Mountain Views News          Saturday, October 12, 2013

B4

OPINION

 Mountain Views News Saturday, October 12, 2013 


OUT TO PASTOR 

A Weekly Religion Column by Rev. James Snyder


STUART Tolchin........On LIFE

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CONTRIBUTORS

Chris Leclerc

Bob Eklund

Howard Hays

Paul Carpenter

Stuart Tolchin

Kim Clymer-Kelley

Christopher Nyerges

Peter Dills 

Hail Hamilton 

Rich Johnson

Merri Jill Finstrom

Lori Koop

Rev. James Snyder

Tina Paul

Mary Carney

Katie Hopkins

Deanne Davis

Despina Arouzman

Greg Welborn

Renee Quenell

Ben Show

Sean Kayden

Jasmine Kelsey Williams

DYSTOPIA MAKING IT REAL

THE PARSONAGE KITCHEN 
SHUTDOWN THREAT

 Do you know the word “dystopia”? It’s a word 
that rarely appeared and now it’s everywhere. 
During the last week I spent most of my time 
watching television; mainly the Baseball playoffs, 
the news, and the ever present car commercials. 
This experience presented me with the opportunity of experiencing 
what is meant by “dystopia” which is generally defined as an 
imaginary place where people are unhappy and usually afraid 
because they are treated unfairly and are constantly manipulated 
by lies and propaganda. Elements of dystopias may vary from 
environmental to political and social issues and are characterized 
by dehumanization associated with a cataclysmic decline in society 
taking the form of pollution, poverty, societal collapse, political 
repression, or outright totalitarianism.

 Do those words convey any feeling to you? There exists a whole 
genre of post-Apocalyptic movies that portray burnt out cities 
and starving people fight each other in an attempt to survive. The 
father and son struggling to survive in the Road or Mel Gibson 
going berserk in the Mad Max movies, or a bunch of other science 
fiction films set in a highly technologically-advanced future 
where basic human values have been forgotten and the heroes are 
outsiders trying to find their way back to what has been lost. I 
had previously thought that these films were intended as satire or 
warnings intended to alert us all to potential problems. Today I 
think this whole idea of dystopia is a photograph of a present which 
lies barely beneath the surface.

 Even the sophomoric skits on Saturday Night Live portray a 
sense of horror and loss. On the most recent show, a man and a 
woman sit in a burnt-out city trying to determine what caused 
the end of civilization. They remember back to the MTV award 
show in which a young woman, formerly known as Hannah 
Montana has morphed into a frighteningly over-sexed creature 
dressed as sexually provocative as possible and seen prancing 
around “twerking”. If you are as naïve as I am you might well ask 
what is twerking. I looked it up on google and learned it is the 
rhythmic gyrating of the lower fleshy extremities (generally by 
a female) in a lascivious manner with the intent to elicit sexual 
arousal. In her appearance at the MTV award show Miley Cyrus, 
formerly known as Hannah Montana, combined her twerking with 
simulated (at least I think it was simulated) crotch grabbing of 
the male-celebrity standing behind her. Two other things about 
the Saturday Night Live Show seemed memorable to me. In her 
subsequent monologue Miley Cyrus responded to the inquiry of 
her former fans who were concerned about the disappearance of 
sweet loveable Hannah Montana. “Well, she was murdered”, Miley 
brutally informed her audience. Remember Hannah Montana was 
a fictional character appearing in a Disney Series, and I gather from 
what was being said, that in order to successfully make the journey 
from adored child-star to successful adult celebrity in today’s world 
it is necessary to leave all vestiges of wholesome behavior behind.

 The other moment of the Saturday Night Live opening skit that 
struck me was when the male character sitting in the destroyed 
future town attempted to read some bit of news. He stumbled upon 
the word “vagina” and wondered, “Do people still do that? Now 
everyone goes straight for the booty.” Perhaps I’m over-reacting; 
but I think this little skit says something about attitudes towards 
future reproductive behavior or familial concerns. 

A certain situation has been 
building in the Parsonage 
for the last several months. 
At first, I did not think it too serious but alas, we 
have reached a terrible impasse.

It started a few months ago when I came home, 
walked into the house and was hit in the face so 
hard I almost passed out. At the time, I was hoping 
I would pass out, but no such luck.

I think everybody knows what it is like to be hit 
unexpectedly by something you do not actually 
expect. I guess that is why it is called unexpectedly. 
It happened to me and I am not sure I am 
over it yet.

Even though I have been married 42 years, of 
which most of it has been happily, I did not see 
this one coming. Just when you think you have 
your spouse figured out, they do something off 
the radar. Every husband knows exactly what I 
am talking about.

This makes it hard to buy Christmas and birthday 
presents. What they liked last year is not 
what they like this year. I remember buying my 
wife a watch one year for Christmas of which she 
was so delighted that for the next four years after 
I bought her a watch for Christmas. How was I 
supposed to know she only wanted one watch!

I think we hit one of those impasses.

Walking into the house, I was hit with the horrific 
smell of broccoli cooking on the stove. I do not 
know if you ever smelt such a smell as that but 
if you are not prepared for it and even if you are 
prepared for it, it can smack you in the face like 
you have never been smacked in the face before.

When I came to myself and gathered what little 
composure I could find, I queried the Gracious 
Mistress of the Parsonage who was in the kitchen.

"What is that awful smell?"

"I don't know, have you taken a shower yet?"

After being married for 42 years, I know when to 
respond to a question and when not to. I knew 
if I responded to this question the way I wanted 
to respond to this question, the smell of broccoli 
would be the least of my worries at the time.

"No," I said gathering a little bit of manliness 
about me, "Something in this house smells dreadful. 
I smelled it as soon as I walked in the door."

Then she chuckled. I hate it when she chuckles.

"Oh, that must be the wonderful aroma of broccoli 
cooking on the stove. Isn't it marvelous?"

Adhering to my rules about questions, I tossed 
that one aside and opted for another one.

"You're not cooking broccoli for supper tonight, 
are you?"

I was hoping she would catch my attitude of disdain 
and disgust in this question. Obviously, for 
whatever reason, she did not catch the drift.

"Yes," she said as chipper as I have ever heard her 
chip, "I thought I would surprise you with a wonderful 
dish of broccoli for supper tonight, to go 
along with our pork chops."

Can you live with a person for so long and not 
know what they like or do not like? Nobody has 
to be around me for five minutes before they will 
understand that broccoli and I have had a feud 
that has been going on since before the Hatfield's 
and McCoy's.

"But I thought you knew I do not like broccoli?"

"Oh, that," she said with another chuckle, "I just 
thought you were joking."

Nobody jokes about broccoli, especially me.

Then a brilliant idea reverberated between my 
ears. I thought I could take advantage of this situation 
and sneak in something forbidden in our 
kitchen and house for that matter, a rare delicacy.

"I will then run to the store and get some fresh 
Apple Fritters for our dessert."

I figured if she wants to put in front of me broccoli 
the least she can do is allow me an Apple Fritter 
or two.

In a moment, all the chipper drained from her 
person and she looked at me and said, "Apple 
Fritters are not allowed in this house."

 "Let's negotiate," I said as calmly as I have ever 
been in my life. "I will allow you to eat broccoli 
tonight if you allow me an Apple Fritter for my 
dessert."

I wonder if there is a husband living today, that 
has ever successfully negotiated with his wife.

"This is how we will negotiate, we will have broccoli 
tonight without any Apple Fritter. I am only 
thinking of your health."

The way she glared at me I knew negotiations 
were off the table at this time and in its place was 
some steaming broccoli.

What I am going to do is sneak behind her back 
and eat two, not one but two, Apple Fritters and I 
will savor every bite.

If only we could act like grownups, come together, 
voice our differences and strike a compromise. 
After all, our government works that way.

I thought about this and came to a certain conclusion. 
The Christian life is not really negotiating 
your preference but rather honoring Christ. 
Jesus said, "For where two or three are gathered 
together in my name, there am I in the midst of 
them" (Matthew 18:20 KJV).

When self is at the center of my negotiations, 
Christ is never honored.

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LEFT TURN/RIGHT TURN


HOWARD Hays As I See It

GREG Welborn

 “President Obama is not defending health care. He’s 
defending the health of our democracy. Every American who 
cherishes that should stand with him.” - Thomas L. Friedman


PRESIDENT OBAMA MAY JUST 
BE A DARN GOOD LEADER 
AFTER ALL

 Anybody remember 
Edwin Meese? If you’re 
old enough, you might 
recall his service as 
Attorney General during 
the presidency of Ronald 
Reagan (resigning 
after three years under 
investigation for steering contracts to favored 
corporate interests; Wedtech, Bechtel, etc.). 
What I remember most was his advice in 
response to the issue of high unemployment in 
certain parts of the country; that job-seekers 
in areas of high unemployment should move 
to where it wasn’t so high.

 It brought back memories (including of 
the “Meese Report” on pornography –which 
became a bestseller at porno shops because it 
contained pics and descriptions of stuff that’d 
otherwise be illegal to have on the shelves) 
when I saw him heading the list of over 
forty names signed onto a “Coalition Letter: 
Congress Must Honor Sequester Savings and 
Defund ObamaCare Before It Is Too Late”.

 The signers included representatives of 
groups like FreedomWorks, Tea Party Patriots, 
Traditional Values Coalition, Citizens United 
and Heritage Action for America – groups 
through which billionaires like the Koch 
Brothers and Sheldon Adelson launder funds 
to purchase our government. (Also on the 
list was Erick Erickson of RedState.com, 
who recently dubbed Texas state senator and 
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Wendy 
Davis “Abortion Barbie”.) 

 The document dates to last February, and 
outlines the strategy of using the continuing 
resolution (“CR”) to fund the government as 
a vehicle to kill the Affordable Care Act; a law 
duly enacted under our constitutional system 
of governance, but which they don’t like – and 
with their kind of money, they’re accustomed 
to getting their way.

 The strategy calls for using the CR to limit 
government expenditures to sequester levels 
(which Democrats ultimately agreed to) and 
“defund Obamacare . . . through a series 
of appropriation riders.” There’s a warning 
that with enrollment set to begin October 1 
and implementation January 1, “the window 
of opportunity . . . is closing”. As Heritage 
Action head Michael Needham told the NY 
Times, “This was a fight that we were going 
to pick.”

 The Koch Brothers last year alone spread 
$200 million among groups supporting the 
effort (with $5 million going to the outfit that 
produced the ad of a grotesque Uncle Sam at a 
gynecological exam). Marketers were hired to 
prepare talking points (“Obamacare is a train 
wreck”). Targets were not only Democrats 
and the president, but Republicans not 
deemed “true conservatives” – those hesitant 
to shut down the government at the behest of 
billionaire benefactors.

 Heritage Action targeted 100 House 
Republicans in their districts who declined to 
sign onto a letter from freshman Rep. Mark 
Meadows (R-NC) calling on House Speaker 
John Boehner (R-OH) to commit to their plan 
to “defund” the Affordable Care Act. David 
Wasserman of the Cook Political Report asks, 
“When else in our history has a freshman 
member of Congress from North Carolina 
been able to round up a gang of 80 that’s 
essentially ground the government to a halt?”

 According to the NY Times, there was 
confidence the Supreme Court would declare 
the ACA unconstitutional. When that didn’t 
happen, efforts went into high gear; not just 
to “defund” the ACA, but to turn people 
against it. The Koch Brothers’ Americans 
for Prosperity sunk $5.5 million into TV ads 
hoping, for instance, to convince young adults 
it’s better to go without insurance than to log 
onto the new exchanges to see what’s available 
and affordable.

 Tim Phillips, president of Americans for 
Prosperity, commits to spending “tens of 
millions” on a “long-term . . . multi-front 
effort” to ensure failure of the ACA, including 
efforts to prevent states from expanding 
Medicaid coverage to the “working poor” – 
those making maybe a third above poverty 
level. Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear (D) 
describes these families as fearful of going 
for a check-up, realizing they’re “one bad 
diagnosis away from bankruptcy”. Among 
those trying to block families with $15,000 
annual incomes from getting coverage is 
Koch-backed Freedom Partners, a “business 
league” with minimum annual dues set at 
$100,000.

 The February Ed Meese letter was focused 
on the House CR debate in March. Speaker 
Boehner got the sequestration budget, but 
that was about it. The same thing happened 
in August. This time, they’re not giving up 
– with tea-baggers letting Speaker Boehner 
know his own job’s at stake should he attempt 
to take control of our government away from 
the Koch Brothers and give it back to our 
elected representatives.

 There’s a significant group, however, that’s 
become more vocal over the past few days: 
the Republican Establishment. Donors 
who’ve bankrolled the GOP since Nixon are 
withdrawing support. Republican Senators 
have implored House colleagues to get back to 
the business of governing. Big business, Wall 
Street – even Grover Norquist, have pleaded 
with Republican Reps to listen to them in the 
interest of our nation’s well-being, rather than 
to Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh in the 
interest of their ratings. Private insurers are 
running ads – in support of the ACA.

 Not long ago, “moderate” Republicans 
feared being “primaried”. Now, it’s the reverse 
– tea-baggers are being challenged not just 
by Democrats but by grown-ups within 
their own party who fear loss of the House 
in next year’s mid-terms. In 24 “vulnerable” 
Republican districts surveyed by Public 
Policy Polling last week, 17 would now go for 
a Democratic challenger. Four went for the 
Republican incumbent, until informed their 
representative backed the shutdown – and 
then they switched to the Democrat. Voters 
supported a shutdown-backing incumbent in 
only three of the 24 districts. (A loss of 17 
seats would give Democrats control of the 
House.)

 The choice is simple: Tea-baggers warn 
Speaker Boehner to keep a “clean” continuing 
resolution from coming to the House floor, 
in deference to their billionaire benefactors 
intent on killing the ACA. President Obama’s 
message to Speaker Boehner is, “Let them 
vote.” On that message, “Every American 
who cherishes (our democracy) should stand 
with him.” 

 There are many on the right who claim 
that the present political stalemate, with 
the government in furlough mode and 
the country knocking on the door of 
default, demonstrates President Obama’s 
profound weakness –failure, some would 
say – in leadership. Unfortunately, I think 
the criticism misses the mark entirely. I 
believe the President actually is leading, 
and it may just turn out that we’ll end up 
exactly where he wants us to go.

 Leadership by definition is attached to a 
goal, a purpose and a group. Leaders lead 
people to some articulated destination for 
some purpose. It’s not simply accidental 
who follows and where they all end up. 
Americans generally like their country 
the way it is and believe that extremist 
politicians on both the left and right 
eventually get marginalized or forced 
to move to the center to accommodate 
the many varied opinions in the public 
square. Almost all presidents, after all, 
have moved to the center during their 
presidencies.

 Doing this, and getting Representatives 
and Senators from both parties to 
go along, is the implicit definition of 
leadership we use. President Obama is 
clearly not doing this – nor is he really 
making an effort. This is the basis on 
which so many conservatives, and perhaps 
now even some independents, are judging 
him a poor leader. He’s not leading in the 
direction they’re assuming that he, like 
past presidents, wants to go.

 But what if this President believes the 
country should be a left-leaning nation? 
What if he doesn’t believe we should 
accept the mushy, moderate middle? 
What if the President believes that people 
can be retrained, re-educated, if you will, 
by experience to change their opinion 
and embrace a new vision? The answers 
to those questions bear heavily on how 
we judge his leadership. If the President’s 
goal is to transform America into a leftist 
country along the lines of many of the 
socialist-leaning nations in Europe, he 
may very well be leading in the true sense 
of that word. The fact that many of us 
won’t like it is not part of the definition 
of leadership.

 After all, this is the candidate who, 
before the 2008 election told a crowd of 
supporters, “we are five days away from 
fundamentally transforming the United 
States of America.” Many conservatives, 
independents, and a good number 
of Democrats all assumed it was just 
campaign bluster. Some of us, myself 
included, weren’t so fast to jump to that 
comforting conclusion. We looked at 
the brief, but consistent, history of State 
Senator and then U.S. Senator Obama 
and saw the potential election of the most 
left-leaning politician to ever seek the 
presidency. 

 His policy goals since election have 
echoed and reinforced that observation. In 
the confines of this short article I’ll simply 
point to his insistence that transforming 
healthcare without soliciting a single 
Republican 
vote of support 
at a time 
when almost 
every observer 
said fixing 
the economy 
should be the 
primary goal. Remember, the financial 
crisis was the “crisis not to be wasted”. It 
wasn’t the crisis to be fixed.

 How the President is handling the 
current stalemate is further evidence. 
If the goal is to break the back of the 
Republicans, receive an unfettered 
mandate to increase spending and 
borrowing without constraint, keep the 
Democratic caucus unified, and anger 
average Americans to the point where 
they pressure their representatives to cave, 
then we’ll have to see whether those things 
occur before determining how good or 
bad a leader President Obama is.

 The ultimate definition of leadership 
is success or failure to achieve the 
desired goal. It’s that simple. Clearly, 
the President believes in his vision, as 
well as believing that Americans can be 
motivated to lean on their representatives 
and that Republicans specifically will cave. 
How else to explain the following:

 Funding for cancer trials was 
discontinued, funding to social security 
was reduced to $171 million, and funding 
to all of the Health And Human Services 
Department was reduced to $417 million, 
while two years’ worth of funding for NPR 
and PBS ($445 million) was paid. Benefit 
payments to families of fallen soldiers 
were eliminated. A jogger at Valley Forge 
was confronted by two armed rangers 
who issued a $100 ticket for running on 
an open path, and an unmanned parking 
lot near Mt. Rushmore was sealed off so 
tourists couldn’t stop to take pictures. 
Meanwhile, the “closed” national mall was 
opened to an immigration rally. The list 
goes on, but clearly pain is being purposely 
inflicted on as many average Americans 
as possible while the President’s core 
constituencies are accommodated. As 
if the circumstantial evidence weren’t 
enough, the President himself told an 
interviewer that he shouldn’t have to offer 
anything in the negotiations. The other 
side’s total surrender is apparently the 
only acceptable outcome.

 I have no idea as to how this will all 
turn out, but I do know that if Americans 
succumb, if the Republicans cave, if the 
Democrats remain united, and if this 
country lurches sharply to the left (despite 
a decidedly 50%/50% national election), 
then the President will have proved 
himself to be a pretty darn good leader. 

About the author: Gregory J. Welborn 
is a freelance writer and has spoken to 
several civic and religious organizations 
on cultural and moral issues. He lives in 
the Los Angeles area with his wife and 3 
children and is active in the community. 
He can be reached gregwelborn2@gmail.
com 

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