Highlanders

This is not an anti-Republican post. It’s an anti-self-delusion post. It’s also Friday and I’m not getting good sleep, so it makes me cranky.

I’m not looking for any political points one way or the other because:

1) I don’t care, because

2) …it doesn’t matter, because

3) …the entire political class is morally and ideologically bankrupt.

But the bellicosity coming from GOP contenders regarding the challenges at the southern border and the deep dysfunction in LATAM is further evidence that the best that decision makers in Washington – and apparently all would-be decision makers – can do is apply failed 20th century geopolicy to our 21st century reality.

Nothing says “leadership” like applying yesterday’s thinking to today’s problems. Just logging political points by holding up the decaying thrice-defeated paper tiger of our armed forces as the solution to a multifaceted, multigenerational problem we’ve otherwise not taken a meaningful interest in solving. That is, until “dirty brown people” who “don’t speak the language” and who somehow “want to take your jobs” clog our border towns. It’s convenient to ignore the plight of others until the inconvenience is brought to our doorstep. When we decide to turn our collective attention to that inconvenience, it’s easy to think we can apply simple answers. Rally behind the flag. Vilify an outsider. Bonus points if they’re poor.

Let’s (endlessly print and then) throw taxpayer money and camouflaged bodies at the inconvenience, hold pressers and thump our starched-shirted chests, and then – in 10 or 20 years – count the bodies, render some scapegoats, and print more money to push down the debt we incurred.

Because it worked so well in Korea.

And Vietnam.

And Iraq.

And Afghanistan.

I don’t have the answers to address challenges at and below the southern border. But then again, I don’t go around telling everyone I do. I’m quite certain nobody else does, either.

It’s obviously been a long time since I last posted, and it may be a long time again. Maybe not. Who knows? Too many other things transpired since I was last in a posting rhythm that I can likely never catch up on. But some muse triggered me to renew sharing thoughts pseudonymously, so there it is.

People who truly know me know that I didn’t vote for either of the duopoly candidates, Mr. Trump or Mrs. Clinton in November. I proffered one doomed ballot – okay two, since I also get my wife’s vote. Thanks babe! – among a sea of protest votes, content to waste my vote on a “snowflake’s chance in hell…” candidate because it’s the only way I could serve my conscience. I even violated state law and selfie-posted my ballot on Facebook because yeah, I’m a rebel.

But for good friends and important people I love around the country who wonder how Mr. Trump pulled off the unexpected in November, I submit the following piece from Caitlin Flanagan in this month’s issue of the Atlantic. Much of the blame – or credit, depending on your angle – rests squarely at the feet of the entertainment industry.

We inhabit the reality we have created. If we don’t figure out how to bridge the divide between us, our nation will never be reconciled. And both sides have to move.

Please read: How Late-Night Comedy Fueled the Rise of Trump

I meet with a group of guys who get together dark and early on Fridays at a local coffee shop to do life together, process the week, and keep each other thinking about things bigger than ourselves. We’ve recently been plodding through the Gospel of Matthew and the conversation recently turned to the section in chapter six commonly referred to as the Lord’s Prayer.

The “Lord’s prayer” has become very special to me in recent months. I have prayed it consistently during my frequent bouts of insomnia, and I often repeat it a few times as I drift off to sleep. Maybe it’s the Catholicism in my family history, but I have found that in a few short sentences, Yeshua, the rabbi of Nazareth, gives us a pattern that probably says all there is to say in many of our conversations with God. As I struggle to make sense of prayer and develop the habit, I go back to the model Yeshua gave us. Here’s why:

• • It “puts me in my place.” It reminds me that God is the one who holds it all together. And I’m not.
  • It reminds me of my priorities. My #1 objective should be that I be an agent of change to help God’s will and kingdom inhabit Earth, as just as his will is done in heaven.
  • It reminds me of what’s important: My “daily bread” is all I should really want. Anything more than the bare necessities is luxury. (Oh how I need that reminder!)
  • It reminds me not to be judgmental: If I don’t insert the unintended comma in the middle of the phrase and read it as it’s written — “…forgive us of our sins as we forgive those who have wronged us…” (with no pause between “our sins” and “as we forgive…”) — I remember that if I don’t forgive others, I am not worthy of forgiveness. I need this reminder all the time!
  • And it reminds me of my frailty. I need God to lead me away from temptation – because I struggle to lead myself away from it – and that he delivers me from the evil one – because I have an enemy who lies and who wants to alienate me from God.

An old version I can’t find, but that I recall from my youth added, “…for thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever, amen.” While this isn’t in my NLT version, I like it because it closes with a reminder that no matter how self important I become, I am once again humbled and again, back in “my place.”

Far from empty phrases or rote recitation, the Lord’s Prayer brings me back to perspective. It reminds me of my place in this world, in God’s plan, for his glory. (Not mine.)

And I need that reminder. Every day.

Recently I’ve been reflecting on these words by Henry David Thoreau in his work, Civil Disobedience. I have generally subscribed to this approach since I first studied it in school, and the more I think about the state of affairs in the U.S., the more I believe it. As the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election looms with what I believe to be the two most corrupt, morally bankrupt candidates we’ve seen in a generation, Thoreau’s philosophy has guided my migration to support the Libertarian candidate, Gary Johnson.

Right up front I’ll admit that I’m not a perfect Libertarian, nor is Johnson a perfect candidate – by Libertarian or other standards. The biggest thing he has going for him in my book is that he isn’t Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton. But there’s more to it than that.

Although the President of the United States is often referred to as the “leader of the free world” and the “most powerful person in the world” (dubious claims I’ve never fully bought in to), the President is head of only one of the three branches of government. As powerful as the executive branch is, we recall from our early civics classes that the executive “enforces” the law; it neither legislates nor adjudicates. So long as we have rule of law, the President is not a dictator. He must always consider Congress and the federal judiciary.

I’m not enough of a pollyanna to fully believe that, as we’ve witnessed many Presidents play fast and loose with the executive order pen. President Obama and Presidents G.W. Bush and Bill Clinton before him spilled a lot of ink on executive orders. The President also has the power to appoint many powerful officeholders in the government, so the President’s influence and power is indeed vast.

But even if Governor Johnson could somehow manage to win in November, which I think is an impossible result, I believe a Libertarian President could do little with a Congress controlled by the two major parties. If a non-party President were to play loose with executive orders, I suspect that the President would be jerked back into line faster than you can blink. That safeguard is not as robust with either Trump or Clinton

There are components of the Libertarian platform – most advocated by the radical wing – that I disagree with, and which I think would be bad policy. Such is also true of the Republican and Democratic platforms.

For example, I do not favor legalization of drugs. I think legalization of pot in Colorado has been a mistake. One must only wander the 16th Street Mall in Denver after dusk to witness the growth of the transient population, and new stories emerge at least weekly on the news about crime, overdoses on poorly regulated edibles, and other problems that are the direct result of the increased access of weed. On the whole, has it weakened the cartels? Not likely. They’ve mostly moved to meth, heroin, and fentanyl (and sex trafficking).

Nor do I favor the most isolationist views of the Libertarian party. I do believe that the U.S. must, to a certain extent, serve as the world’s policeman. If we do not, that responsibility will likely be assumed by the incompetent United Nations or by one of our international rivals, weakening our nation’s influence in troubled parts of the world.

Other matters such as abortion, transgender and gay rights, and other issues are even more complex for me. While I have fairly strong personal opinions on each of these, I do not believe that government involvement is the solution. I think that we as a populace have become lazy and complacent and have allowed our government to address things that we as a society have the responsibility to address within smaller segments of society. I do not favor bigotry in any form, nor do I favor anyone to force me to serve an individual with whom I fundamentally disagree.

For example, we’ve seen in recent months that the owner of a popular bakery in Colorado was sued (and lost on a discrimination claim) because he refused to make a cake for a same-sex couple’s wedding. While I may or may not have made the same decision he made, I firmly believe it was his decision to make. The market would tell him whether or not that was a good idea. Instead, he was served with a court order saying that he had to serve people even though doing so violated his moral convictions. This is just one more example of government (in this case, judicial) overreach.

This should have been an issue that society handled by allowing people to decide whether or not to patronize his business. If he was boycotted, the market has spoken. If his business boomed, the market has spoken. There are undoubtedly many more examples I could offer. I don’t see the parallel to racial discrimination that my liberal friends will argue, but maybe my brain is too small.

Americans of all stripes have sucked the government’s tit for so long that we no longer know how to govern ourselves. We let the parties govern us, while time and again they prove that they only truly represent a tiny minority even of their own party. They cajole, make deals, obfuscate their intentions, and interfere with individual rights at every turn. Republicans are no better than Democrats in this regard. They merely serve different masters.

Indeed, I used to be a Republican. But I have either become much more cynical or the party has changed so much that I no longer believe that the Republicans represent “traditional conservative values” of a limited government. They’re in the pocket of big business and billionaire oligarchs, just as much as the Democrats are. Again, they’re the same; just enslaved to different factions.

Voting for a third party candidate is my way of sending a message to the other parties – most significantly to the Republicans – that they have to get their houses in order.

A vote for either Trump or Clinton is a tacit endorsement of the
brokenness that both parties are guilty of.

Donald Trump would be a disaster, just as Hillary Clinton would be. Gary Johnson, even if he could somehow manage to win, would be generally deadlocked at every turn by a Congress controlled by the other parties. Yes, there are Supreme Court Justice nominations in play. Johnson would have to pick nominees who are very much mainstream, otherwise the Court will continue to languish with a shrinking number of Justices as the geezers “retire” in the way Justices do. If Hillary or Trump wins, they can pick nominees far more radical and aligned with a main party’s ideologies and force them through with Republican or Democratic coalitions already in place.

As Thoreau wrote, I believe that the government is best which governs least. I believe that in this election cycle, that would require a third party candidate to slow the pace of regulation, slow the pace of legislation, and bring a new dialogue to Washington. Neither Trump nor Clinton would do that.

This morning while I was working out I had a bit of a revelation about the looming Presidential election. I can’t claim to have ever heard the “voice of God” but sometimes I get a prompting in my brain that seems to come out of nowhere. When I test that prompting against what I understand about God and what I believe to be true, I try and pay attention.

I’m a conservative guy, but I have grown to greatly mistrust (and frankly, despise) the Republican party. Many of my friends will be stunned to know that I voted Democratic – much to my own disappointment – in the past two Presidential elections. I admit to being  enchanted in 2008 by the “social justice” promises of then-Senator Obama, and was disgusted by the running mate of the Republican nominee. Sarah Palin is an insult to intelligence, and she represents the worst elements of conservatism.

Fast-forward to 2012. In hindsight I really don’t know what I was thinking to vote for another term for President Obama. I think that as much as anything, it was an attempt to keep tension between Congress and the White House; I think it’s generally a bad idea to have one party in control of the whole mess. I believe that the more tension there is between the President and the legislative branch, the less likely there will be sweeping legislation that will interfere with freedom.

Of course as I learned over the past four years, that doesn’t stop an activist President from using the Executive Order pen, or an activist Supreme Court from legislating from the bench.

And so I now sit in the tension of another Presidential election wishing with all that is within me that I had better choices. On the Democratic side we have a former First Lady and former Secretary of State who appears to flaunt her position, violate federal law, lie about it, and get away with it because the extremely liberal nature of popular culture that both deifies the Clintons and vilifies conservative thought.

On the Republican side, we have the emergence of the worst option from a field of terrible choices. I can’t help but think that of all the election years the non-incumbent party had an easy shot at the White House it would have been this year. But instead of finding 2-3 solid options for a true intellect- and conservative value-oriented debate cycle, we found ourselves with more than a dozen pathetic losers who fought their way to the bottom, only to be swallowed up by the most hideous of all the bottom feeders.

(To be clear, when I talk of “conservative values” I don’t mean values around morality. I refer only to values concerning personal liberty, limited government, fiscal responsibility, and government within Constitutional bounds.)

During the Republican debate cycle when I’d had more than a belly full of comparisons about the size of each other’s “hands” and the dehumanizing statements about illegal immigrants (yes, they’re still immigrating illegally so just call it what it is!), I had to burn my Republican voter ID card – this time for good. I re-registered as “unaffiliated” because my home state doesn’t recognize “Independent.”

I have many friends in different areas of my life who have told me that I can’t NOT vote; I HAVE to participate in the election. While I still may do that, I will not be voting for either the Democratic candidate or the Republican. If I choose to vote, I will vote for a fringe candidate that I believe in, or I might just write someone in. If I choose not to vote, I will do so with a clear conscience in protest for what I believe is a terribly corrupt and broken system.

If you’re one of those friends who insists that I vote, please know that I love and deeply respect your opinion, but that I will not be swayed against the weight of my conscience.

All this background gets me to the revelation I had this morning in the gym: I cannot vote for either of the main party candidates and keep a clear conscience. I despise the privilege and contempt with which I believe the Clintons operate. I think Hillary Clinton is dirty, and I don’t trust her. I think she is too deeply entrenched and indebted to Washington power brokers and that a vote for her is a vote to further curtail the freedoms I most deeply believe in.

On the other hand, I find Donald Trump personally and morally reprehensible. I think he is small-minded, bigoted, a hate monger, and the worst kind of entertainer-turned-politician. I don’t believe he has a single serious policy position and there’s enough of a conspiracy theorist in me to think that the Donald Trump thing is just some self-aggrandizing publicity stunt.

I believe that under either candidate as President the U.S. will be a worse place to be. We will be more divided than ever, we will face increasing domestic terror threats, our economy will continue to falter, and we will inevitably face new impediments to the freedoms of law abiding Americans as lawmakers overreach in their futile attempts to rein in “bad guys.”

To vote for a candidate is to attach my own integrity with theirs. To endorse them for the most powerful elected office in the free world is to say that I believe wholeheartedly that they are who they say they are, will act how they say they will act, and that I believe they are the fittest choice to govern us.

My friend, if you can in good conscience vote for one of these candidates, then certainly do so. But before you do, I encourage you to dig deep into your own personal integrity and make sure that you truly, genuinely believe that your candidate will move the country forward. We cannot simply be willing to settle for the “lesser of two evils.” More than ever I feel that my own personal integrity is at risk by supporting either Clinton or Trump. I have wrestled with whether I could support either one and I have lost. I can support neither.

I will not sacrifice my conscience at the altar of pragmatism. I won’t vote for any candidate whom I believe to be morally and ideologically bankrupt. I don’t know where that puts me in November, but it will not put me with either one of them.

I found this today while reading The Signature of Jesus, by the late Brennan Manning. A chastening read throughout, this quote from another author cited by Manning really hit me today:

We need reminders, symbols, stories, exhortations, living models, time-outs for reflection and celebration. These things are indispensable supports. The error is to think these things ARE the Christian life.

Just as Jesus’s practice of prayer was in the service of a whole WAY OF LIFE – a MEANS RATHER THAN AN END – so must ours be. Insofar as prayer, reading, sacraments, and spiritual direction support genuine Christian living, that is, Christian attitudes, relationships, choices, and actions, they are useful. When they become an escape from the more difficult demands of Christian living, they are the corruption of discipleship. The question at the Last Judgment is not, “How religious was your talk?” nor “Was your faith orthodox in every respect?” but “How did you respond to needy brothers and sisters?”

This is the one reliable measure of discipleship.

Quoted from Thomas R. Kelly, A Testament of Devotion (New York: Harper and Row, 1941)