It couldn't be more ironic as well as appropriate that I am writing this on election day, where so many confusing issues lie on the table, covered by a biased media and promoted by mud-slinging canidates (who "approve this message"). With such loud and divergent voices presenting their angle as the truth, how do you differentiate propaganda from the truth? Is anything absolute?
Just yesterday I felt absolutely impassioned to comment on a few posts concerning this whole Sara Palinism nonsense that "Obama hates stay at home moms." I'm convinced, because I asked, that most of the people who seemed outraged by this concept didn't listen or read the entirety of his speech. The right-wing extreme, far too willing to jump on any perceived flaw in this American president, often without checking facts, took President Obama's statement, That's (stay at home motherhood) not a choice we want Americans to make totally out of context and lambasted him as anti-SHM without reading the entirety of his speech. OR just thinking through it. I mean, do we REALLY think Obama hates SHM so much that he went out of his way on a cool, October day in Rhode Island to bash moms? Or could there possibly be something he was saying about stay at home motherhood that affects us women, who by the way, make up more than half of the American workforce?
What Obama was actually talking about was Moms, leaving the workplace to stay home with the kids, which then leaves her earning a lower wage for the rest of her life as a result. THAT'S not a CHOICE we want Americans to make because we don't offer adequate preschools, childcare options or appropriate paid leave. The context was all about how we as a society can give women more choices beyond to stay home or not stay home, without the emotional and financial pressure and hardship that comes with having babies in America. This administration believes women shouldn't be forced out of the workforce because they have babies; that women shouldn't have to choose between babies or a career.
Most women I know agree with the President on this, on both sides of the political fence.
But a lot of moms were raging yesterday about this (misconstrued) notion that Obama hates them.
Why? Because they hate Obama and someone told them he said this. Blind outrage. Context be damned. It's what they wanted to hear and it's called confirmation bias.
It reminds me of a quote in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, Indeed it is a strange-disposed time; But men may construe things after their fashion, clean from the purpose of the things themselves. (I.III.33-35) We the people can be crazy. Because we want to hear what we want to hear, whether or not it's rational. We believe lies because it's easier than reading a fact that undermines our preexisting beliefs. We see what we want to see and ignore what we don't want to deal with. We construe whatever we need to feel empowered that day, to feel safe and in control.
Like President Andrew Shepard said in The American President, People don't drink the sand because they're thirsty. They drink the sand because they don't know the difference.
I guess my question today is, do we know the difference? How do we know we aren't drinking water but rather sand when history has so often proven us capable of deluding ourselves?
Back in the 1800's when slavery was legal and practiced by "God-fearing" people, their truth was that God had ordained and approved slavery. They took one or two verses from the Bible, out of context, in order to prove their "rightness." German citizens during the Nazi Regime, living a mile or less from Auschwitz, denied their knowledge of the Holocaust, dismissing Nazi words as just rhetoric and the smell of rotting corpses or crematoria as the cost of war. Churches divide and attack one another over the issue of homosexuality, conveniently ignoring other Levitical law. Left and Right wing political parties sell themselves with propaganda and prey on public emotion, and the American public unthinkingly reposts and retweets.
We believe what we want to believe.
I've mentioned this a few times. The past 15 months (and counting) have been very, very difficult for me. One of the tragic, beautiful, frightening and necessary reasons behind this difficulty is the confrontation between what I desired to be truth and actual reality. Stepping outside of the safety of my construed political, relational world and faith views has shaken the foundation of my life. I know why people believe what they want to believe. It's so much easier to drink the sand and pretend it's water. Discernment takes effort, research, thought, tears, work, pain and constant intentionality. It takes flexibility. And the real kicker is, we never get there fully. The constant seeking is exhausting.
So is it worth it?
I think once you realize you've been drinking sand, it's hard to keep forcing the mirage. Accepting the complexity of reality takes time. The questioning begins - about why we ever construed this and that the ways in which we did in the first place. It's a lot of self-work to un-believe. And it takes tons of stamina to stay unbuilt and remain fluid, not believing what we WANT to believe but believing discerned, researched, thought-over, meditated in, cared-for, sensical and responsible truth.
Is it worth it? Yes, I think it is. Our world, our country, our communities, our friends and families and marriages and children deserve the outcome of seeking and the humility of refraining from drinking anything less than real water. This is the gift of pursued truth, a witness to our belief in the meaning and dignity of justice and accountability and progress. Today let's stop sticking our heads in the sand and saying it's water. Let's face the often scary desert of life and politics and finances and relationships and search for pure-cold-real water, lest we return to the sad, toxic mirage and drink the sand.
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