Political sport in a time of American heresy

Something stinks in Mudville.

Oh, somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright;
The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light,
And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout;
But there is no joy in Mudville—mighty Casey has struck out.*

The American Constitution of over 200 years is a grand document. And if we don’t like it, we can change it. But the political system resulting from it seems to smell these days. Something stinks in Mudville.

Detecting and judging change is judgmental at best. Sometimes change is in the world, sometimes it is in the observer. And anyone or organization that claims to be the purveyor of “truth” is automatically suspect. But again, something stinks in Mudville.

While I am not personally very religious, it almost seems biblical what is happening all around me. The Bible stories from my youth, read to me by my father, that talk of societies becoming fat and lazy and overcome, often overrun, by barbarians and outsiders seeking power and benefits, are starting to come back in my memories. These memories include school learning about persecutions for heresy and other non-accepted thoughts such as the earth revolving around the sun. Galileo was actually sentenced to imprisonment, later house arrest, for his thoughts. Persecutions were usually for religious, ethnic, and political reasons back in our past, and even continue today. The only difference I can see for sure is that we don’t burn people at the stake, litterally.

The American election process should be about us, our National Interests, and how we will address all of our National problems, foreign and domestic. And the oaths we take are to the Constitution, not any individual or party. Yet creeping into the National discourse more and more are smug and over-confident thoughts that the real game is political sport. Winning over the opponent has more respectability than the ideas about our National Interests. Polarization between Americans has more respectability than practical problem solving between Americans. Gaining a one up in the game of politics is more an objective than winning the game for the Nation. Where do ideas count?

Much has been said and written about “political correctness”. This is just a modern version of burning at the stake. Heresies are now questioning multiculturalism, moral equivalency, global-warming, globalization, believing in and promoting western values that benefit most of the world (including legal), or just questioning problems that must be admitted in public in order to be solved in public. I don’t believe hundreds of years ago we elected the Roman Catholic Church to be the keeper of the gates of ideas and heresies, nor do I think we have elected whoever does the same today. In fact, it is more like some high school clique that seems to be the keeper of the “political correctness” gates today, and it will probably take some child to say “the king has no clothes” to free us from this more modern straightjacket of repression.

And like “mighty Casey” perhaps we are too confident. We can strike out.


* From Casey at the Bat, A Ballad of the Republic by Ernest Thayer, 1888.