Tag Archives: Reed Galen

Oh how we need prophets these days

26 Friday Aug 2016

Posted by in Humanity, Politics, Society, Uncategorized

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There’s a lot of chatter out there.  If you aren’t careful, you can easily get caught up in who said what to who and when.

Here’s the secret, in about a week, it won’t matter because the chattering class will be chattering about something new that someone said.

We have a short attention span.  The question is which came first – our attention spans or the focus on reporting something that is supposedly news, even though it isn’t?

I do a good deal of reading.  Some out of necessity – I’m a seminary student.  But I read other stuff for pleasure.  I usually don’t read much about current events and I don’t like to read fiction.  There’s too much good non-fiction out there to get through, in my opinion.  I prefer to read about ideas and historical events and figures – you know theology, philosophy, and political philosophy.  I love to think and write and talk about ideas.  There’s nothing wrong with other subjects, they just don’t interest me as much.  It’s good that other people like them.

I’m finding myself reading less and less political commentary lately.  I find most of the political pundits who write are nothing more than opportunists who change their beliefs as needed to meet the candidate they support.  There are few that I can rely on for good commentary – people like David Brooks, Reed Galen, Rich Galen, etc.  They are appear to me to be a bit more objective.  I also realize everyone has a bias, so maybe I match their biases.  Regardless, they are able to do something that is rare in these days – they criticize their own political party in thought provoking ways – not just lobbing rhetorical bombs.  In a way, I see them as political prophets.

Let me explain the word prophet though. I’m not using the word in the way it is misused today – predicting the future.  No, rather, an older definition.  A prophet is someone who takes notice of what is going on.  They see what is going on, name it, and tell everyone else where they are headed if they continue on the journey – the logical conclusion.  A prophet isn’t someone who makes wild predictions about death and destruction or the end of the world.  They talk about what’s going on right now and tell everyone – “If you keep this up, this is where it ends up.  This is where the road ends.  And it isn’t a good thing.”

Most prophets I know of aren’t happy about being prophets.  They would rather be wrong in their assessments.  They pray to God they would be wrong.  Yet, they can’t help but tell the truth.  They can’t help but offer a warning – something that might open the eyes of the blinded masses, something that might open the ears of the deafened mob.  Or at the very least might cause a few willing individuals to take notice and make appropriate changes in preparation for the coming chaos.  Prophets aren’t happy about being prophets.

And the mob, the mass crowds don’t like the prophets.  So often in the bible, prophets were killed for what they said.  We kill our prophets in other ways – usually rhetorical ways.  The crowd doesn’t want to hear the truth.  They don’t want to be woken up or have their eyes open.  They are too busy in their moment.  For now the universe swirls around them.  A crowd doesn’t allow for individual thought and analysis – it only acts as a herd.

Being a prophet can be awfully lonely.  It can be costly too.  But I pray to God that God would continue to send prophets to us for various parts of life and society.  They are so needed.  I also pray that people would listen to these prophets.  Open our ears and eyes.  Open my ears and eyes to hear and to see.

 

Reed Galen, politics and culture

03 Thursday Dec 2015

Posted by in Politics, Society

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I read Reed Galen’s column The American Singularity each week.  He’s pretty insightful and has a good sense of how the presidential campaign is progressing. He mostly covers the Republican primary.

Side note – It’s good to have a variety of people to read from, especially when it comes to politics.  You end up learning more and seeing more of what really happens.  I encourage you to find a few sources – some you don’t agree with ideologically too.  It really does help a person when they have to think about their beliefs.

He wrote a column this week that was right on target.  Here’s a few paragraphs:

Unending digital inputs have allowed us to be connected and informed like never before; but they’ve also made it too easy for us to retreat to our most comfortable microcosms – either ignoring the outside world because we can turn it off, or only going to those “safe places” where we know our beliefs, complaints and gripes will be validated by others with whom we’ve chosen to associate. We escape only when something goes “viral” – an ironically positive term for something the human race for eons tried to avoid letting happen.

We reinforce our thoughts and views because it’s so easy and it feels good. If it’s not our fault, we don’t have to take the responsibility for it. If we see only what we choose to see and nothing else, in our world it doesn’t exist. It allows us to shut down a vital and necessary function of our brain: thinking.

It’s easy to be angry and indignant. They are base emotions, like fight or flight. They provide a quick and superficial release from the first decade and a half of the American Uncertainty. Things aren’t what they were and aren’t what they’re supposed to be. They likely won’t be what they should be in the future, either. What’s going to happen? Our college campuses, rather than being the place where young minds are challenged on their belief systems and inherent biases, are turning into unsafe places for free speech and disagreement.

Source – http://www.newconservative.us/blog/2015/12/2/the-american-singularity-week-37-infinite-jesters

That’s only a few paragraphs of what I consider to be one of the best assessments of American political culture I have read recently.  The whole article is insightful and I would encourage you to read it.

Here’s one more section from the article that really nails the point:

Candidates in primaries have always thrown their hardcore supporters pounds of red meat. But rather than exciting them with ideas and new innovation, they incite them to anger and reaction with inflammatory rhetoric that charges up the faithful but leaves the “only on holidays” folks shaking their heads and remembering why they don’t go to church every Sunday.

This race to the bottom is on full display regardless of the issue. Whether it is the environment, social issues, or a horrifying event like that in San Bernardino, California, the parties run to their respective corners, point their fingers, scream at the top of their lungs and bang their shoes on the desk. Sufficiently sure that they’ve communicated their vitriol, they move on to the next outrage. But they’ve done nothing to solve the problem at hand. The US House of Representatives voted 50+ times to repeal Obamacare fully aware that it was a milquetoast piece of political theater at best and as much for their own benefit as that of the people whom they’re elected to represent.

Just down the street at 1600 Pennsylvania, there is similar behavior. To be president means to lead all 300+ million Americans, whether they agree with you or not. President Obama, a constitutional scholar, expressed surprise recently that the Oval Office wasn’t more of a throne room from which to dispense favor here and autonomous authority there. In 2008 Obama told us he wanted to go to Washington to change the culture. He wasn’t lying; but many of us misinterpreted what he meant. He wanted Washington’s culture to bend to his will and ideology. And for 24 months it did, if reluctantly. Faced with opposition on Capitol Hill, he’s chosen, as much as Republicans, to retreat to the edges of political discourse where blame is currency and victimhood is heroism.

My own assessment is that Galen has identified what politics is all about right now in America.  It’s a sad state of affairs that, for me, is highlighted by a lack of leadership.  Instead we have elected politicians that we expect to respond, continuously.  It’s as if they are ignorant of what leadership is.  If they aren’t responding, they must not be serving our needs.  In a sense, this is narcissistic.  Leadership isn’t about responding to everything that happens.  You can’t respond and lead at the same time.  Responding means that someone else is driving the message – but who?  The crowd?  the masses?  the mob?  That never turns out well.

Leadership is about vision.  Leadership is about taking people with you somewhere.  Leadership is about leading.  Sometimes leadership is about ignoring or not responding to things.  Sometimes leadership is saying things that no one wants to hear.  Leadership is about creating an environment where people feel a sense of calm and trust that those in leadership positions have things under control.  Leadership is about inspiring people to move beyond the base emotional responses that people can go to when there is fear or anger.  Leadership is about moving people out of the crowd and mob mentality that seeks to scapegoat and blame.  Leadership inspires us to the better parts of our soul.

It’s been awhile since we had that type of leadership in our country.  We rarely see it in institutions either.  I’m not feeling too optimistic about future political leadership given what our options seem to be in the presidential primaries.

But I’m a pretty optimistic person overall.  I have to be.  Otherwise, life would be pretty depressing.  I’m optimistic because my hope doesn’t lie in any of the politicians running for president.  And your hope shouldn’t either.  This situation that we find ourselves in is a perfect example of why the founding fathers thought that having gridlock in government was a good thing.  When we experience times where there is a lack of leadership, it is safest for government to not pass too many laws that can screw people over long term.