Poll-ar Bear Politics

I miss the following about living in the US:
Early-release movies… in English,
24-hour superstores,
Marshmallows.

I do not miss the following:
SUVs,
Southern accents,
Political commercials.

I can never stop biting my nails during election season in the States. My stomach knots up at every commercial spewing venom about opposing candidates–people, all of them, hoping to do good for our country. Four years ago, two kind men’s faces were pasted all over the media like FBI posters — “Wanted for ignorance and warmongering: George Bush.” “Wanted for spinelessness and baby killing: John Kerry.” It wouldn’t have mattered who won; the influence of each man had already been crippled by hate long before Election Day.

I grew up on the moral battlefield of Texan politics. I dutifully hated Bill Clinton, cheering when he was publicly shamed for his affair. I worked the phone tree for the local Republican headquarters and held signs for hours in the cold on voting days. (The Governor sent me a certificate of thanks for being a “Poll-ar bear.” I’ll wait while you roll your eyes.) I went to meetings where women sporting giant American flag earrings prayed, fervently, for God to strike down the heathens who were demoralizing our country. They were referring, of course, to the Democrats.

Politics came down to three issues for my social circle: abortion, homosexuality, and public education. It didn’t matter that everyone I knew home schooled their children; they were still outraged that public schools taught evolution and “forbade” prayer. It didn’t matter that none of them knew a single gay person; homosexuals deserved no rights. It didn’t matter that none of them had ever been faced with a teenage pregnancy; abortion clinics and doctors should be bombed into oblivion.

I never once heard any of the adults in my life discuss terrorism or poverty or prison reform or medical research. They did mention environmentalism, only to make fun of it; preservation of the earth was just the ploy of immoral Democrats. During “election parties,” when large groups of Christians got together to discuss the takeover of our nation and compare hernias, not a single thought was given to the disadvantaged people in our world. We were too busy hating everyone on the other political team.

I could write entire books on the purposeful ignorance I’ve seen, the arsenic-laced bullshit I’ve heard from people who profess to follow God. I’ve witnessed plenty from non-Christians as well, but the particular brand of fundamentalist warfare I grew up with makes me deeply ashamed. I think Donald Miller puts it perfectly in Searching for God Knows What:

“How did a spirituality such as Christianity, a spirituality that speaks of eternity, of a world without end, of forgiveness of sins and a mysterious union with the Godhead, come to be represented by a moralist agenda and a trickle-down economic theory? And more important, how did a man born of Eastern descent, a man who called Himself the Prince of Peace, a man whom the sacred writings describe eating with prostitutes and providing wine at weddings and healing the sick and ignoring any political plot, a man who wants us to turn the other cheek and give all our possessions if we are sued, become associated with–no, become the poster boy for–a Western moral and financial agenda communicated through the rhetoric of war and ignorant of the damage it is causing to a world living in poverty?”

This isn’t meant to bash the love-less Christians any more than it is to bash people with different sexual orientations or educational philosophies. This is simply to explain why, come November, I will be voting for the presidential candidate I think will best be able to change what truly matters–whether that person be a prehistoric gun-slinging bureaucrat, an inexperienced Muslim pretty-boy, or a fire-breathing she-devil from the bowels of feminist hell.*

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*Before you send the hate mail or the flaming bags of poo, make sure you realize that last bit was a joke. If you want to blast me for the “Poll-ar bear” bit, though, I’ll totally understand.