Politics and Pandora
I don’t educate myself enough on politics and have never voted in any election for a reason… God’s sovereignty. I know that is a bad excuse and we should be responsible with our vote and our privilege that so many people around the world don’t have… yada yada yada. But this year has been different in a weird way … I’ve still not educated myself to the degree I need to in order to make a responsible vote, but I somehow get sucked in to the political vacuum whenever the subject arises. And boy do I get riled up…
Two things are helping my sanity:
1) Rick summarizes the most level headed thing I’ve read about politics in a while:
Two groups of intelligent people watching the same coverage and hearing the same speeches, but hearing vastly different things, I think, based mostly on your own opposing perspectives.
The first thing that jumps out at me is that everyone else must be idiots for disagreeing with me. I’m fairly intelligent, I heard this or saw that and of course made the correct assumptions and analyses, right? You do it, too, wondering how anyone else missed what was so blatantly true in your mind. Two same intelligent people see the same thing, hear the same thing, and somehow come to opposing “truths”. How does this happen?
As much as we all hate to admit it, there is intelligence on both sides of this political argument. I know not everyone who disagrees with me is an idiot… i know there are glaring issues with Obama the guy I support, just as there are glaring issues on the other side. Yet, we all get all loud and demonstrative when someone sees things from a different angle… even if none of us are educated… we make claims that we supposedly “know without a doubt” but we’re usually just regurgitating it second hand from Ron Suskin or Glenn Beck (not that there is anything wrong with regurgitation, birds and pregnant women do it all the time)… At the end of the day, though, it’s just perspective and I can live with whatever yours is…
2) When all else fails, i throw the headphones on and head over to Pandora.com for a bit of the “mellow mix” if i need to calm my nerves, or the “alt rock” if i want to feed the fire.
Anything else i should be doing?
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Thanks for the link love. Hang in there - are you registered? If not, go do that - then read/listen/watch all sides (notice, not BOTH sides) - and then vote your heart. Or don’t vote if that’s your heart.
Totally into the “Mellow” music now! I’m right there with you in the whole letting others do it for me. I’ve never followed politics and am afraid that I would get too caught up and be indecisive anyway. I’m getting hooked on so many things just following links to links to links. I can only imagine all of the political stuff to get hooked on.
I am totally with Amanda. I let Jeremy do all my political research. He enjoys it and I don’t have to go through the heartache of trying to figure out fact from fiction or annoying things from the things that matter. He enjoys it too. I get snippets from day to day over what he has reviewed.
There’s a great article in the latest Relevant Magazine you’d like to read. It’s about voting as a Christian. Was pretty interesting.