Thoughts from the abyss

My political thoughts of the week

One of my biggest problems with the election for the Presidency of the United States is that people place too much value on “People”. As humans we are ALL flawed. I continue to hear about people who vote on things like abortion but none of them are adopting children from this country. Then to me how can you be a Christian and a conservative. If you look at the story of Jesus, he believed in helping everyone even if they didn’t “deserve” it. Even the people who did not pull themselves up by their bootstraps, he still counseled, helped, supported. Isn’t that what Christianity is all about. Jesus hung out with everyone including the promiscuous, murders and tax collectors. He could hang around the “poor tasteless people” and the powerful pharacies. But in modern Christianity, this is lost.

Then after listening to how Sarah Palin said that people liked to be talked the same to “in Scranton and San Francisco.” Well the reality is that the needs of the people in Scranton and San Francisco are different. To put them in the exact same place is a disservice to all people involved. A person who actively listens to the people understands that what I need as a disabled mother living in a suburb of Chicago isn’t the same as what someone who lives in small town Mississippi needs. The people in Mississippi’s needs are different from what a military family needs. Understanding that is part of what makes a good leader. We need someone who can create a compromise that everyone gets their needs met without sacrificing the bigger picture. Someone who can go from the South side of Chicago, to the Gold Coast and still be able to see what each person needs in that area. An effective leader doesn’t throw us all in to one big box and expect us to act according to whatever box they placed us in.

Then the welfare and bootstrap comments amaze me. I know people who have received welfare. The reality is that the little 300 dollars they get every month is very small compared to the amount of corporate bail outs that our government gives out every year. No one wants to touch that though. While I believe that people should strive to survive on their own, everyone needs help and we all don’t have rich wives or families to support us. As a country, shoot as a people, we are responsible to each other. We should work hard to make sure that our neighbor is okay.

Many people think that blacks are voting for Obama just because he is black. I am sure there are some that are but the truth of the matter is, if they are that is understandable. If you aren’t black in America, then you have no idea what it is like. We are NOT all equal. We are NOT all treated the same. Now this isn’t to say that as a black person you can’t create something for yourself but it is to say that for me as a black woman to get the same amount of recognition as my white counterpart, I must work 2 to 3 times as hard. While I could go on and on, many will disagree with me or tell me how xyz but I know what my values have led me to, a place of no judgment. My values have led me to a place of recognizing that I don’t know everything and I don’t have to. Also, I realize that some of the things that I believe contradict each other. I accept that and basically focus on my reasons for MY beliefs instead of condemning the next person for having theirs.