Scary Movies
I don’t watch scary movies. It’s always been a “thing”. I can trace it all back to one of my early memories. I was just six years-old, watching a television show in black and white called The Outer Limits. It was a science fiction show, and this episode was about our earth invaded by an alien force. The aliens were ants, big ants, maybe six or eight inches long ants. And they’d crawl up the pants legs of the earthlings, creating searing agony with their bites. The chewed their way to power.
I had nightmares for weeks. To this day, I occasionally wake myself up in the middle of the night. My subconscious knows that the giant ant nightmare is coming, and it’s time to get up, take a walk, and find another “train of thought” to fall asleep to. Oh, and shake out my pants legs.
I’ve avoided scary movies ever since. I haven’t seen the “classics”, the Halloween series, or Sigourney Weaver in Alien. In fact, one of the only “horror” movies I sat through was called Poltergeist. Four of us were on a summer road trip, driving a van across the country, from Ohio to Washington State to the California/Mexico border and back. One night in Rapid City, South Dakota, my compatriots decided we were going to a horror movie. No amount of, “I’ll just hang out in the bar” was enough to avoid the experience. Luckily, we were all staying in one hotel room that night. I still didn’t get much sleep.
Poltergeist
The movie was about a young girl, named Carol Ann. Her spirit was threatened by evil. The evil spirits wanted retribution – her home was built on a desecrated cemetery. A spiritualist was brought in to keep Carol Ann with the living, and she struggled against the evil spirits trying to drag her away. The battle for Carol Ann’s spirit came down to “the light”, crossing over to the spirit world. The Spiritualist said: “Carol Anne – listen to me. Do *not* go into the light. Stop where you are. Turn away from it. Don’t even look at it.”
The light was a ruse. It seemed like the spiritual light to heaven, when in fact, it was the light to evil. And even though I was terrified by the “horror”, I still got the point. Sometimes, “the light” isn’t what it seems to be. Sometimes, you need to turn away from the light.
A Union of Light
I watched the State of the Union address last night, and the Republican response. Listen, Joe Biden is no Barack Obama, he is solid “Joe” from Scranton, Pennsylvania. He’s a plain spoken man. But he certainly enjoyed his eighty minutes in the limelight, giving as good as he got when the hecklers yelled from the crowd. (Remember when a Congressman yelled “liar” at Barack Obama? That shocked all of us; the decorum the State of the Union was broken. Now, we were all waiting for it. Our times are “a-changing”).
Biden painted a picture of America on the way “up”, with the economy breaking record highs, inflation under control, violent crime going down and unemployment at all-time lows. And he recognized that not everyone was sharing in the “wealth”, and laid out programs to make their lives better too.
And the President gave us a clear view of how the United States would help restore order in the world, from backing Ukraine, strengthening NATO, and even building a seaport in Gaza to deliver humanitarian aid. Like it or not, Biden offered America solutions for our problems.
Biden also explained America’s choice in 2024. His message was stark: we are choosing between a republic and oligarchy; democracy or authoritarianism. There are, in fact, two lights drawing the American people in opposite directions.
A Union of Dark
The difference between those two lights was dramatically (overly dramatic) emphasized by the Republican “retort” to the State of the Union. Alabama Senator Katie Britt delivered the speech from her literal “kitchen table”. Her America is quite dark, overrun by illegal immigrants threatening mayhem at every turn. In her America, it seems, that the average family huddles in prayer and fear around their kitchen table, looking for “the light” to lead them out of their torment. And that light, to the Senator, is the twice-impeached, four-time indicted presumptive Republican Party nominee. As Trump says, only he can fix it. Now all he needs to do is say – come to the light.
When we get past all the nonsense; worries about Joe’s clarity of thought, or physical ability to govern (despite the “Make America Great Again” Pac commercial), America is faced with a vision. Is our Nation in an evil place, looking for the light and protection of Trump? Or are we on the way up, to the better America that Joe Biden offers?
We need to choose – which light will we “come to”?
