BP/Gulf #2 - Sarah Palin Edition

I was struck when I read that Sarah Palin was blaming "extreme environmentalists" (whom she also called "radical," "misguided," and "nonsensical") for what is happening in the Gulf. (Her Facebook entry is here.) As is so often the case when viewing our political landscape through the lens of the 15 concepts, there are so many directions in which to go but as Spiritually Responsible Politics is, above all, about elevating the public discourse and so "debating" at the levels of beliefs and intentions is a really good way to do that. So here we go with one stipulation: We can never really know what someone else's intentions or beliefs are unless they tell us directly, so there may be some genuine guessing going on here, for argument's sake.

When I first heard about what Governor Palin wrote I thought it would be a great opportunity to simply point out that beyond all the name-calling (judgments) are simply differences in beliefs - figuring it would be relatively easy to show how Ms. Palin's beliefs are not the same as the beliefs of your average radical environmentalist. She may or may not consider me to be that, but I certainly have a belief that says, we belong to the planet, not the planet to us - also a concept, yes - and that means to me that we are made of the same stuff and that what we do to it we do to ourselves and what we do to ourselves we do to it and that we should put its health and well being on a par with our own and radically change our approach, legislatively, to what we do and do not consider to be acceptable treatment of the planet. And then I read this: "Some of these countries don't care for planet earth like we do - as evidenced by our stricter environmental standards."

I had thought maybe that Ms. Palin didn't have a belief anywhere near the neighborhood of caring for the planet so I was pleasantly surprised to see that she did. Clearly, however, her belief(s) about caring for the planet are different from mine because mine would not include ever doing something as risky and dangerous as what was done by BP in the Gulf and hers, apparently, would. And there's no doubt that the conversation or debate would continue, but keeping it in terms of what we each believe would undoubtedly keep the level of discourse relatively high. For example, she may have a belief that says oil exploration and drilling is the best source of energy for our country whereas my belief is that America has an addiction to oil that can and should be broken. In this way, we'd be talking about beliefs which would, undoubtedly, lead to conversations about facts and, ultimately, intentions as well.

I just think it's a better way to go than name-calling and blaming and as I have said many times before, it starts with us. What are your beliefs about what's happening in the Gulf? About using oil? About our ability as a country to solve this problem? Etc. and so forth. When we are clear and willing to talk about our own, we will be in a much better position to demand the same of our politicians.