when right is wrong
Sometimes you pray to be wrong.
When being right about your fears signals a path of unmitigated disaster, being wrong would be a blessing. When you fear that the police sirens are heading towards your speeding car, you pray to be wrong. When your child’s behavior shifts and you fear they’re dabbling in unknown substances, you pray to be wrong. When your balancing the creditors and you fear that this is the month that the house of cards will collapse, you pray to wrong.
And I wanted to be wrong about what a “W” presidency would bring.
I confess that when the Supreme Court announced their decision giving the presidency to George W. Bush, I felt an enormous sense of dread. But I never wanted to be right. As the World Trade towers fell, I felt eerily unsurprised. Fearing what seemed an inevitable reign of retaliation, I attended prayer vigils, wrote letters, and put out a yard sign for peace. Mostly I prayed to be wrong.
And though it was too little too late, I thrilled to see an enlivened Al Gore on the big screen. But believing his global warming doom did nothing to help me sleep at night. Please, dear God, please let him, let me, be wrong.
With our communal gaze now on the presumptive presidential nominees, the sins of the fathers are creeping into the mainstream with little fan fare.
Even if the global warming theories are wrong about the cause of our earth’s shifts, no one is denying the change and the unfolding chaos as floods and droughts, earthquakes and storms, threaten what we have known as civilization.
Despite the platitude offered by Laura Bush and Cheri Blair, the women of Afghanistan have not been liberated. Womankind, a British-based research group, reports that 80% of Afghan women are victims of domestic violence, 60% forced into marriages (some as early as age 8!), and more than half of 16 years olds are already married. Conditions for women in Afghanistan are currently so desperate that women are literally setting themselves on fire to escape. In a song entitled, “Not in My Name,” Kris Kristofferson laments the “billion dollar bombing of a nation on its knees.” Pulverized into a feudal existence, the situation for all of the Afghanis is grim.
With a change in our nations’ administration on the horizon, the publicly traded media outlets are beginning to ask edgier questions. Keith Olberman’s tirades are now standard fare and the Associated Press covered the story of Kucinich’s Impeachment resolutions. The Supreme Court this week acknowledged the human rights of the men at Guantanamo and the alternative press is being heard as it points out that more than half of these guys are likely innocent.
If righteous indignation had any correlation with happiness, Eli Lilly & Co. would be filing for bankruptcy protection. Tragically their profits hold steady even as the American economy tanks. For anything that really matters, the privilege of being able to say, “I told you so” isn’t.
