Quote: Thanks to TV and for the convenience of TV, pills you can only be one of two kinds of human beings, buy either a liberal or a conservative.
                Kurt Vonnegut, capsule “Cold Turkey”, In These Times, May 10, 2004

Thought for the Day: I grew up on a steady diet of Vonnegut. I discovered “Breakfast of Champions” on my high school library bookshelf, checked it out, and read it cover to cover that same evening. The next day, I checked out every Vonnegut book in the school. I was immediately drawn to his absurdities, his sardonic wit, and his scathing social critique. The older I got, the more I appreciated him, finding deeper and deeper levels of meaning in his work.

Like many other artists, Vonnegut had distaste for television. While TV has the capacity to be used as a deeply probing medium, it’s too often used to deliver the worst sort of pabulum. TV brainwashes us into complacency, and distills every issue down to “pro or con,” an attitude that now pervades our democracy to the point of paralyzing it. And where once television news was a respected bastion of integrity and investigative journalism, it too has devolved into the most sectarian broadcast imaginable, paid for by one side or the other.

The world is not comprised of simple “us” and “them” issues. We live in a world of rich diversity, so issues of civic justice and freedom, social equality, and wealth inequality don’t have simple, cut and dried answers. There are actually more than two sides to every discussion. It takes a lot of work to live together in diversity. It requires compromise, and compromise is only found in the grey middle ground that comes when both sides of an ideal each give a little of themselves for the common good. An artist can create a painting that is half black on one side, and white on the other, but the painting becomes a lot more interesting when the sides mix into shades of grey in the middle.

Prayer: I absolutely need to stop thinking in absolutes, God that is the only absolute. Help me be more imaginative, more understanding, and more willing to cooperate. Amen.