"Bring The War Home"

In the face of the upcoming election, it is easy to become overwhelmed with the barrage of information, facts, and statistics coming at us from every angle. The newspaper, television, radio… constantly screaming for your attention, and in the end, sometimes it feels like our heads are going to explode. People are asking themselves… “Who is telling the truth? Where is a place I can trust to get facts and formulate my opinions?” It is truly frightening to sink your teeth into such a giant spectacle that is the current state of American Politics.
Let’s be honest… Politics are BORING. As students, parents, and believers… we are fast-paced beings, always looking for something fun and exciting to divert our attention from the everyday doldrums and depression in the world around us. At the same time, we feel an undeniable responsibility that calls us to action when we know something is terribly wrong. Call it a sixth-sense, a gut instinct… a voice in the back of your head that sounds when things don’t make sense and don’t add up. It begs us to verbalize why we feel that way, but sometimes we just can’t find the words, we just follow the feeling. Is this sense a curse? What is causing us as to have such an overwhelming feeling that something is wrong, especially over the last four years?
A while ago, I had the opportunity to see one of the last theater presentations of a documentary called “The Weather Underground” in New York City. It was a series of stories, interviews, etc., with actual members of the infamous Weathermen Underground, a radical group of politically-charged hippies in the 1960’s who took the peaceful protest strategies of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) to new heights. With stunts, scams, and sometimes violence, they caused a ruckus that gained the public’s attention, as well as the attention of the FBI during the Vietnam War. One concept that really stuck with me was the slogan “Bring the War Home!” The idea was that if they could get people to associate the war with real war images and actually visualize what was going on so far away… people would react against it. It’s easy to justify acts of war when you’re not looking at images of blood, death, and destruction. But having it right in front of the public eye gave the war a more true and ugly face.
It dawned on me that the hi-tech media and information overload we’re all facing is in its own way causing that same phenomenon. Everywhere we look, we see horrific images of war, scandal, and hypocrisy. It is the reason why we all feel fed up, lied to, and sick and tired of being manipulated. It is the reason we know trickery, scare-tactics, and government propaganda when it is used to change public opinion and cover up acts we don’t agree with being carried out in our name.
In the end, I see friends, myself, people all around that are intimidated by American Politics and the voting process. They are afraid to stand up and speak out because they don’t feel “political” or book smart. My advice is to follow your gut feeling, listen to the voice inside you, and put trust in the lie detector inside your heart!