on roads less traveled

When traveling across the broad expanses of the west, I like to check the news; but never more so than on this recent vacation during the Democratic convention and the lead up to the Republican convention. Often turning on the radio and cycling through radio stations yields only static and sometimes music. It had been years since I heard John Denver's Take me Home, Country Roads.

Do you know how many talk radio stations in this country are owned by the right? I went looking for the answer-- 91%. (The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio). Ed Schultz, who I like very much, was one voice I finally found before we drove out of range. He said his program is on 60 stations and Limbaugh is on 600. Limbaugh is only part of what is out there from the moderately right to the extreme militia types.

This is not a piece about whether government should regulate that. I understand some of this happens because it's what listeners want; but if all your information comes from either the left or the right, do you really know what goes on or only what your side wants you to know?

Because I do believe we need to understand (when it's possible) how others think, I read or listen to the right sometimes even at home. It's not easy (other than to find the stations); but I make the effort. On this trip the right wing pundits and their callers were in lock step. They are thrilled, thrilled beyond imagining, at Sarah Palin's selection. Everything that supposedly mattered before in a president has been thrown out or possibly revealed.

I know I have thought it before, but it's further proof to me that this country is irreversibly divided, and there is no way back. The only question left is which side will win or do we stay as we are. There is no way of combining such divergent ways of seeing life.

If you believe god intervenes in life, that whatever happens, it's god's doing, that he will guide the good and smite the wicked, if you vote for someone who promises to follow in such a way to always keep god on your 'good' side, you and I can't even communicate. We aren't living in the same universe.

Even on the few liberal radio programs I would come across when nearing big cities, it would still be all about how can we possibly combat this woman given her physical beauty, her trained communication skills, and that beautiful family. Poor Joe Biden. All he knows are the facts of what has been happening, what might happen under the right circumstances, but poor man can only use logic and is at a loss on how to project emotion.

If someone diffidently suggests Palin has only been a two term mayor of a small town in Alaska, and a 22 month governor of that state of less than a million people, the other side retorts that it's putting down all women to question her experience

Besides, her experience does not actually matter as her power comes from her faith. Any logical approach to talk about lack of experience is countered by she has more than Obama. She doesn't, but facts aren't what this is about.

The lack of logic makes me angry even writing it back at home when no longer at the mercy of a car radio in the middle of nowhere. On the road, even when I did find a progressive radio station, what did the host do but invite right wingers from the convention to praise Palin to the heights. Et tu, brute!

In the middle of Oregon's outback, I clicked onto Dennis Miller's program, someone I had not heard on radio but had heard debating on Bill Maher. He is a lover of the Iraq war. Although he said a few good things about Obama, he added he'd never vote for him. Callers would bring up something and Miller was not informed about the facts. He would let untruths go by. Even I, traveling and in the middle of nowhere, knew better what was going on than it appeared Miller did. Is a host's job to prepare or is pontificating all that is required?

I decided (and this is not new) I am really angry at the right wingers who one day earlier considered experience critical and the next considered it to be irrelevant. One day they praised Palin as this great family woman and the next day said her family is off limits. I am angry at people who don't get informed and still talk or vote.

Now I don't mind when someone disagrees with me when we are talking about the same set of facts. Example: Iraq. I do not believe we should have gone there and feel the whole thing has been an expensive boondoggle damaging our own country as the Soviet Union years ago damaged itself in trying to occupy Afghanistan. However, I can tolerate someone using the same set of facts but simply seeing them through a different prism. Where I am ready to blow a gasket is when they don't know the facts and consider that a virtue. Those are the ones that it appears to me are the loudest in cheering Sarah Palin.

Palin recently preached in her church that we were in Iraq because God led us there and it was a holy mission. She states creationism should be taught in science class (heck I wouldn't even think atheism should be taught alongside of the bare bones of evolution). Sarah Palin would ban books in the library that she and her fellow christianists believe are bad for good people.

If she had the power, she would ban all abortions for any reason except maybe the life of the mother. I haven't heard how she feels about that but do know in cases of rape and incest, she and now John McCain (another of his sell-outs to get the presidency) would deny an abortion to even a woman who had been raped.

We are one Supreme Court judge away from having the right to choose an abortion go back to individual states. Some states, who are right wing (you can look on a map to see which as they are in the red column), could then ban it and make it again a crime as it was when I was growing up. The price of that is paid by girls in back alleys, but the righteous will feel vindicated and it's all about them.

Abortion is another of those areas where I can tolerate disagreement so long as its based on the facts. The fact is that it could again be banned if the Supreme Court gets another case and gets a fifth judge who will favor ending a federal right. Someone might (through that different prism) see that as good or bad but don't kid yourself that it could not happen.

Palin, if she becomes president (and it's not unlikely given McCain's age and past cancer), will not feel she has to understand the facts of any situation. God will lead her and that's all she or those who will vote for her need to know.

We are like two countries within one. With all of our political differences on issues like taxes, this christianist concept of god is the bigger division. How widespread is it? If someone is operating on logic, they will look at Sarah Palin's resume, then question why McCain said he would pick someone with foreign policy experience.
What happened to McCain between the one statement and the decision?

Is this a choice made on governing the country or on getting elected and worry about the rest later? Someone using logic would wonder how a woman who has run a small town (with some large failures), been governor under two years (already under ethical investigation there) didn't even know the basics of the Iraqi situation recently, has no education in constitutional law, how is she going to run this country? The christianist knows the answer! God will be guiding her-- as he has been George Bush.

I have no idea which viewpoint will win the election in November, but as Robert Frost said in his famous poem, it will make all of the difference. The unfortunate part is the road less traveled could end up being the one with less votes. I was on a lot of roads less traveled these last days and, superior path or not, there aren't many folks there.

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Robert Frost

Back at the farm, I am unpacking and unwinding after so many miles on the road. I am also going through the photos to delete the less successful ones and organize the best. It was a beautiful trip and in many places little traveled. For me, such times do make all the difference.