Head full of sermons, mouth full of spiders.

I left my house Wednesday morning at 7:45 and the Kerry/Edwards sign on my front lawn had already vanished into thin air. Also conspicuously absent were my hopes that this country would use the 2004 election as a tribute to all those great people who struggled for freedom, equality, neighborliness, and good government.

I avoided the news all day, because I can't bear to see George's smug self satisfaction, nor do I want the din of punditry and spinsanity to invade the otherwise peaceful silence of my house. A dull roar, indeed.

I managed to catch a smidgen of scuttlebut though, and it seems that Bush won because of the large turnout of conservative evangelical voters, spurred on to the the voting booth because of the success of the disingenous efforts by Republican legislators to get homophobic provisions on state ballots. How the hell did this happen? It's 2004 AD, and we're in a world where between 20,000 and 100,000 Iraqis have died at the hands of Washington politico-gangsters. Why on earth does anyone want to talk about what gay people are doing? In terms of relative importance to the welfare of the American republic, the "gay marriage" issue is at the bottom of the deck. Hell, it's not even in the deck. It's not even the same game. But apparently it's enough to swing an election.

((If you think otherwise, and can articulate why gay marriage is a legitimate threat, consider the gauntlet hurled in your direction. I've yet to hear anyone make a coherent argument in favor of such neo-con bigotry))

On a related note, where's the progressive Christian movement in this country? Given the line of work that I'll find myself in someday, I feel responsible for how Christians behave in this culture. When I see them more concerned about same-sex marriage than about war, ecology and charity, it nearly makes me break out in hives.

There's a lot of great progressive Christian minds in this country, so why do we let our voices get drowned out by conservative evangelicals? Why do we let them corner the market on what qualifies as "moral" discourse (gay marriage always seems to make it into this category, but war doesn't).Why do we allow war mongers, harbingers of doom, and assorted "Christian" plutocrats to manipulate the gospel into something that legitimizes the "Americanwayoflife(tm)", which seems like little more these days than the prerogative to go shopping and feel secure. Neither of these are among the promises made in the gospel. A Christian should not expect security or safety in this world ("When Jesus calls a man, he bids him come and die" - Dietrich Bonhoeffer), and we certainly can't keep on consuming things the way we are. It's killing us, and oppressing much of the developing world.

Right now, I think there's a couple things we can do. First, quit the
snivelin' and hand wringing. Sure, we all had issues with John Kerry,
Bill Clinton, or whoever. Still, there was a moral choice in this
election, and it wasn't anywheres in the neighborhood of Karl Rove. We
need to quit complaining, quit acting like sanctimonious twits, pick
our imperfect candidates and scream their names from the rooftops.

Second, don't allow the Republicans to set the standard for what is
considered a "mainstream" political opinion. Assertions that Kerry or
Edwards are extremists, socialists or leftist poohbahs go beyond the
pale in terms of stupidity and inaccuracy. Anyone who's ever ventured
outside America's borders would realize this.

Still, if they say we're outta the "mainstream," I say "good." What
self respecting Christian would want to consider him/herself
"mainstream" in a country where the vagaries of Nick n' Jessica's
marital bliss filter into the legitimate news ticker on the bottom of
my tv screen? What self-respecting Christian would want to be
"mainstream" in a culture that celebrates militarism and Yankee
imperialism?

What a stupid culture. Woody Guthrie, where y'at?