Gentrification and the Coming Class War

IN A HISPANIC NEIGHBORHOOD in San Francisco, kids play soccer on a field where their fathers and grandfathers played. Recently, however, due to business growth, property values in this section of town have skyrocketed, and the suits and ties are starting to move in. As the Song says "Scary guys in suits and ties, romanticize free enterprise, and everything that money buys..surprise..surprise.) Suddenly the soccer field is more popular, and young high tech corporate types on the fast track are starting to show up, demanding use of the field, causing conflict, even, at one point, an all out gang fight. At last report, an agreement has been reached, a detente of sorts. Let's hope it holds; our cities have suffered enough in America. In New York city venerable old Steinway Hall is being torn down and replaced by high end condos for the very very wealthy. In teh quaint old college town of Fayetteville, Arkansas, the rustic, cheap bar college town flavor has been replaced by elite, exclusive shops and restaurants; only the college student sons and daughters of the wealthy can afford to spend much time there. It always seems, at least recently, to be a mad rush of contracts and construction replacing low cost housing and entertainment with upper crust blue blooded culture for the wealthy. the wealthy class and the poor class are growing in America; everything in between is vaporizing before our very eyes and backhoes. People who point out these things run the risk of being accused of "class warfare", as if describing the situation is the same as creating it. There is no country in the world, nor has there ever been, in which the interests of the wealthy and the poor are the same. The greater the inequality, the greater the political gap. Eventually, compromise is no longer possible, and violence resolves all questions. In America, we are now near that.

The Gift Rejecting Post Christmas Regifting Blues

THERE HOUSE BURNED DOWN, with everything in it, including their exercise machines. I thought I was being a hero, giving them a "Total Gym" fitness machien for Christmas. I wan't using it much anyway, and they had expressed sadness that theirs had burned up. It was a hassle loading it into my car, driving it over to their temporary home, a storage shed, right next to the pile of rubble that used to be their lovely home. but doing it made me feel good. Isn't that the right reason to give somebody something? Or, is it....a few days later they called and explained that they really couldn't accept teh "loan" of teh Total Gym, becaue tehy didn't have room for it, and anyway, they weren't inclinede to use it just not; they had other things on their minds, like what to do, where ti love, how to rebuild. Simple stuff like that. They went to the trouble of loading the bulky thing up, driving it back over to my house, and unloading it. After it was all over, I felt terrible, worse than ever - for myself. Poor poor me, my grand gift rejected, outright! Well, there goes my good feeling, replaced suddenly by a feeling of empty hollowness. My grand gift had never been anything but a burden for people with far more fundamental, pressing concerns. But maybe a teachable moment for me! A reminder to always look at other people's situation form their point of view, under all circumstances, including gift giving. Maybe we could all shorten the "regifting" lines a bit. Through it all, may our hearts remain ever open and our generous impulses intact!

Marijuana in America: Doing What Is Stupidest

POPULAR COLORADO HAS a shiny new toy, legalized marijuana, and the nearby neighbors Oklahoma and Nebraska, and probably Kansas too, are pitching a jealous fit. All that new money and fun, high in the Rockies. Folks passing as quickly as possible through the relative blandness of Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska, getting to the party in the Rockies. And guess who's jealous? The three cry baby states claim they have the burden of all that illegal pot passing through their pure and righteous states, the cost of law enforcement, prosecution, and so forth. Their plan is to take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, alleging that Colorado's legal marijuana law is unconstitutional, since it is in direct contradiction to federal law, which supercedes all state laws. And, on the surface, if you think about it, it seems like they are right. But word is that the Supreme Court isn't interested in hearing the case, and you can hardly blame them. It could become quite the sticky legal mess, if it hasn't already. And of course, the U.S. supreme court does not have to hear any case it does not want to. It might be better just to sit this one out, because whatever it would decide, no matter what it decides, would upset the applecart much more severely than it already is; perhaps its better to just let the states and their people work it out, and trust that they will. The best way, of course, would be for the federal government, and every state in the union, to legalize marijuana. In Colorado and Washington state, the laws seems to be working very well. And why shouldn't it, anywhere else? However, never underestimate the ability of the American government to do whatever is most stupid. We've all been through that enough times; we oughta know.

Garth Brooks; Doing It Right

ONCE IN A GREAT WHILE, someone comes along and does something so totally cool, so entirely self sacrificial in service to others, that your only option is admiration. Goethe said "confronted with great merit, the only resistance is love."Ffor those of us who love the sensitive, melodic music of Garth Brooks, its time to abandon all resistance, and so just feel the love. Time to resist the temptation to lament the loss of all the great albums and concerts that Garth could have recorded during the past ten years, when he was instead staying home, raising his family, missing out on millions of American dollars. Garth says staying home with the kids was the best choice he ever made, that doing so purged him of any guilt he might have otherwise felt, but that doing so was among the hardest decisions of his life. But now, he says, he is ready to come back to his art, strong, ready, as he says, to eat mashed potatoes with both hands. (We may assume that he has silverware at hand). A tough decision indeed, trading the glittery limelight for the not so glittery world of diapers and nightlights. It almost seems as if Garth could have had his cake and eaten it too: say, a large recreational vehicle, homeschooling, wife and kids on the road with him. But no, that would have meant a compromise in quality, a forfeiting of the backyard and the precious lifelong friendships kids form in public schools. Above all else, Garth wanted quality of life for his entire family, and he got it. For that , he is a hero. And who knows? Maybe, every now and then, at the breakfast table, or during bedtime story hour, a tune or two came to mind, and a few melodic passages. And just maybe the rest of us will soon savor the new fruit born of ten years of family time, as Garth gears up to hit the recording studio and the open road once again.

Laughing at Sony, North Korea, and Obama

PRESIDENT OBAMA officially acknowledged that North korea is responsible for the recent "cyber attacks" against the Sony corporation, even though sony is a Japenese company (with an American CEO), and even though the word "cyber" is stupid and meaningless, and even though the Sony corporation has already surrendered to North Korea. Obama said he wishes the cheap electronic entertainment dealer had consulted with him first, before turning yellow ( if wishes were horses, etc.), but that, by heavens, he, big bad O, fully intends to do something about it. Precisely what, the President did not say. Options include a full scale Desert Storm" style military invasion of North Korea, or the mere rattling of State Department sabers, the shaking of the fist of the incoming secretary of Defense, or, the most drastic, the flooding of North Korean mailboxes with American print media advertising. The fact that none of these options has any chance of success doubtless will NOT prevent their implementation, as is customary with American foreign policy solutions. North Korea is hardly justified being angry with Sony. Sony is guilty of nothing except maliciously ridiculing the North Korean head of state, who is rather, shall we say, "weird", and fantasizing about said head of stated being murdered, humorously. North Korea might benefit from acquiring a sense of humor: doing so would enable them to take their minds off themselves, at least fleetingly. Ironically, the North Korean dictator is known to be an avid fan of American movies, and is a friend of former basketball star Dennis Rodman, he of the multicolored hair. Any friend of rodman's is a potential savorer of comedy. Couldn't we all just have a good laugh, and move on?

Waiting For Conservatives to Wise Up

COMPELLED BY AN URGENT necessity to induce vomitig due to the inadvertant ingestion of a toxic substance, I turned for surcease of suffering to the ultimate elixer of purgatives, conservative talk radio. It worked like a charm, the poison came back up, and I lived. Which pompous nitwit it was in particular who saved me I neither recall nor care; but whoever it was, the big mouth saved my life, sure enough, merely by spewing the usual brand of hate filled ultra right wing lunacy. And for that I should be grateful. As they say, there is no trash, there is only misplaced garbage. But I do recall the topic of the lunacy. The topic was the extermination of native American civilization by the hordes of land grabbing, gold seeking Europeans who began their conquest in 1492, and never let up. Predictably, the pompous nitwit was all down with the process. The Indians were always fighting among themselves, taking each other's land and squaws away... genocide is normal human behavior... they weren't using the land properly anyway... the United States of America was worth the trade off, and is a much superior culture. You know the line. Same old piously patriotic crap. Needless to say, none of that is true. Of course, nothing on right wing radio is, with but rare exceptions. Sure, the Indians fought, but not genocidally, not with a systematic plan of cultural extinction, and, day in day out, for the most part, they lived in relative harmony, being far more civilized than the European Christian egomaniacs who displaced and replaced them. As right wing bloviator Bill O'Reilly says, yoyu can't justify a wrong by pointing to other wrongs. Hey! A true statement from a conservative talking head! Will wonders never cease! Next thing yoyu know, some right wing idiot will actually suggest that global warming is a bit more than a multi million member liberal hoax, or that the Africans who were dragged to America in chains may have been mistreated from time to time, or that the native Americans wore clothing, had families, and did more than run around in the wilderness acting like wild animals. But don't hold your breath.

Singing To Yourself

IF YOU'RE YOUNG, BLONDE, BEAUTIFUL, female, and facially unblemished, place a microphone within millimeters of your mouth and sing loudly, with an expression of anger on your face. Your chances of achieving celebrity are strong. Self marketing media mogul Taylor Swift is the latest, and most successful manifestation of america's singer-celebrity obsession. She helps herself even more by writing some seductive, sensuous songs. The dirty little secret is, you don't have to rely on Swift, nor anyone else, for your daily recreational requirements. You can do it yourself, in the comfort of your own humble home. Simply stand and deliver! Bellow forth, heedless of utterly irrelevant quality control considerations. Anyone else in the house trigeers the "assumption of risk" doctrine. The point is, you don't have to spend hundreds of dollars, and you don't have to further enrich the already rich, and further flatter the vanity of the already overly flatterd vain ones, just to hear a few good songs. You can do it yourself! In America's rural rustic past, families kept themselves amused at the piano with group and singular song singing. Taylor Swift is a brilliant, hard working self promoter and marketer, and more power to her. She is quite right when she says you need an incentive to buy her music. The fact that she, and others like her, spare no effort trying to persuade a gullible public that such incentives exist is much to her entrepeneurial credit. But don't buy it. Consider leaving Taylor Swift on the shelf. There is a do it yourself recording studio deep in your own throat, and its free for the price of admission. Its free for a song.

Crossing the Line With Cuba

AMERICAN RELATIONS WITH CUBA, according to John boehner the bombastic one, should not be normalized until Cubans enjoy "complete freedom". By "complete", the soon to be screamer of the House presumably means either anarchy, or unfettered access to Cuban markets by american corporations. A reasonable blend of cooperative economics and broad based participatory democracy seems difficult for conservatives such as his Bombasticity to grasp. In its sordid history of supporting brutal dictatorships, democracy has never been American priority. Quite the opposite, in fact. Our corporate American government much prefers capitalist autocracy, such as those installed in the many American puppet-client states sprinkled around the world. The more authoritarian the dictator, the better, as long as American corporate capitalism is welcome. Under Batista, Cuba was a haven for American investment, and thus was a "friend of America". Under socialist Castro, who wanted Yankee imperialists out, no dice. No friend, no trade from Norde Americano. Expulsion of American wealth alway trumps human suffering. Politicians never miss an opportunity for a bit of pious posturing, but Boehner's high toned assertaion that the United States of America should suddenly require "democracy" or "freedom" (aka U.S. capital) as a prerequisite for American "friendship" (aka exploitation) crosses the mightly thin line narrowly separating the hilarious from the downright hypocritical.

Doing It the Abraham Lincoln Way

"LABOR IS PRIOR TO CAPITAL, which is only the fruit of labor, and would never have existed, had not labor existed first. Labor is superior to capital, and should always be given the higher consideration", said Abraham Lincoln, who was a rebublican. Oh, that today's republicans were more like Lincoln! Invest the money, establish management team, hire the labor, minimum costs, maximum profit, sell shares, maximum dividends for shareholders, maximum pay for upper level management, our modern corporate business plan. Bad plan, according to old Abe, who hated being called "Abe", and preferred being called "Lincoln". And he preferred workers to corporate profit. Labor-ownership, small scale production and sales, reinvestment, management, shareholders. The Lincoln approach. All business starts small, and the real work begins with worker production. Let the fruit of labor begin with labor, and let it trickle upward, all the way to management and shareholders. Managers and shareholders can wait. And besides, managers and shareholders don't work quite as hard as workers, as Abraham Lincoln knew well.

Creating Moral Clarity

YOU'RE A GOOD, GOD FEARING heterosexual, frequently randy, always up for a good romp with your churchfully wedded spouse, at least, most of the time. Cut from the cleanest Christian cloth, you just know that homosexuality, that unspeakably off-limits-to-the-righteous lifestyle, is a sin of hellish proportions. The sodomites, you are certain, shall surely get theirs in the hereafter. But there's just one nagging, annoying problem. Sometimes, your minister mentions Jesus christ, and his hard to adhere to doctrine of universal love and unconditional forgiveness. Then too, vague memories of those damned do gooder political correctors and their vaguely similar (to Christ's) message keeps seeping in. A touch of moral incongruity, perhaps? So, you find a solution, a very convenient, clever one, so you think. Love the sinner, hate the sin. Perfect! Case closed, all traces of moral hypocrisy vanquished. Back to church, back to bed. But can we, with intellectual integrity, so easily separate out the sin from the sinner? Just how deeply imbedded within you is your own spousal love and lust? Deeply, perhaps? How deeply embedded is anyone else's, straight or gay? As deeply as your own, likely. Don't look now, but here comes the advance guard of that qwful moral incongruity you thought you had forever vanquished.

Looking In the Mirror

FORMER VICE PRESIDENT Dick Cheney said "some people think there is a moral equivalence between what we (the American government) do, and what the terrorists do, which is simply not true". Quite right, Mr. former V.P.. There is no moral equivalence. What the United states government is doing, and has done for a long time, is far more immoral. The U.S. government (not the American people) has murdered hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of innocent civilians during its history. Forget about the genocide of the natives. In 1898 the boiler room of an American warship exploded in Havana harbor, sinking the ship. The U.S. govt blamed the Spanish, declared war, conquered cuba, conquered the Phillipines, and murdered 800,000 Phillipinos. Can we say "Viet Nam napalm"? Then too, more recently, there are the tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians.The preceding list is only partial, and may never be complete. The terrorists hate the American government because the American military occupies what the terrorists consider Holy lands, and this inspires people to become terrorists. And to think, people like Cheney, people like Reagan, Rumsfeld, Bush, and Bush have the unmitigated audacity to call other countries names like "the evil empire", and the "axis of evil". Boys, how about a quick look in the mirror? If you like what you see, look again.

Naming

I RECKON A MAN'S GOT A RIGHT to name himself, Davy Crockett could've said. "A man goes far to find out what he is", Theodore Roethke actually wrote. Jesus of Nazerath was named "Joshua son of Joseph" by his father. Ask any Christian historian. We can assume Jesus respectd his father, and his father's name. HIS name was translated from Aramaic to Greek to latin to German to English, with stops in between. Beijing, we used to call "Peking", until we finally decided to get it right. "I-vun" is now "E-Von'". Bach is now "Bah". "E-vuh" is now "A-vuh". But Joshua ben Joseph is still "Jesus", a Latin distortion of the Roman Empire written in stone by a religion which refuses to acknowledge and correct any and all error. "Only by errors which really irk us do we advance" said Johann Wolfgang von goethe. Let the self correction begin!

Eating Pizza and Protesting at Harvard, and Elsewhere

HARVARD IS THE WORLD'S wealthiest university, but at the beginning of the third millennium, (which was 2001, not 2000 as widely believed), janitors and cooks on campus were being paid minimum wage. You can't live on minimum wage in Boston. You crowd into small apartments or trailers, live in your car, or go homeless on minimum wage. Harvard, like nearly all American universities, is a bastion of intellectual, do gooder liberals. In 2001 a group of do gooder student activists presented a petition to the Harvard powers that be, asking for a living wage for workers. The petition was ignored. Out came the people, placards, and pickets. Another rebuff from the elite, above on high. Not to be denied (never let it be said that Harvardians are quitters), the teeming mob entered the University President's office, and stayed, with friends passing pizza through the window. Soon the hallowed halls and manicured lawns were inundated with swarming complainers, chanting, singing, snacking. UP showed Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, Harvard alums. Up showed the news media. Game on, fun just beginning. The scene become an embarrassment for the ruling aristocracy and its billionaire benefactors, who finally caved. The older I get, the more convinced I become that something similar must transpire across the fruited plain, in order to save the country, if America is to survive the crushing burden of pervasive racial and economic inequality which will, if not addressed, result in far worse consequences ( worse than protesting); it will result in societal collapse. In 1932 thirty thousand World War One veterans, American heroes, walked into Washington D.C. and occupied Wall St., aka Pennsylvania avenue, hungry depression plagued heroes demanding payment for their service to country. President Hoover called them "communists" and "traitors", and did nothing, in typical conservative fashion. Officers Patton, MacArthur, and Eisenhower shot at them like dogs and drove them out of town, and Franklin Roosevelt said to Mrs. Roosevelt "I will be the next President, whether I bother to campaign or not". So, it can happen, and very nearly has. In the election of 1932 FDR did indeed landslide over Hoover, while one million Americans voted for communist and socialist candidates. Typically thoughtless conservatives think, or pretend to think, that those who describe social injustice are the cause of it, or are imagining it. This attitude is either denial, or downright evil. We need to conserve little of the current system, and we need to liberate most of it, by whatever means necessary. And if we do not, to Quote Bertolt Brecht: "there shall remain of our cities but the wind that blew through them". To quote the French Revolution: "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity".

Celebrating Everything, All the Time

"BLACK HISTORY MONTH" is February, and don't look now, but, that isn't very far away. Like Einstein said: "I don't think much about the future. It comes soon enough". Soon enough indeed. But what's the point? When tracing "black" history, one simply cannot swing a dead cat without hitting "white" history head on. At least you can't in America, and neither can you, tragically, in Africa. Alas, the scourge of white-imposed European colonialism, slavery, and bigotry. History can be reasonably divided into categories geographically and chronologically, albeit a bit arbitrarily, but dividing history by race or gender, particularly considering the widely distributed and interactive nature of races and genders, creates categorical difficulties, and is dubious at best. Men, women, blacks, whites, so intermingle that to separate them in time, space and history is, at best, like taking salt out of saltwater; at worst, like removing Merry from Christmas. Affirmative action was intended to be a solution to a societal problem of long standing persistence, the shoving of racial equality down the throats of the American people, and it has had a positive impact, whatever one's attitude towards it. Sometimes one must be force fed for one's own good, medicinally. Black history month, granted, is also intended as a solution, an enhancement of cultural appreciation. But affirmative action and racial quotas are tangible solutions, and black history month is an abstraction, and runs the risk of distorting historical understanding. May we forever celebrate all twelve months, and may we forever study history and learn from it, as a whole, regardless of race, color, creed, or gender.

Torturing, Doing Our Jobs

The Director of the CIA solemnly swears that "Enhanced Interrogation techniques" (EIT) are successful in rendering a bountiful supply of information vital to the apprehension of terrorists and the foiling of terrorist plots. this, in the spite of the fact the people who have been tortured, and people who have tortured others, disagree. "Enhance Interrogation Techniques" is a very clever substitute term used by people like former President Bush and the CIA Director who lack the courage and integrity to call a spade a spade to call it what it is: torture. Can any of these people say "sodium pentathol"? " How about "truth serum"? The congressional study recently released which belies the CIA's claim of effective torture was conducted mainly by Democrats, with Republican John McCain, because the other Republicans took their ball and went home, doubtless crying and teeth gnashing. The CIA claims that they thwarted a terrorist attack by torturing an individual terrorist informant. But there is a problem with this claim, an inconsistency. the alleged terrorist plot was foiled in 2002; the terrorist informant who allegedly spilled the beans was tortured in 2003. The CIA contends not only that torture works, but that those who disagree must prove otherwise, and that even a single instance of proven successful torture, or that if even a single instance of alleged unsuccessful torture remains unproven, then all disagreement with the CIA is invalid. Very clever. Nice try. Force 'em to prove a negative! But, no dice. the CIA is not privileged to establish the rules of evidence by which its behavior is judged. that must be left to the American people, acting through their elected officials and courts of law. Is the CIA lying, or concealing? It is paid to do both.

Denying The Truth in the Rain and Heat

FIRST, CALIFORNIA experiences a severe three year drought of record proportions. Then, just as all seems lost, in comes a superstorm with 75 MPH winds and ten inches of rain. A cyclonic superstorm. Extreme weather, if ever there was. Precisely the forecast of all those thousands of ivory tower, out of touch, egg headed, know nothing pseudo scientific biologists, chemists, and physicists who dwell within and dominate academia, and their socialist liberal conspiratorial sponsors, of whom there are millions, meeting in ivory towers, conspiring. Our conservative comrads, meanwhile, attribute current California weather to flukedom, something ordinary to be expected in nature, sunspots, or the wrath of a vengeful God. For the right wing religious, anything will do, except logical truth. To paraphrase Bertolt Brecht: "in the earthquakes (or superstorms) to come, it is to be hoped that I shan't allow bitterness to quench my cigar's glow". the question is: where in the world will future cigar tobacco be grown? Antarctica?

The Sinister Spewings of El Rushbo

RUSH LIMBAUGH IS the New York Yankees of radio broadcasting; the most loved and the most hated among a conservative pack of like minded hate spewing long winded talkers. A former drug addict who went deaf listening to himself speak, he has executed a brilliant business plan: preaching to the choir, which consists of several million hard right wingers, the Jesus, Guns, and Money community, which displays a sycophantic attachment seldom seen - to a voice on the radio. Limbaugh's inflated, overbearing ego has so far driven off three wives, and counting. Wife number four is apparently hanging in there, but her days as Mrs. Limbaugh may also be severely limited. How can any emotionally healthy woman endure long in that situation? Its quite a feat for a man of Limbaugh's wealth, about which he so enjoys bragging, to drive off three wives, but Rush has a special talent for repulsion. I've been listening to El Rushbo for twenty years, waiting for him to say something - anything - on the air which isn't preposterous or dishonest. I may wait a good deal longer. He shows no sign of deviating from unreasonable hatred. Limbaugh was a geeky, unpopular kid in high school, a bow tie among blue jeans and T shirts. He spent two semesters in college, where, according to his mother, he flunked everything. Yet, inexplicably, he calls himself A 'GENIUS". His constant spewing of right wing hatred attracts similar minded mediocre minds, much like Hitler's oratory. He fancies himself an intellectual and a historian, while telling his audience that the Magna Charta was signed "in the 1500s". (King John II signed it in 1215). His spewings include a pompous, self righteous patriotism of the sort often heard among scoundrels concealing their sinister intentions. But that's no surprise. His hero is Ronald Reagan, who used similar techniques of disinformation, and had his own set of cognitive dysfunctions.

Torture Is About Us

A MAN STANDING NAKED in a cold room for days on end, with Snoop Dog blaring continuously and a sharp object inserted up his rectum, is decidedly unlikely to answer questions accurately about his whereabouts and activities on some certain long ago day. Thinking becomes confused. Responses become solicitous, garbles, and erroneous, impelled by an urgent necessity of pleasing the compelling inquisitor, at whatever cost, especially truth. Senator John McCain, a rare sensible republican politician, understand this intimately, firsthand. McCain also understands that the United States of America is a great and good country, or one which could be, and is, or ought to be, superior to and above torture. Two wrongs don't make a right, and one does not justify bad behavior merely by pointing to the bad behavior of one's enemies. The other republicans, the God-fearing ones who pompously proclaim America's superiority with such fervor as to raise questions of motivation, don't seem to agree, not surprisingly. The right wingers who cherish the Lord and america's superiority of purpose seem to condone, even advocate, torture. Behold the superior moral standards of America' super patriotic Christian patriots! The United states of America is simply too good to condone or to use torture, aside from the universal illegality of it. (United Nations agreements, the Geneva Convention). As Senator McCain simply, eloquently stated: " torture is not so much about our enemies, its about us".

Eating Crackers, Drinking wine, Killing children

EINSTEIN ONCE SAID "the world is a madhouse". He may've had a point. Roughly two thousand years ago a great guy had a dinner party with a group of friends, for the last time. Allegedly there were twelve participants. Rumor has it that a thirteenth guest showed up, uninvited. Bad luck. We don't know for sure whether the uninvited guest was turned away, nor, for that matter, whether this dinner party actually occurred. Never let the truth stand in the way of a good story, said mark Twain, roughly. but anyway, out came the wafers and the wine, and everyone had a snack. It is alleged that the great guy wanted to be cannibalized, symbolically, to enhance the memory of himself, and to share himself intimately with his friends. give credit where credit is due; this guy knew how to share himself, and how to attract attention. To this very day millions of people engage in a reenactment of the symbolic eating of flesh and blood known as the "Eucharist", for whatever reason. Is it possible that the word "eucharist" translates from the Latin as "the consumption of Christ"? The madness does not end there. Not only does the Bible seem to encourage symbolic cannibalism, it explicitly instructs parents to kill their children when the rug rats disobey or argue with their parents. Christians universally refuse to condemn this arguably barbaric passage in Leviticus in admirably amazing and creative ways, having to do with historical context and translation. To defend the indefensible is indefensible, or something like that. however, considering the barbaric nature of human history and the state of the current human condition, little wonder that the barbaric rantings of an angry god still hold sway over millions of primitive primates.

Eric Garner, the Cigarette Salesperson

FOR 246 YEARS, (1619-1865) , Africans were kidnapped (until 1809, when kidnapping Africans and selling them as slaves was declared illegal) in Africa and enslaved in America. Although they had a pricey marked value, they were often mistreated, much like people, cars, houses, and public restrooms are frequently mistreated today, despite their high value. Although slaves in the south generally "enjoyed" a higher standard of living than free laborers and indentured servants in the north, they nonetheless tended to dislike being slaves. Slave revolts en masse were common, as were attempts by individual slaves to escape to freedom. Until the 1830s, by which time the Indians had been driven from the south, slaves escaping plantations in large numbers went to live with the Indians throughout the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Much like the hordes of early American white settlers, mostly indentured servants, who fled to live with the Indians beginning in 1607, former slaves often preferred the harmonious life on native culture to the oppressive inequities of European-American culture........................................................ When he signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, President Lyndon Johnson declared that "one hundred years is long enough", referring to the one hundred years of systematic segregation, discrimination, exclusion, isolation, and impoverishment of the "free" blacks which followed the civil War. In practical terms, the several civil rights acts signed in the late fifties through the mid sixties have done little, or at least too little, to improve the situation. To some extant, behavior can be modified through legislation, but attitudes cannot. Repeated verified studies clearly confirm the persistence of racism in America, it having assumed more subtle, less overt, more insidious forms. All this is well known, in general terms, in essence, to our contemporary African-American "community". To deny that prejudice against African-Americans remains prevalent in America is to deny reality. This does not justify crime, or resisting arrest, but it does, at least in part, justify the widespread suspicion among blacks that white police officers are especially heavy handed when apprehending black law breakers. The officer who restrained the cigarette salesperson on Staten Island with what rather resembles a "choke hold" around the neck could just as easily have threaded his arms under the perp's armpits, then over the perp's shoulders, then locked his hands together, thus forcing Eric the perp's arms into an upraised position, suitable for hand cuffing. Better yet, write the man a ticket, with a summons to appear in court at a later date. Better yet, leave him alone, in the spirit of free enterprise. Obviously, a less excessive, more reasonable level of cigarette taxation would reduce black market incentives. A pack of cigarettes which costs 13 to 15 dollars per pack can be resold, one ciggie at a time, at one dollar per, for a tidy profit. The prohibition of pleasant commodities creates black markets, as we have seen with alcohol and marijuana. Likewise, the exclusion of human beings from society engenders generalized resentment, and incites resistance and violence.

The Pursuit of American Excellence

IT IS EXTREMELY DIFFICULT to become a member of the United States Marine Corps band. All sorts of paperwork, background checks, and innumerable auditions. A recording of one playing one's instrument must be submitted. One must audition in person, with judges hidden behind a screen. One must play a piece of music, perfectly, at first sight. Those few chosen are exempted from boot camp, given the rank of staff sergeant, with the pay grade of E6. The U.S. Marine Corp band performs flawlessly, and it is a great honor to be a member. The pursuit of excellence is an American tradition. To appear on television, one's teeth must be perfectly straight and paper white, one's complexion flawless. In academic circles, students are given some slack academically, but none whatsoever athletically. At the highest level of college football, scholarship athletes must perform at the highest possible level, or else. Or else risk public censure, ridicule, contempt, and even revocation of scholarship. The common denominator is entertainment. We Americans expect to be entertained at the highest level, are willing to pay top dollar for the privilege, and the market responds accordingly. American exceptionalism is the capacity to entertain Americans exceptionally well. One can scarcely imagine the impact on American society if American political and economic processes were held to such high standards.

Prosperity, One Person At A Time

JUST IN TIME for the holidays, I have a new hobby, one which I recommend to all good Americans, and to all good people everywhere. It all started at Wal Mart. I was looking for a bottle of "Cholestoff", but couldn't find it. An associate was helping me look, but, after about ten minutes among thousands of bottles of various vitamins on the shelf, I gave up, thanked her for trying, and went on my merry way to the cash register, disappointed. Just as I was about to pay for my less than complete basket full of items, aforementioned associate came running up, and handed me the nutritional supplement I so desired. She was out of breath, but hadn't given up. My spirit soaring, I drove home, clicked on my cell phone, and called the store, asking to speak with a manager. I told him the lady's name, and insisted that she be given a raise, because she had ensured my patronage for life. Now I was on a roll. Next day I got a great sandwich from my local "Subway" from a smiling lady, went home, made my call. Now I have decided to make it a habit. Whenever I receive good service from a low wage worker - BOOM! - out goes the "give her a raise" phone call. I've done it at "Sonic", "McDonald's", all manner of corporate entities. One person at a time. Worker by hard worker, we can change the world, we can transfer wealth from the top of the pyramid to the bottom, thus creating a new market of the minimum waged, a bottom of the pyramid explosion of purchasing power, rapid fire trickle down economics, and soon, or at least at long length later, the bottom of the pyramid rises up, joins in the economy of disposable income spenders, and the economy takes off like a rocket. More people capable of investing in the market, bigger market, stronger economy. seven billion prosperous people! From my comfortable middle class home to yours; HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

Life Is Perception

IN ANY GIVEN YEAR, there are several times more "whites" shot to death by cops than "blacks" in America, and since the number of whites in America is more than several times the number of blacks, blacks are disproportionately gunned down. So, what of it? The rate at which blacks are imprisoned, impoverished, and rejected for jobs is also disproportionate, but again, what of it? Racism, discrimination, and enslavement are worldwide phenomena, but, as Bill O'reilly points out, wrongs cannot be justified merely by pointing to other wrongs. Richard Wright's novel "Native Son", published in 1940, is relevant to today's racial situation. Whether in reality or imagination, the African-american community seems, on the whole, to believe that racism is alive and well in america. Life is perception.

Working In Harmony

TO PRIVATIZE, TO CORPORATIZE, or to not....Adam Smith, considered the father of modern capitalism, wrote, in his book "The Wealth of nations", that human economic activity, if left alone and untinkered, is a natural force, like the wind and the tides, wherein an"invisible hand-like" force produces natural harmony and balance in the economic realm. Then, he qualified it a bit. He said that government action on behalf of business owners was never justified, but that government assistance to workers was always justified. Adam smith, the closet socialist. Enter Milton Friedman, the twentieth century giant among economists, who, with his "Chicago school" comrads at the U. of Chicago, beginning in the nineteen fifties, proclaimed the supremacy of the Smithian free market bible, and the supremacy of the free market, unfettered by such distorting annoyances as government welfare, minimum wage laws, and environmental protection regulation. Presumably, Dr. Friedman also opposed corporate welfare, but this is less clear. Friedman's antithesis, John M. Keynes, advocated government spending to stimulate recession plagued economies. The new deal, versus reagonomics. Today, the United states is privatizing everything, including prisons, support services for the military, the military itself. Off in the corner, chastised and berated, stand Obamacare, a meager indicator that socialism is not yet dead in America. Of the top ten richest countries in the world, per capita, the United States ranks about ninth, while Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, bastions of socialism, all rank in the top five. The wealthiest nation? Little Luxembourg, unburdened by military spending. It may be that both socialism and capitalism both work just fine, and better yet, when allowed to operate in harmony.

Heading in the Right Direction

AFRICAN-AMERICAN members of the U.S. Congress entered the House chamber yesterday with their hands up in the "don't shoot" position. According to the grand jury in St. Louis, his hands were never up, he never tried to surrender. Another American divisive debate. We seem somehow to survive them. A young black criminal tries to harm a police officer, and gets killed by the officer acting in self defense. Whether the story should end there, it doesn't. The black community thinks, feels, that racism is a component. Racism adheres, whether it played a part in the Michael Brown incident in Ferguson, Missouri. Vast amounts of empirical observation confirm the tenacity of racism, black and white. No culture in world history has been as racist as American culture, flat out. People who point this out are not fanning the flames, they are not creating the racism by commenting on it, they are pointing to the fire, urging that it be put out, not fanning it. We will not end racism by pretending that we have already ended it. We have merely decreased it somewhat, and it has assumed more subtle, less visible forms. But if we believe we are heading in the right direction, maybe we will be.

Whatever Works

THERE IS STILL hope that black Friday and cyber Monday will not overtake Christmas Day itself as the most prominent day during the Christmas season. Capitalism and Christianity continue their strange but effective entwinement, as only Americans can achieve. Joshua ben Joseph was probably born,oh, when...'long about the first week in April? Even as holidays evolve, they serve the same eternal purpose; to provide inspiration, community, and organization to the herd. So, add an evergreen tree, move the birth date, throw in some online shopping, and the net result, the basic idea, remains. One can even enter a Catholic or an Episcopalian church, and take communion, and one can tell one's self that the communion is of the soul, of the mind, and not of the blood and body. Whatever works.

To Divest, Or Not To Divest?

AT AT LEAST ONE major University in the United States, the students are urging the people who govern the university to divest the university of all stock related to fossil fuels. The powers that be are naturally quite reluctant to do this; fossil fuel stock is a good investment, and never let it be said that an American university passes up good investments. Most university students are liberal, most university faculty are liberal, but most college administrators are not quite as liberal. Fossil fuels may be destroying the planet, but their corporate stock is quite valuable, and likely to become more so in the future. Bear in mind that American universities are, in essence, profit seeking corporations. It seems likely that if large numbers of fossil fuel shareholders divest, most fossil fuel stock will end up in the hands of fewer people, exacerbating the concentration of wealth and power. Better perhaps that everyone own one, and only one, fossil fuel share, that corporate power might be diluted and diffused as much as possible, and the people in general would have corporate power and wealth.

Putin the Pugnacious, ISIS the Insufferable

RUSSIAN BIG BOSS Vladimir Putin is again doing his impersonation of a tough guy (remember the shirtless pics?). Putin, the one who intends to reconstitute the old Soviet Union empire. A compressed spring will eventually return to its uncompressed state, he glibly said, meaning, the empire shall return. Hence, the Crimea. Next? The Ukraine! He now accuses the United states and Saudi Arabia of conspiring to keep global oil prices down, to ruin the Russian economy. As if the United States and Saudi Arabia could ever agree on anything, much less a joint conspiracy. as if they would be willing to wreck their own economies to wreck Putin's. As usual, Putin's estimate of his own importance is way high. The Russian have always been pretty good at wrecking their own economy, Why would anyone want to interfere? Putin the paranoid also claims that there is a legion of foreign spies in his country, working to destabilize the Russian currency. Again, why bother? Putin the Pretext, looking for reasons to start a war. If only the Coke Brothers would finance an early Putinic retirement. Of course, the Coke brothers might prefer having Putin in power............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................Is is too late to stop the Islamic State from existing, or should the U.S. and the world concede its existence, and move towards diplomatic intercourse? the American Air Force is dropping tons of bombs, daily, on I.S., and has already killed an estimated one thousand people, perhaps fifty collateral civilians. Not bad, but will it be enough. And if not, what will be? ISIS came into existence no more nefariously than many other a fine, widely recognized nation, the United States included.

Seeking the Post Capitalistic Light

FOR A LONG TIME, two decades at least, Japan has been in an economic funk, without any growth, try as they might. Now, they are trying stimulus packages from their pro business government, easing regulations, and corporate tax incentives. anything to get ye olde corporate capitalistic machine going again. We may soon have to come to our senses, and realize that this Japanese stagnation is not some aberration, but rather, the new normal. For, Capitalism, particularly big time corporate capitalism, growth is the engine of health. there will come a time, the sooner the better, when growth, hence capitalism, is no longer necessary - when we have ten billion billionaires, what else will we need? An economy designed to maintain the status quo, in terms of gross global product, because we simply have enough, for everybody. Its possible, probable, highly likely that such a time will l come, along with free energy, food, and shelter. the object then will be to keep people happily employed, for the purpose of happiness, rather than survival. Its either that, or the old endless routine cycle of prosperity, destruction, and rebuilding. The Japanese population, the world population, is aging, and the birth rate in many nations is declining. The answer to all our problems may be eternal expansion into space. That, plus a solid plan of population and age management. For now, let us proceed with construction of a solar power satellite, a flat black screen in space a mere five miles in diameter. A few billion more trees would help, while the fossil fuel corporations steadily, painlessly lead us away from fossil fuels, and towards the light, trading one kind of wealth for another.

Bill Cosby, Opening A Dark Closet

SOMEHOW, STRANGELY, the Bill Cosby drama fits. This multiple drug rape business, all these women coming forth, it fits. Wasn't Cosby, forty and fifty years ago, a raunchy Vegas stand up comic with an X rated routine? Then, he began his decades long family family routine, which may, after all, have been sort of a cover. Here we have a huge celebrity, but someone who is nobody's idea of a stud. And let's face it, male celebs tend to be studs. Maybe Cosby simply felt that the number of women, and the lack of ease with which he could seduce them, was inappropriately low for a man of his fame and fortune, and he wanted, and got, more, got what he wanted, many women. Another Jerry Sandusky story; a high profile, productive, successful life, with only the huge hidden monster in the closet, which emerges just in time to spoil the reputation and legacy of the too successful perpetrator, right in what should have been the golden years. Cosby, as he turned his raunchy career into a family values career, became somewhat of a darling of the conservative movement in America, particularly with his message to young black men to drop the ebonics and the gang colors, get an education, and succeed in mainstream society, after the fashion of successful conservative white folk. but then again, it is interesting how often successful, family valued conservative folks end up having things hidden in their closets, unsavory things, and end up showing them, quite by accident. Maybe what we need, to take care of people like Bill Cosby, and the rest of us, is simply more sex. A More promiscuous society in which taboos against promiscuity are cut to the bone, everybody gets enough, and all this tension and anger and violence vanish.

Amazing

MY VISIT TO early 21st century Earth is nearly complete, confirm unfortunate report prevalence of dark ages. Human thought processes still yield widespread illogic, and hence destructive behavior, individually and collectively. The Abrahamic religious triplex adheres, indeed, yet prevails. Their religious, political, and economic structures accrue wealth and power to a tiny minority, who invariably use it to exploit and oppress everyone else. Amazing,in their reasonably advanced time many of them still believe that God writes books, that the theory of evolution is unproven, and that their behavior is doing no damage to their world. It seems amazing that any species on their course could last much longer.

Assimilating

THE GORGEOUS YOUNG LADY working at the library had an attitude from the git go. No way she was going to smile at me,let alone laugh with me. I should have known better than to try to be funny. But I have to try. I love making people laugh. She was born in L.A., a life long American,but her accent was strongly south of the border.She obviously didn't like being asked where she came from, and she didn't like my jokes, though she surely understand why someone might think she was foreign born. Things went downhill from there. I called myself a "straggler"; she asked another librarian where the "stragglers" were located. People standing nearby began to giggle, so ahead I plowed, digging myself in ever deeper. Finally she suggested I seek assistance elsewhere. My apology fell flat, and she never smiled. the guy across the street in my small town is from Guatemala, and he has a strong accent, but his American born children do not. That's the way it usually works, the usually process. People born in American have American accents, usually. The young librarian? Decades of ethnic cocooning, perhaps, in the large Los Angeles latino community. Well, may we all be fortunate enough to experience multiple cultures, and may we always be fortunate enough to feel comfortable, and a part of the country wherein we live.

Hooked On Twitter

SOMEHOW, YOU KNEW it was coming. You just knew that someone would notice that most of us spend most of our time walking around like zombies, texting, and reading text messages, would get curious, do the research, and find out why. And sure enough, after irrefutable research, we know why, and really, it isn't surprising. People love to text because they get a big emotional buzz out of it, cocaine-like. There's just something about 140 letters, brief, intense messages, the anticipation of it all, the social contact, that goes right to the emotional centers of the brain, and gives a person a hooked in with the world feeling of being connected. Brain scanning and careful monitoring of the states of mind of many average texters clearly shows this. People do not text to save time or communicate more efficiently. they do it because they are hooked on a drug, the drug of emotional connectivity. Electronic Communication Addiction.(ECA) How familiar that sounds! I remember having the same feeling back fifteen years ago, on AOL, when AOL was king, in chatrooms, and instant messages. If not mistaken, text messaging is nothing other that the result of AOL being forced by the courts to drop its monopoly on instant messaging. Instant messaging and chatrooms were very addictive, back in the day, some of the older folks might remember. Now we have Facebook and text messaging, which evidently have the same effect. So, no wonder. How long will it all last, and whither will it lead? Maybe Facebook is indeed a fad, a bad habit we'll eventually break, like cocaine rehab. And maybe we'll someday cut back on the screen time and get back to actually talking to each other. One can hope. It is allegedly liberating.

Braindeadness, Coming Home

IN A GREAT BOOK entitled "Bowling Alone" the point is made that participation in the community in America is declining, things such as church, bowling leagues, PTA, civic clubs, etc. Those who remain are the truly devoted. A deeply devoted minority of true and ardent believers, religiously, politically.The moderates and the lukewarm have flown the coop. Everyone is hard line and hard core, all or nothing. First, decide that you are liberal or conservative, one or the other, all the way. Then, as each issue appears, ascertain which is the liberal viewpoint, and which the conservative. Be sure to embrace the right one. Ignore the fact that nobody is all one, or all the other, in anything. Strict to the doctrine. since everyone wants you to be "consistent", and since you want everyone else to be, ahem, "consistent", be so, by any and all means. the fact that this 'tude is the very antithesis of open mindedness is, apparently, irrelevant. Rock solid hard line consistency trumps flexible, critical thinking, every time, because the former is so totally comfy, and the latter so annoyingly complicated, and requires more effort. The fact that this creates a double edged, polarized society of anger is irrelevant. Dems, libs, repubcons. Rich and Poor. The consequences of our braindeadness are coming home.

Exciting wonder

JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, as a young man, was seated at dinner with a group of prominent folks, including Thomas Jefferson. He listened in amazement as Jefferson told how once, while he was living in Paris, the temperature remained below zero for six consecutive weeks. Adams knew darned good and well that no such thing had occurred, because he had himself been in Paris at the same time as Jefferson. His memory was that the weather had indeed been a bit nippy, but endurable. Never let the truth interfere with a good story, Mark Twain might have said. Adams was a tolerant and understanding man, a keen judge of character, and he didn't hold Jefferson's lie against him. He understand that dreamy Thomas was merely a man who loved to, in Adam's words, "excite wonder". Himself filled with a sense of the miracle of life , Jefferson simply wanted to share his passion for living with others. That's hard to do nowadays; that is, to excite wonder. I do a lot of reading, and I can't swing a dead cat without coming across some fact or set of facts which I had never before known, which excites wonder within me. So I close my book and look around for somebody with whom to share my excitement. Problem is, it never works. I never find anyone with whom to share my excitement. I never seem to excite any wonder. Invariably, the target of my wonder lust ignore what I said, or seems to, and proceeds to change the topic of conversation to himself. or tries to outdo me with some bit of information, usually about herself. Often, the target will simply nod and shrug, as if to say: "so what", or, "hell, I already knew that". every time, I know damned good and well that target did not in fact already know my wondrous fact, and was disguising wondrous excitement, or not listening. People seem immune to the wondrous. Its a disappointing feeling. No one seems to want to be intellectually excited by an outside source. No one seems willing to admit that somebody knows something that they themselves didn't already know. We Americans seem too proud to admit that there are things we didn't already know, as if such an admission would reveal some weakness. And its a shame, because few things in life are more fulfilling than the excitement of wonder.

Inventing A More Interesting World

THE MOST RECENT hit science fiction movie, "Interstellar", posits a dying earth, and a grand plan to travel across the galaxy through wormholes to other planets, and to terraform them in order to construct a new earth, replacing the old one. Exciting stuff, requiring only that a little common sense be ignored. Wormholes are temporary, they come and go capriciously, according to theory, and, according to theory, traveling through one and across vast distances of space causes the hole to collapse en route. But aside from that, the question arises: assuming that humanity has the ability to travel across the galaxy and restructure planets to make them humanly habitable, wouldn't it be easier to merely reconstruct the earth we already have, or to travel a mere fifty million miles, and terraform Mars? Never let common sense get in the way of a good flick. After all, we live in a culture largely devoid of simple, common sense, popular science. Even as we speak, thousands of planets are being discovered orbiting other stars, a small car is roving around the surface of Mars giving us vast amounts of data and starkly beautiful photos, and we think we finally have the answer to the question of whether the universe is a one time event, or a recycling one. It would seem to be the former. None of this is ever widely discussed among the science laity. A large number of us are much more interested in UFO abduction, beings from Andromeda, and messages channeled from somebody near the star Sirius. It seems that no matter how interesting the real world is, we are not content with it, and are eternally impelled to invent a more interesting one.

Hanging On to Fossil Fuel

PRESIDENT OBAMA is set to veto the Keystone pipeline, and the fireworks are set to begin. He'll veto it because he's a solid environmentalist, and not so solid a corporate capitalist, who thinks the pipeline isn't worth the effort for two reasons. One, it would transport Canadian oil to U.S. ports to be sold to and shipped to foreign countries, which means that direct economic benefit to America would be somewhat limited. Secondly, the jobs thus provided for Americans would be temporary. The price of oil is down, and the price of coal is down, but presumably there will be, one day soon enough, a resurgence in price as the corporations garner one final payday before fossil fuels are relegated to the past. Once there were nearly a million coal miners in america, now there are fewer than one hundred thousand. Strip mining has taken over, in a process which greatly reduces labor costs and sheers the tops off previously beautiful mountains, causes coal sludge to accumulate in storage ponds, and results in trailer people being crushed, by runaway sludge and cascading boulder, in valleys in Appalachia. Even now federal litigators are going after coal companies who scrimp on mine safety, profit over people. Since federal regulators of every industry tend to be close friends of the companies they are mandated to regulate, federal litigation rarely accomplishes much, and the corporations either get away with murder, or declare bankruptcy, then soon reemerge with a new name and a clean legal slate. Big fossil fuel business has gotten yet another reprieve; the republicans are back in town, but only, we can hope, for a couple of years.

Breaking Promises

THERE ARE APPROXIMATELY twenty three million veterans of military service in the United States, with more on the way every day. Though nearly all world war two veterans are dead, or soon will be, and the number of Viet Nam vets is starting to dwindle, the most recent three wars, (two in Iraq, one in Afghanistan) have replenished the supply considerably. This amounts to a considerable amount of money for pensions and services to disabled veterans, of which there are many. Post traumatic stress disorder and "moral disability" are particularly prominent these days, because thousands of veterans are returning home from service in combat situations which have left them emotionally, mentally damaged. Most of these are young people. How will the nation be able to pay for it all? It may be that taxes will have to be raised, promises broken, pensions curtailed, as well as other benefits, including social security. The veterans hospital system will have to be expanded, again at considerable expense. An empire is expensive to maintain, and promises are hard to keep.

Waiting For April to Arrive

FORMER PRESIDENT George Bush, the second one, has written, (spoken) and allowed to be edited, presumably, a book about his father, the first George Bush, son of Prescott, grandson of Sam. He wanted to become the first former president in American history to write a biography about his father the president, since John Quincy Adams did not write a book about his presidential father. Neither john Adams the first nor George Bush the first wrote memoirs, so the second George Bush is doing us all, and the historical profession, quite a favor. John Adams the first had begun his autobiography, but gave up on it, much the way Thomas Jefferson did. When I heard double you interviewed on National Public Radio, I was drifting in and out of sleep, and I just couldn't get him to interrupt his sentence, and answer my question. My question was: what about April Glaspie? She seems, to this day, to take the blame for misleading Saddam Hussein about American intentions in 1990, but doesn't the buck stop higher up? Wouldn't it have been better, had the first Bush warned Saddam not to attack Kuwait, rather than first granting him permission to do so, then Indian giving the blank check with boistrous indignation once the dirty deed was done, the blank check cashed? We'll probably never know. Evidently the name "April Glaspie" does not appear in the book, entitled "forty one".It can be hoped that it will appear in other, more objective books, yet to be written.

Hoaxing the Republicans

YOU'VE PROBABLY HEARD some conservative say something like "a single volcanic eruption spews more pollution into the earth's atmosphere than all the mad mad pollution ever spewed". You've heard them say that, right? (its a standard conservative line, articulated by such intellectual giants as college flunk out Rush Limbaugh, on his Excrement In Broadcasting (EIB) network). You've heard a lot of things from people like that. the problem is, its a lie. A Joseph Goebbels, big lie oft repeated lie. each volcanic eruption, in point of fact, spews but a tiny fraction of what home sapiens, that being us, spews in only a short time. Perhaps youve also heard that global warming is a liberal hoax. seventy five percent of the members of the Republican party make that claim. this would entail millions of liberals, conspiring to pump billions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere, then conspiring to make the world's thermometers all rise, just a bit, each year. Quite an elaborate hoax. But, not quite good enough. conservatives can see right through it. The lesson is: never try to fool a conservative, and never try to hoax a fool.

Atheists, Fornicators, and Proper Gentlemen

THE CONSENSUS SEEMS to be that we are fortunate that the election is over, because we are fortunate that all the back biting, acrimony, and rudeness have expired, finally. We need not pretend that political hatefulness is getting worse, or is a new phenomenon. In 1800 Thomas Jefferson, while running for president, was accused of being a fornicator and an atheist. The fact that both accusations were true does not vindicate his detractors. Jefferson did his part, by employing a muckraking journalist named Callendar to smear his opponent, John Adams. After several years of coldness between the two politicians, they ended up dear friends, exchanging a fascinating series of letters, and appropriately dying on the same day, exactly fifty years after the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson wanted to live until July 4th, and he made it, just barely. John Adams, turned out of office after a single term, took the high road. If Jefferson wants the office that badly, Adams surmised, let him have it. Abigail was not quite as magnanimous. She wrote Jefferson, and told him "I still love you, but there was a time when I respected you." And so it goes. For our next act, we've only to wait a few weeks, and if Obama does not get immigration reform out of congress, by God, he'll do it himself. He does not seem cowed by being reminded by republican leaders that by so doing he would be "poisoning the well." Translation; if you don't give us the respect we think we deserve we will pout, and refuse to have anything further to do with you. Curious, though, that anyone would accuse our president of violating the constitution, and the law of the land, by issuing executive orders. Executive orders are quite legal, and have been employed by every president. There are limits to what Obama can do about immigration using this device, but what he can do is perfectly legal, else his army of lawyers would have informed him otherwise, which they apparently have not. But at least we needn't concern ourselves whether our national leaders are proper gentlemen; after all, they never have been.

The Content, and the Malcontent

PEOPLE SOMETIMES SEEM a bit confused about what liberals and conservatives are. They start talking about things like "big government", or "small government", as if either libs or conservatives have a monopoly on either size. Instead, think of it in terms of money. A person may be either conservative with money, or liberal with it. The conservative spends little, the liberal spends, well, liberally. the key concept is change. A liberal's money changes hands more often than one who stewards money conservatively. The more change one wants, the more liberal one is, the less change, the more conservative. We live in a liberal world, because the world changes. with time, changed accumulates, and becomes considerable, even if it occurs slowly; a conservative desires a slower rate of change. A liberal might respond: "who doesn't want to change this world"? who indeed? Why, someone who is personally successful in the status quo is far more likely to resist change. Hence, conservatives, particularly in the United States, tend to be more successful than liberals, more content with less change, less inclined to complain. Liberals are complainers, advocates of change. A person who is devoted to one tradition is more likely to be devoted to another. In America, free enterprise and Christianity are traditional, thus the two are joined at the hip,bundled into the conservative mindset. Conservatism embraces tradition, liberalism seeks innovation.the dirty little secret is that we are all combinations of both viewpoints. No one is pure! How strange, and how human, that we tend to defend our own majority viewpoint, whichever one claims most of our allegiance, and to discredit the other at all costs, even while embracing some of each.

Changing Directions, or Planning To

MANY AMERICANS AWAKEN the day after a big election with political hangovers; we had the big party, all the fussing and fighting, the results are in, and now is the brief letdown phase before returning to normalcy, whatever that might be. The republicans have their big victory, and all of them are now promising to take America in a new direction. During my sixty years in country America has never taken a new direction; the old one has always seemed comfortable. What exactly would a new direction entail? Americans are already liberal on most issues; gay marriage, legalized marijuana are sweeping the nation, along with minimum wage increases. Most Americans want the nanny state to endure. Most Americana believe that the government should confiscate wealth and redistribute it. How are the republicans going to change all that, without making themselves as unpopular as they have made Obama? To change direction would entail banning gay marriage nationwide, banning marijuana nationwide, keeping minimum wage low so as not to destroy jobs, and dismantling the social safety net, aka the nanny state, including Obamacare. Let's wait and see how far the Republicans get with that.

Tweedle Dee, or Tweedle Dum

Whichever side wins in the U.S. Tuesday, and of course it'll be the Republicans, the world will continue to turn, and with it, America. Both sides predict disastrous consequences should the other win, and both are wrong. The disasters are already here,; how much worse can they get? There is some difference between the two parties, but not much, not enough, and the differences that exist are greatly magnified by all concerned. Minimum wage will never be enough, whether it increases or not, the poor will always be among us, and the only question is; how poor and how numerous and how angry will they ever become? So far, so good, the bread crumbs have kept the peace, but who knows how long that'll last, or whether it will last at all. If we could only create vast new markets, by getting meaningful amounts of money into the hands of millions of poor people. Time for some demand side, trickle up economic policies! Instead, we seem to think that by increasing supply, or trying to lure the wealthy into doing so, demand will somehow magically manifest. But whence cometh the new consumers to make all these purchases, if not from among America's current non purchasers, non consumers?

Sensing Trouble

MAINTAINING A POSITIVE ATTITUDE is of the utmost importance, of course, but is sometimes, you might agree, difficult to do. Can you imagine paying off your mortgage with a major banking lender, oh, say, bank o america, only to discover a short time later that they were still taking money out of your checking account o make mortgage payments? Its enough to shake one's faith, so to speak, in corporate America. Enough to raise one's blood pressure. Things like this happen, mistakes are made, people make mistakes. But goodness gracious. You'd think, with all our computers and such, that, well...it turns out that we live in a rat race of a survival of the fittest society no less brutal, no less dangerous, in its own very special way, than any group of ancient, historical, or primordial humans. Our advances merely open us up to new dangers, it seems. But wouldn't it be helpful, wouldn't it at least help a bit, if we started thinking straight, for instance, if more us us believed in global warming than in UFOs? Until such time, you sense trouble.

Slowing the Descent

SOMEHOW YOU GET THE FEELING that no matter how scientists and doctors tell us that there is no need to quarantine anyone returning from Ebola fighting in Africa, most of the American people, or many of them, simply will not believe it. Particularly if Obama says it, it has to be wrong. Everything that Obama does and says is wrong, a priori. Indicative of the way these people think, three out of four Republicans do not believe in human caused global warming. These same people are inclined to believe in Biblical miracles, but not modern science and chemistry. Critical thinking skills are in short supply across America. Amid all the standardized testing and government rating of students and schools, a little more training in critical thinking skills might come in right handy. It might slow down our evident descent into a new dark age.

Sweeping the Democrats Out

SUPPOSE THE REPUBLICANS sweep the Democrats from power this coming Tuesday, and Congress enacts a hard core right wing agenda, over and above all Obama vetoes. Obamacare would be eliminated, it goes without saying, and would be replaced with...a blank slate, called "free enterprise". Roe V. Wade would be legislated out of existence, and women would lose their reproductive freedom. Legalized Marijuana in Colorado and Washington state? Forget about it. And welcome back supply side "Trickle down" economics, the smoke and mirrors system in which the wealthy do as they please with their savings in tax payments, and no new markets are created. One can scarcely imagine how wide the gap between rich and poor could become. Probably much greater than it is now, and now, its great. Oh well. At least, after the conservatives take over, we'll be praying in school again.

The Vaccine is Waiting in the Wings

SO THE LADY RETURNS FROM AFRICA, hoping to be welcomed back to the states, and instead is placed in solitary for three weeks. Understandably, she's a tad miffed. After all, when she left a month or so ago, she had no idea this would happen. The Hon Govs. of New Jersey and New York wish to demonstrate incredibly amounts of protective behavior towards the pre election electorate. President Obama has neither closed the borders, nor issued quarantine orders, both of which he opposes, for intelligent reasons, largely ignored by his often less intelligent critics. The vaccine is waiting in the wings. If nothing else, Ebola is showing us the necessity of cooperation. How many more cooperative endeavors might we the human race engage in, to our benefit? Is it possible to remove carbon from the air, repackage and sell it for a profit? If so, we have a fighting chance at long term survival. it is not necessary to continue economic growth perpetually. Only until everyone has what they need. Then, we move beyond capitalism, way beyond it. See John Maynard Keynes, and his comments concerning moving beyond capitalism. Like an invisible hand, the free market forces of supply and demand always rectify themselves, and the economy works, even if we are all dead in the meantime and we destroy our environment. Or, we can use cooperative endeavor to correct undesired market externalities, to improve efficiency. Lets not close off the borders, let's manage them, and let's not ban fossil fuels, let's evovlve away from them.

Racism: Still Around

THE RECENT EVENTS in and Around St. Louis, U.S.A., in which young African Americans were killed by European American police officers, resulting in protests by much of the black community, should have been enough to remind us that racism, the most durable American tradition, is still very much with us. If not, consider this. A team of researchers found one thousand job vacancies around the United States, and sent out two applications for each. In each case, one application used a black sounding name, black sounding address, and black sounding resume, and the other application used stereotypically white names. All this merely to create an impression, a vague hint of ethnicity, on paper. The black sounding applications were made a little better than the white ones, to hedge the bet. Overwhelmingly, across the board, the white sounding applications got the more attention, responses, and job offers, even though the "black apps" were, on paper, more qualified. it turns out that we have not eliminated racism, we have merely hidden it away, changed its name, and repackaged it.

Praising Modern Medicine

WE ARE EXTREMELY FORTUNATE, notwithstanding the thousands of recent deaths from Ebola, and the continuing threat. If this virus had emerged only two or three generations ago, it may well have eventuated in a global catastrophe of tens of millions of deaths. During the seventeen seventies, in Philadelphia, each year the entire population of thirty thousand, or most of it, would flee to the countryside as a small pox epidemic ripped through the city. The annual event played havoc with the first and second continental congresses, and the Declaration of Independence was nearly scuttled. Prior to Louis Pasteur and the discovery of microorganisms in the late nineteenth century, homo sapiens was helpless against infection and viral contagion, and on several occasions was nearly wiped out on account thereof. Long live blood testing and vaccines!

The Poor Masses, and Their Cell Phones

PLATO AND JAMES MADISON, both in the business of designing governments, faced the same, eternal question: how do you design a democracy, any form of government which gives power to the people, so that the poor can't gang up on the rich, and take their money? There are two ways, in general. One is to create economic equality while creating democracy, the other requires barriers between the poor masses and true political power; in other words, create a representative democracy rather than a direct one; in other words, don't create a democracy at all. That's what the American founding fathers did; they designed a democracy intended to keep real power out of the hands of the teeming poor masses. this is vitally important, because the poor will not always be among you, they will always greatly outnumber you, if you are wealthy. And, of course, we all know the chaos of mob rule: given have the chance, the masses would actually participate in politics and government, and make a mess of everything. but now there's a new wrinkle; social media. Computers, the internet, facebook. In america, you see homeless people with cell phones, incredibly enough. Around the world, many poor people have cell phones with internet access, though, of course, many do not. Beware the ones who do. they have the potential to communicate, organize, and raise quite a stink. Many countries, including Arab countries, the United States, Ukraine, and Hong Kong, have very recently witnessed mass demonstrations of political and economic protest, organized on social media. there is the promise of more to come, as the global economy becomes daily more unequal, less sustainable, less sane. Beware the teeming masses, and their cell phones.

Pretending to Believe Trash

SOMEONE MADE THE FOLLOWING COMMENT: "there are many lifeforms in our galaxy which are genetically related to humans". When I cautioned him to add the word "probably" to his comment, he recoiled in revulsion, unable to accept religious uncertainty. Thus are we burdened and tormented by the persistence of our beliefs. Someone else was overheard to say that Michelle Obama is a trans gender female, with adopted children. Such a comment requires great hatred, or too little external intellectual stimulation. Most likely these people will take these beliefs to their graves. but, why? Why do people embrace the fatuous, then resist self correction? We avoid the truth so fervently only because we would perish if we accepted it, perhaps. The geniuses who fabricated the Michelle Obama story neglected to consider the fact that her children are only teenagers, and that doubtless there are numerous people who recall seeing their births. At least the alien lifeform claim has the advantage of being untestable. Against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain.

Making A Difference

AUTUMN IS BEAUTIFUL in mid America, trees changing colors, explosively ending the growing season, beckoning celebration. If you happen to be driving around mid America in Autumn, consider the "Mapleleaf" Festival in Carthage, Missouri. Bit, brassy parade,with the occasional septic on wheels. Hordes of middle class caucasians along brightly tree lined streets. Every spectator, every parade participant, lily white. Suddenly, along comes a large, all drum, all girl, all African American band, called "The Cobras". All drums, all girls, all black. They were quite good. But why the black requirement? All drums? fine. All girls? O.K.. But all black? Any special reason? We don't want to be color blind, or blind to anything. We want to be color conscious, aware of as many of nature's infinite varieties, including skin color, as possible. Knowledge always trumps ignorance. Like, critical thinking is da bomb. The question is not what we notice, but what we care about. What should make a difference, and what shouldn't? What should matter, and what shouldn't? The groupings were not coincidental. They were deliberate. And even though it was all good, all possitive, the fact that the racial groupings even existed at all was unfortunate, and unnecessary, if nothing else.

Paid To Entertain

BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA, because his middle name is "Hussein", is suspected of being a Muslim by American conservatives. More accurately, American conservatives pretend to suspect him of being a Muslim. American liberals don't care whether he is or isn't; they are content to hope that he will begin behaving more like the Marxist which he is accused of being, by devoting more effort to improving the plight of low skill American workers, wage-wise, and encouraging the American people to create a modicum of economic equality. The "Marxist" accusation, as you might suspect, comes from, not surprisingly, American conservatives, such as radio entertainer Michael Very Savage. Rush Limbaugh, another radio entertainer, on his Excrement In Broadcasting network, seems to agree with Savage, or to pretend to. Another well known American conservative, Ann Coulter, who speaks volumes, then employs other people to edit and print out her spoken words, might concur. Her credibility is indicated by her belief that all Muslims should convert to Christianity. All billion and a half Muslims should convert to Christianity, at gunpoint, if necessary. With conservative entertainers like these, who needs sanity? Neither rush, nor Savage, nor Hannity, (yet another conservative entertainer) it seems. Even the nurses who brought forth B. H. Obama from his mother's womb are unable to convince our reason free conservative friends that Obama was born in Hawaii. Neither does his birth certificate do the trick. There is, refreshingly, one conservative entertainer who accepts Obama's nativity and christian religiosity: Bill O'Reilly. Bill's credibility is compromised a bit by the fact that he claims to be an independent, but is a registered Republican, claims to have been raised in Levitt town, long Island, but was raised in West bury, long Island, and claimed to have won two Peabody awards for broadcast journalism, when in fact he won none of the above. When conservative entertainers tell lies, whether on television, radio, or in books, they tell large, entertaining ones, and for that, if for nothing else, we should be grateful. After all, they are paid to entertain, not educate.

Recycling Fear, and War

UNITING AND STRENGTHENING AMERICA (by) Providing Appropriate Tools Required (to) Intercept (and) Overcome Terrorism, aka "The Patriot Act". "Overcoming" is not the right word, but the right word is something similar. Whatever it takes to create a catchy acronym for the greater purpose of gaining greater control of the masses. So much for the conservative dream of "smaller government". In 1991, there was a group on a college campus, somewhere, which called itself "SAGE" (students Against Gulf Engagement), which everyone involved thought rather clever. This group stood in front of the student union, carrying signs which said things like "no war for oil", dodging spit and right wing, pseudo patriotic invective. But the war for oil ensued, then another, than another, justified by a gang of thugs scattered around the middle east who could have been rounded up and prosecuted like gangsters, but instead were treated as if they were a highly organized modern army, and the "war or Terror" something more than a war against a noun. Never discount the ability of American conservatives to whip up a frenzy of the only thing we have to fear, then channel fear into aggression. But why limit yourself, or your national ambitions? Why not invade a country, rather than merely a few hundred safe houses? And why not give the FBI and the NSA (National Security Agency) the power to enter any home without warning or knocking, and the power to eavesdrop on whatever electronic communication it chooses? If the good people of Kuwait had seen the movie "Gandhi", we might not be dealing with the Islamic State in 2014, we might be obtaining lucrative, and voluntarily consummated contracts for oil production from a peaceful and democratic Iraqi nation, free from Saddam Hussein. Goldwater had his little girl eviscerating a flower, Reagan his "bear in the woods", and Bush his pack of wolves television commercials, and only Goldwater failed to scare the American people sufficiently to achieve election, excessive fear, militarization, and war for profit. What the war mongers among us fail to understand is that military production and procurement does not stimulate the economy; it stimulates war. Tanks and guns do not easily recycle into food, clothing, and shelter.

Hedging Our Bets

WOULDN'T IT BE WONDERFUL to have a lifetime free pass to sin at will, to know in advance that all of our transgressions, no matter how heinous, would be forgiven, that someone else would accept, a priori, responsibility for all our misbehavior? Who wouldn't be grateful for such an arrangement, even if it involved someone else being tortured and murdered? Little wonder that two billion people are members of the Christian flock, even if said flock is in a continuous state of internal warfare. God, accordingly, forgives all sinners through the shed blood of Jesus Christ, the lamb of God. Much of the intra-flockial warfare concerns the method by which one becomes a member of the flock, but the acceptance of Christ as one's personal savior is the common thread which unites, precariously, the two billion. If the thought crosses your mind that an omnipotent God more easily and painlessly could have merely chosen to forgive everyone, without ceremony, without the bloody mess, banish it. The phony trial happened, the murder was committed, and we are left with the task of making it significant beyond mere homicide. When someone we love dies, significance must be attached to it. We further alleviate our pain and guilt by bringing the murder victim back from the dead, which, on the surface, would seem to make the sacrifice far less meaningful. Most cartoon characters, Superman included, have been brought back from the dead, with great profit. At the very top of the pyramid of the flock is to be found the profit, where profit always resides. Even in a universal priesthood of all believers there it stands, the archetypal pyramid, the truest believers, the biggest sheep, atop. We are told to accept responsibility for our actions; the Christian faith permits us to hedge our bets.

Admitting that we Are socialists (at least partly)

IF YOU BELIEVE that the interstate highway system should be funded, owned and operated by private enterprise, you are not a socialist. Our privately owned highways are better than theirs, and we charge less too! Drive on our streets and highways, cross our bridges, not theirs. There they sit, parallel roads, as many as the market will bear, side by side. A gridwork of free choice options, bride after bridge, sitting right next to each other, all crossing the same river, all going to the same place. But try ours. We'll bill you online, while our competitors waste your time at those annoying toll booths. If you believe that your local fire and police departments should be privately funded, owned and operated, then you are not a socialist. Don't call their cops, don't call their firefighters, call ours! Our cops will round up the criminals while our competitor's cops are still on their way to the crime scene. And, we'll bill you at a lower rate, just as soon as we finish up the agreement with you, on the phone, prior to rendering our service. The criminals will simply have to wait. Our firefighters will have your house flame free within minutes, while our competitor's hook and ladder trucks are still en route, and the bill we send you will be lower. It takes only a few minutes to complete our agreement, wasting little time, while your house fire awaits the winning bid. Eliminate the socialistic public school system, and rid the nation of socialism! Our privately owned schools are better than their privately owned schools, every last one of them. We employ better teachers, at lower rates of pay, resulting in lower tuition costs for you and your children. Thank goodness free market capitalism keeps those annoying teacher's salaries, and the cost to you, to a minimum. Publicly owned and operated water and sewer systems? Privatize 'em! Flush your toilet, drink your tap water with our company; the other guys just don't measure up. A new sewer system is currently being installed by a newly incorporated, stock issuing concern devoted to free enterprise, and will soon compete with all the other sewer systems, their pipes and our pipes lying side by side. Invest now. Our stock will surely rise, as more and more people transfer their excremental "business" from theirs to ours. Or, subscribe to all, and enjoy the benefits of multiple toilets, each owned by a different company. Flush away! But remember, ours goes down faster, and more efficiently. The other companies, every single one of them, and there are many, require two flushings, especially after a hard night of pizza and burritos. The benefits of goods and services, all goods and services, provided by free enterprise! While you're at it, flush the crazy notion that "socialism doesn't work", and, my fellow free market capitalists, let's be honest for once; socialism, more often than not, not only "works", but is the only reasonable way to get things done. My friends, we are all socialists, to one degree or another, whether or not we want to be, whether or not we are willing to admit it.

Never ending Perversions

THE TWIN PILLARS OF modern American conservatism are capitalism and Christianity, which is to say, fire and gasoline. Have any two concepts ever mixed so poorly, with such disastrous results? Christians for a strong, prosperous, imperial America! Super patriotism, super piety, all rolled into one, resulting in a nation forever at war with someone or something, at war with drugs, terrorism, or communists, at war with concepts, forever hiding behind the sanctimonious shield of patriotism and piety, as scoundrels inevitably do. Go thy way, and sell whatsoever thou hast, and give unto the poor....render unto Caesar....what benefits the man who gains the entire world...a wealthy person is far less likely to enter into the kingdom of heaven than a camel is to pass through the eye of a needle....When it comes to redistribution of wealth, this guy was hard core. And he seemed to think that the government was a perfect mechanism to bring about aforementioned wealth redistribution. One would expect a "Christian nation" to be a society of modestly endowed citizens (financially), each having roughly equal financial assets, by virtue of everyone selling and giving unto each other, until nobody is rich, nobody is poor, and everyone is conforming to the desires of he whom they purport to follow. Joshua ben Joseph, the wine drinking, homeless socialist. Enter the Protestant Reformation, and thus emerges the money lending, interest charging, capital accumulating business person, rising to the middle class, then replacing the old landed aristocracy with a new, urban, super capitalized elite, which we have today. A beautiful economic philosophy of a beautiful person, perverted for the sake of profit and wealth. Enter the United states of America, the land where fire and gasoline are mixed without a second thought. A capitalized elite, standing on the shoulders of a working class whose labor is rendered as cheap as we can make it. Capitalists for Christ! Christians for a strong American military; for turning neither cheek, for making the world safe for corporate profit and christian capitalism! And, for good measure, why not bastardize his name into "Jesus", in deference to our Latin, Roman imperial roots. Why bother calling a man by the name he called himself, by the name his parents gave him? When the perversions begin, they need never end.

Words Mean things

"NEOCON", SHORTHAND for the term "new conservative", sounds more like a state of high nuclear alert, or a software manufacturing corporation, than a word which means a type of political ideology, which, apparently, it is. But exactly what is a "neo con? According to our trusty online people's encyclopedia, the term originated sometime in the 1970s (everything originated in that remote, foggy decade), as a way of describing former leftists, or liberals, who evolved into conservatives, at least on some issues, like opposition to soviet communist expansion. Maybe Reagan Democrat and neocon mean the same thing. The term's vagueness is indicated by the fact that although it has been around awhile, it has never taken on either positive or negative cannotations, but simply lies there, blandly. The word "liberal" has been berated so effectively that even liberals no longer call themselves "liberals". Now, they are "progressives". The day may come when conservatives start calling themselves "traditionalists". The enduring power of language! Anti-American: a person who believes that it is a bad idea to enslave an entire race, then free it, segregate it and ignore it, that it is a bad idea to drop tons of bombs on foreign countries, or a person who believes that an entire nation should never have been named after an Italian map maker- seller and all about town scam artist. Pro-American: a person who believes that the United states is a good place, or that Amerigo Vespucci was generous in lending his name, a distorted version thereof, to an entire pair of continents. Liberals liberate by changing everything, conservatives conserve the status quo.That much we understand. Communists are either people who believe in communities, or believe that people should be forced to be part of a community, at gunpoint if necessary. Socialists are people who believe that everyone should work for society, for everyone else, but not exclusively for themselves. To borrow a quote from America's most popular radio entertainer: words mean things.

Letting the Facts Speak for Themselves

PERHAPS, IF NOTHING ELSE, we might agree on one fact; the history of the United States o America is an interwoven tapestry of achievement, progress, and monstrous injustices. Few of us seem aware of this, however, because what is taught to american school children is not history, but rather, "hagiography". Hagiography is the telling of history from the viewpoint of the subject matter, which is to say, a telling which places emphasis only upon the achievement and progress, but not on the monstrous injustices. Always, there are both. In recent years an attempt has been made to create a better balance, to examine both the positive and the negative, but this has been met with righteous indignation by conservatives, who prefer hagiography, and prefer wrapping themselves in the comforting cloak of patriotism, as if in so doing the are assuming the high ground, which most certainly they are not. When one ignores the negative, one has failed to reach the high ground, that of illuminating truth. Descriptions of aid to foreign countries must be accompanied by mention of exploitation of their resources. The defeat of Imperial Germany and Nazi Germany must be preceded by mention of the War of 1812, the Mexican War of 1846 and, the Spanish american war of 1898. The twentieth century wars against German aggression were necessary contributions to human progress, the three nineteenth century wars were not. In the spirit of the great German historian von Ranke, who admonished us to "tell it like it was", may we all conquer the ever urgent temptation to descend into hagiography, and just stick to the facts. Facts must be organized and interpreted, but our interpretations should be tempered by caution, balance, and reason. Usually, they speak rather well for themselves.

Unqualified

THE BIG QUESTION these days is: is Barack Obama qualified to be President of the United States? For conservatives, the answer is simple, predictable, and thoughtless. Of course not. presumably, in their minds, both of the Bushes were. But the dirty little secret is, as Bill Clinton pointed out: nobody is. It is not possible to be "qualified" to be president of the United States. When Robert MacNamara, the CEO of Ford Motor Company, was offered the job of Secretary of Defense, he told Kennedy that he wasn't qualified. Kennedy replied that he had never attended a school for would be presidents either. Nobody escapes the White House without serious blunders darkening the resume. Washington had his heavy handed response to the whiskey rebellion, Adams his "Alien and Sedition Act", Jefferson his disastrous (for the American economy) trade embargo. Perhaps Lincoln was a bit of a tyrant, and FDR tried to "pack" the Supreme Court, to save his "new Deal". Forty four presidents, more than forty four blunders, all told. And nobody could have done any better. Few people have the good sense to relinquish political power voluntarily, or to refrain from pursuing it in the first place. When Albert Einstein was offered the presidency of the new state of Israel in 1948, he basically said "you gotta be kidding. I'm a scientist, and know nothing about political leadership."The ironic thing is, he quite likely would have been the greatest head of state in history, if only for his intelligence and wisdom. But at least in America we can vote 'em out of office.

Remaking Oneself

"Blinded by the Right" is an interesting introspective autobiography by David Brock, a writer who began his career as a staunch conservative, writing scathing diatribes against liberals and liberalism, and working his way into the very heart of the right wing inner elite of Washington D.C. He wrote a popular book defaming Anita Hill, the unfortunate woman who had the audacity, you might remember, to accuse then Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment. We all know where that got her; demonized by the right. long about 1997 Brock underwent a personal transformation of sorts, not only forsaking his conservative zealotry, but coming out of the closet as an openly gay man. Quite a journey. he never makes it clear exactly what his ideology evolved into; not doctrinaire liberalism; he was evidently finished with extremism of all kinds. Brock says that he simply got tired of living with himself, tired of hiding his gayness, tired of being an attack dog for an aggressive and intolerant ideology. So, it can happen late in life. For the first time in my life I now understand what a "neoconservative" is; nothing other than a converted liberal, of which there are now many, thanks probably to the charisma and popularity of Ronald Wilson Reagan. But the point is: if he can do it, anybody can do it. And not necessarily simply became a non conservative late in life, as if conservative were some sort of illness, which it most assuredly is not. One can remake oneself. And now, in our age of vituperative acrimony and ideological hatred, it might do us all good to remember that. We can become kinder, gentler, and more open minded.

Who Made Who?

BABY BOOMERS, 1946-1964. Generation "X", 1965-1980. Millenials, 1980-2000. Whatever are we gonna call those born after the turn of the century, which, in point of fact, began in 2001, not 2000? It turns out that there are more millenials (80 million) in America than baby boomers (76 million). That seems surprising, considering that for years all we have heard is how many boomers there are, and how the birth rate has been declining ever since. Millenials are being given credit for all manner of innovation, from social media to gay marriage. What exactly, is "social media"? Is it nothing other than communication on the internet by large groups of people, as in Facebook and Twitter? The term "media" always meant newspapers, radio, and television; now it seems to mean the internet, facebook, and twitter. But whatever happened to chatrooms? They were in vogue by the middle nineteen nineties, when millenials were teenagers. Surely the baby boomers invented something! Most people might say that the boomers invented rock n roll; problem is, most boomers weren't yet born when Elvis, Jerry Lee, Fats, and Bill Hailey made it big in '55. Strange to think that the World War Two generation, which tended to despise rock music, invented it. Hint; the millenials, who are now in the throes of early adulthood, and include Mark Zuckerberg, did not actually invent social media, they merely magnified it enormously. Most inventions were with us much earlier than we give them credit.

Conveying Truth In Books

THE FIRST WORD in the Quran, I am told, is "read". An admonition from the prophet to read. A great way to begin a book, certainly. Then, I am told, as you read the book, the wisdom keeps coming at you; encouraging love, tolerance, acceptance, individual autonomy, all kinds of good ideas. And, of course, the same is true of all the other various and sundry scriptural holy books around the world. They contain great wisdom, along with a lot of interesting insights into ancient culture. Comparing the words in these books to the behavior of the very people who claim to adhere to their teachings reveals that people are emotional, sometimes self deceptive, always clever beings, always seeking justification for the satisfaction of their desires from some higher source, and that books, and whatever they contain, are meaningful only in context of the interpretations of those who read them. it is not easy for us contemporary folk to agree on the meanings in books, or even in each other's comments. Surely there must be a better way to convey eternal, immutable truth other than in books.