Though I’d heard about the site before, it wasn’t until today that I visited FactCheck.org. I wish I’d taken the time to chase this down sooner, because I think it’s a worthwhile resource for those trying to sort through the political maze that ends today at the voting booth. I don’t know if the net result of an expedition to this little corner of the www would have been a change in how you vote, but it’s certainly interesting reading. As far as I can tell, these folks are giving a pretty objective treatment to as much of what the candidates (and partisan groups like MoveOn.org, Swift Boat Vets, etc.) say as possible. While you may be disgusted at just how much distortion and outright lying is going on, I’m finding a little relief in this site. Here’s why…

I find political ads (and most campaign messaging in general) to be even more insulting than beer commercials, and that’s saying something. Think about it – the folks at Budweiser have decided that the best way to maximize their profits is to appeal to the base instincts of men. They believe that showing me boobs and butts will somehow trigger a Pavlovian response culminating in me buying Bud Light. That’s insulting, but it pales in comparison to the verbal pornography being churned out by the political ad makers. When they aren’t blatantly lying, they’re doing everything they can to twist facts and perception to portray the guy across the ballot as Satan’s spawn. Pay attention to the music you hear on campaign ads. Look at the grainy photo they show of the other guy with his mouth agape. This is happening because someone with an Ivy League education has determined that a thirty second, low budget horror film is what you need to responsibly exercise your rights of citizenship to the end of securing America’s future. Beautiful.

If you think I’m just being cynical and dark, wander around FactCheck.org. In fact, here’s an easy starting place – The Whoppers of 2004. This is their final pre-election piece that highlights some of the incessant distortion and deception we’ve been subjected to for the past several months. Just be warned – if you have some internal need to continue to admire your chosen candidate without reservation or disappointment, this is not going to be fun for you. These guys both told lies and allowed their surrogates to tell lies. Not fibs. Lies. For the noble cause of protecting or pursuing power, they devalued and disdained truth. You probably already knew that, but I think it’s helpful to be aware of just how brazen and intentional most of it is. I think it’s important that we move toward future electoral exercises with higher demands for those who covet our votes.

I don’t expect perfection in politics. Sadly, I don’t even expect truth. What would be nice, though, is for someone to be honest about the dishonesty. When you try to convince me that one candidate is a saint and the other is a villain, I DO NOT BELIEVE YOU. Politicians whose campaign crayon box only contains black and white crayons are, for me, inherently untrustworthy (and that’s pretty much all of them). Consequently, I am heartened and encouraged by someone who takes the time to call b.s. where b.s. needs to be called, regardless of the offender. We should delight in the exposing of untruth and hypocrisy, even when everyone on the stage is stripped bare. If we must choose from this lot, let us at least thoroughly inspect the livestock, dark underbellies and all.

It is easy for us to become so loyal to a cause or a person that we fear and resist any information or experience which might undermine our certainty. I get that because I’m as guilty of it as anyone. I’m just tired of it, and I can’t pretend that these choices are as simple as they’re portrayed anymore. Let us love the truth more than we love comfort, and let us pursue it without regard for any lesser agenda.

As an afterthought, I think it’s only fair for me to bear down and be honest about what I’d do today if I could vote. It’s easy to rant and whine about how bad everyone is, but I’ve long contended that demagoguery is a poor and usually immature substitute for responsible citizenship and humanity. I’ll stand at the front of the confession line for that sin, no doubt. I’d just like to repent lest I continue needs confess it over and over. In this case, I think that means we still ought to vote, at least unless we’ve found some productive strategy for pursuing a better solution. I’m open to the existence of such a course, though I’m not sure what it might be. I just don’t think apathy or passivity gets any of us anywhere, or at least not anywhere good. So while I joke about being disenfranchised and admit that I found some relief in not having to battle through my conflicting convictions about the choices in this election, I still wish I could vote. And I’d vote for Bush. Then I’d pray my guts out that he’d redirect himself and those around him in some crucial areas.

First, let’s get something straight. The thousands of brilliant Floridians who found themselves incapable of following an arrow from a name to a dot four years ago were not disenfranchised. Disenfranchisement requires that one actually be denied the right to vote. Not having the skills of a kindergartner to read directions and complete a task doesn’t count. No really, Al, it doesn’t. Sorry.

But alas, lest you think all of the protests and cries for justice are without merit, I am here to assure you that disenfranchisement does indeed occur. For I, a citizen in good standing (and without felony convictions), have been denied the right to vote. My lovely wife, who’s far more politically harmless than her husband, and I have been disenfranchised.

Dis. En. Fran. Chised.

The story goes like this:

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I know a little about debate. I’ll spare you my high school resume, but I devoted enough time and energy to competitive debate over a period of five years to fit safely into the category of debate geek. Perhaps only for that reason, I’ve tried to tune into the campaign forays into debate. I watched the first two on TV, and I listened to most of the third tonight as we drove to our new home in Bryan. In the opinion of this recovering debate geek, these little one-act plays we’re being subjected to are just slightly north of utterly pointless and silly. I mean, seriously, how many more times do we need to hear Bush use the phrase, “wrong war, wrong time, wrong place?” We get it. How much more convincing do we need that Kerry knows how to say “rush to war” and “I have a plan to win the peace.” Thanks guys, but we heard you the first seventy-three times. We know what you think of each other, and we know what you think of yourselves.

What we don’t know is whether either of you actually has the ability to think beyond the sixteen phrases you’ve been trained to repeat like my son’s talking Elmo by Karl Rove and whatever Democratic marionette is pulling JK’s strings. What we don’t know is whether either of you has the sa — er, excuse me — fortitude to actually hold up under any kind of unrehearsed or detailed challenge. Every time I hear the debate moderator say, “The candidates may not ask one another questions” I nearly choke. Come on guys! There are ninth graders going at it for hours at a time in debate tournaments every Saturday with more courage and resolve than the two of you can pool together for ninety minutes. I hope they typed those thirty pages of Rules to Prevent Any Semblance of Actual Debate on pink paper and tied a pretty little bow around them. Sheesh.

I suggest you make an effort to visit a local high school debate tournament at some point in the near future. Just be warned – if you’ve somehow found a way to convince yourself that something real or important is going on in these little joint regurgitations, those high school kids will ruin your day. You might not even be able to tune in to the next round of clashless, mind-numbing tongue-wagging on Wednesday night. And for that, you can thank me (and the ninth graders) later.

EDIT: And don’t even get me started on this whole gaggle of spinsters that flood the airwaves the instant the debates end. Apparently Americans are too dumb to evaluate what they witnessed for 90 minutes, so they need these yapping noggins to tell us what happened. SHUT UP! These people get paid to lie, or at least to say exactly what they’re supposed to say with absolutely no respect to reality. The other night Joe Lockhart looked into the camera and told three consecutive lies as he was getting hammered by Chris Matthews. He knew he was lying. Matthews knew he was lying. I knew he was lying. And what was he lying about? His campaign’s position on George W. Bush’s honesty. How many showers do these guys have to take every night just to get enough of the “dirty” off of themselves to sleep? Oh wait, do vampires sleep? For what it’s worth, I could say the same about the Republican spin-masters, although every time I hear Karen Hughes talk I wonder why she’s not the one on the ticket.

I’ve decided I’m fully in favor of getting Nader into the debates from now on. At least when Perot wormed his way onto the stage, something interesting was happening.

Okay, I think I’ve sufficiently decompressed from a full evening of moving.

I’ve been tracking the hits on the site a little lately, and the numbers are a little surprising. Turns out it’s not just me and three other people who read this stuff. The thing is, I don’t know who you are if you don’t ever comment. The site is getting between 30-100 times as many hits each day as there are comments. I’m curious who’s here. I know a few of the regulars, especially the ones that post or email me, but there appears to be a silent throng of millions who remain in the shadows. Well, maybe not millions, but at least a silent throng of 107 today. I’m not sure I know that many people, so naturally I wonder who’s showing up here. For instance, someone found me by punching “Thad Amy Aiden” into google. Who are you?

Here’s my request: If you read, comment once in a while, at least to just let us know who you are and that you visited. If you have some moral objection to commenting online, just send me an email. You don’t have to do it every time; I just want to know you’re out there.

I’ve been pretty clear about my reticence to enthusiastically support or even pay much attention to the major party candidates in this (or most any other) election. That’s still true, but some pieces of truth are so transcendent that they simply must be acknowledged, yea, even exalted.

This is one.

War, taxes, rights, corruption…on these things we can afford some flexibility. Throwing like a girl, not so much.

So begins my journey toward the first Tuesday in November. I’m not sure what I’ll do that day, but I can now conclusively mark Kerry off the list.

Check this out.

I’m not nominating Sarah McLachlan for sainthood or anything, but what she’s done here is admirable. Yeah, yeah…the cynic in me has all sorts of “buts” and “we’ll sees” locked and loaded as I watch this kind of thing, but the bottom line is that she made this instead of a three minute mini-movie showing some tired, soulless lust story between her and a male model. If you’d rather see that than dying kids with dark skin, dial 1.800.EverythingonMTV.

I’ll just hope Sarah’s motives are what they seem, and God bless her for trying, especially if she can become an impetus for upside down values among people who have more than they need and keep more than they should (and I am talking about the rich and famous, but I ain’t just talkin’ about the rich and famous). This video isn’t just about the money entertainers spend. It’s about the money I spend and the money you spend. It’s about what sort of answer we’ll be trying to scrape together on That Day when we’re asked what we did when we saw folks who were hungry and thirsty and homeless and naked and sick and in the joint.

World Vision
DORCAS
Voice of the Martyrs
Compassion International
DATA
Doctors Without Borders

Here are the lyrics for the song, World On Fire:

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One thing I haven’t figured out is how to put the photo albums in the order I want on this page. No matter what I do, they just line up how they please. You can figure that part out yourself.

For the first time (I think), I’m about to post something I wrote in my capacity as a “real writer” rather than spontaneous and disjointed blog musings. I crafted this really witty, clever bit about posting my real writing, complete with all sorts of self-disclosure (the kind that begged for all you amateur psychologists to have at me) and self-deprecating humor about whether or not I am a real writer. Then, in a twist of divine irony, I mistakenly erased it all. The irony, of course, is that a real writer should always know to always save his work always. Always. But I didn’t. So now you get the sad second effort. And that was it.

Before the essay, let me try to briefly describe two processes that are significant to the daily goings-on in Thadland. The first is mostly mental. I constantly ponder and analyze and theorize about how I view life, how others view life, and how life really is despite the warped ways we all view it. I don’t claim to be contributing anything important or lasting to the global thought pool, but I’m thinking nonetheless.

The second process is more earthy and emotional. It’s me trying to actually live the results of the first process. This, of course, is much more difficult and humbling. I can be a genius in my living room and a fool in my front yard. Some of the time I try hard to be a good guy, to pursue integrity of belief and action, and to live a useful, sacrificial sort of life. Sometimes I watch four episodes of Seinfeld in one day. For better or worse, more than anything I want to follow Jesus. Sometimes I think that means I need to try harder. Sometimes I think it means I need to quit trying so much.

Wrapped up in all of that is a big, ongoing wrestling match between one set of assumptions about what it means to follow Jesus and a growing sense in my soul that Jesus didn’t author many of those assumptions. The challenge, then, is to continue to pursue the true Jesus—knowing who he is and how his followers are supposed to live in the world in 2004.

So, because I’m a compulsive belly-button staring philosophically obsessed pinhead, I think about this stuff all the time. Well, not all the time, but at least when I’m not watching Seinfeld. While thinking about some of this, I pasted together this little essay that I’ve decided to call: The Great Omission – Why Jesus didn’t call people fags or preach about pledges to flags. Isn’t it a great title? The brilliant poetry notwithstanding, it’s just inappropriate and long enough to be utterly unprofessional, which should help me convince you that I’m a real writer.

Anyway, this essay was inspired by many years of questions…by debates about school prayer…by lawsuits over the words “under God”…by the images of people weeping on the steps of the Alabama Supreme Court as Judge Roy Moore and his Ten Commandments Monument were defiantly hauled away (I really just wanted to give those folks a hug)…and by many well intentioned people I know and love who long for a return to an America I never knew.

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The Great Omission – Why Jesus didn’t call people fags or preach about pledges to flags

As if my inbox wasn’t already bloated with unsolicited email offering me great deals on prescription drugs and other products to “enhance” my life, I recently received another shamelessly rehashed email forward. You know, one of those with a subject line that starts like this: “FW: Fwd: Fw: FW: Fwd: FW:” where you have to scroll down for three minutes just to locate the actual message. This one came from a well meaning Christian acquaintance, and it urged me to take up arms against yet another part of the culture whose apparent aim was the destruction of Christianity, the church, the family, and everything I stand for.

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The new page banner marks my first fully original creation in this arena. I took that photo a few weeks ago over the top of my parents’ back yard. I like it.

The bragging is artificial. I just pushed a button on the camera. Someone else actually designed what you see.

Anyone still out there? I can’t really blame you if you aren’t. Well, maybe I can since you aren’t there to know I’m blaming you. But then you might come back another day and, in the euphoria of discovering that your favorite blogger has returned to rescue you from the monotonous hum-drum of the rest of cyberland, read back to this point and discover that I blamed you for not being out there. So I won’t. We’ll just assume that I quit showing up in here before you quit showing up out there and move on with our little lives.

What a waste of keystrokes that little tangent was. In the immortal words of Frank Costanza: I’m back, bab-eee, pointless rambling and all.

Rather than launching straight into my standard witty commentary about the state of politics, religion, and silly television shows, I’m going to start by catching you up a little on what our lives have been like since June. I’ll try to keep it (relatively) brief, but most of it is significant enough to the present and future of anything else that might turn up on this page that it’s worth recounting (and precounting).

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