For a while I have to leave my home in New Mexico. Today, while driving across the Great Plains I needed radio distraction from the howling wind and speeding semi-tractor trailers. I could find only one station with sufficient power to burn through loud and clear over the many other static-filled ones. Forget about FM.
I landed on a 24 hour talk news station and was bombarded with the political debate over Senator Obama’s seemingly lack of integrity. Evidently, according to this particular news host, Senator Obama’s failure to immediately distance himself from the Reverend Wright and other notable un-American clergy (so says the show’s host) puts a large question mark over the Senator’s integrity, trustworthiness, and hence ability to act as President of this country.
What interested me most was how folks on the radio program handled conflict. One said that Obama should have immediately and publicly severed all friendships and / or contact with notable un-American activists while others said that open and honest conversation is important for unity (my interpretation). So, on the one hand the show’s host handles conflict either head on in direct confrontation or through immediate retreat while the other advocated for more central way – I call this standing in the middle of the whirlwind holding in tension the two wings of descent.
The conversation turned into what to me appeared to be a shouting match between left and right ideology – evidently, Senator’s Obama’s desire to use diplomacy with our enemies is not a popular policy. Thus, I became lost in the noise of the debate while fighting the whirlwind along the Interstate highway. It came to me then that a one-wing airplane acts like a gyro and spirals to its grave. It takes both a left and a right wing for an airplane to fly.
Posted by John Fair 