So true.

Politicians don’t value the actual impact of speech, only the political impact of it. That’s, of course, why they, if you’ll excuse the term, lie and contradict themselves without any real compulsion — no sense of guilt at all.

It’s not, “Was what I said consistent with reality and my values?” It’s, “Was what I said politically viable, functional? Did it work?”

It’s also why they can say, of an opponent or an opponent’s position, “It’s Armageddon, the end of our country, the sky will fall, our women will be raped and our children will be enslaved!” and then become surprise that someone acts as if what they said was fact. Because they, of course, knew they were making political statements, not the same as actual observations. And political statements don’t count.

Of course, then there’s the question: do they, themselves, believe what they say?

This falls into what my friends at the ad agency might call breathing your own exhaust. Look at black and call it white long enough and it does begin to look a bit whitish to you.

So now the politician can add “sincerity” to his or her defense. You can see it in their eyes, “I didn’t really mean to actually assault someone, I siiiiincerely didn’t.”

To be fair, all of the above applies well beyond the political world. But, in these days right after the passage of healthcare legislation, it seems particularly applicable.

Stop. Breath. Think. Please.

I watch a lot of television, always have.

I remember — I think I was in seventh grade — when we rented a furnished house in Des Moines for a year, and it had a TV. At that point there was one station that originated at Iowa State, in Ames. It was on the air from about 6 am to midnight. Still, I was fascinated.

Like most viewers these days, I seldom just turn on the TV and let it run. I can choose and change channels, and I do. And yes, me too, I’m often online when the TV is on.

But, we’ve been on vacation this week and enjoying, maybe most of all, the wonderful freedom to rise when we want, go when we want and not go when we want — it’s been so refreshingly liberating to be totally free of demands.

One part of that has been switching on the Today Show out of NYC to catch morning news and then just letting it run while we’re rising slowly and hanging out. And it’s just incredible to me how empty it is. “Sound and fury signifying nothing.” The basic rules seem to be: lean forward, smile, don’t breath, don’t stop, keep the energy up so no notices how mindless it all is.

Turn on your TV some morning and look for one human being or one human interchange and you won’t find it. I know that’s not news, but it’s shocking to me how exhausting it is.

When I first got into advertising, I was invited to be on a panel at the local University’s Journalism Department's alumnae meeting. I was asked because I was a recent, mid-life career changer. The other three panel members were local TV personalities. It amazed me the speed at which they responded to questions — no-dead-air had become their normal way of life. They were “on” whether they had anything to say or not. In fact, the content was unimportant, only the “bright” presentation.

Save me, please.

Cant — there’s a great old word.

Although I’m a news junky, I go through periods of absolute, total overload, when I’ve simply had enough, especially of the constant breathlessness of news people and the mindless repetition of political comment.

I’m in one of those periods right now. (I’m not blogging very much.) I still check in with my favorites from time to time, but I’m skimming rather than reading.

Have noticed, you don’t have to read much to get what’s going on?

I was thinking about this yesterday. I was reading David Brooks in the New York Times who, by the way, usually makes an attempt to say something thoughtful. In his column “Getting Obama Right” — I liked his description of the situation — he was talking about “information cocoons,” those media/comment locations where true believers, right or left, can go and live full time in their own reality.

Now, I’m as normal as anyone else; I really enjoy writers who are smart enough to agree with me.

But when skimming, I’ve developed a practice that saves time. It’s sort of a language filter I call rant-dar. Most of the time it takes only a few phrases to notice that all Christians are stupid or Obama is a fascist and then you know you’re in for more ya-da, ya-da, ya-da.

So I scan a sentence or two and when I spot the mindless party line, either right or left, I just quit reading.

It works pretty well. Sometimes it even helps you find some thought — though not always because, in the scramble to fill hours of airtime and the Internet palaver, there’s not a ton of fresh thought out there. It’s pretty much the same mindless cant passed around like overripe fruit.

Cant. Now there’s a great old word. I checked the dictionary. It says: insincere, especially conventional expressions of enthusiasm for high ideals, goodness or piety.

Wow, that captures a lot our political and media landscape.

You don't got to be careful all the time.

I was listening to some fiction from the New Yorker magazine on my way to work this morning. (I drive about 45 minutes each way and have taken to listening to downloaded audio books and podcasts during that time — I now actually look forward to it.)

In this morning’s story, one of the characters overheard a healing conversation between his wife and daughter and reported that, “Suddenly, it felt like the weight of the world had slipped off my shoulders, and I didn’t even know I was carrying it.”

It’s a feeling I recognize.

You know how you can have one of those difficult-to-shake colds for so long that you lose track of how long you've had it or even how sick you've been until suddenly, one day, you feel better.

It takes a good moment to make you realize how normal it had become to feel bad.

The same thing happens to me all the time on a spiritual and psychological level. Something happens. I feel happy or peaceful or relieved or enriched. And only then do I notice I that I haven’t felt that integrated and whole, that happy, for quite a while.

The corollary is the thought that my happiness may just … maybe … possibly be more open to choice than I realize — although, even as I write that, I hate the over-simplification of it.

This morning just reminded me of a deep streak of carefulness in me. I hold my breath without noticing. I do it a lot — until I stop.

It’s refreshing to be reminded, as I was by that line in the story, that I don’t have to be careful all the time. And when that happens there’s a weight-of-world-slipping-away experience. It feels good.

Courage? Not so much.

The head guy from Toyota went before a congressional committee yesterday and NPR predicted that he would, “… face some extremely hostile questions.” Suprise, suprise.

While public safety is important, I’m guessing this was just one more of those discouraging spectacles we expect from congress. They get hold of someone who is momentarily in the media spotlight then put them in front of their committee so members can act righteous for the cameras.

When I was young, I read a book supposedly written by President John F Kennedy entitled "Profiles in Courage." (A Pulitzer Prize winner, most of the book was reportedly written by JFK speechwriter Ted Sorenson. JFK wasn’t known for being either a writer or an intellectual).

I remember being impressed with the stories of politicians making decisions that placed the common good above their own political futures. Possible? I don’t know. I’d have to reread it and do a little fact checking. The name that sticks in my head is Thomas Hart Benton, Missouri Senator, 1821 to 1851, who voted against his party when he opposed the extension of slavery into the territories before the Civil War.

It’s ironic but typical that a book championing political courage would be faked to enhance a politician’s career.

Yesterday, one of the NY Times editorialists was pointing out the obvious, that political courage is in short supply in Washington right now.

That’s not news. It’s just that, on some days, it’s a real head-shaker.

They are us

Whatever side of the gay marriage issue you’re on, it’s clear that one of prime movers of public opinion has been more and more people discovering that they know, are related to, work with, belong to groups with, etc. gay and lesbian people.

I’m just wondering if the same tug will be felt in the economic debate. In the past, it’s been easy for some of us to think of people who face bankruptcy or loose their homes to over-borrowing as “the great unwashed” — as Dickens might have described them, "the undeserving." You know, “They made their beds, now let them lay in them.”

Most of us can remember how effectively Ronald Regan used the image of the welfare queen, having babies just to get her hands on more government cash. And, of course, I could easily sail along not knowing anyone on welfare. Or at least I didn’t think I knew anyone.

But yesterday I found out some of my good friends, really good, highly responsible folks, will probably loose their home. And as hard as it was for them to tell me about it, I’m guessing I know quite a few others facing the same situation who aren’t sharing that news.

And honesty insists I share the fact that our family faced that situation and were fortunate to narrowly avoid it at one point in our lives.

When many of us found out we knew homosexuals, it changed things. Will it change any attitudes when we begin to realize that all of us know someone badly injured in the current downturn? I hope so.

On not acting on principle alone

There is general agreement that true religion or ethics or whatever you want to call it is not just what you say, or say you believe. It’s what you do. Belief is behavior. Because what you do shows what you really believe, whereas we can talk ourselves around anything. I often do.

Now comes another idea that may not be as agreeable to some: true religion is not just what you do, it’s the impact of what you do. For instance, I may do what everyone agrees is the right thing (of course, there’s nothing everyone agrees on), but if the result of that acclaimed right action is violence, I’ve probably acted wrongly.

In other words, when you act on principle and principle alone, without weighing the impact of that action, you have not acted ethically.

I think there’s a dynamic continuum that can be described here. On the one extreme is the totally principled act, which evolves into legalism. And on the other end is a totally contextual act, which evolves into lawlessness. We live, work, play, eat, breath and sleep on this continuum. And, in my opinion, the one sure way to act unethically is to live on either end of the continuum because, whichever end you choose, you’re not honestly taking responsibility for the impact of your behavior in real life and on real people.

It’s not just what you believe or say you believe, it’s what you do. And it’s not just what you do, it taking responsibility for the on-the-ground, real-life impact of what you do that makes you an ethical person.

What’s he talking about?!

It comes down to this: act purely and solely on principles, principles of any kind, and your principles become inhumane and need reexamination.

Heavy duty, huh?

I'm comfortable with their discomfort.

A few weeks ago, I was at a workshop about interacting with people with differing values than your own, an interesting five-staged approach that I found quite insightful — lots of good stuff.

One tangential idea that jumped out at me was this: “It's time to start choosing who you want to make uncomfortable.”

Context: our church recently became an “open and welcoming congregation.” That’s code for going overt on the “gays are indeed real-and-alright people and welcome here” thing. It was sort of a big deal, not because we had a lot of people upset with that decision, rather because we had a few of them. And there is an imbedded value at church that says, “We don’t want to make anyone uncomfortable.”

Interestingly, in the five-stages system at the workshop, both my church and I fell right where I expected us to be. Without getting into the system, we’re there with most wishy washy liberals — we love everyone in theory, but do very little about it in practice except give money.

The workshop leader pointed out that this don’t-want-to-make-anyone-uncomfortable thing is typical of our stage. The problem is this: the people we don’t want to make uncomfortable are the people in our circle. We’re ignoring the fact that, in making that decision we’ve also decided it’s ok with us that people outside our circle, in this case gay and lesbian people, stay uncomfortable.

To put it another way, every decision we make makes someone uncomfortable. Maybe it’s time to have an overt discussion about that rather than make a covert decision for “my group.”

In the case of the gay-support decision at church then, I’ve decided that I’d rather make those people who are uncomfortable with homosexuals uncomfortable than make homosexuals uncomfortable.

Make sense to me.

Fear isn't an answer

You don't have to be religious to understand the statement: "Perfect love casts out fear."

Now, you can find all sorts of problems with that, like, for instance, what in the world is perfect love? I'm not sure I've ever seen it. What we all have seen is someone who, when they found what they thought was something like love, cast aside not only their fear, but most of their good sense as well. (I think that's why they call it "falling in love." It's like other stuff you can fall into.)

Put all that stuff aside for a minute. I just want to say that, from my perspective, the reverse of the perfect love statement is even more obviously true: pure fear casts out love.

Maslow's famous hierarchy of needs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs) puts survival needs at the bottom of the pyramid and the more esoteric needs, like love and fulfillment, at the top, which means when you're afraid there's not much energy left for thinking charitably.

I mention all this because a major chuck of the political world right now is busy selling fear. That's always present somewhere in politics. It's a strategy embraced most frequently on the extreme left and extreme right. But right now, a major swath of our political leadership is openly affirming that approach. And "be afraid, be very afraid" sells well when you've just lost your job or savings or health coverage. Ironically, it's right now, when our fears our highest that we need the humane values--a lot of faith, love and understanding-- the very most.

There goes the my mob--rats!

Talking about the shifting mood of the nation between inauguration day, a year ago, and today, I find it strangely and sadly reassuring to remember what is meant by "mob rule."

Politics is a mob game; it’s simply about moving the right number of people from the other side to your side to stay in power. And it doesn’t much matter how your do it. The mob is emotional, not rational. What moves them often makes no sense. In fact the mob often votes against its' own best interests — whether they notice that or not is another matter — just because it makes them feel good.

Barrack Obama talked about that yesterday, responding to the Massachusetts’ senatorial outcome. The President pointed out that Scott Brown was elected for the same reason he was elected: people, in general, are not happy and want things to change. (Darn that Obama, he’s way too rational.)

Which leads to another point: When the mob moves to our side, we say, “The momentum of this great nation is finally moving in the right direction” — we invest the mob with insight. When the mob votes against our interests, we say, “The uniformed mob mentality has taken over.”

A digressive corollary: spending my entire life in various churches and nonprofit organizations, I’ve noticed how the voices of negative people have impact only when the organization loses momentum. When things are rolling along or feel like they're rolling, many a leaders' weaknesses will be overlooked. When things aren't rolling, the color of the minister’s socks is as likely to upset some folks as much as the content of the sermons. And they'll be very loud about it.

Of course, the same is true of leadership in any office or factory. In this case, I’m part of the mob.

How is all this reassuring? It lowers my expectations, makes me less upset when life is messy. Which it is right now. Very messy.