With Age Came My Interest in Politics

FEBRUARY 7, 2023 BY ARCH KENNEDY

(This blog is part of a series of articles on overcoming life’s challenges to achieve your purpose and goals. Want to read more? Purchase my new book, “The Weather’s Fine: My Method for Overcoming Life’s Challenges” at ArchKennedy.com.)

I never really cared about politics growing up. Even into my twenties, as my career took off, weather was my only passion. I came from a moderately conservative, Christian, southern family. I can’t remember much discussion around the dinner table on the topic of politics and religion, but we were brought up to respect everyone and to put God first. 

Church was a must every Sunday morning, and a coat and tie were required to show respect for our Creator. Despite my family’s dysfunction and shortcomings, I never heard a racist word or curse word from my parents’ mouths. Racism was foreign to me in the small Central Georgia town of Thomaston, with a population of only 9,000 God-fearing people. White and black people would socialize together at school, and nobody seemed to see or judge people by the color of their skin from what I witnessed.

My Political Interest Grows

As I made my way to Nashville as a chief meteorologist for the local Fox station there, I suddenly grew a deep interest in politics. Barack Obama started his service in 2009 as the President of the United States. He had charisma, and much of America was thrilled to see a Black President for the first time in history. Despite being technically biracial, the social justice warriors considered this to be enough. 

I began to notice some radical ideas and moves on his part as he took the presidency. Spiritually, I noticed things like Jesus Christ being left out of speeches and Islam used as a replacement. It was very apparent that he wasn’t basing his political decisions on his faith in Jesus Christ. His rhetoric was anti-police and divisive. This was very disturbing for me, and I truly believe that despite his polished prose, he instigated the incredible divisiveness in our country today. He started a race war.

As I started doing my research, I watched more national cable news and began reading more than I had ever done in my life. Glenn Beck’s message and perspective captured my attention. He was new to the cable news scene with a gig on Headline News. I loved his freethinking. He was definitely conservative, but he was also not afraid to voice his opinions even if they deviated from the Republican agenda. I respected that. He was able to help one really think for oneself and establish one’s own thoughts and decide which side of the aisle you were on. I read his first book, The Real America: Messages from the Heart and Heartland and I was hooked on politics.

My Gay Marriage Outing

Fast forward to 2015. The Supreme Court makes gay marriage legal in all fifty states in Obergefell v. Hodges. At this point, I had been following politics vigorously for five years, so I was pretty knowledgeable on what was going on and how both Republicans and Democrats operated.

I had been watching Facebook friends openly post their strong political opinions while remaining quiet about mine for years, and I had finally had enough. I had always tried to keep my opinions private, as I never wanted to stir up any argument with friends. Drama has never been my thing, but I could no longer hold back.

I expressed my agreement that the LGBTQ community should have the same legal rights as straight people who made a monogamous commitment to another human being, but that I disagreed with the way it was done. It was an intentionally sugar-coated, non-threatening post. What I didn’t say publicly is that I believe in the Bible’s interpretation of marriage, which is between a man and a woman. Genesis 2:24 states: “That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.”

As a meteorologist in Atlanta in the late nineties, I was well known in the gay community because I was also quite a partygoer at the gay bars and also easily recognized from being on one of the local news stations. For the most part, I knew everybody who was gay in Atlanta. Needless to say, I was connected to most of them on Facebook years later. I was shocked by what happened next.

The hate started pouring in from the gay community. Sadly not only from gay strangers but also from gay friends that I considered very close to me. The first emotion was shock, then hurt, then anger. You would have thought that I had killed their dog or something. I was called everything in the book—everything from self-loathing to an alcoholic, to a washed-up, has-been weatherman, and much more. I would continue to get hate messages privately and on the open forums of Facebook. I find it ironic that the one group that preaches tolerance the most is the least tolerant group of them all. Over the following months, I lost most of my gay friends. This fueled rage in me, and I always say the leftist gay community created a monster because every bit of hate coming from them only drove me to become more politically active.

My Political Beliefs

Today we are witnessing an ever-increasing divisiveness in our country and a seeming decline in those who believe in our founding principles of the Constitution. Unfortunately, the Democrat Party is nothing like it was 20 or even 10 years ago. Make no mistake that the party has left God and put government and social justice in His place. What is most disturbing about the party today is totalitarianism. The Left no longer allows debate, and they are canceling any challenging thought. This is very dangerous; you cannot have a free society without free speech and debate. Social media is the new “town square,” and Big Tech is censoring any conservative opinion. I attribute much of the radicalism to this important fact. Never before would I have said that you cannot be Christian and vote Democrat until now.

Don’t believe me? Just look at two important topics the Democrat Party stands for: abortion on demand up until birth and completely ignoring immigration laws. If you read the Bible in Romans 13, you will see that God says we must obey government laws, and I think abortion up until birth speaks for itself. 

So here we are with a Democrat Party that has moved radically left and censored conservatives beyond reproach. Big Tech is stifling free speech for conservatives. With social media being the new town square, conservatives are not allowed a voice as part of their First Amendment rights. In my opinion, the solution has become painfully obvious, and that is that it is time to break them up like we did with the Bell system back in 1982. This is one monopoly that could become an enormous cost for our great country—the cost of freedom.

For a free society to exist, we must let everyone have a voice. The totalitarianism of the Left and not allowing dissenting opinions must stop if we are to have any semblance of what this country was founded on.

For an in-depth look at my solutions for dealing with a very heated political climate today, please check out my book. Also, I’d like to hear from you! How do you think we can bring the country back together? And, do you think we can ever get back to information-based news and civil debate? Leave your comments below.