Our Political Bloated Nothingness

Can God’s grace dissolve the polarization and gridlock in American political institutions? Grace – the merit-less ‘bestowing’ of peace harmony and goodness, as described in the song, “Amazing Grace.” Grace can, does and will dissolve the polarization when we get out of its way and allow it to flow. It seems ‘merit-less’ because it is already present within us, part of our birthright as spiritual beings having earthly experiences, and we need do nothing to ‘earn’ it. In fact striving, struggling and ‘earning’ get in the way of Its flow. To experience grace, we have to get our bloated nothingness out of the way of the divine circuits.

To me, getting our bloated nothingness out of the way, involves seeing clearly and speaking the truth. One such truth is that contemporary lame street media fail to help us get our bloated nothingness out of the way and in fact enable our bloated nothingness by perpetuating a number of myths.

One of these is that there are only two points of view. This sort of dichotomous thinking institutionalizes polarization from the git go, giving us two talking heads, pro and con, Republican and Democrat and the dangerous idea that both political parties are equally at fault. This is a dangerous idea because it facilitates people dropping out, not voting, and thereby perpetuating the status quo.

These myths and either/or thinking are clearly not helpful, are clearly not the truth, and are not working for the majority [they seem to be working quite well for the rich and political elite]. Until people clearly get this myth of equal blame, false dichotomy and the idea that the Truth emerges from an adversarial clash of ideas out of their heads, we will have difficulty getting our bloated nothingness out of the way of the divine circuits and allowing the grace that is in all of us, to flow.

Of course there are legitimate differences in the way people define and deal with problems and opportunities. And dialogue and discourse conducted with mutual respect can help combine these differences into something that will work for all concerned, or almost all concerned. But the current political conditions do not support dialogue and mutual respect.

And that lack of mutual respect and willingness to dialogue comes overwhelmingly from one political party. Not only that, but this party also emphasizes trivial issues of little consequence to keep the pot boiling and the polarization in place.

For example, consider the over-hyped, so-called ‘controversy’ over the President’s vacation daze. Obama has taken 61 days off in 31 months in office. Reagan spent 349 days on his ranch. And George the Second logged 490 daze at his ranch! The Republicans started this ‘controversy’ and continue to stoke it while their Presidents, took much more time off than Obama. Hypocrisy? Yes, but worse, much worse. It is only the tip of the iceberg. It is the new way Republicans do business, and they do it because it seems to work. And I guess as long as it keeps working, they’ll keep doing it.

So it’s up to us to see this for what it is: both parties are not equally to blame, there are not only two sides to every ‘argument’ [it may not even be an argument, it may be just a discussion], truth does not emerge from name-calling, one-sided, ignorant insistence that Paul Revere rode to warn the British and corporations are people just like you and me.

All of this is worse than mere hypocrisy and is not business as usual because by just about every indicator, the United States is falling behind and not living up to its ideals and potential. God’s grace is there for everyone, in both parties, and in no party, but until we allow it to flow by getting our bloated nothingness out of its way, we want be able to benefit from it.