The God Vote
Sitting around in a hotel room, as I seem to be doing quite a lot of these days, and attempting to avoid doing whatever it was that I should have been doing, having also sacrificed my laptop to the young male member of the family, there was naught to do but watch CNN on TV. Repeatedly, endlessly. Thus, on a segment which I believe was called “Keeping Them Honest”, a worthy effort I am sure, however ineffective, I came across “The God Vote”. It appears, at least to their own pundits, that the democrats have finally gotten their act together and decided that they are not simply going to cede the God Vote to the Republicans. After all, they are good god-fearing people themselves, why should they just sit back and let the Republicans be the only ones making hay in those fields.
It turns out that recent polls indicate that most Americans are of the God-fearing type and if not God-fearing then at least God-conversant. Apparently the exact blend of percentages, which God, worshiped in what particular way, by how many, varies across the country, but it remains clear that upwards of seventy-five percent of us like to hear about God from our politicians. We like to hear that they look to a higher source for their inspiration and motivation. This appears to be true everywhere, but California, where the Godless heathens live. Who would have thought? Apparently Bush is on the right track, letting himself be guided by God. There are even those who feel that Bush doesn’t refer to God enough, that he should do it more often.
By this point I was pretty nauseated. I had always thought that my relationship to a God, assuming I could figure out which and why in the first place, was sort of a personal thing. I thought it a private matter between myself and whatever, whomever, but the best is yet to come. The parting segment is a short video of Hillary Clinton quoting the bible at a campaign speech. I had to turn the segment off before they could run it again. It was bad enough that I had to think that she had sacrificed the last shreds of her integrity to do this, to please the handlers and consultants who told her that this was what America wants in a president, but further, she doesn’t do it well. It comes across as an act and a bad one at that. And I had such high hopes for the woman.
Who knows, maybe it plays well outside of the land of the heathens.