Procrastinator’s Lament – 331.5

I had previously mentioned that I would really be sorry about procrastinating when I got to Mitt Romney, because it just wouldn’t be timely anymore. There was going to be an interesting twist though, and now my thunder has been stolen on that as well.

Please remember, my mind is always running. If I am not plotting out stories then I am having analytical dialogues or mentally writing my blog. Obviously, not everything gets entered via the keyboard and posted. Going back in time, we shall trace the evolution of the post that never was.

It started with a presidential candidate, Mitt Romney. I first heard of him during the Salt Lake City Olympics, as he was responsible for cleaning up the mess that corruption in the IOCC had created. Those went well, and he seemed okay. Later on when he became governor of Massachusetts, he seemed to be doing well. Remember, I am not really that liberal. I am just becoming more and more of a democrat because the GOP keeps forgetting that conservative is not supposed to be an exact synonym for evil. Therefore, it is not impossible for me to vote for a republican or feel like one is doing a good job—it just doesn’t happen very often. Romney was getting good reports, especially for some plans he had for getting more people health insurance coverage, and I thought, okay, this let’s see what happens.

If Governor Romney had been the same person as Presidential Candidate Romney, I might have been tempted, but he changed, and not in a good way. He turned his back on everything that I liked about him, but it wasn’t so much the changing as that it seemed to be a race to become as conservative as possible to win votes. More to the point, it wasn’t even done in a measured, intelligent way, which is why he still stands as the only candidate to suggest doubling Guantanamo. (Seriously, it’s not even smooth.)

It did get him painted as a flip-flopper, but it’s hard to run for president without that happening anyway. I don’t completely agree with Barney Frank calling him the “most intellectually dishonest human being in the history of politics” though. First of all, that is one long history right there, but also that comment to me seems to imply some cold calculation, and I don’t think Romney is calculating. If he is, he’s really bad at it.

Instead, I think what we have is someone who is so easily influenced in pursuit of his goal that the result is no spine, and no useful integrity. This would be a concern in any candidate, but especially in a member of the true church. So I wanted to write about that, and the title was going to be, “Why I worry that Mitt Romney is the Anti-Christ”.

The problem is that if you are going to take on a topic like that it just seems to lead to all these other places that you need to go, like following up on the true church thing, and also probably the Anti-Christ topic because when people say that they really mean the Beast, generally speaking. So. I procrastinated and he started losing, and then Mike Huckabee became really scary because he believed he was ordained of God, and I was sure he wasn’t, but at some point in there I had an interesting conversation.

I was helping out at a robotics tournament and talking to an old acquaintance, and somehow the Anti-Christ came up, I guess, and I shared my concerns about Romney, but Dan was sure that it was Oprah, because the key would be popularity, and who is more popular than Oprah? Our conversation was derailed by an apparent eavesdropper who said it would actually be someone clever enough to explain what happened to all the people who suddenly disappeared, lulling people into a false sense of security. She thus revealed to us that she is waiting for the rapture, and did not do anything to dissuade Dan away from his Oprah theory.

Well, that was interesting. True, she doesn’t seem evil, but they never really do now, do they? It’s hard to believe that she could have unleashed both “Doctor” Phil and Rachel Ray on the world without some secret malevolence.
At the time it resonated a bit because a friend of Maria’s was all excited over The Secret, and was going to use her mind power to focus on flushing the fat from her body so she could just drink lots of water instead of dieting and exercising. (I will confess to not having read The Secret, so it is certainly possible that the friend took the book the wrong way, but she certainly hasn’t lost any weight.)

The book was really popular though, and I heard many people talking about how it changed their lives, and it was kind of irritating at how obvious these things should be. Really, gratitude makes you happier? Well how about that! Who knew? (/sarcasm)

Seriously, the things that you get from Oprah are things that I get from religion. I’m not saying that I wouldn’t want to attend a taping of her show given the opportunity, because I understand that she gives away things and I love free stuff. However, I don’t think she really has that much too teach.

Perhaps I am being unfair, because a lot of people don’t have religion, or religion with any depth, and some people have such twisted religion that the closest it gets them to joy is smug satisfaction at being better than everyone else, but if she is set up in such a way that having a watered down set of answers dressed up attractively halts people there, instead of proceeding on to greater truth, then it is reasonable to call her anti-Christ, even if she is not the Beast.

So I came up with a new title, “I feared Mitt Romney was the Anti-Christ, but maybe it’s Oprah”, but there were still other things to explore, and I wasn’t writing that regularly anyway, and yes, I procrastinate. Anyway, other groups have beat me to the punch, criticizing Oprah for promoting a false, watered-down spirituality. When will I learn?

Their primary complaint appears to be her belief that there is more than one way to be saved, thus she is clearly not consigning enough people to Hell. Again, this is a topic that should be explored, and it is really an age-old theological conflict. God gives commandments, which we are supposed to follow, but not everyone has knowledge of them, so people are caught between the cruelty of some people having no chance, or the contradiction that His mercy would mean you can be saved without obedience, and then they come up with weird rationalizations like predestination to make it right.

None of the above. There is a plan in place to cover for all eventualities and where every person can end up with as great a level of blessing as they are capable of receiving, and the more you know about that the more you realize how great God is, and loving, and it makes everything better, but going into that becomes several blog posts and I still want to write about Italy, and my romantic history, and what happened Monday night when most of my regular readers already share the same religious beliefs anyway (it’s not a prerequisite of any kind—that’s just how it’s worked out).

So, although it is a strange way to end a post, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is the only true church, not meaning that no other church has any truth which would be ludicrous, but that it is led by living prophets so has continuing and updated truth, and that by the Holy Ghost anyone and everyone can know the truth. And the truth is good. I think sometimes people get scared away from knowing more, but the more you know the better it gets.

Someday it would be nice to go over my entire political philosophy, and what I would do as president, and all the aspects of my testimony, and how many Christians (even my kind) get so badly twisted, and even my theories about the timing of the Apocalypse (which are fascinating), but I’m not done being shallow yet, and it’s my blog.

That being said, I am always open for conversations, and will generally answer questions freely. Even if we do not yet know each other.