The Beltway Disease

A couple posts ago I mentioned how we have a text that can and should help us analyze current events. The scriptures can also help us see beyond a person's rhetoric and instead see the potentially damaging actions that could occur. My friend sent me a link to an article from Meridian Magazine. The article uses the King Men as a tool to analyze President Obama's first nine months, and the culture of corruption in general that surrounds the Beltway.

I disagree with several points of his analysis. First, like Micheal Hobby, I think the King Men were far more active in Nephite politics before and after the episode that Lawrence describes. But six years is close enough to the four year presidential cycle so I can see why he would stress that number. Plus even though I dislike Obama's policies, I don't think he has entered dictatorship territory yet. Jimmy Carter territory for sure, but not the far out dictatorship that many people are warning. Although, Lawrence addresses this concern by showing how the King Men were often subtle and deceiving.

I think Lawrence's best point was how the King Men thought they were the new nobility and looked down on others. I've lost track of the number liberal blogs where anybody who believes in God, Guns, or traditional morality are just plain hick, racist, and troglodyte rubes. A sad number of Mormon blogs are like this as well. Everybody in the club considers themselves the new elite and they make sure through their acerbic comments that anybody who dares to disagree will know that they are just not as smart, nuanced, educated, subtle etc, as the permabloggers. You also see this in the way Obama treats the Town Hall protesters. My wife recently asked why Obama is continuing to seek his version of health care even though Americans clearly want something else. My answer was that he knows what is better for us, so our opinions don't matter. If only WE KNEW, we would want his plan and more government in our lives. Since we don't know, we must be angry and ignorant dummies for protesting his plan.

This post was more political than usual. Feel free to respectfully post your comments if you disagree. I also wanted to point out an example of using the scriptures to analyze current events. The danger comes from the harsh feelings that result when your analysis and conclusions differ from others. Overall I would recommend this article as a way to use the scriptures to examine the difference between rhetoric, goals, and actions.