My Election Day (after) post

Months of agonizing over my vote, a historic election, global hysteria, and this is all I can come up with? 

Yup. 

Saw this online yesterday and it cracked me up.  Still does.  

Voter's Agony

Hi. My name is Nate, and I have Voter's Agony.

This is my first election living abroad, which means I have less time to procrastinate making my decision because we have to get our absentee ballots returned soon. I payed more close attention to each party national convention than I ever have before. Just now I spent the last hour or so online trying to find anything to help me find clarity on this election. It seems to me that this is such a polarized election that I must be one of the few who genuinely am not sure what to do. More than anything, this is due to the fact that I am growing increasingly weary with, and wary of, both political parties, and I really don't expect much significant change from either candidate, regardless of what they say and promise now. In the end, each ends up being the tool of their party - which leads me to believe nothing will change. One party will be in control, and blamed for everything under the sun by the party out of control. The party that is out of control will promise the moon, and besides, anyone could do a better job of governing than the current party. It's as predictable as it seems useless.

I was struck by some various web pages designed to 'help' the undecided voter and how everything is defined in terms of 'positions'. Who you vote for should be based on what position you have on various issues, and you should vote for the guy who has the most similar stances. Or something like that. Anyhow - this is what irks me - why does it come down to positions? What ever happened to ideas? No matter how much either candidate tries to present himself as an agent of change, or a maverick, all I see is the same old tired republican vs. democrat battle. It sure seems to me that anymore, candidates decide what positions to take on an issue based on their party, or even worse, because it's opposite of what the other party is for. It seems to me there is far too little room for nuanced thinking, and truly new ideas. I think we as a nation face a host of very serious issues that threaten us. But I can't possibly believe that they all will be solved with either/or solutions.

Anyhow - I guess this is more rant than thoughtful post, but clearly I am concerned about the future of our country, and I am none too confident in either party right now to make much significant change. If anything, let this be a reminder for us all to take this freedom seriously, to pray hard over our decisions, and pray even harder for whoever happens to win, because regardless of who wins, we have a mountain of serious problems to address.

Christians and Politics

Here is an interesting reminder of how we can engage in politics without losing our soul. I think #10 was the reminder I needed most as I can feel pretty frustrated with politics at times.

This post was my introduction to a blog that seems to be pretty interesting overall. I'm not crazy about the name, but the author of smartchristian.com definitely has some interesting things to say.

Politically Disaffected

While I am often quite interested in following politics, I am increasingly finding myself more and more removed from feeling connected. I definitely feel a sense of being disaffected by the state of our nation and the state of our politics.

A friend pointed out this organization called GOOOH!, which (not so) cleverly is an acronym for the phrase above. What is GOOH? They define themselves thus: "A non-partisan plan to evict the politicians from the U.S. House of Representatives." I could copy more of their ideas here, but will save space by giving you this link to their website. In addition to being intrigued, I was also somehow entertained by reading through their site a bit.

I am not at this point ready to participate or suggest others join. However, the concept was interesting enough that I thought it worth pointing it out to others. I have no idea if this is THE answer, or even AN answer - but I must admit it's nice to see some people trying to take action with the intent on making an impacting change for what they think is the better of the nation.