{"id":16179,"date":"2017-02-12T00:39:01","date_gmt":"2017-02-12T07:39:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=16179"},"modified":"2017-02-12T00:39:01","modified_gmt":"2017-02-12T07:39:01","slug":"prairie-lights-rooting-for-the-chariots-of-the-right-color","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2017\/02\/prairie-lights-rooting-for-the-chariots-of-the-right-color\/","title":{"rendered":"Prairie Lights: Rooting for the chariots of the right color"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"moderate\"<\/a>

Go ahead and enjoy the show, but remember: moderation in all things.<\/p><\/div>\n

The first time I can recall thinking overtly about politics would have been during the presidency of John F. Kennedy.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t remember any talk of politics in our house, but I somehow knew (or, more likely, connected the dots later) that my father, being a working-stiff union man, was a Democrat.<\/p>\n

And we were Catholic, as was Kennedy, so it would have been strange if we had not been admirers of his. That\u2019s the thing: there was another family just like ours a block away, also German-Catholics, and their kids went to the same Catholic school we did.<\/p>\n

The Jungbauers, in fact, lived in what used to be the house where our parish priests lived until a new rectory was built. But somehow\u2014and if my memory is faulty here I apologize to the Jungbauer family\u2014they had become Republicans.<\/p>\n

It may have been that they were just ornery and enjoyed being contrary. I distinctly recall that on St. Patrick\u2019s Day, when everyone else wore green to school, the Jungbauer children showed up in bright blue, which they said signified their German heritage.<\/p>\n

So I guess if you could defy St. Patrick, one of the most revered saints in the history of the church, what was the harm in defying a mere Irish politician from Boston?<\/p>\n

I also remember hating the Jungbauers\u2014though I can\u2019t remember now whether I was more upset about their Republicanism or their hostility toward St. Patrick and the Irish. I don\u2019t suppose it mattered. The intense feeling was what mattered, the joy of choosing sides and having someone on the other side to hate.<\/p>\n

I would learn many years later that those same two colors\u2014blue and green\u2014nearly tore apart Constantinople, the capital of Byzantium and of Christianity after the fall of the western half of the Roman Empire in the sixth century.<\/p>\n

\"CapreAir_Variable\"<\/a><\/div><\/div>Blue and green represented the two factions in the chariot races that captivated virtually every citizen, high and low, of Byzantium. Historians have long argued about the significance of the factions, one theory being that blue and green really represented two sides in a theological debate about the nature of Christ.<\/p>\n

Other historians say that the chariot races themselves were quite contentious enough to bring people\u2019s passions to the boiling point, which they often did, resulting in riots in which many thousands of people were slaughtered in the streets of Constantinople.<\/p>\n

I think it hardly matters which historians are right. Whether people are slaughtering each other over sports, theology or politics, it all comes down to the rapturous joy of belonging to a faction, of feeling the closest possible kinship with people dressed in shirts of the proper color, and passionately hating those sporting a taboo hue.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not suggesting that we all pull together and root for Donald Trump because he\u2019s our president now and we have to give him a chance to grow into his new role, or at least to learn the first damned thing about it.<\/p>\n

I still believe that we have a patriotic duty to resist everything Trump stands for, or thinks he stands for, or was told by somebody that standing for might look presidential. Let\u2019s call our present-day factions red, white and blue vs. orange.<\/p>\n

But let\u2019s also, from time to time, stop and consider whether our passionate feelings about a particular aspect of the current presidency stem from a love of the Constitution and a concern for the well-being of our children and grandchildren\u2014or from the thrill of being soldiers in the army of righteousness.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s ask ourselves whether, in each particular case, we have done the research and come to a well-thought-out conclusion, or whether we wholeheartedly believe something because we heard it from a man in a blue shirt, or rabidly oppose something else because it was brought up by a woman wearing green.<\/p>\n

It won\u2019t be easy\u2014I\u2019ve been nursing a grudge against the Jungbauers for something like 50 years now\u2014but I think we had better try.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The first time I can recall thinking overtly about politics would have been during the presidency of John F. Kennedy. I don\u2019t remember any talk of politics in our house, but I somehow knew (or, more likely, connected the dots later) that my father, being a working-stiff union man, was a Democrat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16180,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[5509,5510,5508,4869],"class_list":["post-16179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-prairie-lights","tag-byzantium","tag-chariots","tag-constantinople","tag-john-f-kennedy","prominence-top-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16179"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16179\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}