It is neither the best of times, nor the worst of times, to quote Charles Dicken’s “A Tale of Two Cities.” To draw parallels to our nation today, these are not, in many respects, extremely unusual times, nor are they times that try men’s souls. However, as we approach another presidential election, these are times that try thinking people’s patience. We are not merely lost in a flurry of words; we are lost in the fog that keeps us imprisoned. One last grasp at literary comparisons and then, “words, words, and all the boards did shrink; words, words, but none of them helped us think.” No, it’s not “The Ancient Mariner,” it’s the age-old nonsense of political illusion.

Behind it all stands three power-giving cities, thinly veiled by the curtains. They have always been there in some form, in every nation, at every point in man’s political history. Let’s now pull them out into full view so that their commanding influence on this year’s politicians can be displayed in full.

I give you first, New York City, the first of the “three-fold cords” Solomon first alluded to. It’s all about financial power and the agreements made privately between the biggest stakeholders in the game. Rule number one: Don’t even think about advocating change, let alone dealing with root issues that would unduly put our resources at risk. Rule number two: Push the problems away from us out into a future so that we will not have to deal with them personally. Friends, spiritually speaking, the World Trade Center was a target for multiple reasons.

Second, I give you Washington D.C., the defining city of our nation’s psychological borders. From many folks’ vantage point, in Washington, everything, and I mean everything, is inside “The Beltway.” Surely we live in two distinct nations. Washington D.C. is the seat of legislative, executive, and judicial power, backed by the power to tax and the power to make war. That is power, real power. Its demand upon our office holders or would be office holders is akin the demand on the financial stakeholders in New York. In D.C., the unspoken rule is, “Don’t even think about any policy that would dethrone entitlements, tenures, or long standing policies that give our current populations a sense of security, even if it is illusionary. You can call for radical policies, speak of them in double-talk, and or even accuse your political opponents of not having the courage or insight to see their need, but by no means do you enact them.” The game is really like the lyrics of the Eagle’s “Hotel California:” “You can check in anytime you’d like, but you can never leave.”

Lastly, we have the third city in this three-fold cord: Hollywood, California. This is the communication vehicle of “American Cultural Imperialism.” It makes nations hate us enough to fund terrorists. It pushes its own brand of “freedom,” a freedom never countenanced by our Founding Fathers, and that is the freedom to self-destruct. It says to the politicians, “Don’t come near; don’t even get close to putting moral absolutes or limits on our sexual preferences.” It demands the frequent showing of the reality of man’s evil nature. Hollywood is largely in the business of making sure that we do not elevate man’s conscience, rather we must relativize and desensitize it.

To be sure, there are people and spiritual forces working to break the current strongholds of this “tale of three cities.” Some progress is being made at lower levels. However, we need to realize the political debates are largely, but not completely, drowned in the noise made by these three cities, and that’s...