Throwing my hat in the ring

Okay, I'm making this brief because I really do need to get my day underway here, but I accidentally have The View on...it comes on after Ellen, and I try to change the channel in enough time, but sometimes I fail. Today I failed.

One of the first things they show during a segment they call "Hot Topics" was a clip from a speech Sarah Palin delivered where she repeated that Alaska's heart needed to be in line with God's heart for the good of the state. The question here was not whether or not Palin should be a Christian or should tell people that she's a Christian. The question was whether or not it starts to blur the line between separation of church and state when a political body asks for the consideration of God's will when making a state decision.

The women, of course, got off-topic, and they got off-topic because of Joy Behar and Elisabeth Hasselbeck. I generally have problems with Elisabeth for many reasons, most of them centering on her youth and immaturity. Although she is close to my age (she's 31), I find her to be much less mature than most of my age group. My problems with Joy are that, although we have similar political views (whereas Elisabeth and I do not), she is overbearing and loud and seems to mostly enjoy the sound of her own voice.

The two of them get into an argument within the first ten minutes of the show's beginning about whether or not Palin should have mentioned God's will in her speech. Rather than talk about the separation of church and state, they focus their conversation instead on God's will. Joy challenges Elisabeth to explain what she meant when she stated that sometimes "God will say no [to people's prayers]." Elisabeth's example was Katrina, which she likened to a parent disciplining a child...way out of line, there, I feel. Joy asked, "Then is the Iraq war God's will?" Elisabeth said, "There are some people who believe so. Some people believe that God's will is for there to be peace in the middle east." That's true. But Sherri Shephard, a good addition I feel, offered the response that there are people who believe that God's will is for there NOT to be a war in Iraq. The conversation then degenerated into an argument about what God's will is.

Here're my two cents. We are a nation of individuals. As a nation of individuals my first point is that most of us pray to a different idea of God. A good number of us don't pray to a god at all. It is extremely difficult to pinpoint whose will we're talking about when there is no standard in who God is. My second point is that we will never agree with what that Great Willpower wants for us. We are all so wrapped up in our own agendas (our own religious beliefs, values, prayers, needs) that sometimes it's easy to forget that if there is a God who has a will, we cannot possibly begin to know it. How can we know if Katrina or the Iraq War or my sinus infection last week were part of God's Will? I'm Catholic, so I like to believe in a larger plan, but I can't begin to pretend to understand that plan or explain it.

I'm so irritated with the distractions we're getting in this election. (Not like it's that surprising, though--we're always distracted away from the real issues by these sorts of riddling debates.) I want to know the clear-cut stances on the issues. I don't care about whether or not a politician should or shouldn't have mentioned a personal fact. They're just all distractions. Give me the political facts, the campaign platforms, and go away so I can make a decision.