Heart and Wisdom: Thoughts From My Grandmother

I talked with my grandmother for several hours tonight, touching on many subjects.

Money quotes: “Too many people want God to be theirs, instead of being God’s.”

“More and more, I have stopped mentioning all the little details in prayer. I just pray that the Lord will fill up our family so full of His love—like a cup that will overflow if one more drop is added—so there is no room for anything else bad. The love of God makes no room for our bad stuff.”

My grandfather (D-daddy, as he is known to the family and a few outsiders) has the beginning stages of Parkinson’s, three microphones in each ear, a bad back, and prior cornea surgery. My grandmother (Mom-mom) is spunky, outspoken and thoroughly able to complete any task as long as it falls beneath the level of a triathlon. She has the particular gift of hospitality. Seriously, even a PB&J snack looks as if it was prepared for a king. And Thanksgiving? I’ll just say her meals are the only ones I know of that get five-star critics to make house calls. Visiting them was like going on a progressive dinner tour of Zagat’s.

My grandparents still love each other dearly. After mealtime prayers, D-daddy always pulls Mom-mom’s hand close, kisses it, and then waits for her eyes to meet his and for her to feel how his heart feels toward her. Always. Even considering the effects of Parkinson’s.

My grandmother related this story to me. One evening after dinner, she sat down at the table and announced to my grandfather that she would like some pie. The pie was right behind her on the counter, so she was fully able to get it herself. Grinning from ear to ear, my grandfather got up, made her some decaf coffee and brought her the dessert—as if he was the most chivalric knight in shining armor from age-old enchanted stories. He knew she still wanted him to be her hero.

Hedging Bets

Let’s say John McCain gets the nomination. His best bet is probably to get Huckabee as his VP to almost guarantee pulling in the evangelical nomination. If it’s the other way around with Huckabee as president, I would still say the same. Huckabee needs someone with strong foreign policy experience, and just experience in general. [Sorry, but at this point I just can’t see Romney being a viable . . . anything.] McCain is seen as a problem by the republicans. Gee, maybe it’s because when they had the democrats in a tight spot and were about to make a killer deal, he stepped in the middle and fouled it all up. Several times.

For democrats, the ultimate ticket just may be an Obama–Clinton clincher. I say Obama first because he is the visionary, while Billary has the experience and clout on the Hill to line up all the ducks in a filibuster row. They just have to get over their exploded egos and the tension that has built up over the past almost-year.

Of that ticket, the real problem is Billary. Even though she’s got connections, you’re just sure you can’t trust her. She’s like old toothpaste with new packaging; promising fresh and clean, but your intuition tells you there is a real reason why it hasn’t gotten the Dental Association’s seal of approval. Or like pharmaceutical companies; you know they’re scalping you and that you are bound to end up with more negative side effects than the original problem gave you, but you’ve got to take something for your ills.

This is pretty much the best positioning for each party as far as I can tell. And they each need to figure out how to get their side elected. From now until election day, electability is the game.

Beyond One Commonality

The first major round of primaries is done.

John McCain has over half of the delegate votes needed to get the Republican nomination. Mitt Romney, the Mormon sugar daddy, has spent more than $35 million of his own money to get to where he is now. At best, he could only hope for a VP appointment. But, you never know, maybe he could help America pay off its deficit. Between Clinton and Obama, a decided leader hasn’t really emerged.

Looking at the polls, we see that most people are initially attracted to a certain candidate based on one feature or a commonality the voter feels they have with the candidate: Hillary attracts the women; Obama attracts blacks; Edwards attracted the “sick of government business-as-usual” crowd; McCain attracts the veterans and strong military types; no clue about Romney; and Huckabee attracts the evangelicals.

Mike Huckabee has shown to be a resilient campaigner and evangelical front-runner. My only concern is that most evangelicals see him through rose-colored glasses: he was a pastor, so he must be an incredible politician. Not so. If I go in to have heart surgery, I don’t want someone who is “just a Christian”, I want a great surgeon.  If I go to record an album, I don’t want someone who is “just a Christian”, I want great musicians and producers. When it comes to politics, I don’t just want someone with whom I have a starting point to relate to them (religion, philosophy, issue agreement, etc.), I want a great politician. Whether they are Christian or not only lends me to attribute more commonality between us and more solid of a starting point from which to investigate them further. A single commonality does not a good __________ make.

The question—politically, for me—is not whether we should have a Christian leading America, but how the candidates stack up on certain issues. Obviously an atheist is going to feel the same way about how the country should be led, but from an opposite perspective (“The less god-freaks in government, the better.”). For Huckabee, I just hope we can look past his halo to see:

• his foreign policy with Iraq, China, the Koreas, the Middle East, Israel, etc.
  
• how he grants favored nation status to countries guilty of inhumanities to man
• how he will deal with terrorism and our security
• how he will deal with radical Islam
• his economic plans (mortgages, jobs, various stimuli, avoiding recession/depression, etc.)
• his social security, welfare  and healthcare overhauls
• his tax system overhaul
• his illegal immigration response

As with all things, politics has more to it than, “Do I have an item of significance in common with this person?” Somewhere famous there is a good quote about being as wise as serpents but as harmless as doves. As a whole, contemporary Christianity seems to have the impotent thing to a science; it’s about time we get wisdom.

Historical Imperialism

For those thinking I was not being reasonable in my assessment of evolution and slavery, do not forget that my very assertion was one of the main arguments for Imperialism in America in the mid– to late 1800s.

Immediately upon Darwin’s convergent scientific release, Imperialists seized upon it as such an elementary and obvious understanding of class, and, therefore, of inherent value, position and rights. Well, that should actually be in reverse order: they recognized it as such an elementary and obvious understanding of inherent value, that it gave weight to their bigoted system of position, rights and class structure.

What was that time like?

• The Civil War had just ended; Lincoln was still the BMOC, but VP Johnson was about to get a raise
• Reconstruction had begun; it was the president’s job to put the country back together and start the healing process between the north and south
• Darwin released his evolutionary theory in 1859
• Only 25% of the south owned slaves; early in my life I was led to believe it was almost 100%
• Only 8% of the south had more than two slaves
• When the slaves were freed, their numbers totaled between 4 and 4.5 million; definitely a lot of people, but still less than half of all the losses and murders of WWII
• Blacks and whites were not segregated until between 1810 and 1830; therefore . . .
• Slavery was not originally an issue of race, but an issue of economics; many whites were slaves
• Many who were anti-slavery (and fought to end it) were still not pro-equality

As slavery transitioned from an economic impetus to an ethnic impetus among the general population, Imperialism provided the necessary tools (yeah, um, that would be “prejudice”) to apply inherent value to certain groups and not to others.