Tread lightly on the things of earth

I just used Congress.org to send this message to my U.S. senators and representative:

On the upside, I see (via TPM) that one of these elected officials, Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander, is now on record saying --

"Federal law makes clear our state's right" to enforce its law defining marriage as between a man and a woman, Alexander said. "I am not persuaded that amending the Constitution is necessary."

I think any governmental declaration of who can and can't be in legal union is unwise, but am willing to concede that decision to individual states. I say bravo to Sen. Alexander for this early-on show of backbone against some of his peers -- for not signing on to the amendment nonsense -- even if he and I may not agree in total.

Today's discussion at Daily Kos entry Except for homos mentions a prevailing "Ick" factor overriding many people's rational thought or discussion about homosexuality. I respond to homosexual behavior with a high ick factor myself, which I attribute primarily to being heterosexual. But my commitment to people, principles, and integrity outweighs the ick: all persons deserve equal protection under the law if our present Constitution means anything. Else it's Jim Crow all over again.

This is not fundamentally about homosexuality, however. It's about a lack of commitment to human rights and a willingness to shred the Constitution for political gain.

Thus I find this politically -- and morally -- reprehensible.

I predict that even Bush supporters will come to agree the shark has now definitively been jumped.

a few minutes later ...

Allen at The Right Christians quotes Dr. Jack Good, whose sermon reminds me to listen with compassion, not exasperation:

I know that when I hear arguments that are devoid of rationality [like the ones against gay marriage] I am hearing not logic but fear. Fear is OK. It is normal for people to be upset when some important area of life is undergoing change. If you are one of those people who is still struggling with this issue, or if you have friends or relatives who are still struggling, try to listen not to the head stuff. Listen, instead, to the emotional stuff. Fears should be heard and respected. Then ask how you or your loved ones can move beyond those fears.

I will, with God's help.

Beautifully done short video/audio montage about the ideals at the center of the Dean movement —

http://www.thankyouhoward.com/

This reminds my why I found such hope in the Dean movement — and why, even now, I still do.

My hunch is this is the kind of integrity and core values that all of us who care about such things are looking for. It’s a quality that knows no political party boundaries. Mr. Bush offered depth like this as a teaser, but it was a façade — and a betrayal.

I passionately want a real “uniter not a divider” — and I have a reasonably keen bullshit detector for those who claim to be but aren’t. Since I expect many of us agree on what we actually want, and many of us have now, in the wake of the present betrayal, had a fresh bullshit detector tuneup, I think we can finally move forward, more together than before, toward our common goal.

I intend to work over as many election cycles as it takes to move ideal and implementation closer together.

Voting in the Tennessee primary last Tuesday must’ve been a Dean support closure thing for me, a last-reserves burst of energy like the final moments before crossing a 10K race finish line. I crossed it, and now I’m temporarily out of glycogen.

I really didn’t realize just how much sustaining hope I was deriving from the Dean campaign’s ideals and my support of them — and just how little wherewithal I’d have left for anyone else.

I’m around, just sitting down fer a spell to ketch my breaf.

I am so thankful to Dr. Dean — and to the movement he’s started — for rekindling hope in me and giving a spine transplant to the Democratic Party in the U.S. that I’m marching out the door Tuesday morning (February 10) to vote for Dean in the Tennessee primary.

Howard Dean is the only presidential candidate in my lifetime whose campaign I’ve been passionate about — it’s helped me believe my participation makes a difference, and that collectively we the people can take back our country. We can transform our country into one characterized by courage, straight talk, trustworthiness, balanced budgets, and healthy relationships among ourselves and with the world.

My vote will be one fully for Dean; any other vote would be lessened by being partly for the candidate but mostly against someone else. I am tired of voting for the lesser of two evils, and this day, for once in my memory, I won’t have to.

Of course I’m disappointed that the numbers of us choosing to vote similarly isn’t surging, whatever the reasons. One reason gives me pause about the efficacy of democracy’s equal voting representation: when I consider that someone who makes a voting decision Tuesday AM based on the front page of Tuesday’s USA Today has exactly the same political decision-making input I do when I’ve been studying these guys for seven months, it seems not quite right.

But in the end I let go of that conceit and insist that all of us have voices. Commitment to this democratic ideal implies a next step of reforming the media back to being a diverse chorus of voices and views for people to consider instead of being a monotonous, far-too-influential, agenda-laden handful of voices as it is now. A healthy democracy requires a diverse and informed electorate, not one misled by talking heads’ talking points.

For example, what’s up with the media declaring any candidate the winner when most of the nation’s primary voters haven’t yet cast a vote? That just doesn’t make sense in something called a democracy.

A Rainbow Brightens the Day, © caitlin conoverWhat happened to grace? Given primary results so far, is my earlier discernment without merit? — that “Dr. Dean’s campaign is where the grace falls. If God indeed guides our paths, rescuing us from ourselves — and of course I think he does — then this is where I sense he’s busiest. And where he’s smiling.”

Maybe. But because I credit the Dean campaign with initiating the tectonic plate shift that’s begun in U.S. politics, I think I was in the ballpark but without any sense of the final score, something that happens to me all the time.

I amuse myself thinking that intuition-plus-discernment is like a barometer that makes sweeping atmospheric change visible well before its effects appear (clear skies, raindrops). The data provided by a barometer yield no precise forecasts on their own, but we still value the barometer’s input in revealing invisible trends.

The situation as I see it theologically: The God of scripture and my experience is a God of transformation. And transformation finally appears to be underway in our U.S. political landscape. The Dean Phenomenon by most accounts has played an important role in initiating and fueling this transformation: Dr. Dean’s ideas are alive and well, having been appropriated into and now transforming the candidacies of those around him. Hence I think I can still sanely infer that Dean’s campaign is where the grace falls.

Now where grace rains down next will be interesting to see. Maybe it’s spreading further than I had dared imagine.

It has felt like rain in the desert, and I’m thankful for every drop.

2004-02-09 update: Jon Carroll captures the essence of Dean’s contribution very skillfully in SF Chronicle column Thank Howard Dean for Leading His Party Out of the Darkness.

Tonight as I turn in before voting tomorrow AM, I’m pondering the out-of-control budget deficit (and worse, debt) situation we’re facing in the United States, and thinking how much we need Dean’s year-in, year-out budget balancing expertise at our financial rudder. I imagine his “doctor’s bluntness” could help in this situation: We’re going to stop this hemorrhage so you won’t die. But it’s going to hurt. Much saner than “you can have it all, including Mars, and tax cuts, too.”

2004-02-10 update: Done! I stared at the glowing red LED beside “Howard Dean” for a long time before I pressed the VOTE button, remembering, savoring. Making a fully congruent vote like this is a matter of joyous significance for me; it’s my first in a quarter-century of voting AFAICR.

Steph and I were two among a total of four voters in our precinct at 8:15 AM. I don’t know if that’s a data point pointing to a poor primary turnout in Tennessee, or that we live in an intractably Republican suburb whose voters by and large see no need to vote today.

My rules of thumb:
Vote your conscience in a primary — forget “electability.”
Vote the best interests of your country and the world in a general
(which in the U.S. too often means choosing the least-bad candidate among those left standing).

I am still pro-Dean, and always will be, but I hereby expand my scope to ABB.

I’m pleased to report the dubious achievement of now having more than two years of weblog entries here, all reachable via the Search field.

Two years doing any one thing represents follow-through for me on par with completing a marathon. Wow.

Best outcomes of blogging so far?

• I’m finding my voice and the courage to use it. The idea that one day voice, message, and skill might be called forth in unison to serve good ends motivates me.
• I’ve made new friends. Not having had to be alone during the last three years is a priceless gift. Life in an insane asylum (the world of U.S. conservative religiopolitics) is no stroll in paradise, however beautiful the inmates and surroundings. I get too serious about it and then forget to laugh. (Wouldn’t it be great to be remembered as someone who laughed a lot?) I’ve learned that friends help friends laugh.

David at Orcinus, a blogger I learn a lot from, wrote yesterday about The spurious rise of the non-anonymous blogger. All this interesting discussion for and against blogging anonymity postdates my “choice” of non-anonymity — my ass is hangin’ out there because two years ago it never occurred to me I could whip up a pseudonym.

Just as well: writing-as-myself exercises my internal editor so I’m a little fairer, more thoughtful, and more compassionate than I might be otherwise.

Hmmm. Maybe non-anonymous writing can also work for people like nutrition information does for foods: it gives clues whether you’d like the item and what it’s made of. I like knowing people through their writing — and letting them know me, which leads to more friends than I could actually meet in person — and then thinking that should we meet in person we’d soon feel right at home with each other based on this agreeable written history instead of having to waste time assessing whether one or the other of us is a jackass. :-)

My 2003 and ongoing 2004 weblog entries are all nicely tied together here in Movable Type with links every which way: entry to entry, month to month, day to day, category to category. (Try clicking an entry’s month name, for example.)

My 2002 entries were almost all published using a different system, Radio UserLand, and are accessible as published starting here.

But I’ve also imported these 2002 entries into Movable Type (using Bill Kearney’s Radio Exporter.root tool) so that all weblog content is searchable from within Movable Type. FWIW, the imported 2002 content starts here.