Davison's Doodle

Now My Vote Really Doesn’t Matter

Those that know me know that I don’t think my vote, in national elections, matters.  I believe, even in the face of the 2008 election, that corporations, national and mult-national, decide elections for governor to President.  Voting allows the public to feel involved and allows the venting of emotion without the need for violence.  It was a revolutionary idea by our founders.  Today, it is more an opiate that keeps the public consuming, spending, divided, and distracted.  The decision by the Supreme Court giving corporations first amendment rights assures that we can now claim, and factually follow, that we have the best politicians bought and paid for by . . . (you fill in the corporate name or logo here).  I recall from civics class that one function of our government is to protect citizens through regulation of business, services, and the greed of capitalism.  No more.

I am not a constitutional lawyer.  The idea of the Supreme Court is tarnished just a bit more with the person-hood ruling granted by a 5-4 vote.  Here is the summary of the decision by Howard Fineman about the cancer of cash that the court has unleashed on the adolescent experiment called democracy.

The Sweeping Impact of SCOTUS’s Campaign-Spending Decision
January 22, 2010 | by Howard Fineman | Newsweek Online

It’s nothing short of revolutionary. Here’s how I add up the possible consequences:

• It adds to Republican chances of pickups in red states with small, cheap media markets.
• It turns the cottage industry of campaign consulting into a Hollywood-lucrative major media sector.
• It reduces candidates and political parties to mere appendages in their own campaigns.
• It will turn corporate boardrooms into political cockfighting pits, since that is where the key decisions will be made.
• It gives President Obama a populist issue, if he has the cojones and imagination and sense of injustice to take it on.
• It rips the veil of “conservatism” from this court, which just rendered one of the most wildly “activist” opinions in decades. It makes a mockery of the legal theory of “original intent.” The Founders would be rolling over in their graves.

Jim Wallis on the Daily Show

Jim Wallis is a self described “evangelical” that represents the best of whatever that label means.  Just like “liberal” or “conservative” there are many reproductions of “evangelical” in our culture.  Too often only one kind of evangelical, conservative, or liberal makes it to the airwaves or print which makes it easier to retreat to gated communities, mall churches, political parties, or “us and them” world view.  For all our technology and modern advances, humanity has yet to embrace the meaning of community beyond crisis care (Haiti the latest example of our temporary communal response).  But, I am certain that somewhere there are capitalists determining the best way to divide up the resources, whatever the Haitian people have left beyond their sweat and tears, to benefit the first world in which I inhabit.

Into the chaos of commercial advertisement and political dysfunction Jim Wallis continues to interject what I think of as a voice counter-culture Christianity with a civility that the public cannot willingly embrace.  I have not read his new book, but his blog is weekly reading for me.  He has been a frequent guest on the Daily Show, even when not selling a book, commenting on the state of the community we call the United States of America and a religious community called Christianity.  Though our Christologies differ, I am certain that he is motivated by the same practical Christianity that can reform the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), namely, being followers of Jesus of Nazareth.  Only a follower of “the Way” could express the needs of our society, no matter one’s religious or political, with such clarity and describe the ways to mend the social covenant we call the United States of America.  Click here to see Jim Wallis on the Daily Show from January 20, 2010.