Every four years we go through a presidential election that appears to sling as much dirt as ideas. In past elections, even where candidates lost by wide margins (think McGovern and Goldwater), campaigns were not as negative as what we’ve recently suffered through. The on-line mud is particularly odious. Snopes.com exists because lies are rampant.
Why do people get so involved that they insult, threaten, or stop talking to friends and neighbors over who they supported? What leads people to attack rather than discuss? Some would say it’s the baggage that we’ve been carrying all of our lives—baggage that distorts our views of the world. When we are willing to go to war over words and political candidates, we are ignoring the fact that they are not perfect and neither are we—no one is.
To put politics in perspective with faith, my church recently presented a series of sermons on the “The Politics of Jesus”. There was no talk about which candidates to vote for, but instead about free and open dialogue, the testing of ideas, between people of faith, without rancor.
Mankind is broken, which is why we feel our candidates are far superior to their opponents. We are so imperfect that we often can’t get past our own emotional baggage.
We recognize, or at least we should, that, also being human, our leaders have their own baggage. And we make them accountable through our votes. Sometimes we need to do more. Illinois is an equal opportunity state—we send both Republicans and Democrats to prison.
The reality is that we live in a great and flawed nation with some great and flawed citizens. It’s time to move forward and leave our baggage at the altar of life and focus on the ideas we need to vet.
