A Brief Aside

This is a little different than my usual posts but just on my heart. Not trying to start a debate here just getting this off my chest.

I, like much of our country, have become disgusted with our political system. I don't for one second judge the men & women that serve as representatives and congressmen but rather hold them in high esteem. Their job is not an easy one. Try balancing pleasing your constituents & those who voted you in, passing legislation to make our country better, negotiating with partisan counterparts, all while trying to get re-elected and within a period of 2/6 years. Anyway I imaging balancing these things, I could easily see someone classifying my actions as playing politics. The point is, I get how hard it is.

My frustration peaked last week when Senator Joe Wilson yelled out "You lie" during President Obama's speech on healthcare. I don't fault his stance on the issue at all and will concede that there probably are provisions or loopholes in the presidents plan that will allow illegal immigrants access to healthcare. So the significance of his outburst, for me, was how Obama's election has divided the country more than it has united it, much to my surprise and disappointment.

In the black community, by and large, our president is revered and given an automatic pass on any and every issue, just about opposite to how we treated President Bush, who could do no right. Then there's this other community who I suppose has always been there but, of late, have arisen with a new zeal and incredible boldness. We've seen it in the townhall meetings, the McCain/ Palin rallies, Fox news, generally anywhere staunch conservatives hangout. We've heard charged phrases such as "I want my America back" and "what happened to my country" and we're left only to wonder about the implications of such rhetoric. I wanted to believe that it was a minority of close-minded Hannity/Limbaugh disciples, that it was just a few people who would never let go of the fact that Obama is in office.

So when I heard Senator Wilson yell out, it was like one of those townhall meetings all over again. This culture, which I had attributed to only an under-infomed portion of our society was now present among our leadership. What other president would our leaders be so cavalier about disrespecting? Then the liberal response was to exploit this guys mistake and only further widen the schism in our country that our president has tried to bridge. Liberal vs. Conservative. Republican vs. Democrat. Will we ever get past it?

It'll take some courageous people in Washington who won't revert to the same old politics. We have to allow those courageous people to rise up by demanding a higher level of accountability, with opinions formulated by truth, not mass mobs. Let's turn off Hannity & Olbermann, Maddow & Limbaugh and base our opinion on facts and with a Godly worldview.