Why Can't the Truth Be As Powerful As Propaganda?The Truth exceeds our abilities to comprehend, let alone describe. Nearly every conversation with parishioners contains a paradox. Putting it another way, if the Truth were a storyteller--it wouldn't be a good or entertaining one. It would constantly interrupt itself; site and setting alone would be beyond copious. The story would be complex beyond extreme and unending. (Have you read Robert Jordan?) Propaganda is unencumbered; it has a guiding principle and a specific goal. Propaganda appeals to the senses, it sounds good--it feels good--we know what to believe--we know what to do--we belong to the group--yeah! Ken Kesey stated. "You're either on the bus or off the bus." The fact that this statement applies to our current discourse is both disturbing and paradoxical. Ken was mostly referring to a gnosis, the Merry Pranksters were on the bus, if you were not on the bus--shut up, you don't know what you are talking about. However, Further was just one bus, most busses provide transportation, easier and quicker than walking, to a given destination along a select route. There are bus stops along the way, etc. We use the bus as a symbol often in the ECoD. If the federal government is the bus company, the president is the driver; he didn’t determine the route or lay out the town. When we get on the bus we don't know where we are going, there is no end of the line. We are told by the driver that things will improve, that the future is bright--"Next stop Opportunity"--it is just around the corner. I've been around the block and further. Passengers on the bus are afraid to get off the bus; they keep paying the fare and hope. Looking out the window keeps you on the bus. There are people that take advantage of other human beings through knowledge of human nature and because they can. Great cautionary tales in literature, The Prince by Machiavelli and 1984 by Orwell now seem like training manuals for political success. I have no faith in the feds--I have nothing good to say about the route their bus has taken so far. Every president/commander-in-chief since Truman has been able to negotiate in international diplomacy with the nuclear deterrent notion as part of policy. Having a history of using them and a demonstrated capacity as a country to kill hundreds of thousand of civilians in a day, Dresden--Hiroshima--Nagasaki, how is it we can still claim to hold high moral ground? We claim to have the high moral ground because talk is cheap and communications are affordable for the wealthy. Media is a commodity. They even refer to it as programming. We must tighten the belt; we must endure injustice as part of our nations development, we must sacrifice civil liberties to preserve our freedom; "What's good for General Motors is good for America."--"too big to fail"--"Just Say No"--the crap just does not end. On a positive note--we are so moral as a nation as to have more of our people in prisons than any other nation on earth. In fact we have 25% of the world's incarcerated population. That should make you feel safer. It doesn't make me feel safer. Someday my church may be a bus, I would like to be a bus driver, but for now I am walking. I cannot say, "It’s all good," but there is dancing. There is also safety in numbers, if you decide to get off the bus, or you are thrown to the curb--you will not be alone. Reverend Stu Holbrook home writings |