2012 Republican Presidential Candidates...

I heard this today as I was watching "Morning Joe" on MSNBC:


"The Republican primary race has really been a choice between the unlikeable and the insufferable."
     ~ Tina Brown, Editor-in-Chief, Newsweek Magazine


This is a very interesting summation of the Republican candidates for President in 2012.  Who are the individuals who would have been more likable, sufferable or even desirable to the Republican Party as candidates for President?  Do such individuals actually exist?  And why didn't they run???

Maybe the question really needs to be: What is considered likable, sufferable or desirable for a presidential candidate in the Republican Party?  Maybe if that question were answered, then the more preferred presidential candidates could be found...

But I suspect that this close to the presidential election, even if that question were able to be answered and the more preferred candidate found, that it is too late... and Republicans will be stuck with either Mitt Romney or Rick Santorum or Newt Gingrich or Ron Paul... none of whom have been endorsed wholeheartedly and without any type of reservation by leading Republicans, and all of whom are still running for nomination as the Republican candidate for President in the 2012 campaign.

Trayvon Martin and Hermeneutics for Life...

(Originally posted by me on:  dear world... postcards from life... )

I'm guessing that you may be wondering what the word "hermeneutics" means...  in theology, it is a fancy word for how people approach the reading, study and understanding of the Bible...  are we unbelieving or suspicious of Biblical scripture even before we read it ... or do we approach scripture with a mind-set of acceptance and belief before reading it?  You can think of these as ends of the "hermeneutics spectrum" with a whole lot of ways to approach scripture in-between...

Now you are wondering, "So what?"... 

I suspect we all have a hermeneutic for how we approach other people - our family, our friends, our acquaintances, the people we don't know... that this hermeneutic is different and shifting for the various people we encounter and the times we encounter them... that there are other complicating factors we are not even aware of that influence how we approach others... factors that have been ingrained in us through family and/or societal expectations from the time we were infants...

We rarely even think of any of this, as we see another person and evaluate, judge and approach them...

Again, "So what?"

I think we need to be honest with ourselves... to recognize and pay attention to the underlying factors that guide how we approach others...  our "hermeneutics for life", as it were... and I believe that we need to push back against the ones that would have us immediately be suspicious and perhaps fearful of the people we don't know, the people who are dressed differently, or who talk differently, or who (       ) differently (you can fill in the blank)... the people who we think of as "those other people"... 

Maybe Trayvon Martin might still be alive if George Zimmerman had done just that...  

Maybe all the Trayvon's of the world might still be alive...