I have a friend who is getting so worked up over Obama’s “terror” connection with Ayers that I think his computer is going to melt. And now we are watching trembling McCain supporters pleading with him to save them from an Obama presidency and the Muslim takeover of the country. But what are the facts behind the spin words in this political soup? I went to www.factcheck.org to see what the label on this can of soup read. Here’s the summary.
Voters may differ in how they see Ayers, or how they see Obama’s interactions with him. We’re making no judgment calls on those matters. What we object to are the McCain-Palin campaign’s attempts to sway voters – in ads and on the stump – with false and misleading statements about the relationship, which was never very close. Obama never “lied” about this, just as he never bragged about it. The foundation they both worked with were hardly “radical.” And Ayers is more than a former “terrorist,” he’s also a well-known figure in the field of education.
What is spin but national gossip that appeals to the darker side of the mind? Interesting. When I searched Google Images for a picture of Ayers, half the pictures were of Ayers Rock, the aboriginal sacred mountain in the middle of Australia that they believed is the center of the cosmos. To the tourists it looks like a big rock that needs to be climbed for a photo op; to the natives it is too sacred to walk on. To the universe it is just a pattern of energy that in time will weaken and dissolve into other patterns. So what’s my point?
We are caught in a spinning universe of superficial meaning. TV ads, pundits of the right and left, friends, family, headline everywhere telling us what to believe. Everyone is selling us their packages of meaning, and they are usually laced with fear to encourage us to swallow. Have you noticed that the world is a fear monger? We are bombarded with fear messages overt and subliminal that are designed to get us to vote for a person or a product or a religion or an ideology or, finally, a false sense of self. Fear makes the world go round. Fear also drives us insane.
So maybe the Australian Aboriganies got it right. You have to find a rock, the center of the universe and then hold that place so sacred that you never walk upon it with the feet of your thoughts. If you don’t have a center that can’t be moved by the world, then you are lost in the world and its storms of fear, having no anchor and depending on others, religions, and politicians to make us feel safe.
The purpose of spin (substitute sin here if you want) is to make us hunger for that rock and turn within to find it. Only then does the world stop spinning. Only then does fear dissolve into fearlessness. Only then does sin dissove into forgiveness.
Posted under current events
This post was written by ed on October 11, 2008
Beginning quote from an email fear attack that warns against an Islamic takeover of Western Civilization that is starting in Europe. Guess what folks, we’re back in the Middle Ages and the call to a new Crusades is being trumpeted. Here’s the quote: