It’s election year and it’s time for Americans to put on their blinders, make their political allegiances and remain entrenched in their belief systems until the big storm blows over November 5.
At stake in this year’s elections? Two global issues: war and oil. As far as domestic issues, housing woes and the stumbling economy, even affordable health care are all on the back burners. What matters most is getting that oil out of the ground and into our economy and keeping terrorists at bay in the Middle East—or is it?
In the last week, I have spoken with three business owners across the the nation who have had to cut their work forces by over 30 percent in the last few months. During the past summer, nearly every business in Livingston has reported record low revenues (except the bars and casinos, of course), and it looks to me like our economy is in true trouble.
The rising price of gas is partially to blame. But this oil shortage was something being predicted some 30 years ago by geologists around the world. A 1973 National Geographic article meticulously outlines the “End of Oil” and predicts the advances that would be made in the future to prepare for this eventuality. Thirty-five years later, we have seen precious few of these advances. When record profits are at stake, why look for cheaper or more efficient options, or options that might even prevent prolonged conflicts with countries across the world from us?
War. More important than houses over our heads, healthy babies or a healthy economy is the war machine that creates billions of dollars in revenue for war contractors like Kellogg, Brown and Root, a subsidiary of Dick Cheney’s corporation Halliburton, as well as thousands of companies with politicians (and millions in profits) in their pockets.
What is really going on in Iraq? Some soldiers I know who have served over four tours in Iraq tell horrific tales of guerilla warfare and say they now feel like hired guns for contracting firms, while fewer say the work they do is effective, or even rewarding.
Meanwhile, more and more people die every day in Iraq, and more and more civilians—the young family members of dead moms, dads, brothers and sisters—are growing up to hate the people who killed their family members, and continue the terrible cycle or murder and hate by fighting back. According to a recent study by the medical journal Lancet, over 650,000 civilians have been killed in Iraq, and half of those people are dead at U.S. hands, many of these innocent people victims of aerial strikes over civilian neighborhoods. Some studies abroad put the numbers at closer to one million dead, with half killed by U.S. forces.
The Republican party supporters in America say that we need to “drill, drill, drill” for oil and “kill, kill, kill,” the terrorists and it is disturbing and confusing to me that many of these right-wing conservatives also stand behind the Christian doctrine of thrift, charity and forgiveness. Jesus Christ yielded to the hatred and force of his persecutors, but the modern Christian right seems anti-Christian at times, rallying for war and encouraging excessive consumption of finite resources.
Where is the thrift in our use of a finite resource such as oil? Where is our compassion for our brothers in the Middle East? Are we treating them as we would wish to be treated? Are we open to diplomacy with those that are different than us? Where is the charity? Where is the forgiveness? Why all this greed and war fueling the Republican party? Where is the true Christian doctrine that should guide a party that aligns itself with God’s will?
Listening to a number of recent Republican speeches, I find myself frightened at how easily good Christians are accepting such a a narrow-minded doctrine of greed and force. Have we exhausted every other option with our foes? Have we tried in every manner to communicate with our enemy, and have we looked within ourselves to see what America might be doing to cause others to want to hate and fight us?
This election year, regardless of what political party an American might align themselves with, they would do well to also examine such party’s eventual objectives, and consider whether or not those objectives are truly in line with the way the voter lives his or her life. This year, regardless of the spin on television and the flat brilliance of politicians’s speeches composed by speechwriters trained in industrial psychology to tap into American’s dreams and desires, Americans need to research and investigate the parties and candidates they will support.
If we go down the road toward more war-mongering and greed, we may end up in a terrifying place where these qualities are prized, and it certainly won’t be a place of love, understanding or forgiveness.
—Reilly Neill
news@livingstonweekly.com
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