As horrifying as this election season has been, even worse is the sense that we are looking into a mirror and seeing the grotesque caricature of our culture; selfish, ill-informed, superficial and cunning… lacking impulse control and living by the motto, “The end justifies the means.”
Most spiritual practices emphasize that the method, the means by which we live, justifies the outcome. In other words, if you live a crappy and corrupt life, whatever you achieve is the fruit of the poisonous tree.
Mr. Trump… I can see his inflamed red face, his pursed lips and his diatribes about Bill Clinton (his mirror image). I can hear his snorting, importuning us to “believe me,” and his creepy, adolescent bragging on that bus about bullying women. Worse than those disqualifiers is his complete ignorance of world affairs and his smug and pitiful diatribes about things he knows not of. I feel for his wife…how embarrassing.
Secretary Clinton… She has laid down with dogs for so long, she has come up with fleas. Her good intentions as a young woman have been sullied and compromised by politics and the ugly business of back room deals. I see her as a young woman, a bright lawyer with altruism and faith, now having deteriorated into her own stiff, corrupt caricature. At least she seems to know something.
If I were the mother of a child who wanted to fight for our country, I would take a step back. Not only are the missions contaminated with private interest, the care for veterans once we’ve used them up and they’re broken, is third class or not at all.
Make no mistake, it’s how we live our lives and the values we hold that we are seeing on the big screen. Maybe we have finally seen the extreme version of this, and we won’t excuse ourselves. If we deserve better, we have to BE better.
With love and hope, Rosanne