Huh, as some­one who I sup­pose is “on the left” I really agree in a way that this is a vote for the direc­tion of the coun­try, but I am desirous of the direc­tion that Sen­a­tor Obama wants to take the coun­try. But, I don’t think that it comes from an anger about 2000 or 2004 in that I dis­agreed with the direc­tion that the cur­rent pres­i­dent took the coun­try, but I also believe that it was the direc­tion that peo­ple appar­ently wanted the coun­try to go, hence more votes were for him than for the other guy (both of whom I voted for)

Any­way, it is lovely to see you post, as always and I look for­ward to hear­ing about the wedding.

I’ve been kick­ing this around all night, I hope it is ok to com­ment again, I think that I’m struck by the assump­tion that I am vot­ing out of anger, and that’s where I’m get­ting stuck.

But, hav­ing said that I want to say two things — one is that I love you and your blog. And two, that Mother Raphaela, who I saw speak this week­end, said the same thing as you on your last line, she said “do not go look­ing for the devil, for you will find him”

Lord have Mercy. And hugs.

I’ve actu­ally been think­ing about it, too — how’s that for a cou­ple of polit­i­cally involved types? It sounds like just a lame ‘me too’ to say that I love you and your blog as well, but I really do.

I think I wasn’t being clear. I’m not say­ing that I think a bunch of peo­ple are going to vote for Obama because they’re mad. That’s a BIG gen­er­al­iza­tion, and it doesn’t even sound accu­rate. I wouldn’t pre­sume such a weird thing any more (hope­fully) than you would actu­ally believe that if I don’t vote for Obama, it’s because I’m a racist.

But there are a lot of peo­ple on the left who are angry, and unfor­tu­nately for rea­son­able peo­ple like you, those peo­ple are the “voice” of the left right now, either because they are in indus­tries that are all about broad­cast­ing your views — news & enter­tain­ment for two — or because they’re the alt-media guys that have the ear of the Demo­c­rat party — Daily Kos, Huff­in­g­ton Post, MoveOn.org, etc. There are voices on the right that prob­a­bly sound sim­i­lar, but their mes­sage is not echoed by the GOP. That’s why I say that there’s a very pow­er­ful strong-arm tac­tic going on that is com­pletely one-sided. (If you think I’m mak­ing that up, check out this admis­sion from Politico — “1. Yes, we’re totally biased against McCain; 2. So what? ”)

THAT is what I’m talk­ing about, not indi­vid­ual vot­ers vot­ing their con­sciences. And, as I said, I’m not even just talk­ing about Obama vs. McCain. I’m talk­ing about all the bag­gage that the elec­tion is car­ry­ing right now. You may not believe in forc­ing peo­ple to com­ply with a lib­eral agenda, but there are a lot in power who do (just look at what Prop. 8 in Cal­i­for­nia is ask­ing Chris­tians to go along with).

Hope that doesn’t sound mean or any­thing. I’m just try­ing for a lit­tle hon­esty, because yeah, stuff looks reeeally ugly out there right now. If Obama wins, maybe I’ll find that those in power *don’t* want to grind con­ser­v­a­tives into dust, but I’m not hold­ing my breath.

No, I gotcha, thanks for clar­i­fy­ing. I know what you mean, and I see it on both sides, this access­ing the anger side. I think hon­estly, some of the real and seri­ous issues fac­ing the coun­try are so over­whelm­ing, that the fall­back response is fear and anger, does that make sense? And, unfor­tu­nately, I do see it with the GOP too.

Are you in a swing state? I am not, and that cou­pled with the fact that I don’t watch TV news (I get my news from NPR and the news­pa­per, plus clearly the inter­net) I think that tem­pers my perception.

I think I’m more self­ish with each pass­ing elec­tion cycle, but not in the way that poll­sters and the chat­ter­ing class tend to think of self­ish vot­ers (i.e., peo­ple vot­ing their pock­et­book, etc.) Which is to say: I don’t think the per­son in the White House affects me, my house­hold or my fam­ily all that much.

It’s an odd posi­tion to be in, par­tic­u­larly since I used to work in pol­icy cir­cles and, as Grace will hap­pily (I think) admit, I sort of intro­duced her to the world of pol­i­tics and pol­icy many years ago.

Today, I’m all about my own micro­econ­omy and micro­cul­ture — the can­di­date who will allow me to cre­ate and sus­tain those two things with the least inter­fer­ence (notice that I did not say “with the most assis­tance,”) is the one who tends to get my atten­tion. And hon­estly, although I don’t *agree* with most of Obama’s pol­icy ini­tia­tives, I think I can insu­late myself from most of them. Heck, even the McCain pol­icy choices I agree with whole­heart­edly aren’t the kinds of things that will affect me in a vis­ceral, day-to-day way for the most part.

Any­time I hear peo­ple of the Ortho­dox faith talk­ing pol­i­tics, I always want to ask a gen­uine ques­tion: If this life is tem­po­ral and we’re sup­posed to put noth­ing ahead of God, how do we square that with our polit­i­cal choices?

There’s no “right” answer, but pol­i­tics — and pol­i­tick­ing in par­tic­u­lar — is a form of sec­u­lar evan­ge­lism; we should, I think, be coun­ter­ing both the pre­vail­ing world view that This Is The Most Impor­tant Thing Ever™ as well as look­ing at spe­cific poli­cies and posi­tions that are in oppo­si­tion to a Chris­t­ian perspective.

That’s not to say we should make no choice at all — we do our­selves no favors as cit­i­zens or as mem­bers off the Body of Christ by hid­ing in a sort of monk­ish “the world doesn’t inter­est me,” mind­set or tak­ing on the “they’re all pretty much the same” man­tle of cynicism.

We’re called to make sec­u­lar choices all the time. But a sur­pris­ing num­ber of peo­ple seem ready to call them­selves devout and to in fact act devout — right up until it clashes with party affil­i­a­tion It’s an odd and wide­spread phe­nom­e­non with a lot of dif­fer­ent ratio­nales, which is why I like to ask the question.

Argh! Greg tak­ing the high road — ALWAYS embarrassing!

Just as Mimi found that I was (acci­den­tally) mir­ror­ing a mes­sage from Mother Raphaela, you’re now dupli­cat­ing a con­stant mes­sage that I read through­out Fr. Alexan­der Schmemann’s jour­nals, which is: Ortho­dox Chris­tians have to not just live for this life, this age, this world … even for this Church. We have to be liv­ing escha­to­log­i­cally, liv­ing for the next life, the next age; that’s the truest way to be sure that we are really lov­ing God with all our strength and liv­ing for the King­dom of God. He says it bet­ter, of course, and I’ll try to see if I can’t post some of it to make the point bet­ter. But any­way, you and Fr. Alexan­der — BFF. Who’d have thought it?

For what it’s worth, I had been think­ing this morn­ing of the list of things I want to do on the day after Elec­tion Day. The point is to focus on (a) how lit­tle the elec­tion really changes my day and (b) how many things I can come up with that are not just bi-partisan but a-partisan, beyond “party.” I think the Big Issues, Big Direc­tions right now are impor­tant, but when the elec­tion is over, it’s over (bar­ring 2000-esque vot­ing day strange­ness). In most of my per­sonal deal­ings, I’m sick of even think­ing about how the peo­ple around me might vote. And I’m really, REALLY sick of hear­ing every­one on main­stream and alt-media talk about noth­ing else.

I am very much enjoy­ing this con­ver­sa­tion, and how it mir­rors what we’ve heard and read from those who are wiser than I am. And, I appre­ci­ate Greg’s com­ments too.

One thing I remem­ber read­ing online (per­haps on the Yahoo Ortho­dox Con­vert List) was that Ortho­doxy isn’t Right or Left, It’s Up and Down on the polit­i­cal axis, and I very much agree with that. Our priest was talk­ing about how we do have a duty to vote, as Greg pointed out, but like Grace is say­ing, ulti­mately, it mat­ters lit­tle (but not so lit­tle that you can’t par­tic­i­pate, if that makes sense)

Mimi,
I belat­edly remem­bered that I never answered a ques­tion. Yes, Mis­souri is a bat­tle­ground state.

As for sources of news and news analy­sis, I get it from the inter­net and talk radio, which will prob­a­bly elicit an ‘Ohhhh. Well, then,’ response. But just so you under­stand how it goes on this side of the ide­o­log­i­cal aisle, I would sug­gest that the only dif­fer­ence between get­ting the news from alt-media-right and from old-media-left is that I *know* I’m get­ting news & con­ser­v­a­tive analy­sis whereas news­pa­per read­ers and NPR lis­ten­ers are under the impres­sion that they’re get­ting objec­tive reporting.

Dear old NPR prob­a­bly has the best rep­u­ta­tion of the two, but I would chal­lenge any­one who thinks it’s fair and bal­anced to count how many neg­a­tive sto­ries are done about Repub­li­cans as opposed to Democ­rats in the next week or so. When NPR very begrudg­ingly con­ducted a sur­vey back in ’05, they found that 38% of lis­ten­ers said they had a lib­eral bias, and I think it’s got­ten much worse since then.

Not try­ing to throw down another gaunt­let here, just try­ing to offer some per­spec­tive on why it is that those on the right don’t con­sider offer­ings from news­pa­pers or pub­lic radio to be fair.

Nah, I totally get what you are say­ing. Although, I have a ques­tion — do you mean that 38% of lis­ten­ers said that NPR had a lib­eral bias, or that 38% of lis­ten­ers said that *they* (being the lis­tener) had a lib­eral bias.