One more thing: (the media again)

I'm reading the book "Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger" by Ron Sider. There's a paragraph I just read that runs along my rantlines of late, and it gives me an idea.

"Centralized wealth equals concentrated power. And that—as the conservative critics of communism rightly used to point out—is dangerous. It is not surprising that the relatively small numbers of wealthy people who control the largest corporations, which in turn own the media [did he just say "own the media"?], also have vast political power. In the U.S., most of the private money for political campaigns comes from the richest 1 percent of the people. Not surprisingly, most politicians care more about the self-interest of their wealthy donors than about justice for the poor. Democracy is threatened and the poor suffer" (144).

So here's the idea that I don't think my wife would support (given that I would become completely unavailable). I'm going to go door to door around the country and sit down with everyone who will talk. (It's important to introduce myself in a way that they will actually talk to me.) We'll talk about their life and economic state and what they wish were better. We'll talk about the system that's in place (see Sider's assessment above). Then we'll talk about weaning ourselves off the media. We'll talk about genuine community conversation where we can get information from people we trust (where will they get it? not sure about that yet), rather than self-interested oligarchical plutocrats. The media empires will fall because the advertisers will see that it's not worth their money. We will get back to the day of candidates actually having to work, using more literal, but probably still figurative, stumps for their speeches. This will lead to a more actual democracy, rather than the joke that we have in America (or should I jibe the anti-democracy by saying "'Merica"?).

I am so darn idealistic, but I like to think that I have idea(l)s worth putting into practice, and ones that can be put into practice. My ethics professor wrote in his book "Just Peacemaking" (yeah, it's as great as it sounds) that we need to rid ourselves of our cancerous pessimism. We can actually do something about poverty. Yes, Jesus said we will always have the poor with us, but that doesn't mean we don't do great work to mitigate the disaster that is their life. We need to start having human concern for changing the world for the sake of the world, not our own. When can we start?