On Sex, Politics and Religion

“Sex, Politics and Religion”

Ladies and gentlemen:
At Club Manipulation
The gut feels selfish

Do good intentions
Lay twisting in a hot bed-
Pandora's Dancefloor?

My friend Clare asked me what I meant by this. I said:

It is basically saying that there may be good intentions behind the political institution, but those intentions have gotten us nowhere. Our government is still as corrupt and unprofessional as it ever was, but now at least we have a corrupt and unprofessional media watching their every move. Take the democrats- they want big government because they want to support the welfare system and fight poverty with tax dollars. Good intentions: check. How is our welfare system? How is our social security system? How is our healthcare system? All these institutions are in dire need of reform. Even raising the minumum wage increases unemployment by making the waiter do the dishes instead of hiring a waiter and a dishwasher, because now with the minimum wage up, a dishwasher, who deserves less money than a waiter in the first place, cannot be compensated due to the amount of money the company can afford to spend on its staff. Republicans ask- why does the government have to spend our tax money on social programs? That should be the job of individuals, of churches, of communities. And there a lot of good NGO's (Non-Governmental Organizations) that address the same issues as Democrats but just with their own money.
Republicans want small government. Good intentions: Check. But most republicans, in addition to being so-called fiscal conservatives, are social conservatives who try to protect the status quo. You see the problem here- blacks, women, gays, immigrants, young people- they all get the short end of the stick while old rich white men heading corporations profit from a Republican government. They also profit from Democrats, who recieve just as much campaign funding from Republicans (especially Hillary), and therefore are indebted to corporations. They have strings attached. Republicans especially because they fund the warfare system. There is a huge military-industrial complex with 772 U.S. military bases worldwide and private companies that profiteer from war such as Lockheed Martin, and the infamous Halliburton and Blackwater, the latter of which is especially dangerous because they act above the law and get away with terrible murders, according to Iraqui witnesses and police, and one alleged rape of a female solider of fortune (as Blackwater is a mercenary group and not just ordinary soliders). Basically, these companies need constant US military intervention across the globe to stay in business (as opposed to using the military only for defense), and American corporations such as Exxon and McDonalds profits every time we make "the world safe for democracy" because they get a share from the new resources in the land. Also, a lot of Republicans are homophobic and against a woman's right to choose, which makes them a liability into actually meddling with the Constitution. Just last year, a Marriage Amendment was proposed to be added to the sacred Constitution because Karl Rove tried to polarize America at election time to get Americans to support his brand of so called value-based initiatives. Democrats are just as guilty of polarizing America, too, like how Hillary got nasty with Obama over race and other issues.
Things like the war on drugs, the war on terror, the war on poverty; all these things our tax dollars go to are shams. Social Security is the biggest sham of all, Clare, because our generation is paying for the Baby Boomer's retirement but the system will fail. "Today, the Social Security system is broke and broken. Those in the system are seeing their benefits dwindle due to higher taxes, increasing inflation, and irresponsible public spending." Ron Paul predicts that you and I won't live to see a social security system that supports us. We bear the burden of our parents, but no one will bear our burden. And inflation will make all the money we save for retirement dwindle. Liberatarians like Ron Paul know how to fix the economy- by setting a gold standard. He's an expert on the economy.
But all we have are Republicans and Democrats, both emphasizing good intentions, but both fail. When they try to solve our problems, they open Pandora's Box and a whole bunch of new problems come out of it. We fight poverty but we can't control people's minds, so we can never end poverty. All the issues can be reduced to how individuals like you and me are affected by what our environment tells us to believe, and how we interpret it. Hate and stupidity and fear spread from parent to child, and the school systems, while a lot are good, are terrible in inner cities where children need teachers to be the voice of reason when their home and communities are in peril. We can't tell people how to raise their children, so we can't end bad things for good. The source of all the evil and hate goes back generations and generations, to the dawn of man. That's Pandora's Box. We don't realize we're all fighting for the same values but approaching it with different means and getting hung up on and invested in those means so that we lose our awareness of how our actions have a ripple effect that effect the whole world. We are confused by this separation: right wing or left wing, Christian or atheist, religion or science, pro-choice or pro-life; our self-esteem is extremely too high or too low, and lack of faith in everything is prevalent on either side. Pandora's Box also asks "how can you have the good without the bad?" "Is there ever going to be Heaven on Earth? Do we need to do something to make it occur?" and says things like "nobody's right if everybody's wrong" in a sarcastic tone.
The way society twists our resources to worship a false trinity of Time, Money and Self instead of God is directly responsible for manipulating the masses who don't give a damn about politics or who are conditioned and brainwashed to follow certain ignorant extremists ideologies. We are told to go with our gut, which means follow intuition over reason. But we condition our gut to be selfish and irresponsible. We vote for leaders without looking into them, and we end up going into a war Bush had planned before he was president. We buy things without looking into the corporations and end up supporting slave labor. We eat bad food, watch bad TV, disrespect our bodies and minds and it's no wonder our generation of music sucks- the gangsta rappers have little faith and talk about dumb, ignorant, materialistic things while alternative rockers whine about not getting what they want and whine about politics and religion without actually doing anything about it.
Things like Sex, Politics and Religion scare people away because of what society has done with them. And it's your fault and my fault and all our faults for letting them. We just have to do something about it. Being responsible American citizens and re-directing our country from being a modern day Rome or Babylon, participating in the divine, respecting ourselves, loving, fighting to understand and be true to ourselves, as well as others and the earth; it is all we have to do. We must unlearn what we have learned to actually try to understand what we fear. And if we're too busy in our fast-paced lives to do things on our own terms, at least we should seek knowledgeable people and listen to what they have to say if it is too overwhelming to handle by ourselves. www.ronpaul2008.com, Bono, Bill Gates, Neale Donald Walsch, Ram Dass, Gerhart Niemeyer and Eric Voegelin are all relatively modern spiritualists, thinkers and ideas such as www.bahai.org and www.radicallyinclusive.com are all great relatively modern sources of the eternal Gospel that spreads goodwill and fights for peace on earth.

Gerhart Niemeyer and Eric Voegelin
Social Security:
http://www.time.com/time/columnist/frank/article/0,9565,1032063,00.html
http://www.ronpaul2008.com/issues/social-security/
http://thinkprogress.org/2006/02/01/sotu-social-security/
http://www.brookings.edu/papers/2007/0921governance_galston.aspx
http://prisonplanet.com/articles/january2008/012108_giuliani_dropout.htm
http://mediamonarchy.blogspot.com/2008/01/ron-paul-giuliani-dropout-federal.html

By the way, you don't have to feel dumb for asking me. I mean, you got to figure words like "sex" "politics" "religion" infer a divided set of views. Those are the things that polarize human beings. But if we could come up with a shared set of values that associate words like "sex" "politics" and "religion" with "love" "peace" "understanding" "truth" "beauty" and "progress" instead of "manipulation" and "selfish", the world would be a better place. It is worth fighting for because they are the defining issues of existence.

The latter part of the poem is just me questioning whether we can never get to the heart of the matter and solve these problems. I never give an answer in the poem, it is up for the individual reader to decide. If you decide "yes, we can solve these issues," than I would like to see you in person and high-five you. But if you decide "no, it's impossible, we shouldn't even try," then I would love to hear why you think so.

By the way, my blog, http://ageofmurdanstorm.blogspot.com is addressing these issues in many articles I have written, and I would love your feedback if you are interested. I like debates and constructive criticism. I also like general applaud for certain ideas to see which ones hit home the most with people. And if you know of any great leaders fighting for what I'm fighting for, which is what good people everywhere are fighting for, please let me know their names. And if you hear any good quotes, whether they are funny or insightful, then I can add them to my Truth of the Week article and I'll credit you with discovering the quote. And if you've actually read everything I've written you then than I praise you for being patient and kind enough to get this far. Thanks and have a great day!

- Shep