Our Nation Focuses on the Wrong Message
We are trapped in a whirlwind of the salacious and melodramatic, clinging to the empty calories of the sensational nothing. Few claim to actually acknowledge it, but there is a reason that Paris Hilton's early release from jail made all the news wires or that the winner of American Idol instantly becomes a household name.Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt has become the nation's muckraker-in-chief, offering $1 million to anyone who can provide proof of an illicit sexual encounter with a high-ranking government official. More people seem outraged that Barry Bonds will break Hank Aaron's home run record than, say, the president's troglodyte pace to address global warming.
Iraq is America's first sacrifice-free war, which allows us the luxury in our petroleum-based economy to complain when gas prices creep toward $4 per gallon while we continue to buy SUVs that idle in the fast-food pickup line.
With the inconsequential garnering of the attention, you may not know that only 25 percent feel the country is headed in the right direction.
Has American democracy morphed into an ostrich society by burying our collective heads in the sand -- ignoring the painfully obvious and important, opting instead for the insignificant?
I find frightening the amount of attention given to the level of inquiry about the presidential candidates' personal faith. Do we really need to know about the biggest sin that John Edwards committed? Or take a crash course in the Book of Mormon to decide if Mitt Romney will make a good president?
Soon we will be asking candidates what side would they have taken in the Scopes Monkey Trial?
What message does this send to those who do not share such beliefs? Are they irrelevant to the public conversation? Haven't we been down this path? If memory serves me correctly, it was the 2000 and 2004 elections -- and it didn't work out too well.
Now that Turkey's long-standing war with the Kurds in Northern Iraq is showing signs of a resurgence, the arguable bright spot in the misguided invasion carries the ominous cloud of additional chaos over a region already flush with problems.
There are potential thorny conundrums, none of them good, as tensions flair between two overlapping allies. As the Economist reported, many plans for an American exit from Iraq involve leaving some forces in the Kurd region. So a Turkish invasion would be a disaster, inserting NATO's second-largest army in the middle of a territory America is desperately hoping to keep calm.
Barack Obama gave a serious speech on poverty and what was reported was his quiet riot statement. The spin, given that Obama was speaking to a predominantly African-American audience, might have suggested that he was one step removed from calling for armed resistance.
Opposition to any type of immigration reform has been reduced to building a fence, providing no answer for the estimated 12 million individuals who are already in the country, and making amnesty the new inflammatory buzzword.
California, which boasts the nation's highest recidivism rate, is projected to soon spend more on its corrections system than state universities.
The theme for the Democratic-led Congress is A New Direction for America. But it doesn't feel like a new direction. It feels more like a rudderless vessel without a moral compass. We are locked in a reactionary posture at a time that cries out for proactive measures.
It would be too easy to lay the blame exclusively with our elected leadership. We all have a responsibility to stay engaged. I realize most lead lives that are more demanding than our parents, but active engagement is the price that a free people must pay.
Otherwise, we will be relegated to keeping up with the whereabouts of Paris Hilton, actively living out the bumper sticker that asks: Where am I going? And why am I in this hand basket?
Byron Williams is an Oakland pastor and syndicated columnist. E-mail him at byron@byronspeaks.com or leave a message at (510) 208-6417. Send a letter to the editor to soundoff@angnewspapers.com.
Damn straight.
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