oxymoron in the web address...


DUELING MEGA-ROADSIDE CROSSES!

Roadside America cites the cross on the right, located in Effingham Illinois, as the world's largest cross. Standing at 198 feet tall, you'd think it would be more than sufficient. The Cross Foundation, which built the monolithic structure, makes no claim about it on it's website, but does encourage you to donate. Not surprisingly it's Texas that makes the claim of having the largest free standing cross in America. Please note that I said "CLAIM". The cross is only 190 feet tall, some 8 feet shy of the cross at Effingham, yet The Cross Ministries (which built this cross at Groom, Texas) claims it is the largest in the world.

I guess we don't have to think too hard to come up with some of the other stuff they're completely wrong about.

I saw so darn many of these I assumed it was the standard plate in Indiana. Didn't we shoot this down in several other states? I don't see any plates in Indiana for other faiths... or for no faith. Hey Indiana, would you be willing to sell a Cthulhu license plate? Or one designed for atheists?

Ever want to annex a billboard? I did. The hearland is littered with signs letting us know we're doomed to hell. One huge billboard simply says "Jesus is Real" I kinda wanted to put one up behind it saying "You just keep telling yourself that".

There are also areas (especially along the OK/ TX border) where I could get nothing in but Christian radio... there were other long stretches where there was nothing but country music. I have to wonder at how narrow lives are in places you can't even get diversity in media.

Northward Bound!

A Day at the Zoo

I've photographed my home town zoo often, but always find new shots to take. Today I really discovered the zoo again, and looking at the layout of the zoo and considering all the events they have there, found a new appreciation for our zoo.

Cay and I went to the zoo alone, which allowed us more opportunity to take it slow and really look at the zoo. Of course I ran into some of the usual types... my favorite was a woman who, looking at the capybara said "I've seen those before back home. Of course they weren't as big as those two (indicating the capybara) but were more the size of that one there (indicating a squirrel). They must have given these growth hormones or something. They just don't get that big naturally."

Renewing my faith was a very young girl who looked into a display and said, "Mommy, those are orangutans!" and the mother responded, "yes they are. Can you spell orangutan?"

I always have to laugh a little at some of the people at the zoo. I mean, think about the reason behind this sign:

I find it amazingly ironic that people would find the reptile feeding offends their sensibilities, yet people flock to, and point their children to, the display where tortoises are mating.

I don't see any of it as offensive. I mean, why take kids to see the wild animals if they aren't behaving naturally?

They can't always look like dad after a football game on TV:

Anyway, some of the photos I took today lend themselves to a post with an overdose of cute, so without further ado:

Proof Positive

Proof positive I wasn't always godless.

This is a picture of me as a child, just after receiving my first Bible from my church. I was a pretty typical WASP kid: very secure in being white, middle class, and Christian.

I was a member of my church choir, went to Sunday School faithfully (no pun intended), didn't separate what I knew from church from how I lived life on the other side of the stained glass windows, knew Catholics and Communists were evil, and wore white gloves at Easter.

Then, a few years later, I actually opened up that book and had questions.

The answers made it impossible to stay in my church.

Then, a few years after that, I learned I wasn't white and Anglo Saxon either.

Rather than being disheartened that my whole childhood had been built on lies, I have to look back on some of that naïveté a little wistfully. Sometimes ignorance really is bliss, and I can see how people are attracted to it.

On the other hand, it's a big, beautiful world out there, with more diversity and wonder than I could have ever imagined in the small little world I grew up in.

Isn't that what growing up is really about? Leaving behind the small, restricted and self centered world of childhood and seeing (and evaluating) the fullness of the experience of life?