Inauguration of a new era.

Approaching the election of 2016 I had the sense that the Trump campaign would prevail. I had a lot of friends who didn’t give it a chance in hell but I was getting the sense from my social media feeds, some of my other social settings and the news sources I was tuned to, that there was a significant segment who were supportive of him and there was another segment that was totally disenchanted with the Clinton campaign. My worst fear was that this combination of factors would produce a victory for, what I considered, a truly abominable candidate.  I was actually in the Trump camp at one point. I remember a conversation in September of 2015, with some people I barely knew, where I actually spoke the words “I would like to see a Trump presidency”. I was one of those who was disgusted with politics and thought that Trump might actually stir things up. I knew that he was touting some absurd policies but I wrote that off as theater and felt that he was playing the game well. I believed his continued success would force him to the center, like it had all previous candidates, and that he may just go the exceedingly functional route to address those in the center just like Ross Perot had. I followed the campaign avidly, as I had all previous Presidential races, and with every passing week my support for Trump decreased. I had given him the benefit of the doubt that he was an intelligent person on some levels. After all he had built an empire of sorts. Could a buffoon really do that? Each absurd statement and publicity stunt indicated to me that he did not have any real intelligence but was just the inheritor of wealth and used that to secure himself a spot in that echelon. For me the final straw was his “2nd Amendment people” speech in the early summer of 2016. It was clear to me that his insinuation was that gun zealots assassinate Hillary Clinton despite the contorted disputations of him and his minions that gun zealots were being called to exercise their political power. It was apparent that he had zero sense of decorum and absolutely no comprehension of the intricacies of politics. He could not be trusted with the ultimate power our president was granted. I posted a rare political Facebook statement raising the red flag and was somewhat dismayed to find that my sense of outrage was not widely shared. There were a few who shared my sense that this had crossed a line but this was not the fatal blow to his campaign that I felt it should be. It was just another blip on the radar. I watched in horror over the next several months while the campaign ebbed and flowed for him but the Democrats were never able to deliver the knockout punch but instead repeatedly undermined their own campaign. By the time the election arrived I could only put my faith in the humanity of the electorate of the United States that they would not allow such a travesty to ascend to the ultimate seat of authority. On Election Day I checked my phone at 7pm Pacific Time as I was on my way home and saw that there were several red states on the board to only a few blue and I knew then that it was over. If Trump was not repudiated by Middle America the election was his. And by 10pm it was clear that he had won. My initial thought was that there was a dark underside to my country, larger than I had even expected, who voted him in to office to reaffirm their gloomy world view. It wasn’t until a couple days later that I finally saw the statistic that showed me my fears were even worse than I had imagined. On some political talk show analyzing the unexpected results of the election a graphic went on screen and exposed that Trump had gotten roughly the same number of votes that Romney and McCain had gotten in their losing effort.  Clinton had gotten several million fewer votes than Obama and third parties did not account for the difference. So the truth of the matter was not that there was a larger dark side to my country than I originally had expected but that the moderate voters who had embraced Obama’s message of hope and change had simply let Trump win because Hillary just wasn’t sexy enough for them. Granted the Clinton campaign did an abysmal job of reaching out to those voters but still the presidential campaign does have consequences and millions of people failed to see the significance and let the worst of our country prevail rather than holding their nose and doing what was right. My team was lame.

This perspective affected me greatly in the weeks following the election and I could not share my compatriots’ outrage at the result. He did not do anything extraordinary. This was a colossal failure by the left. Nothing more. Even as talk of Russian interference increased I could not put any stock in that. Trump got the same number of votes as Romney and McCain and they lost! The blame for this situation lay at our feet. No one else.  As the inauguration approached I was similarly jaded. Some of my closest friends were talking about the demonstration that was being planned for the day after the inauguration and I was still uninspired. First of all it was being largely referred to as a protest. This seemed to me a strange reaction and I could not discount the Trump proponents who characterized the reaction of the left as essentially a tantrum. There was simply no evidence of anything nefarious. This was simply a bungle on an epic scale. The Democratic Party couldn’t even defeat a clown! If anything needed to be protested it was ourselves. Secondly, I had seen protests like this before and found them to be initially uplifting but ultimately impotent if not counterproductive to real change.

Still the consequences of this election were becoming decidedly real with Trump’s cabinet appointees and I had to ask myself what I was going to do. My initial reaction was to flee. I couldn’t picture myself in a society that would allow this to happen. But on serious reflection I had to admit that I hadn’t done my part at this moment and I did have a deep attachment to my country and the ideals I thought it was founded on so I needed to step up. I have been similarly stirred to a sense of action in the past. I was in the camp that saw the Iran-Contra affair as the ultimate abuse of power. One that, if allowed to go unpunished, would spell the end of the foundation of our society. Again I was somewhat surprised that others did not share my outrage but there was a movement of sorts and there were some repercussions, of sorts, so it all played out in a way that didn’t totally discourage me. It did leave a bad taste in my mouth. At the same time I was trying to reconcile the inanity of the drug war and was firmly convinced that it was all based on corporate profit. The government was acting as an agent of the pharmaceutical companies to ensure their profits over others. Not for the good of the country. Similarly, it seemed to me that the pursuit of nuclear technology was suicide by another name. I volunteered for organizations that lobbied against the nuclear arms race and was baffled that this issue was on the periphery of social discourse. I was very active in the counter culture, traveling with a band that was overtly critical of the current government. The community seemed strong to me at that time. There was a large group of like-minded people and benefit concerts were too numerous if anything. Live Aid had convinced too many people that concerts could change the world. We got Bill Clinton elected and things seemed to be moving in the right direction. But Bill was fatally flawed and I believe the morass he got himself in to ultimately pulled him more towards the right than was necessary in order to appease his detractors. Ending Welfare, bombing, NAFTA … It all started to seem like more of the same. By the time George W. Bush got elected my mind was jelly. I just could not get my head around how things had gone so sideways. I had taken every political science course at the City College and maintained a deep reading list of domestic and foreign affairs even though I was only marginally involved in the counter culture which seemed to me at that time largely impotent and ineffectual. I was haunted by Noam Chomsky’s “Manufacturing Consent”. Particularly the part where he talks about how the powers that be actually benefit from the appearance of dissent and the counter culture served that purpose to a tee. As long as nothing ever changed “they” were able to point to us and say “We are not tyrants. There are dissenters!” I was determined to find a path toward change. Not merely dissent. When the invasion of Iraq was announced I was again stimulated to make my voice heard. I traveled to Washington, DC to participate in the march against the Iraq war. It was a brutally cold day but still 100,000 people showed up and I was invigorated to know that I was not alone in my dissent. I was disappointed to find that I was alone in my desire to change things. All I heard there was dissent. A lot of “NO!”  Very little “This is the alternative”. 

The reelection of George W. was a major breaking point for me. I had volunteered for the Kerry campaign and it seemed quite obvious to me who was the best choice for the job even though Kerry didn’t present himself very well in that contest. I was finally convinced that there was absolutely no logic nor reason in the political process and that it was largely controlled by forces that were hidden and, from what I could glean, much more powerful than I could possibly combat on my own. By this time I had gotten myself in to main stream America and found that the creature comforts provided by the corporatocracy far outweighed any emoluments that integrity and grace and nobility could provide. I was originally in the McCain camp in 2008. I liked Barack Obama. I thought he was a good speaker but I thought he was too green and that he would be easily out gamed at politics and ultimately his failure would tar the left. When McCain announced Palin as his running mate I had to reconsider everything and voted for Obama with trepidation. As the economy collapsed months before the election I was convinced that it was an intentional act. That “they” were going to saddle him with an intractable crisis and they would let it dissolve for four years so that they could come to the rescue. “They” could survive for four years and the whole "create a crisis so you can provide the solution" ploy had been demonstrably proven as their modus operandi for 500 years or more. Now, despite the fact that President Obama outwitted them for the most part, we can see that they are still following that script, because that has been their modus operandi too, decrying the carnage of America during the Obama administration. Stick to the script. The rise of Donald Trump seems off script too so, in that way, it provides a glimpse of hope that things can change. 

So, now, I’m watching the current events with an eye towards whether there are the sufficient components for change still unsure what that change might actually be. One of my core beliefs is that a few essential mindsets need to change. Part of my frustration with the dissenters has always been this prevailing attitude that we just need to beat them at their game. Well what kind of victory would that be? We would be the owners of the spoils we disdained. No. What needed to change was the game. Not the winners. The entire game. Their game is acquiring and domination. Fear and hate are their tactics for winning that game. My game is providing and cooperation and my tactics are peace and love. Yes I came up in the reggae scene but I ended up there because it corroborated my belief that it was the best way to achieve a more perfect union not for any sentimental reason and not because they changed my point of view from some previous held position. I had come to the peace and love conclusion from reading Kant, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Locke, Rousseau, Plato... The list goes on. The western philosophical tradition is all about peace and love. So as the Trump dissenters began to foment I didn’t see much of a change on the horizon. It all sounded like fear and hate to me. I planned for the long haul. I had seen what peaking too early could do. The enormous outpouring at the initial moment of inspiration dissolves rapidly as it is impossible to sustain a full sprint for much longer than a couple hundred yards. I knew that real change was hard work that required real sacrifice and that marching through the streets with other like-minded dissenters was too easy and ultimately served the powers that be, not our cause. What I would have liked to have seen was a national strike, something that had real impact. A party on Saturday is nothing more than a dalliance. 

Ultimately though, what really needs to happen is the dissenters need to do the hard work. Run for office. Get elected. Make tough choices. Show through action and policy that love and peace can provide a more perfect union than the politics of greed. Maybe this could be the spark to make that happen. I watched. I eagerly tuned in. And I was pleasantly surprised to see Naomi Klein talk about making the Democrats better and not losing site of the mistakes that were made. And to hear Josh Fox talk about the water protectors at Standing Rock employing love of their adversaries not because it was easy but because it was necessary and that this was the true revolution at hand. And to hear Van Jones talk about how love means being honest with your adversary as well as yourself and holding them and yourself accountable to what is right. And all the talk of intersectionality and its implications that we are all one. And to hear Kamala Harris point out that although it is convenient to frame the current issues as women’s issues that distinction is ultimately specious. The critical issues on the table apply to people. All people. Even “them”. They are people too. And as soon as we lose sight of that we have lost.

"Without path from protest to power, the women's march will end up like Occupy"

My Dad

I’m thinking about my dad on this Veteran’s day 2016, ten years after his passing, and he remains an enigma. My dad was one of the most gregarious people I have ever known! He always approached strangers and struck up a conversation but he never revealed much of himself. He was also one of the most private people I have ever known.

The family line as I recall it, growing up, was that dad had served in World War II but was on a ship in the Atlantic when the armistice was announced. We knew that he had served in the Korean conflict, too, but there was not a lot of detail around that. He didn't have any memorabilia, not his Purple Heart medal (which I only surmised he must have gotten when I heard about the shrapnel that remained in his arm), not any mention of a comrade, I never even saw a photograph from that time. As I look back on it now, it strikes me as odd that my dad and I never talked about that aspect of life. I was fascinated with the military as a child, playing with toy soldiers and G.I. Joes and even read a lot about the battles of World War II and played board games simulating them but, I don’t ever recall talking with him about it. Maybe I had a sense that it was off limits.

My parents divorced when I was 12 but my dad remained nearby and was a constant presence in my life. He often made it to my sporting events and even my performances with the school band or theater. We spent many Sundays together too. He expressed his love for me in a stoic fashion; very few hugs and kisses but a constant supportive presence. As I entered college I moved away and our communication became sparser but I still made it a point to contact him. I moved even farther away after college and he retired to South Carolina so we were literally on opposite sides of the country. Our contact was reduced to a phone call a couple times a year. He was always happy to hear from me but always cut those calls shorter than I wanted. I'm not sure if it was his frugality, now living on a fixed income and not wanting to incur long distance charges, or his awareness of my impecunious state and not wanting me to incur long distance charges or whether he was unwillingness to get in to deeper topics of conversation. The only time I saw him in my twenties was when we both traveled to Chicago for my brother's PhD graduation. Dad was a big man at 6'4" and had many back problems so he always complained about plane travel. Traveling cross country to see me wasn't discussed. I just understood that it wasn't an option.

Once I got myself to a place where I had an income I made it a point to go see him once a year. He always expressed great happiness in seeing me and his wife made it a point to tell me, when we had a moment alone, how much my visits meant to him. On one of my visits, as we were chatting after dinner, he handed me a photo album and told me he had spent some time assembling pictures from his life. He was having some health issues after a lifetime of smoking cigarettes and he was softening up. I opened the album with great curiosity and found on one of the first pages a black and white picture of him in army fatigues holding two pistols much like today's gangster rappers. In the background were two palm trees. "Is this Korea?" I asked. He told me that it was World War II and that he had actually served in the Pacific and this picture was taken in the Philippines. After a little prodding he went on to explain how he had run away from home at 17 after his father had beat him for going to swim team practice. Dad grew up in a rural house, the youngest of twelve children, on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls. His mother passed when he was four years old and his father started working at an automotive parts factory in the US when he was young so he was raised by an older sister. Dad described to me, that night he showed me his photo album, how he found himself on the streets of Buffalo, NY, literally penniless and hungry and in front of the Army recruiting office. I'm unclear on the timing of this. I'm guessing it was the fall of 1945 as he told me he was 17 when he was deployed to the Pacific theater. He said that he spent 6 weeks training as an anti-aircraft gunner in Arkansas and once he got to Seattle to deploy was told he was joining the infantry. He was the tallest member of his squad so was made the squad leader despite his youth. His Canadian citizenry came to light at this time and he was told that he couldn't be deployed unless he was a citizen so was offered citizenship. He agreed and they made him a citizen on the spot. As squad leader it was his responsibility to lead the charge on the beach they landed on.  He told me how he ran through the shallow waters of the Pacific on to the beach in a hail of bullets and mortar fire and miraculously made it to the edge of the forest. As he told the story I tried to digest it. As I inserted his story into my knowledge of this setting it dawned on me, ever so clearly, and I had to ask, "So, you killed people?" Dad did not hesitate. "Oh yeah," he admitted matter-of-factly, "More than I can remember." That was difficult for me to assimilate. My dad had killed more people than he could remember! I chose not to focus on it but, instead, tried to find something positive. "Did you keep in touch with any of your squad?" I was thinking about the Hollywood version of war. "No. I lost half my squad every day. There was no point in getting to know anyone. You never knew who would survive." I just kind of stared blankly not sure what to say. He could tell I was struggling and went on to tell me how terrible it was and his only goal was to survive. We talked about what it was like for him to return to normal life. After spending some time as a drill sergeant stateside  he went back to upstate New York and his older step brother took him in. He actually had to finish High School! He was allowed to attend the public high school nearby but only after the principal sat him down and told him he was to stay away from the girls. He completed his senior year without incident and took advantage of the G.I. bill to enroll in college after spending a couple years saving money. He was determined to have a normal life but as the Korean conflict involved US troops my father was called to serve again. I'm not clear on why his service in World War II didn't fulfill his obligation but he was required to return to the military even though he was adamantly opposed to it. He told me, that night, of a conversation he had with a US Army officer where he asked what would happen if he didn't show up and was told that he would be jailed. It seems he could have easily gone to Canada, where the majority of his family lived, and avoid service. Maybe not. 

Regardless he found himself on the front lines of the Korean conflict. He was part of an intelligence unit that would actually venture behind enemy lines at night, hide in the brush all day taking notes, and then return the next evening. I asked him about peeing while hidden in the brush and he just laughed. "You just wet yourself! There was enemy soldiers everywhere so you didn't dare move and risk being detected."  He then went on to tell me how they would send their compatriots off at night following a defined route  and when they heard the explosion of a land mine they would calculate the spot on a map and that is how they determined the route for the next guy not to take. He also told me how he and two other guys were atop a peak, calling in aerial strikes, when the enemy made a push and trapped them behind enemy lines. They stayed there for 69 days with supplies being dropped in. He said the hardest part was keeping their food from the rats. They would put the food in the ammunition boxes and sleep with it in order to keep it from the rats even though there was risk that the ammunition might be compromised by moisture. They survived multiple attempts by the enemy to take their position. He would see the enemy advancing and watch troops ascend the hillside below them. As the enemy got closer they would pull the pin on a grenade and let it roll down the hill and watch enemy soldiers fly off the hillside when the grenade exploded. After 69 days the allies finally pushed forward and they were able to come down from that peak. They had to cut their uniforms off and immediately burned them.

I sat there, in my Dad’s living room, trying to reconcile the man who endured the horrors of war twice with the man who raised me working a white collar job and living a typical American life. The truth of the matter was that I was struggling to understand myself at that time and my Dad’s role in my formation was something I was trying to reconcile too. I tried to imagine what it would have been like to have gone through his experience rather than the jejune path of my early adulthood. I couldn’t.

That was 20 years ago and I'm still trying to understand what his life must have been like and it has occurred to me that my Dad’s experience was common for his generation and for the Vietnam generation too. The thing that really sticks with me was my Dad’s absolute yearning for a normal life. That impulse, I think, had the single largest impact on me and my generation.  I certainly appreciate the normalcy that he provided. Even though my parents divorced in the mid-70s, and that was uncommon at that time, we still maintained a standard middle class life with the luxuries and amenities afforded United States residents of that time. All driven by a couple generations of men who survived the horrors of war and were determined to have a normal, comfortable life.

My father passed away ten years ago and I rue that I was never able to get more clarity on that era of his life. I briefly researched what was available on line thinking maybe I could find what division my dad served in and find some history on their experience in the Pacific theater. I found that most of the records of that time were lost in a fire at the Pentagon and abandoned my efforts. I’m not sure I want to know all that my Dad endured but I still wonder about it often. Recently I saw an article about pictures from the Korean War that were just released. I decided I would look to see if I could find my dad in any of them. One of the first I found was this -

The soldier giving solace bears a striking resemblance to my father, particularly the pictures I have seen from that time. I've zoomed in to see if I could determine if it was my dad and can't tell definitively. Still, the emotion in this picture informs me of the dreadfulness my dad endured and I am even more filled with respect and admiration for his ability to survive that and maintain his sanity. 

Universal truth

Instead of comparing our lives to those we consider more fortunate, we should rather compare to all those who have lived.  Then we would see how fortunate we are.  Helen Keller said something like that once. I have been saying something like that for a long time. It bears repeating. I have long felt that there was some universal truth to it.  I am convinced that our ability to compare and contrast is our competitive advantage and this idea of being able to compare our lives to all who have lived, not just humans but all who lived, is a unique ability. So when I read that quote by Helen Keller the other day I was struck once again. And it dawned on me that this could have been practiced by any sentient being and the conclusion would be largely the same - Life is good! At first this struck me as a flaw in the thinking. That if it were true that this maxim could apply to all sentient beings at their time the maxim had no value.  Value comes from singularity doesn't it?  That's what I said to myself. But then it dawned on me that this broad quality approached universality and that there is value in that. Universal truths are the framework. 

If it were true that humans are mainly motivated by pleasure, as some have claimed, it seems that they would endeavor to simplify their lives. Life's simple pleasures are the best. We have been hearing that for millennia. Our experience bears that out. So why do humans complicate their lives? I think it is because they are mainly motivated by fear. Fear is mainly irrational. Of course there are legitimate fears but those generate either paralysis or tightly focused action. Illegitimate fear generates unfocused action.  Because the fear is unfounded there is no concrete target for that action. So life, for many humans, is this series of unfocused actions responding to some irrational fear. This leads to unnecessary complexities. A lot of people are afraid of being alone. In response they create a multitude of affectations. This gives them a sense that they are addressing their aloneness - That they are moving to togetherness. This apparent success breads further affectations. After all if something "works" then it is worth repeating or elaborating. The returns on these apparent successes quickly diminishes because an excess of affectation is counterproductive to relating because so many artificial layers make it difficult to connect on a fundamental level. This connection on a fundamental level is the only emollient for the fear of aloneness. 

Awakening

There is that fundamental energy; that which drives us forward.

It manifests itself strongly in intersexual relationships. The desire to create. It is the core strength.

Brutish. Unrelenting. Overwhelming. Enlightening.

I feel its pull. I grit my teeth. I desire. I will not bow my head.

I love it. I cherish it. I would give it my kiss.

Yes! It is perfect. Love! Love of the deepest kind. 

End of an Era

So nice to hear from you Ellie! I'm glad to hear you are thriving. I'm sure grandmotherhood suits you perfectly. I have been thinking about you recently. My mother passed away on December 30th. I thought you might like to know. I'm certain that you two had met. It was  the end for her. She was 88. All things considered it was a great ending. She was present right up until the very end. She had a liver disease that was sapping her strength but not her mind. She almost died twice in the fall of 2013. She ended up being severely anemic both times. They never had an explanation for it. The second time was Thanksgiving. She decided at that time she didn't want to go back to the hospital ever. She was prescribed in-home Hospice in July of 2014. She was still getting up in the morning and getting dressed. She would even make a pot of coffee and have some cookies. Between meals she sat on the couch. She could only get up for a minute or two and then she didn't feel like she could stand any more. Rhoda moved to just 5 miles away and I have been going up every other month. With the Hospice staff making regular visits, we had a few more sets of eyes on her. By all accounts she was doing surprisingly well. By September though she was even weaker so Rhoda moved in with her. Rhoda still worked. She's got her own acupuncture practice so that is highly demanding too. Her mother-in-law celebrated her 80th birthday in France on Thanksgiving 2014.  So, with the blessing of my employer to work from home,  I moved in with my mom on November 7 so Rhoda could make that trip. My first week there Ma was very much the same except she weighed only 65 lbs!! Just skin and bone but still doing crosswords and never missing an episode of Jeopardy! The second week I was there she announced on Tuesday morning that she wasn't getting out of bed any more. She spent the next three days in bed but got up over the weekend and seemed back to normal. That next Tuesday she announced again that she wasn't getting out of bed anymore. She never did. Not on her own power. Still she was present. I brought her food and her medicine and she would complain about both but I would always get her to take them. Near Thanksgiving she was pretty out of it. Inchorent sometimes. She was talking about death and saying it was imminent.

I encouraged her to wait until Rhoda got back from France. Rhoda happened to be coming back on her 88th birthday so that was added encouragement. She buckled down and made it to Rhoda's return. We had a nice birthday party for her and she was very happy. Royd had scheduled a trip to see her on Dec. 12th so that became her next target which she made easily. She was very much present by the time he arrived and had stopped talking about death. Rhoda's daughter, Camille, was returning from her Senior year at Bard for the final time. Mom made that target too. She was doing so well that I went back to Santa Barbara for a weekend. It seemed like this might go on for a while. I got permission from Johnson & Johnson to extend my stay. Working from there was as good, if not better, than me being in the office.  I got back to Mom's on the 22nd and we had a nice Christmas on the 26th. Camille celebrated on the 25th with her father. Mom agreed to get in the wheelchair and come out and celebrate Christmas. That was a first. We got her out on the deck of her condo and she reveled in the fresh air and bright colors. She had a big window by her bed which she had been staring out of  ever since she became bed ridden. Being outside was better. A couple days later she agreed to go out on the deck and we had our breakfast out there. She honked at the geese as they flew over. The morning of the 29th she was a changed person. She had this blank stare and stopped talking almost entirely. If I pressed her she would say "Yes" or "No" or, most commonly, "I don't know." Tuesday the 30th she was the same. Even though she wouldn't talk to me or look directly at me, she would hold out her fist to bump like I taught her when she first became bed ridden. The nurse's aide arrived and asked if she wanted a bed bath and she said "Yes" and even commented that it felt good. The spiritual counselor came next and they had an intense conversation where my mom said she was seeing her parents and the counselor encouraged her to let go. Ma said she understood. A few hours later it was time for her to use the commode and I asked her if she needed to go and she said yes. I put her on the commode and she never responded. She was breathing and her eyes were open but she never recognized me. I asked her if she was going or not and got nothing back. I turned the lights out and put a flash light in her eyes and there was no pupillary response. When I turned the lights back on I heard some urine fall in to the bucket and said "Oh you are peeing" (Amazing how close death had brought us in some ways) but when I turned to look she was slumped over. She was gone.

It is an epic time El. Not sure if your folks are still alive but these last few months have been epic. I'm making my way through. Rhoda and I have been prepping her condo to sell and taking care of all the business of her passing. I am back at work. Not really liking it but, for the most part, I can not complain. I'm doing something interesting and getting paid very nicely. It is a good group of people too so I feel fortunate. Still, I am lucky enough to be able to pursue a better situation and I think there is a better situation for me out there so will be doing more exploring. I just got a call from an old friend who now lives in Raleigh! Maybe North Carolina is calling me. I will be going to Camille's graduation in NY in May and we are planning a memorial for my mom in Rochester for July 24th to coincide with her family's reunion.  That will be the beginning of a new era.

What is right?

My intent is not to lead but to do what is right. After long deliberation, I believe that speaking out is the right thing to do. How do I know it is the right thing? I don’t. I believe. You can never really know what is right. The right is a journey. A path. Not a static thing. It lives in an ever changing environment. Our task is to find it. But you can’t hold on to it. You can’t put it in your pocket. Whenever you need it you still have to go through a process, however brief, however subconscious, to produce it. How exhausting it is to have to produce right all the time. We all use a lot of right. Knowing the right. You can’t take it from someone else or buy it from them. You have to produce the right for yourself every time you need it. Whenever you decide! Should I read more? Should I write more? Should I type the letter z right now? There is a will behind it all. I can sense it. Others can sense it too. I also believe this. When others explain to me their belief in god l hear them affirming my belief. When others express to me, even in the most subtle ways, kindness or love or positivity? I hear them affirming my belief. My belief is affirmed in the grandeur of a forest or the play of an animal. My belief is affirmed in Art and Sports and eating fine meals with friends, laughing so hard you wet yourself.

We have accomplished amazing feats.  When I think of my ancestor, someone I have direct lineage to, living in a mud hut, manufacturing right for himself. He must have been. I am the direct result of that. He made decisions for years before he passed his gene to my ancestral mother and that produced my grandfather. A man that I have met. Who produced a lot of right in his lifetime.  People are making decisions all the time and have been since the beginning. Life is this giant web of decisions. That’s what differentiates life - Decision making. Even the most microscopic form of life is making some decisions on a fundamental level. Once decision making stops we call that death.

Our collective decision making is an epic journey that we are all players in. All decision makers. Now and forever in the past and forever into the future. It is an amazing river, constantly flowing, currents and bends everywhere. It sounds so overwhelming! But it is not because we are part of it. We have control over it. All we have to do is make the right decisions. And how do we know what the right decision is? You don’t. You have to chase it and ride it and it takes some unexpected turns and you can spin out. The next time you catch it you need to bring your knowledge and experience to bear and ride it for as long as you can. Fortunately you have the assistance of others. We can collaborate on this. We do collaborate on this. That is the joyous thing. The more voices we have the more assistance we have. Every interaction whether it is visual, aural, tactile, has some element of assistance in it. And you keep collecting little pieces of assistance. You can’t hold them all but you hang on to the ones that work for you.  But there are currents and those are the effect of others decisions. It is not easy! You have to work at it. I have found that there are a couple pieces of assistance that work all the time. Sometimes I lose those but when I get them back I hold on to them more tightly. Not too tightly. I am riding the rivers of time. Got to flow with it. That requires a firm yet loose grip. Imagine you are holding a bird. Control it as best you can but don’t strangle it. Then it no longer has value.

Brennisteinn

Be smart.

Every decision involves a multiplicity of factors. Understand as many of them as you can as well as you can. Rarely do you understand them completely. Do the best you can.

Pick your moments. How do you know when it is time to pull the trigger? You don’t know. You got to feel that one. For me it is enthusiasm. That is the determining factor. Do I want it?

When you do pick a moment go all in. Want that shit! That’s what living is. 

Fairness is the soil that liberty grows from.

I watched Elizabeth Warren’s questioning of Treasury Department officials about what standard might apply to bring a financial institution under federal criminal investigation considering HSBC's actions were termed “egregious” by one of those officials and yet no criminal investigation ensued. I shared that article on Facebook and I wrote “This is leadership!” when I did. If you haven’t seen it please watch it here. http://youtu.be/9lh0cMtOHmo 

The reason I pointed to leadership was because I felt that she was asking a pertinent question and she was relentless in that question even in the face of dissembling at a professional level. I don’t blame those officials for their equivocation. They were not from the Justice department so it was not their role to make that statement publicly even if they did have an opinion. Still it was important for a Senator to ask that question. Is it not the role of legislators to say what the law is? To her credit Senator Warren was asking for guidance from this official but it was plain to see that the threshold had been met. If there is any doubt watch this. http://youtu.be/K800WHFqy1g 

 HSBC deserved to be, at least, criminally charged. If that threshold is not specified in law to a sufficient degree that Justice Department officials felt compelled to prosecute then it is contingent on legislators to give them guidance. If the legislators feel they have given sufficient guidance then they must conclude that Justice Department officials are at fault, if not incompetent. Or maybe impotent is a better word.

Why wouldn’t the Justice Department at least criminally prosecute violations of such a vast degree?

As Senator Warren points out, Justice Officials investigate actions on a vastly smaller scale all the time. She concludes her questioning by surmising that this “just isn’t fair”. I know that many in the room with her and many watching the recording or reading the transcript find that a peculiar conclusion. Fairness is a fantasy they would say. There are functional things that take precedence over fairness. They might say that leadership is knowing the difference between fantasy and reality. I say that leadership is knowing what really matters and relentlessly pursuing it even if it is hard to comprehend.

Fairness is our government’s main product. We formed this union in order to establish Justice. It is the soil that liberty grows from. People are not free to prosper in a free market unless they are assured fairness. Tranquility grows from the soil of fairness – “No Justice! No Peace!” Democracy itself is based on, one person, one vote, fairness. Elizabeth Warren was right for asking about the fairness of this situation. She was leading by relentlessly focusing on the real business of governing.

This isn’t the first time that unfairness on a grand scale has been questioned in a legislative body though. I’m certain that people have been pointing it out for thousands of years. Now that Senator Warren has asked the question out loud it remains to be seen if she will get an answer let alone be able to do anything about it. She certainly won’t be able to do anything about it by herself. She will need more than a staff and more than a caucus of like-minded legislators. She will need a majority of people. She may need a super majority! I know there are a lot of folk in our country who share my view of the fundamental nature of fairness in our society. We need to be reminded by our leaders that this is the task at hand.

Bertolt who?

You gentlemen who think you have a mission
To purge us of the seven deadly sins
Should first sort out the basic food position
Then start your preaching, that’s where it begins

You lot who preach restraint and watch your waist as well
Should learn, for once, the way the world is run
However much you twist or whatever lies that you tell
Food is the first thing, morals follow on

So first make sure that those who are now starving
Get proper helpings when we all start carving
What keeps mankind alive?

What keeps mankind alive?
The fact that millions are daily tortured
Stifled, punished, silenced and oppressed
Mankind can keep alive thanks to its brilliance
In keeping its humanity repressed
And for once you must try not to shriek the facts
Mankind is kept alive by bestial acts

You groups who march and put on demonstrations
To save us from the evils of war
Should focus on the learning situation
So that everyone can understand your words

You folks who shout “Peace and Understanding”
Should learn for once the way the world is run
Reactionary measures may make you feel better
But they don’t very often get the job done.

So gather all who understand your reasons
And elect them; they’re the ones to lead us.
What keeps Mankind live?

What keeps mankind alive?
The fact that millions are spent daily on the instruments of war? No.
Mankind can keep alive thanks to his brilliance
And by keeping his humanity in tact
And for once you must try not to shriek the facts
Mankind is kept alive by being a pack

Victory

There are times when it seems the whole world is conspiring against you. A gritting of the teeth. Perhaps a small bite of the lip. You can defeat the world.

There are times when it seems the whole universe is conspiring against you. Then the dog sticks his nose in your face and wags his tail with delight.
Not the whole universe.

There are times when it seems the cosmos are conspiring against you. You take the left turn home instead of your usual right. There, on the third block, a pedestrian, in every sense of the word, makes eye contact with you through the window of your car and smiles. You make it home and have an appetite for a cookie.

There are times when it seems God is conspiring against you ...

Wait.

Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing. To keep our faces toward change and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable.

4/13/2010

Waking up in the dark, for me, is always strange. Having to wake up in the dark - just torture. Not a morning person. Had to be at the office at 6 this morning. Felt surprisingly rested considering the preceding 12 hour workday. I'm at a satellite office for the company I work for. We've got a small manufacturing operation in Tucson, AZ. This is my first time to Tucson. Didn't get to see much. All work and no play...
It was nice to meet the folks at the Tucson office. They are a hard working, committed, bunch. I have been supporting their computers for 4 years now so I've spoken to most several times. One of the strange parts of my job is that I talk to a lot of people on the phone but only occasionally do I meet them. When I do meet them there is almost always a strange disconnect. I can not avoid assembling a picture of the people I talk to on the phone and when that picture doesn't jive with their actual person I feel that disconnect. It's nothing serious but it happens, that little internal dialogue, digesting the schism. I like it actually. It makes me feel good that people are out there being themselves.

I was there with one other guy from my office, one guy from another one of our offices and two consultants. We banged it out over the weekend and today we were just wrapping up loose ends. We wrapped up at 11 to make our 1:30 flight, hustled to the airport only to find that our flight was delayed. Well I had to wait at the airport for 3 hours before I got out on the first leg of my trip. Expected the worst. Me and my co-worker bellied up to the bar. We did a lot of that on this trip. I found out that my co-worker who I had been working with for over 2 years was not the person I thought he was either. Nice! He was out there being himself too! Fortunately our flight was only delayed by a half hour so we were on our way after two cocktails. Connected in Los Angeles and because of the delay was concerned about making my connection. I found out my last leg departed from the other side of the terminal. I hustled over there and as I was approaching my gate I saw a police officer standing in the middle of the hall looking very serious. I grew concerned. Then I saw he had a dog. Is that a bomb sniffing dog I thought? I got within about fifty feet and the odor hit me and the crowd parted in front of me. There it was. The officer was standing right next to it. A large pile of dog shit. And there was that German Shepard wagging its tail, tongue hanging out of its mouth, proud of what it had done. I laughed out loud. Dogs are so good at being themselves.

I was right on time for the flight home, got on the plane and opened the newspaper that the hotel had provided to me 12 hours earlier. Not quite sure what to make of the news. Not when I'm exhausted and riding a good gin buzz. I did notice that there are a lot of people out there who I read about. I have subjective pictures of those people too. I'm trying to understand why they are doing some of the things they are doing and it occurs to me that I don't know them so I can't really understand their behavior. That's disappointing. I get to an article about a guy who has won the Pulitzer Prize for literature. A drummer from a rock band! He transitioned to writing and won the Pulitzer Prize at, like, 48! And at the end of the article they list other Prize winners and I scan the list until I get to the end - Music: Violin Concerto - Jennifer Higdon. I know Jennifer Higdon! We went to music school together. We represented the composition department together on the dean's advisory board. I remember her as the quintessential sweet girl. Just a delight. She won the Pulitzer Prize! I guess I shouldn't be surprised since she was nominated for a Grammy a couple years ago. So there’s another moment. The internal dialogue reconciling my memory of Jennifer and her name in the newspaper in front me. That is vast. It had been 24 years since I last saw Jennifer. She had been out there being herself for all those revolutions. And I had been out there too, being myself during that time. Yet there was a thread. Those threads are everywhere. It almost seems that those threads make the fabric of life. They are so vital.

A Time to Break Silence (Again!)

Originally published April 4, 2004

OVER THE PAST YEAR, as I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures from the destruction of Iraq, many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path. At the heart of their concerns this query has often loomed large and loud: Why are you speaking about the war, John? Why are you joining the voices of dissent? What do you know of the intricacies of foreign policy. Aren't you venturing outside your expertise, they ask. And when I hear them, though I often understand the source of their concern, I am nevertheless greatly saddened, for such questions mean that the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment or my calling. Indeed, their questions suggest that they do not know the world in which they live.
In the light of such tragic misunderstanding, I deem it of single importance to try to state clearly why I believe that the path from Tudor Road, the street I grew up on in Brockport, New York, where I began my adulthood, leads clearly to this place.
I write this letter to make a passionate plea to my beloved nation. This letter is not addressed to Al Qaeda or to A.N.S.W.E.R. It is not addressed to Iraq or to Israel. Nor is it an attempt to overlook the ambiguity of the total situation and the need for a collective solution to the tragedy of Iraq. Neither is it an attempt to make Muqtada al-Sadr or Osama Bin Laden paragons of virtue, nor to overlook the role they can play in a successful resolution of the problem. While they both may have justifiable reasons to be suspicious of the good faith of the United States, life and history give eloquent testimony to the fact that conflicts are never resolved without trustful give and take on both sides.
Right now, however, I do not wish to speak with either of them, but rather to my fellow Americans who, with me, bear the greatest responsibility in ending a conflict that has exacted a heavy price on both continents.
I have several reasons for bringing Iraq into the field of my moral vision. There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Iraq and the struggle that others have been waging in America. At the end of the Cold War there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for our poor through the "Peace Dividend" which included all the great resources of a great nation suddenly made available in addition to the vast revenue that was being directed to the military. Then came the build-up in the Middle East for Desert Shield. This project endured and spread to the Balkan's and elsewhere. It eventually grew into the war on terrorism and I watched the dividend become broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political play thing of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that the United States would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its own so long as fear continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic, destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the people and to attack it as such.
Perhaps the more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. It was sending their children and their siblings and their spouses to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population. We were taking the young people who had been crippled by our society and sending them 8000 miles away to guarantee liberties in Asia which they had not found in Southwest Georgia and East Los Angeles. So we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching our youth on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to care for their medical needs or provide them a secondary education. I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor.
My third reason grows out of my experience on the streets of the United States over the last twenty years - especially the last three. As I have walked among the desperate, rejected and angry young people trying to effect change, I have told them that Molotov cocktails and Guns would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through non-violent action. But, they asked, what about Iraq? They asked if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today, my own government.
Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of the United States today can ignore the present war. If the United States' soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read "Iraq." It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over.
And as I ponder the madness of Iraq, my mind goes constantly to the people of that area. I speak now not of the soldiers of each side, not of the junta in Baghdad, but simply of the people who have been living under the curse of war for a continuous decade. I think of them, too, because it is clear to me that there will be no meaningful solution there until some attempt is made to know them and their broken cries.
They must see the United States as strange liberators. For years we sponsored sanctions and initiated destruction that virtually eliminated all infrastructure in their country and took the lives of several hundred thousand of their citizens. Now there is little left to build on, save bitterness. Soon the only solid physical foundations remaining will be found at our military bases and in the concrete of the concentration camps we call "green zone." The peasants may well wonder if we plan to build our new Iraq on such grounds as these. Could we blame them for such thoughts? We must speak for them and raise the questions they cannot raise. These too are our brothers.
Perhaps the more difficult but no less necessary task is to speak for those who have been designated as our enemies. What must they think of us in the United States when they realize that we permitted the repression and cruelty of Saddam Hussein while he did our bidding and then wrecked terror down on them when he would not? How can they believe in our integrity when now we speak of "terrorism" as if our hands were completely clean? How can they trust us when now we charge them with violence after the murderous reign of our operatives, and charge them with violence while we pour new weapons of death into their land?
What must they be thinking when they know that we are aware of their control of major sections of the Middle East and yet we appear ready to allow national elections in which they will have no part? They are surely right to wonder what kind of new government we plan to help form without them, the only party in real touch with the peasants. They question our political goals and they deny the reality of a peace settlement from which they will be excluded. Their questions are frighteningly relevant.
Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and non-violence, when it helps us to see the enemy's point of view, to hear his questions, to know of his assessment of ourselves. For from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition.
At this point, I should make it clear that while I have tried here to give a voice to the voiceless of the Middle East and to understand the arguments of those who are called enemy, I am as deeply concerned about our own troops there as anything else. For it occurs to me that what we are submitting them to in Iraq is not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to destroy. We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for our troops must know after a short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved. Before long they must know that their government has sent them into a struggle among Iraqis, and the more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the wealthy and the secure while we create a hell for the poor.
Somehow this madness must cease. I speak as a brother to the suffering poor of Iraq and the poor of the United States who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Iraq. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop must be ours.
The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. It demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in Iraq, that we have been detrimental to the life of her people. In order to atone for our errors in Iraq, we should take the initiative in bringing the war to a halt.
Meanwhile, we here on the streets of the United States have a continuing task while we urge our government to disengage itself from a disgraceful commitment. We must be prepared to match actions with words by seeking out every creative means of protest possible. As we counsel young men concerning military service we must clarify for them our nation's role in Iraq and challenge them with the alternative of conscientious objection. I am pleased to say that this is the path now being chosen by at least one soldier, and I recommend it to all who find the United States course in Iraq a dishonorable and unjust one. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.
There is something seductively tempting about stopping there and sending us all off on what in some circles has become a popular crusade against the war in Iraq. I say we must enter that struggle, but I wish to go on now to say something even more disturbing. The war in Iraq is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality we will find ourselves organizing protest committees for the next generation. We will be marching and attending rallies without end unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy.
In 1957 a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution. During the past fifty years we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression which now has justified the presence of U.S. military "advisors" worldwide. The need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counterrevolutionary action of American forces in Haiti. It tells why American forces have been active against rebels in Columbia. With such activity in mind, the words of John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. He said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investment.
I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. When machines and computers, profit and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.
A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look easily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.
America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from re-ordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.
This kind of positive revolution of values is our best defense against terrorism. War is not the answer. Terrorism will never be defeated by the use nuclear weapons. Let us not join those who shout war and through their misguided passions urge the United States to relinquish its participation in the United Nations. These are the days which demand wise restraint and calm reasonableness. We must not call everyone a terrorist or an appeaser who recognizes that hate and hysteria are not the final answers to the problems of these turbulent days. We must engage in a positive thrust for democracy, realizing that our greatest defense against terrorism is to take offensive action in behalf of justice. We must with positive action seek to remove those conditions of poverty, insecurity and injustice which are the fertile soil in which the seed of terrorism grows and develops.
These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression, and out of the wombs of a frail world, new systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. "The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light." We in the West must support these revolutions. It is a sad fact that, because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of terrorism, and our proneness to ad just to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch anti-revolutionaries. Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism.
We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in the Middle East and justice throughout the developing world, a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.
Now let us begin. Now let us re-dedicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world. This is the calling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. Shall we say the odds are too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? Will our message be that the forces of American life militate against their arrival as full men, and we send our deepest regrets? Or will there be another message, of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise we must choose in this crucial moment of human history.

A TIME TO BREAK SILENCE, Martin Luther King, Jr.
Declaration of Independence from the War in Vietnam
Riverside Church, New York City, April 4, 1967
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