John McCain

I'm doing a terrible job of updating my blog lately, but I wanted to make at least one updated entry for now, with a video that expresses some of my many concerns about John McCain's bid for the presidency. Passersby might want to take a look at it before deciding how to vote this November.

I just don't agree that everyone in American politics is truly well-intentioned. In this video, there's a clip where McCain actually admits to having acted from an excess of ambition when he failed to condemn the display of a Confederate flag. Everyone's human, of course, but the temptations accompanying the most powerful office on earth can be too great for some, and in these critical times, it's imperative that we take a close look at those who would attain that office.

If someone questions why there is no equivalent here for Obama, I can only answer that I agree that Obama has his own personal failings, but I very much believe that we need for him to win this election, so if you want ammunition to use against Obama, please look elsewhere. If there arise any questions about him as troubling to me as those in this video, I won't hesitate to bring them to everyone's attention, through this blog or whatever means I can. At this time, I believe there's plenty of reason to trust Obama, at worst as much as you can trust any Democratic presidential candidate we've seen in the last thirty years or so, and I don't believe for a moment that Obama has any "secret" schemes that he hasn't divulged. My beef is with McCain.

The emphasis in this video is McCain's potential for drawing us into further unnecessary and avoidable conflicts. That's just a tiny subset of the things that worry me, but it's important to consider what a reputation he has developed for showing a preference for the use of force. Coupled with his military background, his traumatic experiences as a prisoner of war, and a record more notable for its lack of support for legislation that would benefit soldiers and veterans, it's very difficult to feel much confidence in the way that McCain might address global issues.

Bottom line, I believe John McCain when he tells us there's going to be "more wars", at least if we elect him into office. I believe he is much too closely tied to that familiar NeoCon school of thought in American politics that heavily champions the use of American military force as a preferred method of supporting American (in this case, corporate) interests. Far from being one who might temper the ambitions of the NeoCon hawks, McCain's temperament would be more likely to exacerbate the problem. All these ingredients and more combine into perhaps an even more toxic brew than the one concocted for our distinct lack of enjoyment these last eight years.

I can't tell you that everything in the video is true, especially with regard to questions about McCain's behavior while a prisoner of war, but that's not the point. The point is to make you think about the sort of world you think this really ought to be, and whether McCain would bring us closer to that world. Since around 80% of America believes we're headed in the wrong direction now, how much sense does it make to simply speed up the pace?

I Love Life

I'm back. Sort of. I've kind of had a tough time health-wise the last few weeks, and my good intentions with this blog got waylaid just a bit. I'm going to do more to support my health -- I promise -- and we've got warmer weather coming up, and that's going to help me a lot. I'd like to see if I can get back to taking a few minutes every day to put my thoughts down. I'm not sure if I've had many worth recording the last few days, but here goes nothing.

I don't want to dwell on poor health, but it does, as they say, have a wonderfully concentrating effect on the mind. I've smoked my way into a pretty severe case of emphysema, and I'm getting serious now about wanting to kick the habit. Here's a fascinating new product: e-cigarettes! I'm seriously considering placing an order. Electronic cigarettes, good grief! But the simulation is impressive. There's actual nicotine, and smoke is simulated with water vapor. It's so close to the ritual of the real thing, complete with nicotine, that it sounds crazy enough to work. Of course, you wouldn't be saving much money. Twenty nicotine refills are equivalent to two cartons of cigarettes, and it looks like they run for about $39.00, so in essence you're still paying about two bucks a "pack". I'm gonna try it. Hey, what have I got to lose?

I'm propped up by some pretty massive drugs right now. So, now you know, you want to make something of it? I'm using the high-strength Advair (500/250), plus Spiriva, and a whopping 40 mg/day of prednisone. I won't be able to stay on the prednisone much longer, but it sure is helping for now. It's always better when your need for air doesn't outpace your capacity to take it in, but I've been on the losing end of that equation for several months now, and it's been hard even to meditate. I've tried to keep up with the outside world through all the usual sources, but I haven't had much energy to spare. Here's hoping I'll have a little reserve for a while here. My thoughts aren't worth all that much, but it helps me to sort things out. If I can start turning my focus away from the personal here, and do a little reflecting about our common experience, maybe I'll have a post here or there that says something useful. You'll never know unless you try.

I know that it's really good to be alive. It's an exquisite luxury to be a human being in this time, and attempt to process all the complexities of our experience in some meaningful way. I've been pretty vividly reminded how brief and fleeting all of this really is, and that really does make you appreciate the simple things for what they are. It's good to be here. We've got lots to do, but I don't care. I'm really excited about being around to witness this exciting time.

When I've been able to meditate, I've felt it's somehow easier than it was. I think it's something about understanding how foolish it is to try and "accomplish" something by meditating, so I'm pretty happy just to sit there. I don't know what it's good for, so I just do it, and that's that. Then I do other things. Enough on that for now.

We've got a face-off going on right now between our two candidates for the 44th Presidency of the United States, and I think it's sufficiently important to give it a lot of attention, even to the detriment of other concerns, till this is resolved. I really believe these next five months are going to be as important as any I've known in my life. I made a similar comment yesterday on Huffington Post, and got a response that I must lead a pretty sheltered life. I was a little hurt, I think. What's happened to me personally is arguably more important, I suppose, but it seems to me we're at a crisis point in the determination of our future, both as a nation and even, perhaps, as a species. We have the most historic presidential candidate ever in Barack Obama, historic on so many levels due both to his race and to the nature of the way in which his campaign was financed, by people like myself instead of by the usual suspects. On the other side it appears we have a man who has jettisoned any personal opinions he's ever had in return for power, with the support of the cancerous outgrowths of corruption that have spun the world nearly into madness and self-destruction. The contrasts would seem to be so clearly drawn that old boundaries really may have been transcended, and we may be redefining ourselves and our loyalties for some time to come.

Is the choice really black and white? And how confusing is it to even use those terms now, given the candidates? Everything's topsy-turvy. I've never in my life seen things start to fall apart all at once like this. The economy is outrageous, the current administration is twisting slowly in the wind of its own exposed corruption, and the disparate mentalities of America attempt to grapple with all this and find a way forward. John McCain is transparently championing our current directions, and I can barely take my eyes off those Americans who listen and nod in agreement. It's like watching a crash in slow motion. These are truly lemmings headed for the sea, even if they should win. There will be a new kind of dialogue this year, and I don't think most of us are prepared for it.

"The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax--
Of cabbages--and kings--
And why the sea is boiling hot--
And whether pigs have wings."

-- The Walrus and the Carpenter, Lewis Carroll

Pastor Problems

Yes, I know, I missed posting yesterday. And today's will be pretty short. I'm just doing the best I can. Yesterday was kind of busy.

Today was the day of the pastors, at least for Republican candidate John McCain. McCain's complete break with Texas televangelist John Hagee was followed a few hours later by another break with Ohio televangelist Rod Parsley. And for one day, at least, Obama's troubles with his former pastor Jeremiah Wright took a back seat. I'm sure this isn't the last we'll hear of religion in this presidential race, but at least we scored a couple of points for a little more rational world today.

You might know I would say this, but the GOP's pastors scare me a whole lot more than Obama's guy. Hagee already made a name for himself by calling the Catholic church "the great whore", but the latest stuff that came out was just too much. Not even McCain could tolerate someone saying that Hitler was sent by God to drive the Jews into Israel, and he disassociated himself, leaving Hagee and his followers to decide on their own who might be best to lead them onward to Armageddon. Rod Parsley's church is in Columbus, Ohio, not far from where my father and stepmother live, and when the media began following up on Hagee with the well-known stories of Parsley's inflamed hatred for all things Islamic, McCain made it a two-for-one day. Someday we're really going to figure this separation of church and state thing out.

I've had my say about Reverend Wright elsewhere. It would be nice if I never feel a need to discuss him at length in this blog, but I'm sure the time will come. There's not much worth saying about Parsley, at least in terms of what I know about him right now. He's just a bigot, as near as I can tell. Hagee is worth mentioning in connection with the long-neglected themes of this blog, because Hagee apparently believes he can discern the will of God. You can read up on this guy if you want to; I'm hoping he and his little following fade along with their plans to catch up the plight of the Jews in their dreams of rapture, but the whole of the story of fundamentalist visions of the Last Days most likely has yet to be told.

Catching Up

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
-- Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

It's been a while since I made an entry. All the focus is on the primaries, and I'd like to move ahead to the general election and take on the Republicans. It looks like my candidate Obama is in a strong position, so much of the recent happenings seem like noise that must be endured, lots of sound and fury signifying nothing. We'll know more after Tuesday.

I'm thinking about how to take on the arguments of McCain. My own stance is probably more pointedly opposite him than even Obama's arguments may be when this debate starts heating up. I'm happy that with Obama as the candidate, there's much less chance for the Iraq discussion to deteriorate into how the "war" was simply mismanaged. Senator Obama will forcefully argue that there should never have been a war in the first place. There are a great many reasons why we shouldn't have gone into Iraq, and Obama correctly stated many of those back in 2002. Beyond the obvious misdirection of the battle against Al Qaeda to a country that had no role in 9/11, Obama knew that such a war would further damage relations, both within and outside the Muslim world, that it would require occupation resources and heavy cost, and that such endeavors are really doomed from the start. Obama's judgment on this issue is so inarguably correct, or at least it should be by now, that it's just a question of whether Americans are really ready to hear it.

Throughout history, occupying forces have never been able to fully conquer any nation. The pitiful excuse for a government now in Baghdad will never be truly accepted by the Iraqis. Democracy probably has a lot less chance of taking root in Iraq than it would have if we hadn't been meddling in that country since the 1950's, but until we get out of there, it has no chance at all. Will Obama talk much about the truth of why we're there? Will he discuss the heavy pressure being brought to bear by multinational energy firms such as ExxonMobil for control of Iraq's oil wealth under the guise of Iraq's oil "revenue sharing" plans? Will he mention the international leverage we want to possess by having our hands on the spigot of such an important resource right in the middle of the world's biggest region for it? There are many reasons why he might not. The forces that want to exercise that sort of control in the region will still be around after the election, and they'll continue to make an impact on how we behave. It's going to be up to us to make sure the whole argument gets laid out, because I don't think any President is going to be able to stand up to all this alone. It's still going to be up to us to drive the argument forward, and force America to face the truth about its own imperialistic pursuits. These problems extend beyond whatever administration is in power, and they don't go away simply by electing a relatively progressive Democrat. It's not that simple, folks. We have work to do.

If we simply accept that the world is a nasty place, and we have to be nasty if we want to be a part of it, I think we're failing to examine that position in sufficient depth. For myself, I can't lay claim to being an international expert, but I've known and worked with people from an enormous range of countries, and I think I've developed a pretty good sense of people overall. There are certainly some very violent pockets in the world, and there are some attitudes in the world that defy belief. Even in some countries we think of as being developed, there are nakedly racist attitudes toward other peoples that are beyond shocking to our American sensibilities. I wouldn't try to tell you for a moment that there isn't a whole lot to worry about with respect to our security. A lot of this planet is just plain crazy, make no mistake. Still, so much of the worst part of the craziness stems from patterns we can follow by studying history and related areas. When you look at what's happened, and after the shock has worn off a little, there's nothing very surprising that we haven't known all along about human nature. We know that too much power corrupts, that greed is too prevalent, and that we've become sort of a power-hungry, greedy nation. So what did you expect? I expect that we can improve things, perhaps beyond anything we could currently imagine, if we stay involved enough to examine the motives for our actions, and actually exercise the best judgment instead of opting for the most material gain. There's a lot we wouldn't solve by such a change, but we might start cutting some of our problems down to size.

Noam Chomsky resurfaced to give a talk about Iraq in Massachusetts the other day, and an article for The Nation called The Most-Wanted List that examines the terror of recently assassinated Hezbollah commander Imad Moughniyeh in the light of other violent activities in that part of the world. These are invaluable perspectives if we really want to understand the events of today's world as a caring human being, and not as an ideologue or unquestioning supporter of U.S. administration policies. I need to remind you now that I'm looking at all this in somewhat of an attitude of retrospective, as someone who's grown older and is no longer in the prime of health. I need you to understand how clearly the things that really matter stand out within that context, and the clarity doesn't represent a shift, such that some things should have mattered before, but other things matter now; what's clear is that these are always the things that really mattered, the things that provide a broad and deep sense of meaning and value throughout all phases of our lives without regard to age or life situation.

If you've read some of these entries, you know I've been studying the world situation very closely, and I've seen that our policies have done at least as much harm as good, and that's putting it mildly. I know that many of you just haven't had the time to pull back the curtain and see the sham for what it is, and I feel that many of you would be prepared to take very strong action if you really knew the truth. There are still too many, though, who would still try to ignore what's going on, who would hope that someone else could fix things, or afraid to try to fix things for fear of upsetting the status quo. What I have to tell you is that you absolutely must stop these things from happening because we're at multiple tipping points, for democracy, the climate, and the world. As long as we let George do it, he or Cheney most certainly will, and the world will suffer.

I've never said this won't be a long struggle. We can't just elect a progressive candidate and take a snooze. We not only have to wake up, we're going to have some long nights ahead, and we're going to have to upset some applecarts along the way. I'm the last person that will ever advocate any sort of violence. Don't look for that sort of thing here, because any attempt to solve problems with violence immediately destroys the solutions. What we do have to be is strong, and steadfast, and confident that we'll know what has to be done when the time comes as long as we listen equally to our heart and our head when we're asked to decide.

An election is a good time to shake things up, but we need to shake things up every day from now on. I don't want anarchy. I don't want everyone to give away all their belongings and renounce materialism. I don't want to open the door for every crazy who shows up. I just want you to start making your decisions with a thought to the things that are really important. I want you to imagine how you'll feel about things when it's nearly over, and how you'll feel then about some of the choices you made. Will you rationalize about that compromise that helped to exploit a few hundred workers in some obscure part of the world, or will you look for some way to ask for some kind of forgiveness for having come up short when you didn't really need to? I don't think we always need to think in big, revolutionary terms, even to achieve something big and revolutionary. Sometimes we just need to start taking care of the little things, and the big things will start to fall into place.