Leaders We Don't Need

I find it astonishing that in this country we have political and religious leaders who seem perfectly fine creating a society that dismisses the poor, the sick, children in crisis, and the frail elderly who don’t have enough resources for their many medical and prescription needs.

These leaders have no interest in providing a safety net for the most vulnerable people in our country.

They talk about cutting social spending but are fine with bloated defense budgets. They want the government out of their lives but are happy to get Medicare. They want to pay little or no taxes but then scream the loudest when the system doesn’t work for them. They are fine shutting down agencies of care for people desperate for help, all the while they tell us how righteous they are. They quote random Bible verses and use them as validation for their indifference to others. They lift themselves up in pompous claims of religious fervor even as they detest those who differ from them in color or creed or conscience. They wave the American Flag in obscene arrogance as if it belongs only to them mocking the freedom for all it was created to represent.

They refuse to welcome gays into the full rights of society and work to hinder any progress society attempts at giving them a better life and recognizing them as brothers and sisters in our human family.

They talk about “family values,” but then have no interest in understanding or help preventing the destructive forces that poverty and joblessness have on poor families and how it often makes them vulnerable to crime and addictions which become attractive alternatives to the grinding barrenness of their lives.

They scoff at public education and mercilessly criticize its weaknesses while doing everything they can to keep public schools from receiving the financial resources they need to succeed, ultimately betraying the children of our country by refusing them a first rate public education in a safe and stimulating learning environment.

They love guns and dismiss gun violence by spouting banal references to their Second Amendment rights without the least bit of concern for the fundamental rights of the innocent who are killed by careless gun owners, criminals, and the deranged every day.

They preach freedom and patriotism and Christian living but actually behave in ways that promote consumerism, greed, prejudice, intolerance, and narcissism.

These sanctimonious political leaders, these religious amateurs, these pretending “Christians,” are bad for our country. Whatever pure motives they claim to possess, their actions are just the opposite: mean-spirited, ugly, unkind, selfish, insensitive and defeating. They are not leaders who can help us.

Forget for a moment giving them names: Republican. Tea Party. Democrats. Independents. Green Party.

Just look around. Just notice. Just observe. Just listen. Anyone fitting the behavior I have described is not a leader this country needs. Think of the actions and not the Party affiliation.

If you can honestly do that, whatever your politics, then I think it will be clear who these people are. Don’t vote for them. Stop promoting them. Quit defending them. No longer follow them.

They are not leaders we need.

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