Disclosure: I’m registered independent/undecided with the state of Colorado.  I tend towards conservative voting, but this political post is intended to be one where I call out bad politics as bad politics.

I want to challenge my dyed in the wool Republican friends and my dyed in the wool Democrat friends to please explain to me why it is OK for either party to try to justify the use of the word ‘retard’ or ‘retarded’ (with or without the f-bomb) to describe the other party or parties members?  I sometimes slip the word retarded into my sentences and once its out I think, “shoot, that’s not a good word to use.”  I have a personal story that ties in with the potential of possibly having ended up mentally retarded because of meningitis at 13 months old.  God spared me that consequence, but I don’t take it lightly.  Life is a blessing – handicapped or otherwise – and so I’m going to own my own foolishness – I don’t say it often and will attempt to not use it ever again [out of proper context].

Why is it OK for humans to talk of one another that way?  Because we have freedom of speech.  Yeah, that’s it.  They do have the freedom to say all sorts of things.  But it doesn’t make the politicians look like competent representatives of the people.  Are you a hired or appointed official?  You represent the people: don’t use the words of offense to describe others without serious contemplation.  If you don’t you’re just a loud mouthed individual without self control.  Are you leaking national secrets?  Maybe not, but if you lack self control over your mouth in public I’m far more afraid of your private mistakes.  Are you a nationally syndicated talk-show host?  I know you get ratings, but if you refuse to censor yourself to the point of describing a wide swath of your co-citizens, you’re probably not doing a good job communicating real content.

I have friends and acquaintances all over the globe, and some of them look at the US’s citizens’ flippent, sarcastic, affluent, offensive, and selfish attitudes and think, “this is why they are fading out of prominence.”  How can we expect to prod this generation and other generations onto acts of courage, bravery, selflessness, leadership and humanitarianism if what we’re saying, doing and promoting is selfish or insulting?  Why should governments we are at odds with accept our offers of peace if we look like double-standard oriented fools?  This isn’t a nation that was just founded on liberty and freedom of speech, but also an attempt to provide a safe place for citizens to live their lives without oppression.  We had a system in place with public servants.  Servants?  Yes, servants.  Folks who served the people rather than insulting the people.  I don’t want to go back to the good old days – we can only move forward from this sad state of affairs.  However, I do want to challenge anyone reading this: what makes it worth aligning with these two major parties if they have major representatives acting as though their words can’t and don’t have an effect if they’re not on the campaign trail?

Answers I won’t accept:

Because.

Everything evil that has happened to the country has come from party X.

Come on, its not that big a deal.

Internationalism-sminternationalism.

I’m writing this post ahead of time.  Go figure.  I’m writing this while having been studying for a Bible study lesson I will have taught by the time you read this.  The thing I’m covering, as the title of this post suggests, involves rabbis.  Without going into the hefty religious connotations of Christ being a rabbi, I want to give you some quick summary information and then ask you a question or three.  Even if you’re not a Christian, this post has some relevance, so stick with me.

What’s a rabbi?  Here is a short bit of text I wrote for my handout (it is by no means thorough):

Rabbis would have been teachers of the Old Testament, but primarily the Law or Pentateuch. Typically a student would approach a rabbi and ask if he may follow the rabbi, if the rabbi rejected him, he would then go off to a trade. The student of the rabbi was called a talmidim. If you’ve ever heard of the talmud, it is the a Judaic book that outlines traditional rabbinical teachings. Christ operated contrary to this and sought out His disciples and told them to follow Him. Furthermore the disciples were at least in part already involved in trades – so they would have to walk away from their careers and lives as they had expected them to be and instead joined themselves to Christ.

A rabbi was expected to have a physically following disciple or disciples, and Elijah and Elisha were an important example of this concept in the Old Testament [I Kings 19:19-21]. Time was to be spent together and a lifestyle that represented the teacher was to be lived in front of the following disciple. Discipleship meant being seen with the rabbi so that others would begin to see what the rabbi taught as see the fruit of the teachings worked out in the lives of the disciples.

What I have been thinking about is this question: Who are today’s rabbis?  Who do people follow and identify themselves with?  Historically it was a life devoted to a teacher and their teachings.  In modern first world America, do we have time for this rabbi/disciple concept?  Today we follow people on twitter, television, the Internet, and of course in our cars to the store, but do we really follow teachers and devote ourselves to their teachings?

Are rabbis Richard Dawkins, Rush Limbaugh, or Barry Obama?  Of those three one is anti-religion but religious about his anti-religion, one is a right-wing-loud mouth, and one is a president with big words and many promises but single handedly incapable of delivering on what he wants to promise.  Do we follow them?  I personally wouldn’t follow them.  I wouldn’t follow Oral Roberts, Bill Gates, or Joel Osteen.

Who is your rabbi?

Today I was listening to a pop artist because I had heard her name enough times that I had to find out why people were listening to her. For those of you keeping score: it’s not Britney Spears. YouTube had a number of her videos online so I listened to them on the y’ube and got a feel for the style of her album(s). I did not watch more than about 10 seconds of her video but I’m pretty sure I’m prejudice. The reason I say that is that with computers and software being what they are even I can sound relatively decent so I want a genuine artist writing from their heart about things that matter to them. I need something deeper than dulcimer tones.

Am I prejudiced against the pretty faced girl who sings like an ‘angel’ (pardon me while I puke in my mouth after writing that)? I think so. What if the unnamed country-pop star is really a great, talented gal who writes real songs from her heart? I’m scared if she does because she’s got to have a large chunk of bubble-gum lodged in there and its coated with banjos [this makes her songs authentic country, I believe]. Definitely enough to have a need for heart surgery. If she likes country music and enjoys singing about love, broken heartedness and incestuous relationships like traditional country musicians that’s great, but it just doesn’t show up in the lyrics and the videos are more about her hot young body than they are about her personality.  Or, as my sister, who likes country, likes to say: her qualities [a reference to the Bachelor TV show].

Help me find a really, really good country artist who writes quality songs, has depth in lyrics, music stylings, and isn’t just a celebrity for appearance sake.

What is the proper etiquette to let a person know that they have a crock pot on the roof of their mini-van?  I don’t know morse code, I don’t know that it is safe to exit my vehicle while driving with two little girls in the car to alert the driver of the crock-pot-mini-van, and I’m pretty sure that when traffic is that jammed and it is as cold as it was this morning (-13F or -25C) its even less safe.  What would you do, if anything, to alert the driver that their soup is getting cold?

There is a dog lying on my foot.

He is resting there wishing

That I had probably not

passed wind

I wonder what he thinks about me

I think he needs a bath