A Debate and Jesus Always Mash-up

I managed to stay awake through slightly more than half of the debate last night. I conked out before any of the pro-life stuff. I guess maybe I should have tried to keep my eyes and ears pried open but, on the other hand, why bother. So, I did have three thoughts, in no particular order.

1. The interrupting is so disrespectful. And so off putting. Just because it has become the Way We All Live now doesn’t make it any more bearable. I have been riding herd on my kids all week about this very point. When one person is speaking, everyone else needs to be quiet. I say this and none of my own children can understand me because they are too busy talking over my admonishment to be silent. To be heard I have to shout louder and louder. I think interrupting arises from entitlement driven fear. The interrupter thinks, “if I don’t get right in there and talk, the other person will win and I won’t get what I want and deserve” and so, from a deep wellspring of poverty, the interrupter goes around shouting like a lunatic. It was so unpleasant when Trump did it, and So Unpleasant when the weird looking democrat did it last night. What’s his name? Is there any reason for me to remember his name?
2. Pence looked calm and rational but who are we kidding, if he had stood on the stage with the sixteen other GOP candidates in the primary, he wouldn’t have won either. He sounds calm and rational and we didn’t want that this go around. We didn’t want someone with “experience”. We wanted an “outsider”. What we meant by “outsider” I admit surprised me, but certainly it was something different than the two men last night who volleyed fluidly back and forth about policy issues and the evilness of the other side.
3. Isn’t it interesting that Sarah Young managed to wedge Jesus Always into the conversation earlier in the day. Her book, which, if it’s anything like Jesus Calling, will blur the lines between human emotion and the voice of God, seems a fitting addition to this messy picture. There is Pence, sensibly just saying stuff he believes, regardless of whether it in any way conflicts with what his new boss thinks–I say sensibly because Trump says all the things, so maybe at some moments he and his running mate will accidentally agree. And there is the democrat (you thought I was going to remember his name, ha! Really, have no idea what it is) whose timber of voice amazingly rivals his boss’ in sheer irritating-ness. Kept seeing the words “nails on a chalkboard” on Twitter last night and they couldn’t be more apt. Words, the voice–those foundational elements of human society–are now so broken, are becoming tragically useless to affect the minds of people. Whether it is someone muddling the voice of God, or a charlatan saying all the things, or a more shrill and disciplined charlatan offending the very mechanism of the ear, we are all doomed. If we don’t have language, we can’t really function. We are reduced to impulses and urges, to shouts and grunts, to substance-less offense taking and giving.