deferring to Juanito

If I were a tasty, crunchy (at its best) breakfast, I'd be a waffle. I just rode my crazy rebel-machine back from a summer working for the filthy oil-man and, after having read some nifty books, have found that I am flip-flop-fulminating on my life. Think, think, think.

Tumulted thought-times, oddly enough, are not good write-on-internet times - at least not when "tumultosity" reaches some sort of critical mass. And yet the internet lumbers on. So I will cut and paste in a post from the one blog that I read regularly, written by a man named Little John, who lived next door to me eighteen years ago in Peru, along with his crazy family and a howler monkey that liked to... er... howl.

His site is: http://ozerik.homeip.net/ , and I highly recommend it if you're into random interestingness. Without further ado...

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...socialism is bad if you are a christian. and i don’t get why...
--Karla


Um... i am flattered to be consulted thus, and i hope to attract comments which will flesh out my nearly unintelligible response.

In the US, socialism and communism have been linked in the popular mind, and since the persecution of Christians by communist states like China and the USSR is widely known, socialism is seen by a great many Christians as one of those bad -isms. In more modern politics, socialism is the direction "liberals" lean toward, while conservatives prefer less regulated capitalism. Conservative politics also include such noble causes as not killing fetuses, and making gay people stop being gay. At least, that's how those issues seem to be understood by most Christians, and there's clear support for not killing fetuses and avoiding sexual impurity in scripture.

I think this is unique to US politics. I see nothing about either a progressive or conservative agenda to attract either end of the moral agenda. But i'm pretty sure a lot of what's going on has to do with the history of communist states being anti-Christian, and liberals being homosexual abortionists.

There's also the fact that the political right has done a fantastic job appealing to morally conservative Evangelicals. There's people (hopefully fewer and fewer of them) who seem to sincerely believe that if you vote non-Republican, then you literally can not be a Christian. It's impossible. Even intelligent people i love very much have said things like "You've got to be CRAZY or STUPID to vote Democrat!" Um...?

My personal quest in politics is to find what most closely matches the idea of the Kingdom of God as laid out by Jesus and the apostles, and try to support those kinds of things. Issues like abortion and gay rights are hot buttons in the conservative Christian community, and any politician who delivers a few key phrases can guarantee himself (or -- unlikely -- herself) a hefty amount of support based on those two issues. But how about the disadvantaged? Poor people are poor for a reason, and while Jesus says "the poor will always be among you", that doesn't mean "those lazy slackers are hopeless, let them help themselves and get successful like you did". Or how about the sick: Jesus spent tons of time and effort healing the sick. And American conservative politicians seem fairly happy with the system we've got going right now, with only the worthy taxpayer who has a full time job with benefits getting the healing they need. Let's talk about global poverty. I think it was famous "Christ-Worshipping Agnostic" Kurt Vonnegut who said something like "I see no justification for why I should have so much, while my neighbor should have so little." I completely agree. I complain to myself that gasoline costs three bucks and change per gallon. But i can afford it! I have two fricking cars! And a scooter! I spend more per day on gasoline than the world's poorest billions spend on their very nourishment! This is outrageous, and not least because i tolerate the outrageousness of it. And, um, social projects, socialized medicine, and friendly foreign relations have been policies of progressive Democrats.

Capitalism works (when it works) because people are greedy. Greed is, according to scripture bad. Socialism doesn't work (when it doesn't work) because people are greedy. One could say that capitalism "gives up" on human nature, and instead runs with it, letting people trample and back-stab their way to power and wealth. One could say that socialism is naively idealistic, and is doomed to failure because people will "work the system", and perhaps even immoral because when the richer portion of society provide for the poorer, the lesser will be humiliated and dehumanized.

So, since i am utterly cynical about the government and the political process, i want earnestly for our American leadership to present a face to the world which is utterly different than the face the world has come to know and fear. With that in mind, i fully support Barack Obama, even though he's one of the mainstream candidates, and is a polished, professional politician. Yech. With Obama's face as the face of America, maybe the poverty stricken masses will think "Hey, there's hope!!!" So, like the Evangelical who will vote based on the pro-life, anti-gay-rights boxes ticked on their card, i will vote for Obama because he's a black man whose middle name is Hussein. Black; CHECK! Middle name Hussein; CHECK!