"We Have Met the Enemy..."

This comic was printed for Earth Day in 1971. It's part of a strip called "Pogo," and the line at the bottom is one of the more memorable quotes that I've come across.

We have met the enemy, and he is us.

The quote, specifically geared toward our destruction of the environment in the comic, speaks much deeper and broader than what's just pictured. It's something that skims across my mind, now and then, and unfortunately it's one of those times.

As you may have inferred, politics has claimed a good portion of my thought process as of late. Now with less than a month to go, the campaigns are getting nasty.

Recently, the McCain campaign has been touting that Obama's one time brief acquaintance with Mr. William Ayers (considered a terrorist in the 1960's and associated with several bombings, later considered Chicago's "Citizen of the Year" of 1997 for his philanthropy work) is more subversive and sinister than what it appears to be.

Tensions have been running high on both sides, needless to say.

I saw something today, however, that made me cringe. And it will surprise you. I saw footage of McCain having to tell some of his supporters that Obama "was a decent man," that they had "nothing to fear" of him becoming president, and that he's not an Arab. It looked horribly painful for McCain to say. I didn't expect it. And do you know what happened after saying that? He was booed by his own supporters. Even though I'm for the other team, that made me cringe, and I feel terrible for the guy. I don't think I can watch that video through for a while.

Not that I can say that I'd be any better than his supporters. In this war of hyper-partisanship, I've been pretty quick to take up arms (on occasion), and I frequent news sites to eagerly search for any news that my side is winning, and the other side is losing. I especially like it when I get news that validates my claim that I am "more correct" than others who won't vote like me.

It's so easy to demonize people--it's a way of us trying to validate our sin, to make it okay to dislike, slander, and harm those we don't want to love. And it's wrong.

For those of you that are like me, here's some friendly verses to cut you to the core:
Matthew 5.43-48
1 Peter 1.13-21
Colossians 3.1-8
Luke 18.9-14

I've been speaking about how dangerous that is for a while now, but I haven't exactly put planks before specks on that one. And I've done that several times now.

I'm sorry, guys, for all those times my political fervor got out of line, and thinking I was walking around with a pure heart and superior intellect with my views. I was way off.