Disturbing:

[pecunium]

This youtube is getting lots of play:

I am reasonably certain it's being seen by lots of people who support it, as well as those who are aghast when they see it. While the woman being interviewed disturbs me; her opinions (the only thing which matters in casting a vote is, "who has greater faith in the Lord" [which "should be make or break for everybody] and that I have a real problem with a president being named "Obama", and I'm not the only one. [scare quotes to try and show the way she says the name)] and that the Obamas aren't Real True Christians&tm; practicing, "the Christianty that's in the Bible) are troubling, but not for themselves alone. Not even primarily for her opinions.

What realy bothers, is the her position gets from this clip. I don't know how long the segment with her husband was, but right at the beginning her basis (a cultic "gut-check" based on the religious beliefs of Obama's parents: his mother's atheism is only worsted by his father being a Muslim) isn't cast as removing thought from the decision, but as one of measured consideration, "For Tracy Kerlie, this election is not so much about policy, as it is about values."

Which is, again, that pernicious meme that "Values™" are somehow the exclusive property of the whack-jobs, the ignorant, and the intolerant; the Dobsons, the Hagees, the people who don't want to trouble their little heads with the difficulties of policy.

Well guess what, it's bullshit. I have values. I like 'em. I use them to make up my mind when voting. Eric Rudolph has values, he shares some of them (the ones for which he is known) with Ted Kaczinski. Values are cheap.

The press keeps say people have "values", and as the philosopher Montoya said, "You keep using that word... I don't think it means what you think it means."

Values does not mean, "Traditional Western Modes of Life and Thought as Idealised by the Religious and Cultural Conservatives of the American Right."

It means, if I narrow it to the sort of definition the press is using (tossing out the references to money, color, music, etc.):

values
     n : beliefs of a person or social group in which they have an
         emotional investment (either for or against something);
         "he has very conservatives values"

We've all got values. There is no touchstone set of them which ought to come to mind when someone is said to be, "Voting their values".

When I step into the little semi-cubicle and make my mark in the NO column on Prop 8, I'll be voting my values. When I look down the list and see, "For President, and Vice President of the United States: Choose one" I will take the pen, find Obama/Biden, and vote my values.

When I vote for the slates of judges (voting, by and large, against anyone who has been a prosecutor, and esp. against one who has been a "gang" prosecutor) I will be voting my values.

But... and this is where I hope, and pray, there aren't so many like this woman, I will be, using my values in concert, to quote Nero Wolfe, with my judgement, and experience. The press telling us that using the tools of reason is to abandon "values" is a lie, it's a nasty little lie at that.

Because it makes it easier for those who are voiting for the narrow-minded values of race/tribe/cult to look at the rest of the nation as valueless heathens. Those who don't "vote our values" not only not members of the group, but are against the group.

This casting of values not as things one cares about but as some touchstone set which one believes in enough to vote for, or one is against, feeds the idea of persecution. When one is voting for one's "values" and losing, then one's "values" are being slapped around.

It stops being about the best course for the nation, the better policies, the better politicians (or "leaders" if you prefer. I don't, but it's quite the fashion. I want leadership from them, yes, but they are not my "leaders", they are my employees; and that, really, needs to be pounded into their skulls;often) and becomes some odd referendum on beliefs.

Which is no small part of the polarisation of the nation. The Right has used this trick to keep the atrocious affects of their policies from rebounding against them (Reagan said he hated unions, and went on to prove it... Union country went on to vote for Bush, and then Bush again; with some strong pockets of Dole voting in the interim. They filled their House delegations with Republicans too. I can't believe it was because of how well the economy flourished under Reagan/Bush and how much it tanked under Clinton /sarcasm).

For those who think "faith in the Lord" is the be all and end all of such choices, "Render unto Caesar those things wich are Caesars's," because The Lord will know his own. If you believe Him, the values he cares about are, "Doing justly, loving mercy and walking Humbly with Thy God." For those who want a more detailed list of the criteria for making it to Heaven (in the afterlife... you want Heaven on earth, you gotta work for it here), might think to look at Matt. 7.

Comments

[bifemmefatale.livejournal.com]

I want leadership from them, yes, but they are not my "leaders", they are my employees; and that, really, needs to be pounded into their skulls;often

Truer words were never said. I was horrified, as I posted the other day, when Tom Brokaw referred to the President as "head of the American family".

[hammercock.livejournal.com]

Gah. Not my family, thanks.

[asimovberlioz.livejournal.com]

Crazy Tracy has based her vote on her gut feelings. Were I to do the same with her, I might be pardoned for thinking that, with some severe weight-loss, she could easily be mistaken for the character of "Joy" on "My Name is Earl." Even to the dialect and that scary thing she does with her eyes, although of course Jaime Pressly (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0005326/) is acting.

As for her feeling that "the Lord will take care of us," she would do well to ponder that "take care of" has many meanings, not all of them salutary.

But that's neither here nor there. Should Obama win, Tracy and captive husband will get a tax cut and she'll just whine about something else.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Her weight, and her mannerisms are neither here nor their. I was reluctant to use the video, because those aspects come to the fore, and we, all too easily, write her off as strange/bizzare.

There are lots of perfectly, "sane-looking" people who think this way.

The present Vice-presidential candidate for the Republican Party, for one.

[asimovberlioz.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm not criticizing Tracy for her weight. (Those who are close to me will confirm that that would run counter to my preferences.) I'm merely noting how well Ms. Pressly has nailed that particular stereotype. Yes, it is scary to be confronted with the reality.

Tracy must be indicative of why the red states vote as they do. That alone is frightening enough.

[kibbles.livejournal.com]

Something like this, I couldn't imagine being so fundamentally different from Dan in opinion. It would be a large problem. It would mean I don't know him.

[stillnotbored.livejournal.com]

Bear showed me this video yesterday. The single minded focus of making all decisions based on "faith" and the hate shown toward Obama for who his parents were, and not any actions on his part, are beyond disturbing. I doubt that Tracy Kerlie has had an independent thought in her life.

The sad thing for me is how many people like Ms. Kerlie there are out in the world. The majority of my ex-husband's family was this way, professing to be good Christians and viewed as pillars of their church, while holding the most hateful views of anyone outside that church I've ever heard.

I remember one debate at a family dinner when I was first married where the question under discussion was whether it was worse for a white woman to marry a Mexican or a Chinese man. Neither man was Christian in their view so it was okay to be as racist as they chose, because non-Christians didn't count.

That I would call them on this stuff and never agreed with them was a constant source of confusion. I'd married their son/grandson, so surely I had to be on the same page. My refusal to leave everything in God's hands just baffled them.

So yeah, Tracy Kerlie appalls me, but she doesn't surprise me. I think of her and others like her as brainwashing victims.

[sunfell.livejournal.com]

See, here's the Ultimate Irony: There is no "Christianity" in the Bible. "Christianity", as defined by that woman and her peers is a fairly modern construct- as far removed from the Bible as we are from the Bronze Age tribes that spawned it.

Ancient Christians of the Biblical ages would not recognize today's Christianity. They'd see Pharisees, or some crazy death cult (the cross and emphasis on the death of Christ became popular about 4-500 years after the Gospels were written), or something other than what they believed.

The biggest irony is that the modern Christians would not recognize ancient Christians, either.

I've never understood the use of the word 'values' in a religious- emotional sense. Use 'values' in an engineering, financial or graphical context- and they make sense. But otherwise, it's all noise to me.

[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

Hell, I see Pharisees when I look at the Christianist Right! And so, I think, would Jeshua ben Joseph.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Actually... he'd see Sadducees. Jesus, insofar as we can map his practice (as explained in the Gospels) was pharisaic. It just happens that the struggle between the Jesus-cultic jews (proto-Christians) was with the rising form of mainstream Judeaism, i.e. Pharisaic.

So when choosing a bad guy (some 40 years after he died) the guys to pick were the Pharisees, because the Saducees lost out when the Romans knocked the Judea down to the ground and sacked Jerusalem.

[labelleizzy.livejournal.com]

*applause* for this essay.

and thank you for the link to the Matthew citation, that really sums it up for me. Bigotry and refusal to think are not Christian values... I *like* real Christians, emphasis on the humble, the personal relationship with God, the doing right, the avoiding hypocrisy, the helping your neighbor and taking care of your children with kindness and love.

(it pisses me off that this lady is like, "I don't think his faith is strong enough." WTF - how can one person EVER know what kind of faith someone else has? It's not like she has the Sekrit X-Ray Specs-o-Faith and can actually SEE into someone else's heart...

Okay, I'ma stop now before I get more annoyed.
So, yeah, thanks for sharing this.

[summers-place.livejournal.com]

This lady and people like her annoy the crap out of me, to put it (quite) mildly. I'd best stop there before I get completely out of control.

(Btw, icon love!)

[labelleizzy.livejournal.com]

you like? you take. On the house. I ganked it from a friend, don't know who made it. Is excellent icon.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

She doesn't mean faith. She means piety.

Obama and Biden have done nothing to placate her imams and they've not mouthed the shibboleths of her church. McCain has tried and Palin is dyed in the wool.

So the McCain/Palin ticket is the one she backs. If I were to go divining her thinking, she expects Palin to end up as president, and then to usher in the New Jerusalem, where all shall be forced to act holy.

[labelleizzy.livejournal.com]

boy, haven't any of these people read Revolt in 2100?

*smek*

d'oh, of COURSE not!

ARGH!!

[greystroke.livejournal.com]

So which candidate has the record of marital infidelity? Which candidate has a long history of attending church?

I DON'T UNDERSTAND THESE PEOPLE ...

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Sarah Palin has no (public) history of infidelity.

The others, they aren't Real True Christians™, so they don't count.

One wonders, if God is so active in the day to day of the world; that he will look out for her, and hers, why she needs to vote at all? God will surely see to it the country gets the gov't it deserves.

[labelleizzy.livejournal.com]

She doesn't, but McCain does have a history of infidelity.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

The people who are like this woman don't care.

1: They aren't voting for McCain. They way they flocked to the flag only after Palin was announced is sign of that.

2: Obama is eeeevil, so Palin gives them a crutch to prob the rest of it on. If it weren't for her then they'd have to stay home.

After all, they don't care that Biden wasn't unfaithful, and put his kids first after his wife died.

Her issues are a narrow band of identity politics. Palin's over the top religiosity is the thing they care about.

And the press tells us that's what counts as "values".

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

Gah. I'm a theist and, while I believe in putting one's faith in that higher power, I also put stock in the sufi attitude: "Trust in God, but tether your camel first."

This woman makes me want to smack her smug, complacent face. She should use the wit God gave her. (And if God shorted her in that department, as is a clear possibility, I apologize and hope she finds the keeper she needs.)

[lwj2.livejournal.com]

Well-written, sir.

We disagree on some things agree on others and should we be fortunate enough to meet in person, we can discuss it like gentlemen over a drink or so.

In the concept of values in re.: voting, we do agree.

Thanks for putting this into words.

[beable]

The clip including the husband's segment is also available on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CatsNlhh4fs

[hammercock.livejournal.com]

You know, everything being equal, I tend to view religion similarly to how I view kink: YKIOK,IJNMK (your kink is okay, it's just not my kink). However, people like Tracy Kerlie make me swing more toward the realm of YKIOK,BE (your kink is okay, but eeeeewwwwwwww).

I do vote my values. My values are pretty good ones, if I do say so myself. Many of them probably even are informed by my religious tradition, even though I myself am not religious at all. But my values also include thinking for myself and being at least nominally open to the idea that others may know more, be better informed, etc., such that I may change my mind about things sometimes, and it is so frustrating to see how many other people's values apparently don't. *sigh*

[annathepiper]

This, sir, is a thing that very much needed to be said. Thank you.

[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

Sums it up pretty well for me.