c u p p e n r o o d

Don't Cry For Me, Argentina: Nancy of Knotts and Sanford and sons

Politics makes poetry of history and we get to have an input into the line breaks and punctuation. Journalists are the medics and playwrights. And poets, full of themselves, write Redeem, Redeem, Redeem the self, forgetting poetry and justice and hearts, bleeding or otherwise.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/06/25/questions-mount-sanford-survive-governor/?test=latestnews

SEN. KNOTT'S opinions, as reported on FoxNews.com June 25:
"The way I'm looking at it now after going home and sleeping on it. ... There's a lot of questions out there that need to be answered. ... I intend to get to the bottom of some of them," Republican state Sen. Jake Knotts told FOXNews.com.

"We need a person in that position that can start moving us forward," he said. "I'm beginning to believe that he didn't care about South Carolina. ... He's got to think about the embarrassment."

Knotts, a longtime Sanford critic, was taken aback by Sanford's decision to step down as chairman of the national Republican Governors Association while staying on as governor.

"Why should he be able to represent the whole state of South Carolina when he can't even justify in his own mind the ability to represent the Republican Governors Association?" he said.

Knotts said he wants to know whether Sanford committed an "impeachable offense," and that his seat should not remain "dormant" for the next year and a half.

Sanford's term is up at the end of 2010, and he cannot run again due to term limits.

NANCY'S opinions, self reported on FB June 26:
Sen. Knott's comment, "... he's got to think about the embarrassment," interests me.

Sad though it may be, an individual's moral laws will differ and change in much the same way economics do; especially over the course of years. This is not spiritual hypocrisy, in my opinion, nor is it an immediate debaucher of a man or woman's long demonstrated integrity.

Rather, it is the outward manifestations of the constant interactions of emotional and physical chemistry that each individual has; that each individual may reach toward knowingly, as Columbus toward the Spice Islands; or discover quite by accident, as the wealth of one's Interior Continents, an individual's "America", if you will.

This chemical-emotional gateway is not piracy—which is criminal, or lethargic fishing—which is irresponsibility. To believe moral changes are criminal, casts blame, shame, and failure on the opposite partner, which is not just.

When an individual's chemical channels have discovered the wealth (or poverty) of their Interior Continents, whether through drug abuse or careful relational choices, the individual himself—not his family or allegiances—is responsible for continuing to guide his principled choices.

In the area of drug abuse, a guided, principled choice may be to choose medical assistance to regain footing. I think of New Orleans and parts of the Netherlands, places where the literal geography is lived upon with the sea, lived upon through engineering. I see no difference in the principles of chemical recovery and national sovereignty, no difference to choose or find yourself born into emotional geography that cohabits with geothermal fault lines, grapes, bogs vs. literal economic, national geography that protects its citizens through land ordinances and cumbersome balances. Geography is rich. Individual geography is rich, too.

What is personal morality and integrity? What person gets to define that for us? And where, really, are we free?

We are free to be debtor to those we choose to love.

I am sorry for Sanford's predicament, the expectations he accepted being so strong, and his own personal desires surprising him (?), as they may have. (I suspect, though, that his desires, nor any other man's desires, did not come to him as a surprise.) His prior choices before Argentina were a part of his road: married man committing publicly to one woman. But his road curved, as all roads do. He may not have seen it coming, looking at his integrity, not knowing that his integrity was with him all the while, holding it into the shallow air space of his chosen expectations.

I say "shallow" not to infer that marriage is shallow, his family is shallow, or SC is shallow—not at all! I say "shallow" to infer that at some point, individuals in every condition of choosing, find it hard to breathe. In surfacing chemically & emotionally, individuals are often killed by other individuals' anger and disappointed expectations; instead of receiving the calm consequences, or bearing the rough consequences, for their actions.

Yes, I am after peace, because I believe we have it in our Integrity—a constant self-truth we alone possess, which remains at all times untouched. Our integrity to receive the cost of ourselves. Our integrity to restore those we can.

Principled behavior within our personal integrity will recognize when expectation becomes untruth, and will respond in as gracious and non-militant (I believe) a way as we are nobly capable as humans, for the benefit of other's self-awareness, as well.

When our choices cause us to betray or discover our constant self-truths, then within the full range of our Integral Moral Responses, our principled living will allow us to move toward our best health, or recover our better (or) WHOLE life.

Why we are not encouraged to embrace our individual integrity first and last and in between; why we are encouraged to embrace Expectation and Authority and Definition over our chemical and emotional integrity, is barbaric to me. Barbaric to local and greater society, I believe.

We may lose, trade, choose to cross an ocean, or simply find our road turning, without losing our integrity. We are chemical-emotional people, and so long as the TRUTH of being ALIVE is kindled, integrity remains intact. It is not the rare, Olympian Self, it is the nose and lymph nodes and backside and skeleton. Integrity, in my opinion, is the gold of an individual's being alive to consequences, continents, poor houses, wars, and peace.

Yes, I am after peace. Recovery of chemical and emotional prosperity. Drug addicts, abused children, wives, mothers, husbands, fathers, prisoners of State, may retain their Integrity, recover themselves, should they embrace their lives to the point of recognizing when an accepted expectation becomes a lie. Guiding themselves by their personal chemical-morality and standards that reveal themselves as true or false to their Integral Self, serving the integrity that—think of this—has chosen them.

I understand why Sanford knew his mind in stepping down as chairman of the national Republican Governors Association while remaining governor of our state. He recognized the untouched integrity of the Governor's office, outside of himself. He is right to remain. He recognized and respected that his chemical-emotional choices conflicted with the greater ideals and personal expectations he had agreed to in the name of The Republican Political Ethic, which is frail (stern) in respect to chemical responsibility in morality.

I will be interested to see whether Sen. Knotts and others determine Sanford's comfort with Argentina to be an "impeachable offense". I am interested to see what "starting to move [SC] forward" is expected to be.

Posted by nancy at June 26, 2009 01:01 PM