Midlife Meditation

It happened so quickly. Remember Election Night 2008? I do. I was proud of my country, proud of a people who had looked beyond race, who had chosen a President whose platform was about progress, inclusion, diversity, and thinking and talking through problems. For the first time in a decade, I was proud to be an American. That pride lasted for the better part of a year and then, just like that, it fell away. I hadn't given up on my President, or the Congress who swept into office with him. Not most of them, anyway. I was thrilled that Washington was engaged in the hard work of expanding the social safety net to include health insurance, and while it frustrated me that so many Democratic legislators had bought the snake oil of the insurance company and were opposed to a single payer system, I still had hope that they could put together something that covered far more Americans than the previous system. But I was already growing jaded at the knee-jerk resistance of the Re...

Proof:  Some people gonna call you up Tell you something that you already know Proof:  Sane people go crazy on you Say ''No man, that was not t he deal we made I got to, I got to go'' Faith:  Faith is an island in the setting sun But proof, yes p roof is the bottom line for everyone --Paul Simon, "Proof," from Rhythm of the Saints , 1990. I wonder: when Donald Trump looks in the mirror, does he tell himself the same words he's used on audiences longing for someone, something, anything they can rely on to improve their lives: "Believe me!" And when he sees that huckster expression on his face, hears those words bouncing back off the glass, does he, in fact, believe whatever thoughts are bouncing around under his expensive meta-combover? Judging from the fallout of Saturday's Trumped-up "Obama wiretapped me" tweets, the answer to that rhetorical question is a very solid "yes." Here's White House spok...

I lean leftward. A lot. I am well to the left of this guy: Still to the left of this guy: Maybe even a bit to the left of this guy: Here's one guy who's probably to the left of me:   What all these guys have in common (and I do apologize for not putting any women in this gallery, but sometimes I just want to get the damn thing written) is that they have had their positions distorted by both opponents and allies for their own purposes, and that those positions were far more nuanced than anyone gave them credit for.   In both politics and religion, nuance is the enemy of partisanism. People want simple, binary answers to their questions, sound-bite responses to issues that can be easily memorized, memed, and quoted ad infinitum on Facebook, Twitter, Pintarest, and whatever social medium du jour they get their news from. In churches, mosques, synagogues, and wherever else religious leaders wax homiletical, complicated, nuanced sermons generate congr...