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.

Making Heroes

THERE ARE TWO KINDS of heroes, personal, and theoretical. Cops and firefighters, soldiers and nurses seem to be on everybody's list, on the theoretical side. If we're lucky, one or both our our parents can be a hero to us, in our fulfillment of an evident human need. Albert Einstein and Davy Crockett always came in right handy for me, hero-wise; they both played the fiddle, and they were both nonconforming renegades, true trend setters, pioneers. And, just downright good guys to boot. But what about women? Any female heroes, other than my eternally beloved mother? Suggested reading: "Reconciliation; Islam, Democracy, and the west", by Benazir Bhutto, my new female hero. She was assassinated in December 2007, shortly after returning to Pakistan after eight years in exile. The former prime minister was simply too popular, controversial, hated. Doomed, like Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy. Her attitude towards her Islamic religion is a breath of fresh air, and should be preserved for all time. If only Christians worldwide would read her book, which she wrote just weeks before her death, and similarly, if they would read The Quran, the Islamic holy book, a new awareness would awaken throughout Christendom. Similarly, if all Moslems shared Benazir Bhutto's vision for their faith and for the future of the world, we would all live in peace, prosperity, and happiness. And who knows, maybe, just maybe, all that'll happen, some fine day. Quite a fine trio of personal heros, I think: an American hillbilly, a German genius, and a female Pakistani political martyr.