Well its 2:21AM and here I am awake watching The West Wing. So in other words, a typical Tuesday morning for me when I have to be up at 6am and out the door by 6:40 to make it to Indy on time for work. With that pleasant thought in mind, I was (re)watching Season 6, Episode 10 of one of TV’s best dramas (past, present or future) and just happened across a line of dialog that sparked the theme of this post and a flurry of activity in my head. I don’t run a political blog, and my views on many subjects would probably piss of both sides of the ruling class in America, but I just can’t help bringing this up.
President Bartlet is discussing an Amendment with Senator Wilkinson (spelling?) banning gay marriage. Bartlet is torn on the issue, being a both a typical (sorry for the stereotype, but as the saying goes, if the shoe fits) Catholic, and a typical Democrat, he is morally opposed to the issue, but liberal enough to know that he doesn’t have the power or authority to push his views upon others. The conversation takes a turn when President Bartlet stresses that he raised his right hand and swore and oath to The Constitution, and maintains that this shouldn’t be the government’s job. Wilkinson jumps at the niche the President just opened up and asks Bartlet where his left hand was.
In what is already (and rapidly) becoming one of the biggest smear campaigns held in my lifetime, Barack Obama has been accused of being a terrorist, wishing to consort with terrorists, a sleeper agent for some rogue splinter of Islam (whose primary religious base is a peaceful one with numbers that rival the Christian Church [pending you lump them all in together, if you split things out into the various sects the numbers get even more interesting, but that's neither here nor there]), unpatriotic, my personal favorite, The AntiChrist, and last but not least, *heaven forbid*, a Muslim. They have pictures of his father’s side of the family pitting him with his estranged brother, who is apparently a militant leader of some form in Kenya (or some other African state, point being most of the people bitching couldn’t find it on a map without Google’s help), and I can say that i won’t be surprised by any other black sheep (pun not intended) they pull out of his family tree.
I made those points to make this one, one of the biggest arguments I have heard so far is that Obama has stated he wouldn’t swear an oath on a Bible. Now, whether the allegation is true or false, i could give a damn. To garner my approval he could be sworn in on the Deathly Hallows or a blank ream of printer paper. My lack of religious affiliation should be apparent by now i would think. I return now to my West Wing Episode, and the underlying meaning and reason for this ever-growing post: Separation of Church and State was not an oversight or something done to piss people off. It was done for a reason. If you get elected to office you cannot serve two masters. You are serving the people of the United States first and foremost, and we come from many religious groups, all of who deserve their rights. If you cannot think outside the box enough to see the views of somebody who doesn’t think like you (a point which I am positive most Republicans and an ever-growing number of Democrats are blind to) you don’t deserve to hold office on a School Board, let alone the federal government. To paraphrase another quote from The West Wing, “I was elected the President of the United States, not the President of Those Who Agree With Me.”
The United States for formed by people escaping theocracies all over the world, and the Right have us pushed back to the brink of re-establishing one right here in America, except this time the ruling class are “freely elected” by whoever has enough money or influence to buy enough commercial time during the evening sitcom.
Sidebar / Addendum:
Oh, and just to throw it out there, anybody who thinks that oil prices are the fault of anybody but the US government needs an economics lesson. Oil producers want low prices, they make far more than they can spend (have you seen the shit they’re building in Dubai?) on quantity alone, they don’t need to charge through the nose for it, and the high prices only drive people to use less, or investigate alternative fuels, which is bad for them in the long run. The problems are in our government, and in our corporations (look up how many gasoline refineries there are in the US. They’re expensive, and to curb the demand they’d have to build more, which would eat into their profits and keep them from buying that 5th private jet). Enough people have SUVs and Trucks now that supply/demand allows this $4/gal shit to happen. Look at what they did with Diesel fuel. Until last last decade diesel engines were noisy and generally relegated to semis and farm trucks. Diesel was usually substantially cheaper than gas, which lead to the development of more mainstream diesels. Once they became mainstream and millions had them (Ford PowerStrokes outselling their gas counterparts by orders of magnitude for almost a decade now), diesel’s pricing shot through the roof, far ahead of gas. And the market isn’t being gouged? Higher fuel prices are going to drive the innovation required to break our dependance on oil, something i’m in favor of, and there is never going to be a ‘right time’ for it, but something is going to break in the near future if nothing is done. Especially now that food prices are starting to scale with fuel prices. Get your cans and your umbrellas ready, we’ll be back in gas lines before you know it.