Politics

How meager and weak and puny is the god worshipped by Tony Perkins! Surely his is not the god of Israel which turned the Nile to blood and flooded the whole of Earth. Surely his is not the god that plagued Job with boils and death to prove a faithfulness that was never in question. Surely his is not the god which punished the regrets of Lot's wife by making her a pillar of salt. Tony Perkins's god is no god to be reckoned with. For what god, awesome in might and intolerant of sin, would need a mortal man like Tony Perkins to smite the wicked and punish his enemies?

I suppose that Tony Perkins, were he asked, would proclaim himself a tool in the hands of "the one true God." I believe he would tell me that the world has become so corrupt by Satan's temptations and the wiles of sinful man that his god needs an army of mortals clad in spititual armor. I trust he would tell me that this letter is an arrow in the quiver of his god's army, that it is a weapon in the defense of virtue, and that his god's power on Earth depends on it.

If that is true, then Tony Perkins is no instrument in the hand of his god. Tony Perkins is the master, and his god a mere tool. His god is an instrument used to exploit the weakness of those who believe that to punish the "unrighteous" will make them "righteous" to an equal degree. He calls on the wrath of people who should leave it to their god to judge sin and punish the wicked. He is building an army of donors. And with their luchre he lowers his god into the pit of human politics. He makes his god a beggar, a supplicant for the votes of men who are no greater than Job or the Pharoahs of Egypt.

In the end Tony's god will lose this fight. Tony's god could never win, because he is a god who needs a man to save him.

It's been 12 months, or very close thereto, since I last wrote in here. Anyone whose been watching -- which is safe to guess includes everyone -- knows that this past year has been a rough one for the President.

Apparently no one told him that it's really, really, really hard to change things when people don't really want more than superficial adjustments. But, blinded by a conviction of his own good intentions and lusty for the power to make them real, Obama embarked down this path.

I am recently exploring the meme of homeostasis. The French have a lovely way of putting it which the English doesn't capture. "Le plus ça change, le plus c'est le même chose." No matter what changes we attempt, the norms prevail and find a way to triumph. Which is interesting, because the norms are defined by the vast masses in the middle. The average will always find itself and impose its mediocrity despite our best intentions.

On a micro level, that's fine in so much as you are below average. However, the truth is that to expand the range of the normal requires a shrinking of both the left and right side of a given distribution. Trouble occurs when the range of the normal is expanded and limits the side which is above average.

In this country, everyone wants to believe they can be above average. And when confronted with the impossibility of that fact they enter a state of denial. They are each of them convinced they will beat the odds.

As a society this is healthy. It shifts the normal a little more towards the positive. But in moving the normal in that direction the condition of those below average is become relatively worse. To include more of those below average within the range of the normal would require undermining those above average.

In this country those people will first exercise their political muscle. And if that fails they will leave. Under such a scenario, Obama would be able to achieve his objectives. But the end result is akin to cutting off the nation's nose.

People are jealous of what they have. Those in the middle who are convinced they are above average won't abandon their hopes for the sake of Obama's vision. When they elected him they thought he would help them. Now they know they were never the intended beneficiaries, and they have begun to quit their support.

He's not going to get it back.

Stories like this are fast becoming trite.

Even though casual observers often compare Florida to its big-state peers (TX, NY, CA), I would argue that it is unique in the Union. On the surface the political issues appear to be the same - sizable ethnic immigrant communities; distinct geographic regions; a blend of urban, suburban, and rural populations; disparities of wealth; etc. But after living in each of these states, I would argue that such a construct is overly simplistic (a topic for another day).

As for the political commentary related to the 2010 U.S. Senate race in Florida, these articles all rely on the following assumptions:

1) Because it's a swing state, Florida is also a bellweather
2) Politics in Florida operate in a manner consistent with politics everywhere else
3) The split within the Republican Party is between two main factions, namely "Moderates" and "Conservatives"
4) The battle between distinct Republican philosophies will be settled in any one electoral contest

I think most of these assumptions are overblown. Good, on-the-ground reporting would investigate the way in which the Republican Party is evolving based on the shifting relevance and priority of certain issues.