I Used to Be Smart.

This will probably get me in trouble, but, “I’m gon’ make it do what it do, baby!”

There is something I cannot figure out about this whole election thing. With a lot of people I have talked to, there are two major issues: the war, and abortion. Simple enough. Here is what baffles me: the party who is (not totally) anti-war is (not totally) pro-choice. The party that is pro-war is pro-life. Does that make anyone else’s head spin? The party that wishes to keep the country from taking lives in Iraq is willing to concede the lives of the unborn here at home, and the party that is willing to take Iraqi lives is fiercely protecting the lives of the unborn here at home. In my best Lil John voice, “WHAT!?!”

This puts is in a damned awkward position. The people who voted yesterday had to pick one. Which set of lives would they concede? The great tragedy, I believe, is that they had to concede either. Here is why I cannot figure out why the issues have shaken out as they have:
Abortion is, essentially, the ending of a completely innocent life. There is no grounds on which to claim a child is not completely innocent. Taking lives by means of abortion is taking completely innocent lives. In Iraq, what is different? Ordinary citizens are being killed. These citizens are not utterly innocent, but in relation to the justification for the war, there are people dying who are innocent. So, by choosing either party, we are choosing to sanction the destruction of one form of innocent life. I can’t say which form is more important to protect. In fact, I am convinced that each form is equally important. That leaves me standing in a gap between two parties, confused as I can be.
The story, however, doesn’t stop there. When I continue to think about it, I realize that maybe nobody believes the things they do for the reasons they say they do. There’s a third piece of this puzzle that I believe is important. That is the Sudan. I’m not going to give a great big lecture about it again, I simply believe that is important. Each side screams about the sanctity of human life, yet the most heinous genocide since Rwanda and Bosnia continues daily in the Sudan. After each report I see, I wonder which part actually believes in the sanctity of human life. That the Democrats are heavily pro-choice and have yet to push for anything significant in the Sudan leads me to believe that their anti-war rhetoric is a mask for finding a way to weaken the power base of the Repbulicans. That the Republicans support war in Iraq but will not touch the Sudan leads me to believe that their pro-lifeness may be genuine enough, but that the incursion into Iraq is a smokescreen to some deeper U.S. interests that will ultimately help to under gird the Repbulican power structure. Both parties are self-interested. Both parties pimp Christian rhetoric to fulfill their own ends. If I can ever believe that political parties are interested in this system for fulfilling something than their own needs for power, maybe I will cease to be disillusioned with the political process. Until then, they can have it.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 3rd, 2004 at 12:21 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.