The perspectival entrapment that I explored a couple of days ago is egregiously being played out currently in the impasse of our government.  This impeachment issue is proving very divisive as the Republicans and Democrats have pledged their troth rigidly to their “pony in the horse race.”  Yes, I certainly see the Republicans being more intransigent…blatantly so, but either side of a disputation like this must remember that on some level they too have a “pony in the race.”  Otherwise they are as ridiculous as the bizarre and inane Republcan Congressman Louie Gohmert, who last year pointed at a Democrat being interviewed, and passionately declared, “Just look at him!  Just look how biased he is!”  This brings to my mind the New Testament admonishment, “We see through a glass darkly.” How tragic if we see darkness in others and not our own.  That is called “projection.”

Having a perspective, and feeling passionate about it, is very human and even desirable.  But when one is “dug in at the heels” on an issue to the point that he is willing to totally disregard another view on the issue, his “dug-in (ness)” will reflect merely a self-serving ego investment; and ego, when pushed to an extreme, cannot back down.  That would be admitting he was “wrong” and acknowledging wrong is a something a very insecure, fragile, egomaniac cannot do  They are inclined to double-down, round up the troops on their side of the disputation, and argue with great passion and intensity.  In an extreme they will use violence rather than endure the sting of humiliation at being wrong, a sting which could be merely the dawning of a very noble human quality–humility.  It takes humility to admit, “Oh, I was not as right as I thought I was.  I wish I’d have listened to the admonishment of the bumper-sticker, ‘Don’t believe everything you think.’”

My concern with this political morass is more than mere politics.  This conflict is about the very definition of reality in our culture, what is real and unreal, what is true and what is untrue, what is acceptable and what is unacceptable.  Oh, of course, distinctions in these matters are always more nebulous that we like to think; but, there are some basic standards of human decency that are usually more or less maintained.  Beneath the surface of the “reality” that we take for granted, there is a substrate which I like to describe as Reality.  Yes, with the capitalized “R” I’m teasing with the notion of “god”, but words like god and the rest of “god-talk” which is usually mere rhetoric I can’t help today but grimace and groan about.  To illustrate my concern, I offer a quote from Shakespeare that describes just about the whole of my spiritual life and what passes for a lot of spiritual life today, “With devotions visage and pious action, they do sugar o’er the devil himself.”  Oh for those days when my perspectival enslavement kept me in the solace of that darkness!!!