Our Modern Political History.

Last night I rented both Milk and W. on iTunes. Now, as expected, Milk was really an amazing film and W. did underwhelm in many regards. However, they both focused on an America I like to kid myself does not exist. A country whose government spends so much time and energy on war and bigotry in the name of our values, we have come to simply be accustomed to such things.

Whereas I want to believe most citizens would say they honestly believe in providing human rights to everyone and hope for peace, can this be true if we live in a country where they regularly legislate hatred and march to war with the willing complicity of the majority? What if we spent the same time and energy providing access to information and education? Would our citizens allow their values to be distorted by their leaders if they were trained in critical thinking and knew how to recognize a reasoned argument?

Instead, we live in a country where evidence is rejected and ignored if it challenges something we are told to believe. Rather than seeking multiple sources of information, gathering as many facts as possible, making a reasoned decision and possibly adjusting your beliefs, we are actually taught standing firm and willingly remaining ignorant is somehow more noble. It was quite appauling to learn that one of the strongest supporters of both promoting discrimmination against homosexuals, as well as actively pursuing them being banned from public service in education or government was originally from Oklahoma. It made me sad my home state could produce someone with such backwards ideas, who would not look at the data, assess the situation and allow the possibility that something different is not necessarily a threat to their way of life, faith or family.

The way we managed Iraq was due to a similar reasoning. It relies on the flawed assumption and that everyone wants and should want the same way of life. Rather than learning about the region, assessing the risks, knowing the culture and figuring out how to successfully rebuild the country, we just assumed that freedom and democracy would somehow make everything work. We worry greatly about Islamic extremists in this country, while somehow rejecting the idea that extremism in any form can be dangerous. Meanwhile, nationalist and religious extremists take stances in our country we could find equally reprehensible. Let us not forget that Christianity itself brought about the Dark Ages and the Crusades, not to mention many and varied lesser acts of ignorance, hypocrisy and bloodshed even today.

There is such a thing as cultural evolution, with which in our country we should be rather familiar. Ideas, freedoms and equal rights do not come immediately from an open society, but rather manifest themselves slowly as those brave dissenters convince their families, friends, neighbors and co-workers that something is unjust. Part of this journey comes from separating out pieces of religious texts that encourage bigotry as things written by fallible men centuries in the past, who were unaware of any real notion of equality as we know it today. However, as people consider the ideas and people around them, they can realize something they had been taught to believe may be flawed and slowly change their minds. That is real progress. We see people accept the messages of peace, love and generosity in religion, while rejecting those of ignorance, hate and revenge. The Christianity most of us like to think about only teaches humility, generosity, kindness and simplicity. To be honest, our prosperity makes that a luxury, which through economic advancement and opening a dialogue, I do believe we could help other faiths to do the same on a large scale. However, all those messages of hate and ignorance are still there, and strict interpretations of religious texts will always hinder progress societally, scientifically, philosophically and personally.

This country has seen unbelievable progress because our founders despite being largely racist, sexist, pompous, old white men believed in allowing, even encouraging, open dissent. They realized that sometimes society and government will have it wrong, and the people need to be able to say so, even if it starts with only a few willing to speak loudly enough to be heard.