THE PRICE AND REWARDS OF MORALITY

The Price and Rewards of Morality:

I guess it starts with freedom---free will if you prefer. If God 'wills it' then human morality is non existent---whatever we do, or someone else does is scripted by God or the Devil. Some view a person as torn between the Devil and God. Behind any of this are beliefs, not proven facts, so the issues are forever muddled. I suppose the question first has to be answered as to whether we can really know anything that is not first in the senses--- senses which are dependent on the material world. Kant viewed morality as a series of questions: "What can I know?" "What ought I to do" and "What can I hope?"

Reason would appear to dictate that life on our planet is controlled by some sort of 'natural law' embedded in a God created evolutionary process. As time progresses we learn more and more about the particulars of the evolutionary process, especially now that we know so much more about molecular genetics. Thus, what is left is to understand is how human 'free will' fits into the evolutionary process. If humans have 'free will', then this free will affects the evolutionary process. In this respect the human species is the first species able to affect it's future destiny via 'free will'. Other species seem pretty much destined to be entirely controlled by natural law. Of course one could argue that 'free will' is just another aspect of natural law. Perhaps so, but then 'free will' as part of natural law did not exist until more recently in the evolutionary process.

If one believes God created each species, that God is actively involved with the personal lives of each person on the planet, that whatever happens in the world is God's will or that God has designated human emissaries to write written words of gospel to a particular tribe of people---well these are beliefs----and because they are beliefs, cannot be proven or disproved. Humans, by definition I guess, are free to believe anything they want. But beliefs often have consequences. One can 'believe' that smoking does not have future health consequences, but then if that belief is wrong people die a slow painful death desperately trying to get oxygen into their body. Beliefs can matter a lot in the long run.

Given that beliefs often have consequences, it behooves us to have reasonable beliefs based on reasonable thoughts. Mistaken beliefs can yield disastrous results. Somehow, stating that 'my religious beliefs are true because I inherited them' seems almost absurd. Religion, at least in theory, is about living some kind of moral life as a path to an 'after life'. Because of free will, so it is reasoned, some will choose to live moral lives and others will choose not to, and only those who choose to live a moral life get to go to 'heaven'. The question of an afterlife is beyond human reason. This does not make it, a priori, an absurdity. There is so much yet we don't know about earthly life that it seems unreasonable to be upset because we cannot reason out details, or even any existence, of a possible 'afterlife'. Not everything that IS is subject to current human understanding. With the passage of time, humans have much more understanding about a lot of natural law, and the environment in which we prosper. This is evolutionary progress. Almost by definition, the evolutionary process is the work of God.

Given the goal of religion (an after life) and the role morality plays in all religions, then moral principles are important. For the most part humans don't appear to discover or learn basic moral principles. Rather, humans have the intuitive capacity to understand basic moral principles. In what human society is there debate over whether it is wrong to steal? to have sex with another's spouse? to kill another person? to lie? to cheat? etc. Not all moral principles are equally clear. Nevertheless just about everyone understands moral cliches such as 'fair is fair', 'what goes around comes around', etc. We know. We all know. Everyone knows---here, there, and everywhere. Abstract logical reasoning resides within human nature as a current genetic reality. If everyone except psychopaths understand right and wrong, then the problem is one of doing the right thing. But what then is the right thing? Something which gives us pleasure? something which increases our financial worth? something which gives an advantage to our own family, our own community, our own state, our own country, our own economic bracket, our own ethnic group, our own religious group?, etc.

One problem is that morality excites passion. Passion cannot be trusted to be reasonable or moral. In the presence of passion, reason can be driven by circumstances, not moral principles. Thus there are non moral imperatives--behavior which is driven by circumstance. These are reactions to situations. You may need to get access to food for survival, protect yourselves from those trying to harm you, win a political battle, or romance battle, or save your job, or win a job, etc. Moral behavior which is governed by non moral imperatives is not, in any pure sense, moral behavior.

What then is pure moral behavior? A pure moral principle is an action that is morally necessary in itself, without reference to any purpose. These are the mountains which everyone must climb to gain any real moral status for their life. I suppose this kind of behavior distinguishes the 'saints' from the 'sinners'. Let us take "thou shalt not steal'---a widely accepted moral principle. The principle is simple, the application is not. If someone has no real need to steal, and they don't---for the most part---then the result is meritorious at the lowest level. If someone has a great need to steal to survive, but only steals in the worst of situations, then I guess they may well have achieved a result more meritorious than one who never has any need to steal---and certainly a lot more meritorious than one with a need to steal who does so all the time. The point here is that it is wrong to steal---period. This being granted, any grading of moral behavior gets quite complicated. Once you add genetic and environmental variations, the interpretive fog here gets extremely dense. Hence the logical moral caution of 'Judge not that ye be not judged'. If morality is an operative state necessary to achieve a goal (some sort of life after death) then it is probably unreasonable to think we will be our own judge and jury on the matter or the one to judge and jury anyone else. Like so much else in life one has to just do the best one can. We know the rules but we don't know how many points we have to get to pass. How could anyone possibly know that? Many cop out with such vaporous absurdities such as "God has saved me---I have sinned but God has saved me" It is like the kid who does bad things but explains to the school principal,"I did a bad thing but my mom loves me and will forgive me and not really hurt me, just slap my hand." The trouble is adults are not kids and no one has the vaguest idea about judgment, the nature of it, or the points needed to pass---except I whom God really likes, Who guides me daily through the mine fields of life. Yeah, me and Pat Robertson, Jerry Faulwell, Muslim Ayatollahs, Popes, Priests, Ministers, Kings, etc---the chosen ones. In each category listed history has yielded endless examples of this being not true. There have never been any human designated representatives of God who have stood the test of moral trust. Like the rest of the population it turns out to be a crap shoot. It strains the concept of logic to assert God would attempt to communicate rules and laws and interpretations of law via such a bizarre assortment of religions whose criteria of being correct is essentially via inheritance.

One of the characteristics of a moral principle is universality. Lincoln put it this way: "As I would not want to be a slave I can be no master" While all sorts of defensive beliefs can be generated by those who mistreat others or deny others the same freedom and privileges as themselves, there really is no escape from the grand daddy of morality: 'do unto others as you would have them do unto you'. This perfect example of moral logic kind of dictates the morality of most situations. While every age has it's 'witches', every age should, from a moral standpoint, have no 'witches'. It was never right to enslave others, to hang certain ethnics, to deny women the vote, to deny equal opportunity for jobs or housing, to deny certain groups admission to good schools, etc.And by the same moral principle it is not right to deny children (or others) the kind of medical care available to some, it is not right to spend less money to educate some children than others, to deny the benefits of marriage to some couples of adult age because of whom they chose as their marriage partner, to use military might to solve global conflict, etc. Yes, this is a modern age but 'witches' still abound in the minds of otherwise good people.

There is no moral logic to 'might makes right'. Those who claim otherwise cannot rest their case on moral logic. Unfortunately, this 'might makes right' about guts any moral principles from the mentality of our own foreign policy for some time now. "You can run but you can't hide" is bully bellowing. "Dead or Alive" is nothing if it is not an ok to take law into your own hands and justify violence as a means of deciding right and wrong. Preemptive military attack means nothing logically if it does not mean that someone has the right to attack anyone who they think might be some kind of threat to their life, their financial status, their religious beliefs, their political beliefs, their own position of power in life, etc. Gangs use this mentality, the mafia, some religious zealots, and currently our own government. And as logic dictates, "what goes around comes around". It certainly is no product of any "do unto others what you would have them do unto you". And because we are now hell bent on using violence to address world conflicts---what goes around comes around, and we get in return terrorism. When violence becomes your operative mode, then whatever you have at hand you use. Is there anything sillier than leaders, who use violence to resolve their own conflicts, rising to some podium and urging others not to use violence to solve their conflicts? It's hard to top that for pure arrogant moral absurdity.

Let's just take one more example. Almost all religions preach the moral principle that once you have enough to take care of your own basic needs, that left over should be given to those in need. I have never heard anyone argue the opposite. It fits in perfectly with 'do unto others as you would have them do unto you'. Hardly any of us really do follow what we all agree is a universal moral principle. Let us not quibble here as to what constitutes basic needs---clearly most of us are considerably past that. Part of the problem is two-fold. I might put forth this: "I would consider this if others did it, but for me to do it by myself doesn't really accomplish very much". Hard to argue this has no truth. Or I might say, puffing up into the appropriate posture, "I earned what I have, if someone else wants to have this stuff, let them earn it"----the "I did it the old fashioned way, I earned it". Sometimes someone comments that I seem to have accumulated more wealth than that of someone who was a teacher all his life. And I of course like to point out that I lived simply most of my life, never had more than just a room to live out of until I was late twenties, never owned a house until I was in my forties, never (except for my first car) bought anything on credit. So there, other fools spent most of their earnings on interest for all the things they bought on credit. Still, the point remains---a pure moral principle is an action that is morally necessary in itself, without reference to any purpose. To live by the moral principle in question it is necessary, because the principle is moral---to give any excess I have past the point of basic needs, to those who have less than the basic needs. But, one might say, "there is no real reason why some of these people cannot earn their own basic needs". This is certainly true too. If I am capable, and willing to work to earn my basic needs, then all those who are capable of earning their basic needs have an obligation to do likewise.

I wonder, given their particular genetics and environmental situation, just how many millions of people across the globe have no chance, for any variety of genetic or environmental circumstances, to earn for themselves their basic needs? If the answer is in the millions, then the number of people who do have the genetics and environmental circumstances to earnpast their basic needs must be many fold million more than those who don't. Clearly, if enough people would follow the moral principle in question here, there would be no one left without the basic needs of life except those who have the ability and environmental circumstances to earn their basic needs, but decline to do so. In this respect we are all trapped. We really are. Almost all of us are weasels, of one sort or another. We circle the wagons around our wealth, we spend considerable time plotting how to acquire even more wealth. I mean, if a certain amount of wealth is good, more must be better, and endless more wealth the ultimate orgasm.

My own rationalization goes like this: If I gave all my excess wealth right now to those in need there would be less available to those in need over the long run than if I let my wealth continue to grow so that at my death there will be the maximum amount available. Hard to deny this rationale either. To contribute to this maximum amount available I try to live modestly, not getting too wrapped up in some sort of material world or spending excessive amounts of money on extravagant restaurants, trips, hobbies, etc. I suppose, so far so good---BUT, I am single and can do this kind of thing with little emotional conflict. Most people have kids and want to leave most of their accumulated wealth to them. It is hard to envision how this in any way meets the universal moral principle of giving your excess wealth to those unable to meet their basic needs. In fact, inherited wealth simply ensures a greater inequality in the distribution of wealth in every society. Even if all the above is logical, the question remains whether my plan here is more meritorious than those who leave their excess wealth to their kids. After all, if I did have kids would I really still do this? As far as I can figure out, almost all religions place the responsibility of parents to raise and support kids to adulthood. I don't know of any religion in which the religious founder extended that responsibility any further. In general, it has always seemed to me that those kids who make the most of their life, accomplish the most, and have the most contentment in life, are those kids essentially left on their own after like 18 yrs of age. Like any generalization there are sufficient exceptions. My dad made that clear to his kids, and while at the time I thought him cruel and non supportive, with time I think it was the best contribution he could have made to my life. What you do on your own always means the most and is a major foreboding of how far you will go in life---give me a fish and I eat for a day, teach me to fish and I eat for a lifetime.

At any rate, the universal moral principles are not hard to identify--- just hard to follow. These universal moral principles have little to do with any particular religious creed. To the extent any particular religion enables a person to adhere to these universal moral principles, that religion matters to that person. Unfortunately, far more often a person's inherited religion serves as some sort of safe haven for ignoring universal moral principles---when adhering to them is inconvenient or clashes with assorted human selfish motivations. Through your religion, God will forgive. I guess.

To the extent most of the above is true we then live in a world where all except the mentally ill or retarded understand universal moral principles. Individual religions add nothing to these universal moral principles. All the ceremonies, the hymns, the prayers, the glittering cathedrals, the brightly robed highly titled priestly patriarchs, the solemn services, the paper shuffling, religious college degrees, or the sermons have zero impact on these universal moral principles. These principles are not changed by any of the aforementioned. On the other hand, to the extent any of the aforementioned, except the glittering cathedrals, assist a person to adhere to the universal moral principles, then it is all good. But I suppose one could question to what extent, and to what percentage of the members, does organized religion instead provide some sort of shield from having to adhere to these universal moral principles? The unspoken argument for many is, that while they do not always adhere to universal moral principles, they are good and active members of a church. Historically, churches have often supported, or been passively silent, on many of the worst abuses of human rights and moral principles, including burning witches, slavery, etc. I doubt any reasonable person could ever envision Christ or Buddha, etc. ever supporting the invasion of Iraq. Like who could ever read the teachings of Christ and conclude he would handle conflict the George Bush way? Who would ever conclude that Christ would endorse some kids having no health care, spending less money to educate some kids than others etc.? Strangely, and this is a debatable generalization, it just seems the religious right wing factions of our society are the most vocal supporters of military violence to solve conflict, to actively support the accumulation of more and more wealth in the hands of the already wealthy, to oppose any universal plans to equalize health care and education for kids, to exploit the environment, to have intolerance to the different, and least likely to share excess wealth with those deficient in the basic needs of life.

Somehow there is a glaring disconnect between universal moral principles and the actions of religious fundamentalists---just a picture of life's illogical contradictions. What we see is not always what we think we see, but twisted so that we see what we want to see. "I see", said the blind man as he picked up his hammer and saw.

T.O. CLOSURE

T.O. Closure

The World is replete with remarkable people. Some are famous, most just known by a few. All of us, in our own little worlds, are exposed to some really remarkable individuals. Some are good friends who seldom get the credit they deserve, mostly because it is not too wise to single out particular friends as being remarkable less your other friends get insulted by omission.

Four years ago I accidently read Terrell Owens' autobiography. While I am not a very social person, I am kind of a people person in that I find most people intriguing. Diversity tends to be an attraction to my interests, not a turn-off. The exception are those who disrespect others in a malicious way. My dad had his prejudices but I noticed he sort of compensated for it by being especially courteous and fair to those in any of his prejudiced groups with whom he came in contact personally. Sometimes that may well be the best we can do with some or our ingrained prejudices---deliberately compensate.

Shortly after I read Terrell's autobiography he began to come under an intense and derogatory attack by an unusually large segment of the media sport commentators/analysts. The person Terrell was being made out to be by these detractors seemed to be someone else other than I had read about in his book. What stood out was the subjective, highly personal, slanderous adjective-filled nature of their attack. Virtually none of it had to do with football but an angry character assassination.

Not surprisingly I sided with Terrell. Surprisingly, I often found myself the target of anger from most others who know me because I defended Terrell. It was often like, "how can you defend such an absolute asshole?". A positive feedback surge debate commenced. The more Terrell was attacked, the more I defended him---the more I defended him the more vitriolic the attack on Terrell. From a distance it all was some sort of humorous absurdity. But from any serious introspective standpoint, it was a real interesting case to study. I mean, wow, what did this guy do to create such a monumental stir? After all, a good number of professional sport figures assault, rape, steal, get in drunken fights, trash talk other players, are obnoxious with fans, have poor training habits, etc. They are reasonably tolerated by these same sport commentators. For the most part these commentators choose to concentrate on the game performances of such lively social misfits.

Then there was Terrell. A real loner, talked little with his teammates, worker harder at conditioning and practicing than most anyone else on the team, didn't swear, didn't drink, didn't do drugs (as far as anyone knew), never physically assaulted anyone--male or female, no rapes, no drunken driving charges, no nightclub incidents, never stole anything, is always courteous with fans (especially kids), doesn't trash talk other people including those sport commentators who were trashing him, and has performed at a high level on every professional football team he has ever been on.

The volcano seems to have erupted because Terrell decided Philadelphia had tricked him into an unfair contract. Of course Terrell is not exactly the only one who tries to re-negotiate a contract. There are hundreds of attempts each year. While the TV commentators and print columnists turned on Terrell with a vengeance, the beat reporters loved Terrell. Terrell loves a microphone when he is ready to say something, and with Terrell you always get his real thoughts. His ethical mantras are interesting. He repeats these mantras over and over in his books. Never lie. Never lie. Never lie. Fair is fair, fair is fair, fair is fair. Trust no one, trust no one, trust no one, never let anyone disrespect you, never let anyone disrespect you, no one can make you accept unfair treatment, no one can make you accept unfair treatment, you do your job I will do mine, you do your job I will do mine, I am somebody, I am somebody, I am my own boss when it comes to my own position---I got there on my own from nobody to somebody, I will not let anyone change the person I am or the way I train, or how I care for my own body, or use slick ploys to pay me less than the level at which I perform.

To the best of my own analytical ability the above is the real Terrell. Like everything else in his life, he celebrates success on his own, some sort of self celebrating, self bragging, self cheering one man band after he crosses the goal line. That is difficult to tolerate unless one knows the early history of Terrell's life.

Be that as it may, Terrell handled contract renegotiating efforts his own way. He would play, but he wasn't happy, and he expected the other part of Philly's two man quarterback/receiver success saga----Donovan McNaab, to support his contract demands. Donovan did not. Like every thing else Terrell turns his attention to, he did it with a vengeance. Let's face it. When Terrell is happy, he is theatre; when Terrell is angry he is theatre; when Terrell is sad he is theatre. Unlike with most of the rest of us, no one has to wonder if Terrell is happy, angry, or sad. That last year in Philly Terrell spoke essentially with only the head coach Reid and his receiver's coach. He would not talk to Donovan ("I don't care if I ever talk to Donovan") or even the Offensive coordinator ("You don't talk to me unless I talk to you), and Coach Reid had to tread carefully in any conversation with Terrell (Coach. "Shut up Terrell". Terrell: "You shut up. My name is Terrell Owens. I am not your son. You shut up"). And so it went. To everyone's surprise except Terrell, Terrell's performance level in games did not dip at all. His media detractors ripped into Terrell with vigor---he was ruining the team and his refusal to talk to Donovan or other coaches would be a disaster come game day. Terrell's response to Donovn via his Receivers Coach was simple: "When I get free throw me the ball." Terrell knows football. It has been his whole life. From Tues until Sunday even his family or girlfriend are not allowed near him. He studies his opposition on his own. In team film sessions he often falls asleep. He has his own trainer, his own doctors, his own publicist, and his own little world apart from others. Once a year he throws a birthday party for himself (of course, I guess)--rents a nightclub, invites hundreds of celebrity type guests, shows up near Midnight, stays for maybe an hour, then leaves. What a swinger!

In my mind, it is time for me to put the Terrell matter to rest. The saga has played itself out. That Terrell has remained standing after such a frontal assault by the media, the NFL lawyers, an irate owner, League officials, and a vast media created hostile fan base is kind of amazing, at least to me. The rest of us kind of know when to 'fold 'em', when fair is fair has to give way to the reality of 'you can't fight city hall'. We get up, we dust ourselves off, we grin and bear it, preferring the tranquility of defeat to endless and hopeless conflict. Terrell is probably the nearest thing to the proverbial immovable object as there is. I often pondered, 'How does he do it?". The answer seems to be that Terrell's world is some kind of isolated, self contained, self driven, self evaluated, self sufficient operational sphere. Unlike most of us, what others outside his bubble think of his operational principles, has no impact on Terrell. No matter that many others don't like him, Terrell is really content with himself, his plans, his efforts, his understanding of matters, his achievements, and his attitudes.

Let's examine the goals and predictions of those media commentators at the height of Terrell's Philly controversy. The most vitriolic commentator was the head of the football area of Sports Illustrated (King). I can never remember his name. He insisted the league should ban Terrell from the league, that Terrell's behavior was a disgrace to the league. Others were a mite less vitriolic but made the following predictions;

Terrell would never be hired by another team because Terrell was too disruptive. Oops, Terrell was hired by another team (Dallas Cowboys)

If Terrell was hired he would have to take a pay cut from his salary in Philly. Oops, Terrell received a contract that was more lucrative than his contract in Philly.

If any other team hired Terrell there would all sorts of behavioral clauses in the contract. Oops, there were no such clauses in the contract Terrell signed.

Terrell would not be hired because his former teammates and coaches did not like Terrell, felt Terrell was a disruption and was personally disliked by players and coaches. Oops, the number of former or current teammates who dished Terrell could be counted on one hand. Considering Terrell has had hundreds of teammates over his career and dozens of coaches, that is not very impressive.

When Philly released Terrell at the end of the year, the media awaited the funeral, the end of the Terrell saga, no doubt well prepared to celebrate with the same vigor they engaged in their character assassination of him.

OK, why then did Terrell land on his feet with a better contract and within one year, a coaching staff almost written to his specifications? If his former coaches and teammates did not really like Terrell his career would have been finished. If no owner had been willing to look into the real world of Terrell, Terrell would have been finished. While few, if any players could claim to be personal friends of Terrell, almost all said some form of "Terrell never did anything to me, I have no reason to dislike him. He is just impossible to get close to. He is (was) a good teammate---a play maker---one of the hardest workers in practice, and certainly off the field on his own training program." His former coaches, especially his receiver coaches, had nothing but praise for Terrell, but noting that you don't control Terrell, you work with him. When Parcells left and Wade Phillips became the coach, one knew Terrell would thrive when Wade said the first day, in response to how he would control Terrell, "I don't control players, I assist them to become the best they can become."

Are there any general lessons to be learned here? First, if you are going to stand your ground, the principles upon which you take a stand better be solid ones. Second, if you are going to stand your ground, the ones around you, the ones you work with on a daily basis, better have a high opinion of you. Third, there is no 'best' way to coach, no 'best' way to teach, no 'best' way to become a successful athlete. Fourth, the best way to be the best teammate is to perform your best at your position. If all this camaraderie in the locker room was so important, teams would not trade and replace players so often. Fifth, all players old enough to be on a professional sport team need to be treated as individuals for any 'fair is fair' mantra to prevail on a team. Dictatorial coaching at the professional level might work occasionally, and work very well occasionally----a la Vince Lombardi or Bill Bellicheck---but then one has to ask, what price victory? Sixth, in the case of Terrell, when Terrell trusts those at the top, he loosens up with others around him. He even played dominoes with players in the club house this year. And he, to the surprise of many, teared up in the defense of Romo when Romo was being pummeled by the media for losing the playoff game. I think he teared up not just because he likes Romo, but he probably sensed that if the media began any kind of character assassination of Romo, remotely similar to the character assassination the media laid on Terrell, that Romo was not Terrell, that Romo would be too defenseless. But who knows, Romo himself is a good character study, and may be just as strong in his own way. I think I will pass on that character study, I need a rest.

I suppose the future may yet write a few more interesting T.O. chapters. But my case study of him has ended. The next remarkable study for me is Barack Obama. He wrote a book titled the Audacity of Hope. We'll have to see where this saga goes. Terrell could write a book titled The Audacity of Principle and Perseverance. On the other hand I guess he just did.

YOU CAN GO HOME AGAIN

You Can Go Home Again

For the most part, the past is past, and cannot be recreated. Nostalgia. The Good Old Days. Youth. Nightlife. Athletic endeavors. Loud music. It all happens, then it is over, and life goes on in a different format. And it all really is gone, as even the next generation create their own unique youth culture. Every young generation are 'jerks' of some strange weirdness to any living older generation.

Still, you can go home again to the past-----Music. At least with me some of the old music I listen to while in bed, before going to sleep or before rising, can regenerate some of the old feelings of days gone past. Music will bring to mind certain people or certain events which stir some feelings lost and stored away. I like those feelings as they are often the only connection to the past. Maybe that is why old folks tend to like the old songs---not new songs. Another reason is that old people can understand the words of the old songs, the new songs are too much mumbled. Not really, of course, it is our hearing, but as my aged mother used to say, "People don't speak distinctly anymore". I am not that way. Tis often a pity some people speak at all.

IF I HAD.........

IF I Had.............

Pretending must be some sort of protection for sanity. I think all of us must pretend sometimes, and if the truth be known, most of the time. I read a poll recently in which only 13 percent of Republicans thought global warming was a serious problem. Wow! Pretending perfected. There are ever expanding areas on the globe where the population density is so great that natural resources----including the soil, the air, the trees, the fish, and raw materials of various ilk----are so depleted that most of the inhabitants, when not killing off each other to gain access to anything worth having still left, live lives of hopeless, often homeless desperation. Still, no major political or religious leader remotely suggest any form of population control. Wow! These are just two examples of advanced Pretending.

But here I want to engage on some less harmful pretending. I will pretend that maybe I know half of what I think I know, that I see some vague clearness of the big picture, that politics is in some measure predictable, that I could possibly be objective enough or sapient enough to predict the mental state of politicians or those minority of adult citizens who vote. In the absence of any Barbara Walters lining me up for an interview, I will interview myself---I guess for the record. Kindly don't ask, "What record"? Maybe it is outside your limited world. I am already pretending.

QUESTION: Who will win the democratic nomination? ANS: Obama if he leads in the delegate count going into the convention. Those delegates holding elective office will not dare overturn the popular vote results. It would be political suicide next time they run for re-election.

QUESTION; Will the convention overturn the Party's earlier decision not to count the delegates from Florida and MIchigan? ANS: Same answer, if this is done to overturn the popular vote results it would be political suicide. If the Obama supporters are anything, they are energized and totally in the mind set for revenge. Of course logically you cannot make one set of rules and then at the end change the rules. No comment on what percent of the time in life anything is done logically.

QUESTION: Can McCain win the election against Clinton or Obama? ANSWER: If issues mean anything, the answer is No. But if issues meant anything George Bush would never have won a second term. 80% of Americans in polls say they oppose the Iraq War and want it ended. McCain endorses surging up the the war, stated we could be there for the next 100 years. Most Americans say the economy is the most important issue to them (the personal greed factor) and McCain said he doesn't really know much about economics and planned to read a Greenspan book to catch up. Most Americans in polls say they don't approve of tax cuts to the rich and want them rescinded. McCain supports continuing them. In general most Americans seem against the Bush policies on almost every front. Off hand I can't think of any area better off because of Bush policies. McCain, like most Republicans, has supported Bush on most of these unpopular issues. So, on paper, it would be impossible. But George Bush won a second term. The logically impossible can obviously be possible in politics.

QUESTION: Who would be the best candidate against McCain? This is seemingly easy. Hilliary has a small army of people who have hated her for years. It is an irrational emotional thing, not that any of us, certainly not me, are capable of such a thing. Obama drew a record number of voters into the democratic party, many people who hadn't voted in years. There is no reason to think this ability of his would cease come the general election. The last two elections were close. This increased turnout by democrats would seem an unbeatable difference this time. Obama is the more inspirational, the better speaker, and starts any debate with better positions to defend than McCain. McCain was a very good soldier, a solid military man who endorses military might to solve conflicts, and a decent middle of the road sort of politician. The mentality McCain and Obama bring to the issues is mostly one of stark contrast. With Obama in the race this time the election would represent a real choice. Votes will really matter this time, both to this country and the rest of the world. But lurching in the background will always be the race issue. What percent of voters will simply be threatened by the prospect of a blk President? And Latino voters are really conflicted. They compete with blacks for a piece of the pie; it is not easy for them to want a competitor for the pie to become President. But still, the short history of Obama in politics has been really amazing. He doesn't get any greater percentage of the black vote than most other democrats get. He wins, and always has won because of the white vote. Obama did not get to be the Democratic candidate for Senator in Illinois because of the black vote, he got it because he carried white downstate Illinois. His victories in Iowa, Maine, etc. are not any show of power of blks to win an election. All of this tends to favor Obama trouncing McCain. The campaign appearances of Obama in a Presidential election are likely to be huge emotional rallies, and people tend to align themselves with those kind of movements, they want to be on the winning side.

QUESTION: Will either Hilliary or Barack be a Vice-Presidential candidate? ANS: No. Neither one will feel comfortable in that role, although Hilliary is at least conceivable accepting that. Obama is young. The reality is that the next President will not be able to solve enough problems fast enough to be the cure-all any of the candidates pretend they are. Thus Obama would be more likely to resign from the Senate, concentrate on community organizing and be conveniently waiting in the wing for the next election. In some respects Obama is in a win-win situation. For Hilliary or McCain it is kind of Now or Never. For Obama it is kind of Now or Next Time.

QUESTION: Is there a chance somebody might shoot Obama? There is a chance somebody might shoot any Presidential candidate. Only President Bush has a strong enough protective force to pretty much prevent his being shot. But after he is not President, Bush probably has a greater chance of being shot than Obama. Bush certainly holds the world record right now for the most enemies across the globe. Will Obama get killed? We live in an out of control world in which violence begets violence and sadly, the US has been the leader in this regard. When the once most respected country in the world adopts violence as a means to solve conflict, the violence, unlike his economic gifts to the wealthy, really does trickle down. If there has been any overpowering theme of the Bush Administration it has been the endorsement of violence to achieve success. This mentality cannot be overturned over night. It is possible that Obama could be the victim of the very mentality he fights against.

Well, enough. What will be will be. The evolutionary process moves ever on. It is always Mother Nature, operating via the laws of nature created by the Creator of the Process, which prevails. When we are not pretending ourselves to death, the reality is none of us will get out of the world alive---in fact birth itself could be viewed as the beginning of a fatal 'disease' with no cure, with assorted temporary reprieves along the way.

PATRIOTISM

Patriotism:

Religion and patriotism have been the toughest nuts for me to crack over the years. When I was young everything seemed so much simpler: there were the good guys and the bad guys and everyone knew the difference. The cowboys were the good guys and the Indians were the bad guys. The United States was the good guys, anyone our government declared the bad guys were the bad guys. Those who lived in Crotonville (the seedier part of town) were the bad guys and those in more affluent neighborhoods were the good guys. People who went to church, especially my church, were the good guys, those who didn't were the bad guys. The communists, the North Koreans, the Chinese, the Vietnamese, the Arabs, those who used illegal recreational drugs, those who marched angrily on the streets or disrupted political conventions were the bad guys---and so it went. The nice thing about those times for me was everything was so orderly and clearly labeled. Those dissidents living within the boundaries of the United States, if they didn't like it here they could leave---the sooner the better. Those who resisted our policies abroad, if they didn't like our policies, they could take one of our bombs up their ass and deserve it. The National Anthem, the Lord's prayer, the Pledge of Allegiance, a parade of military equipment of any sort, etc, sent chill's down my spine every time. At those times I was really glad which side I was on, immensely proud to be aligned with the right country, the right religion, the right side of town, the right ethnic group, whatever---which ever side I was on were the good guys. Rah, rah, rah.

I suspect I might have stayed on the 'straight and narrow' road of good guys and bad guys if I had not been a bit of a loner, one who spent a good deal of time observing the interactions of others---one who, after graduating from high school, began to---just once in a while---began to sense the pain and injustice heaped upon some of these 'bad guys'. Once you find some of the 'bad guys' are not really so bad, it sort of unsettles the whole rosy simple picture. Slowly I began to realize not every one with a recreational drug problem was a bad guy (certainly not a candidate for jail), that some of these people angrily marching in the street had legitimate grievances, that many religious beliefs different from mine had no more logical legitimacy than my own inherited religious beliefs, that many people raised on the wrong side of the tracks were more honest, trustworthy, emotionally stronger, had better priorities, and were more self reliant than those on the right side of the tracks, that it was not really so clear why it is automatically ok to send troops around the globe, level countries, and kill the inhabitants by the thousands upon thousands.

Recently I heard a politician, I think it was Romney, emotionally defend our country by pointing out that we were the greatest nation on the earth because we sent our soldiers around the world, sacrificing their lives for other countries, and we never, despite our military superiority, take any land and claim it for our own. He nearly came to tears thinking about all the Americans who have died in foreign combat. For their efforts, he concluded---America must become even stronger militarily, that we must never let our adversaries win, that he worried about those who would fail to back up the sacrifices of all our dead soldiers and let their efforts be in vain. There I guess is patriotism in the rawest form. At a younger age I certainly would have been there cheering with tears in my eyes. Support our troops! Support our troops! Support our troops!

I think Romney got it right when he said 'Support our troops'. Of course the best way to have supported our troops would have been to never have sent them into harm's way for the wrong reasons. All 3500 or so of our dead troops would still be alive if the Iraq War had never been launched. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis would be alive if we had never launched that war. Millions of Iraqis would not be homeless if we had not launched that war. Romney certainly had it right when he railed that no country has sacrificed more men dying on foreign soils. After that his logic and ethics seem faulty to me. First I am not aware, since World War II, that any country has been going around grabbing up the land of sovereign nations. To the extent this is true that certainly removes any bragging rights about the U.S. not doing so. Even our biggest adversaries haven't done that---Russia, China, Cuba, Korea, Vietnam, Iran, etc. Perhaps Romney needs to be reminded that countries are not suppose to do that kind of thing. Not doing what you are not supposed to do hardly earns you a medal.

I am well aware that for most of our history the foreign policy of the U.S. was to refrain from meddling in the affairs of other sovereign nations. We, for example, were like the last nation to get involved in World War I and World War II. And World War II may well indeed be the last of any wars with clearly demarcated good guys and bad guys. Since that time, in the context of this discourse---the 'good old days' have been replaced by some sort of arrogant U.S. foreign policy of 'manifest destiny' seeped in economic and military empire building. With this as the general gist of our foreign policy we have the unique distinction of being the country who has killed the most citizens of other sovereign countries. Whoever is in second place is nowhere remotely close to us. It must be in the millions by now. I will forever feel guilty about how 'patriotic' I was during most of the Vietnam War. No matter how many villages we leveled, how many hundreds of thousand Vietnamese we killed, no matter how many Vietnamese were left homeless and destitute, there I was waving the American flag, cursing the draft dodgers, and in short making a patriotic ass of myself. When I visited the Vietnam Memorial in Washington years later I felt personally ashamed and an accessory for their senseless deaths. For the first time it dawned on me that when your own country behaves badly it deserves to lose, not win. Vietnam had been fighting for many decades to control their own destiny, not be occupied by foreign powers. They had a right to fight to reunite their own country after being divided by foreign powers. They had a right to settle for themselves the question of what kind of government they wanted and who their leaders should be. We deserved to lose that war while the slaughter of lives on both sides was a travesty of universal moral principles. And having lost that war, none of the dire consequences preached to the American people by our government leaders ever occurred. After the Vietnam War I had to go back to the drawing board to redefine patriotism. Patriotism can never be some sort of blind 'my country, right or wrong'. The real patriots in the Vietnamese War were those young men and women who refused to slaughter citizens of another country for no valid reasons. If the rest of us could have been so 'patriotic' all those senseless deaths would have never occurred.

Perhaps the only kind of patriotism worth a tinkers damn is moral patriotism. Moral patriotism is to support your country to the fullest on all ventures which have a clear cut ethical basis. I, for example, am never going to support ego centric attitudes of manifest destiny or empire building. I don't think my country has any right to establish 750 military bases in 130 different countries. No other country in the world claims such a right, and why do we? We have no right to use our military presence in other countries to protect governments from their own people. And yes, what goes around does come around. Every terrorist group across the globe, hell bent on killing Americans, exist in order to get our military bases out of their country. Al Quaida was formed to rid Saudi Arabia of American bases on it's soil. 9/11 was an attack by citizens of Saudi Arabia to express their displeasure of our military presence in their country. Since then it has become kind of a generic term applied to any group fighting to get an American military presence out of this or that country.

Most citizens of the world react with bewilderment to this 'new America'. Whatever happened to the 'old' America which led by example, a real friend of the people all across the globe---a beacon of hope for all the oppressed, the destitute, those seeking an opportunity for a better life. The priorities of our government today are substantially out of kilter with many of the accepted priorities of the past. A good portion of our policies today are abhorrent to the values and priorities of most American citizens. Without trying to be all inclusive here, how many Americans support our policies of empire building, our environmental policies, our attitude toward global warming, our indifference to the medical plight of millions of our people, the inability to provide equal funding of education for all our young people, minimum wage levels that fail to keep pace with inflation, loss of job security, loss of pensions, a distribution of wealth that creates the fastest growing differential between the Haves and the Have Nots of any modern industrialized country, an ever growing monster military/industrial complex that spends tens time more of our GNP than other countries spend of their own GNP. Because of this obsession with military bases and military solutions to conflict anywhere on the globe, all other needs get more and more neglected. The result is an increasing struggle to keep up economically with our major competitors, and inability to meet the needs of many of our own citizens, an indifference to the global concerns other nations want to address, and a vigorous growth of terrorism against Americans across the globe by all those foreign dissidents who want American military bases out of their countries.

Be all this as it may, what does all this translate to when it comes to patriotism? Are those who support our current policies patriots and those who don't support these policies unpatriotic? If the political power were to switch in this country does that mean a similar shift in who the patriots are? Given the nature of things today I kind of dislike the word patriotism more every day. I think I resent the attempt to sugar coat bad behavior and policies with all kinds of 'patriotic' symbols and displays. When an important sporting event is saturated with ostentatious displays of mammoth flags, military marching bands, modern jets flying overhead, military generals lined up for recognition, wounded soldiers on display, moments of silence for the dead in the current wars of the day, etc.----well, it reminds me of Hitlerian Germany, where this kind of thing was perfected and used all the time at sporting events. Personally, I am tuned in to watch a sport contest, not pay homage to militarism as a foreign policy. I used to love watching all kinds of military planes perform at the Chicago Air Show, held once a year. Now my appreciation of these shows is clouded by realizing just how many millions across the globe see these planes fly over their country and are fearful they are about to be bombed. So many things are relative.

I can't define patriotism with any degree of accuracy. I guess those who cheer Bush on are patriotic. I think those of us who find the policies of Bush despicable and view our current attitudes and priorities with sadness are patriotic too. Those who fought in the Vietnam War were patriotic; those who refused to fight in that war were patriotic too. So what good is patriotism? I am not sure I know anyone who is not patriotic. I do see people who differ widely in how they feel their country should behave and what kind of priorities should exist.

With all the above as the rationale I am personally no longer going to let patriotism be part of my personality. There are certain ethical principles and priorities which attract my allegiance. If I am for or against anything I want to try, as best I can, to base my support on these ethical principles and priorities. To the extent my own country is aligned with these same ethical principles and priorities I enthusiastically support my country. To the extent my own country abandons these ethical principles and priorities I am non supportive. When I read a poll which claims only 13% of Republicans think global warming is a major problem, I cringe in disbelief. When I see Americans reflexly cheer American soldiers who are fighting in Iraq I am very conflicted. What the hell is there to cheer about? What we have created over there is inexcusably abhorrent. There is only one cheer appropriate for American soldiers at this time: "Bring the troops home....Bring the troops home.......Bring the troops home." And for those who believe we should stay and participate in somebody else's Civil War I just think that should be permitted on a voluntary basis, and those who think this way but are unwilling to volunteer should be muzzled or force-ably dropped into Baghdad---their choice. I guess that constitutes some kind of patriotism.

DEATH BY A THOUSAND CUTS

DEATH BY A THOUSAND CUTS:

I reckon most everyone thinks about death; it is always there in our peripheral vision bouncing in and out of our consciousness throughout life----more so at certain times in our lives, and never more so than in our terminational years. Death, in my conception, is not like birth, some sort of singular event which happens and is over with. Rather, death seems to be a process, and for most people, a kind of long drawn out process---death by a thousand cuts. I can't pinpoint at which age we begin to die; most likely it varies just like the onset of adolescence, menopause, failing health etc. For the religious right---death, like life, is crystal clear with sharp demarcations---living cells and YOU are ALIVE, no living cells and YOU are DEAD and only God has the right to determine the time of death. Any other meddling with life is a sin. Since many notions about life and death are beliefs, there is no real basis to assign any dogmatic statement of fact to any of the beliefs. The battle with the religious right of any religion is basically around opposition to anyone's beliefs being made the law of the land. Why anyone's religious beliefs should be made the law of the land is a logical absurdity. Beliefs are not facts, and non facts should never be forced on anyone. But that is another musing for another day.

We seem to be what we are by genes, environment, and luck. Our very existence to begin with was a crap shoot among sperm racing to an egg. Short of claiming God was directing this race, there is nothing overly special in any personal way, about our arrival on this planet. Of course it is natural human tendency for all of us, in varying degrees, to hope or believe God is with us, with His arm around our shoulder, guiding us through the land mines of life. Some people would probably be frightened to death if they could not believe that. Fair enough. While beliefs may not be facts, we all need beliefs to sustain us. Even sports are entertaining to us only because we can believe our team or our sport heroes are better than the other teams or players. Of course, in any objective analysis, it is a comical absurdity. We believe in the players or teams, the players believe God is on their side, and if all this had any truth, why watch a game if God is determining the winner? No matter what we are up to at most any moment, we often envision God being involved. In fact most religions teach that God made humans in an image of Himself. Please.

I cannot precisely remember when I stopped praying for God to help me through the battles of life. I prayed most earnestly earlier in life, at one time for most any challenge I faced in life. God was always the ace in the hole---a brazen "help me here God and I will win this battle". I was always generous enough with thanks to God when things worked out well, and stifled myself if they didn't work out----there was no belligerent "Dam you God, how could you be such a Bastard to let this turn out this way? I hate You." After all, tomorrow would be another day and another need for His assistance.
With time and considerable thought I saw more clearly the obvious influence of genes, environment and luck in my life and the life of others. Had the evolutionary wheel of fortune been different, I could just have well been born in a tent in Darfur. Or a Palestinian refugee camp. Or one of a litter of kids being raised by some crack mother in a small dingy tenement with bars over every window and door. I think I tried for years to believe that for some reason God really liked me and would reward me if I just thanked him to death and didn't go out and steal or commit murder, etc. Fortunately for me I never had any real reason to do those kind of things. My sins were those of omission and complicity. I didn't oppose the Vietnam War. I didn't particularly care if some kids got a poorer education, or some women were discriminated against, and on and on it goes. For the most part, I personally had a level playing field---well, not really in the area of romance----but there was enough on my platter for me to thank God.

For complicated reasons, my life bought me in contact with many people who didn't have environment or luck or genes on their side. It is best not to listen to these people. At some point you begin to feel their pain, react against the injustices they face-----and over time you begin to see the vast numbers of these hapless souls living lives of quiet and hopeless desperation. If you sense their pain they will be in your face. Depending on your position in life they will seek help in life for problems overwhelming them. Worst, even if you solve a particular problem here and there, seldom does their life substantially change. For me, all this brought human lives into a broader perspective. The belief that God would listen to my prayers to make my life even better, and not answer the prayers of those living lives of hopeless quiet desperation was simply an ethical absurdity. Whatever God is, He is not a pompous Fool or Sadistic Evil Hateful God. Eventually I resolved in my own mind that God was the creator of the evolutionary process---a great and good process---but God was not, for the most part, calling any shots in this evolutionary process which is ongoing, self driven, and forward going over millions of years.

But back to death. We are what we are due to genes, environment, and luck. And who we are varies at different periods in our lives. We change. Others change. Our priorities change. Our looks change. Our health changes. Our friends change. Often spouses change. Pets come and go. Our lifestyles change. Our family relationships change.
Our economic situation changes. Whatever we are, we are momentarily. Tomorrow we will be different. Tomorrow others will be different. For most of what we acquire we tend also lose some of what we once had. This loss of what we had, to me, is the dying process. No one dies suddenly. Oh, that might be some sort of physical description of death, but we were always more than just some functioning cells. A person lying in a vegetative state is less of a person than a pet. To define life as some functioning cells is to trivialize life. If you want to worship living cells, collect tissue cultures and wallow to your heart's desire among the 'precious' living cells.

With every loss of family, friends, and pets we lose a bit of ourselves. That part of ourselves is gone---gone forever----and these losses accumulate---and at some point we feel a bit tired, a little less bounce to our step, a little less eager to battle anyone about anything---and we begin to value contentment and solitude more than challenge and social commotion of any sort---winning becomes almost irrelevant and those who persist in that mode become a nuisance. When these personal losses first begin to occur in our lives we get angry, somewhat depressed, and in the case of divorces or lost friendships, we place blame. With time, at least with me, I have accepted these losses as inevitable (like death) and in the case of fading friendships---well blame is pointless, the real cause is change. We all change with time and to insist relationships will stay the same in the case of change is irrational. Friendships should be valued for what they once were, not trashed because of how change tore them asunder. The loss of the old versus the acquisition of the new becomes lopsided with age. The losses outnumber the gains and by my definition, we are then dying. The real choice is to die at peace with life, or die angry and bitter about all the losses. Genes matter, environment matters, luck matters. It is what it is. Others matter too, especially those with a life left to live, and the most serious ethical obligation, by the measure of almost any pure religion, is to share any good fortune with those less fortunate at some point in our lives. One of the most subversive traditions to the purity of almost all religions involves the distribution of earned wealth. The vast of amount of inherited wealth goes to those who don't need or didn't earn it----and in the process more families become dysfunctional over inheritance matters than any other issue. There is no singular more important way to help the lives of the less fortunate than to have acquired wealth be distributed at death to those less fortunate in the society from which the wealth was taken. Fair is fair. What you take out you should give back. Count your blessings, enjoy your good fortune, and return the money to the same pot from which you yourself sought some sort of monetary jackpot.

My cat Keisha is dying. This means nothing to anyone else, and fortunately, doesn't mean a damn thing to Keisha. She doesn't know she is dying, or that death awaits her shortly. Animals are lucky. They can't conceptualize death. Keisha is lucky because I can ensure she has a good death. There are no right wing laws in existence which prevent her from having a 'good' death. Keisha started out life as one of two kittens who survived being abandoned by someone in a forest preserve in March weather. It took her several months to regain her health, during which time she bonded to me as some sort of fifth appendage. It seems the trauma of the time left her with the belief that I was the only one she could trust. Like most pets Keisha is non judgmental. She likes me no matter what kind of jerk I am from time to time. She doesn't criticize me, harass me, demand much of me. This of course is why pets are so valuable in life. Medical care could try to save her, in this case carve up her face, remove half her nose, radiate her, and attempt chemotherapy. But Keisha and I have this bond, and she expects me to protect her from harm and misery. She has had a good life, never needed a substantial medical intervention for anything since her trauma as a kitten. Maybe her struggle against death as a kitten gave her a really strong immune system. But no matter, she will not be tortured or suffer for months before her death. She is almost 15 years old, and I have long ago committed to ensuring that she have a good life and a good death. Some day it may be possible to use the same concept for human beings---a good life and a good death. That would sure make death more palatable, knowing that each person could control their own dying process via directives at the time or advance directives written out in advance. We inch that way as the ability to prolong the dying process gets to the point where modern medicine can prolong pointless suffering and/or the expenditure of vast sums of money to give people some sort of tortured existence for a few more months. One day Keisha will start not to eat much food. The vets tell me loss of appetite is the best sign as to when she is no longer feeling well. That will be the time Keisha and I will say goodbye and I will remind her that I had promised her as a kitten things would get better and she never again would be allowed to suffer needlessly. Keisha is lucky---she is not lying around worrying about impending death, she will not be left to wonder why I took her to vets and let them carve up her face and force her to suffer through the effects of surgery and radiation and chemotherapy for months. Good life, good death---sometimes it can work out that way. For me, this scenario is just part of my own death by a thousand cuts, another piece of my existence and being gone with the wind, just like the many cuts before. You pause, you say thanks for the memories, you cry, and you move on. We all do, some handling it better than others, but with a little less bounce to our steps. We move forward, we adjust, we find ways to enjoy life and find contentment, but we are dying, the cuts are mounting up, and if we live long enough life becomes mostly a nothing left to lose proposition. In that sense death is not that scary. This Deistic evolutionary process, including death, is really the ultimate wonderment. In fact, technically life is a continuum---there is no death, the same DNA molecules keep on getting shuffled around and evolution proceeds. After all, no form of life on our planet arises from anything except living cells. Life is really forever. IT IS OUR BEING, a separate entity from life itself, which is gone forever, barring an after life. Tis' a pity. Jimmy Durante had it right when he would end his show every time with, "Good night Mrs Calabash wherever you are." Maybe each night we should remember the departed from our lives with similar acknowledgment. Some night soon I will say, "Goodnight Keisha wherever you are".

IF OBAMA WERE TO WIN

IF OBAMA WERE TO WIN:

15 years ago I predicted that with Republican Presidents in the White House the inevitable 'march off the cliff' for this country (several other countries have already taken the great leap) would occur roughly 3 yrs from now. There are so many factors driving the downfall of modern life, as many of us know it, that predictions of any accuracy regarding when the U.S. takes an irreversible dive into the depths of chaos and misery---such predictions must be taken with a grain of salt. For me personally, if I can be off with my prediction around 15 years too soon, it will all likely happen over my dead body.

Back when I was making my prediction there was no Barack Obama in sight, no one able to stir into voting a good number of the roughly 50% who don't bother to vote in this country. Just like no rational political pundit at the time of Lincoln could have predicted his ascendency to the Presidency, there is little in traditional rationale to predict Obama could get to be President. As I write this, a week before the big Feb 4th primaries, the odds are slim, but I guess exist for Obama to eek his way in. If he had another month, perhaps he might even be favored. But this is not about whether he is likely to win the nomination and then the Presidency, but what if he did? Would such a drastic change in our priorities alter the course of history for us?

In many respects, a lot of things would change (assuming Democrats also get control of Congress). I doubt Obama could ever get elected without that happening. But in the larger sense, Obama could not likely change the inevitable fall off the cliff, perhaps at most delay it a few years.

We all are aware of the Holocaust and the roughly 6 million victims. It stands out as the ultimate example of what humans can do to other humans. While the mantra at the aftermath of this tragedy was one of 'Never again', human nature in the short run, does not change. Today, there are genocides all across the globe---oh maybe not 6 million at a clip, more like a million here, 600,000 there, etc.---- but the global reality is that we are rapidly approaching the slaughter of millions of avoidable deaths each year and like the melting of the icebergs, the rate of such dying is accelerating exponentially. As Hitler is not behind this current ruthless destruction of human life it behooves us to seek the ultimate cause elsewhere. After all, HItler may not have personally slaughtered anyone, but it was his mentality, accepted by others, who effectuated the end result. Bush may not personally have slaughtered anyone, but his mentality allows millions to to die unnecessary deaths, be maimed, terrorized by thugs, bombs, religious cults, or foreign agents, left homeless or jobless, etc---you know, just a regular day in the life of trying to live in an occupied country.

Today there is a mentality loose, yet unchallenged, which is imposing a reign of misery, often followed by ghastly means of death. Most of us are vaguely aware of it, but we don't see it, we don't feel it, no aspect of it is part of our own lives, and unlike the lives of those trapped into a life of quiet desperation and futility, we essentially are quite alive and well in our best of all possible worlds. I never really know how to feel about the way I live---to be endlessly grateful? endlessly embarrassed?, endlessly angry about the injustices to the less fortunate? endlessly proud of my 'self achieved' accomplishments? endlessly praising God for personally blessing me along the way? Deep inside I realize it was essentially a crap shoot---a blessing of parentage, location of birth, the schools I happened to go to, the neighborhoods I grew up in, a genetically healthy body, and most broadly put----a combination of genes and environment, coupled with a lot of luck, that determined my destiny. In my clearest moments I don't see myself deserving of awards, I don't really think God personally interceded on my behalf by going through life with his arm around my shoulder, walking me through the land mine of life. I feel more like the guy who pulls a lever on some kind of gambling machine and some sort of jackpot rolls out. Let's face it, a roll of the dice hardly makes anyone better than anyone else. Frankly, I really want to make myself the exception---attribute all my blessings to some sort of inner superiority over some others on a level playing field. I now know that is self illusionary. I don't feel any need to be the biggest winner, the most successful on the face of the earth, and in my later years I don't feel any need to feel brighter or better in any way over those vast hordes of humans living quiet lives of desperation under conditions unimaginable to my mind. "There but for the grace of God goes I" might be one way to look at it, but I no longer believe that either. LIke most others, I know God exists just like I know if I get an anonymous gift I know the gift giver exists. Given the evidence of a long drawn out evolutionary process over billions of years, I now see God as the creator of this evolutionary process of life. While I can't say whether God ever tinkers with His created evolutionary process, there is no reason to believe he very often does so. The neat thing about seeing God in this light is that God is no longer cast in the light of causing this or that good or bad thing to happen to this or that person at any particular point in time. It also puts our own sense of personal importance in perspective. The God created evolutionary process is a brilliant, complicated, self driven, ever advancing, endless process driven by God's laws which just happen to be the Laws of Nature. From time to time there are those humans who write up laws purported to be dictates from God, but I regard them as nothing more than food for thought, the validity of which, like the validity of anything else in our lives, is dependent on sound reasoning for giving adherence. Seeing life as I now do in no way sheds any light on the possibility of life after death or in anyway denies the validity of ethical or moral principles based on human reason. These kind of ethical or moral principles are universal---applicable to all cultures and diversified political states.

With all this as background, what would happen if Obama became President. Clearly our priorities would change for the better. Justice would be elevated, hope arise in quarters where hope has been absent. Respect for others and toleration for diversity would soar. Feelings of superiority over race, religion, political beliefs, culture, and economic status would become out of line, less free to be exercised openly. The use of military power to solve conflicts would truly become the option of last resort. It is less clear whether the U.S. would continue to maintain 750 military bases in 130 countries, many of which exist primarily to prop up and protect a 'friendly' government. Yes, the kind of changes one might expect from Obama are big changes, welcome changes, admirable changes---BUT, in themselves not enough to save us from the edge of the cliff.

SO WHAT IS MISSING? There are roughly 15 million refugees scattered across the globe, and the number growing at an exponential rate. While these are not exactly extermination camps like for the Jews in Germany, in a larger sense they often lead to the same tragic end. What percent of them are dead in a few years from malnutrition, preventable disease, community violence, untreated post traumatic stress syndromes, etc. is only a guess. I suspect it is very high. Neither can I even roughly estimate how many millions perish before ever reaching these refugee camps. Now if we add to all these millions all those who die needlessly from preventable or curable diseases, the toll now is in the hundreds of millions. Fortunately for the rest of us, these people are mostly passive, helpless, forlorn, too weak and too without hope to resist their fate. They linger on for various amounts of time living lives of quiet miserable desperation---total nothingburgers in the pool of humanity.

But as their numbers grow, in ever new corners of the globe, like some sort of spreading plague, there also grows an ever increasing number of 'victims' who refuse to go quietly. These are angry desperate intense fearless 'warriors' willing to attack at any cost those whom they perceive responsible for their misery. From these numbers come the suicide bombers and 'terrorists' of various ilk. Whenever civilized wealthy societies face these kind of 'nothing left to lose' Have-Nots, the Halves always lose. Despite the irrational patriotic rhetoric that we can protect ourselves from these 'terrorists' we cannot. As we have found out in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and I guess now Pakistan, short of blowing up the whole country and practically everyone living there, we are helpless---battalions of troops hiding behind walled off bases---with soldiers dying whenever they venture out of the bases, and unprotected civilians dying by the hundreds of thousands with millions left homeless from the chaos. Even our smartest of bombs end up killing more innocents than criminals, and it would be hard to call people who fight to rid themselves of foreign troops in their land----criminals, let alone terrorists. If Americans could resist mindless patriotic gibberish, we would acknowledge that in some sense there hasn't been a good guys/bad guys war since World War II. If Amercans could see past our noses we would realize that placing 750 military bases in 130 countries is setting us up as targets for all those citizens of those countries who want to topple their own government but can't as long as we prop up and protect the government they despise. To hear our own politicians babble on about how evil gangs in foreign lands are hell bent on destroying America, I guess even capturing us, is arrogant illusionary poppycock. None of these terrorists have any goal of capturing our country---their goal is always to get us out of THEIR country. It is hard to precisely pinpoint when this country decided sovereignty did not apply to any country weak enough militarily to oppose our intervention in their own internal affairs. I really don't understand why the U.S, is the only country who feels such a great need to establish 750 military bases in 130 countries. I can easily imagine what Americans would feel about any other country in the world establishing a string of military bases across our own country---you know, maybe to make sure no one tries to get President Bush out of Office, that sort of thing. We do this to other countries all the time and accept this sort of thing as legitimate, even helpful charity, calling the soldiers stationed all over other people's lands---'peacekeepers'. Since vast majorities of the citizens in countries like Iraq want our troops out these people must hate the peace we bring to them. Maybe they just want their jobs back, or their homes, or some place safe to live, no matter how humble. We now even brag about military surges---in which if we kill enough people, and topple enough buildings, producing a widespread enough desolation---then we can call it PEACE---the peace of absolute desolation, the kind of Freedom which essentially means nothing left to lose. It just makes you wonder, how did America ever get to this kind of mentality? Of course I never did understand how the Germans could accept the mentality of HItler either.

But as usual, I stray from the point. The real force pushing human society to the brink of chaotic collapse is overpopulation. The resultant sequence of events is not exactly rocket science. By definition overpopulation depletes natural resources. Depletion of resources limits quality of life. Limitations on quality of life produces conflict, conflict produces deaths by barbaric emotional savage acts, and finally any society affected is reduced to rule by thugs in some kind of Darwinian struggle. Add to all this the pollution, generated by technological affluent societies, affecting our climate, and the future for all species on this planet is too depressing to accept as a reality. There is no indication that even Obama intends to lead any crusade to enforce responsible reproduction. There is no indication that even Obama is prepared to lead any crusade that forces us to live simpler, more inconvenient lifestyles in order to reduce pollution and take the pressure off depleting the earth's natural resources until appropriate population levels can be established across the globe. In the absence of this, terrorism will multiply exponentially, and no society, of any form of government, is going to escape the subsequent chaos, mayhem, and collapse of their society into a lawless Darwinian thug state.

I am also reminded that just before the Civil War virtually no one predicted slavery would be ended in the South, not even Lincoln. But somehow, after a devastating civil war, the impossible was achieved. Interestingly, we achieved it without some kind of foreign intervention, or foreign military bases all over our country, or foreign military surges to kill off those Americans targeted by a foreign power as 'terrorists'. Thus, the election of Obama might once again, as it did with the election of Lincoln, give us the last best hope for salvation. I mentioned earlier that there was no way to know whether God ever intercedes with His process of evolution. As kind of a Lincoln buff there always struck me the possibility of Lincoln being some kind of divine intervention to solve a situation beyond human capabilities for solution. Everything about the life of Lincoln just seems strangely scripted for a particular purpose and when the purpose ended, the curtain dropped. I know this is silly perhaps, and all of us are entitled to some silly thoughts, but it just seems way too much about the life of Obama seems strangely scripted for a particular purpose. Maybe without any realistic hope for the 'immediate' future of mankind there is little left to hope for except some sort of divine intervention.

Finally, I don't think I am going to lose any sleep over all this. It is the big picture which should always prevail in our outlook. In this case, I am not going to get depressed over the forest for the sake of individually dying trees. After all, we all live in a little 'gleam of Time between two eternities', God's evolutionary process proceeds---and the continuum of life achieved by endless shuffling of DNA with the resultant 'new' and sometimes 'improved' participants in this eternal evolutionary stage play is never about individual bit players who strut about in their 'little gleam of Time between two eternities'. There is no evidence to the claim by some that God created man in his own image. God must be better than that. In the last analysis to be Somebody is less important than to have been lucky enough to participate in this evolutionary process, to have had the opportunity to live and think and make decisions. The process is obviously not really about any of us as individuals, but that hardly diminishes the brilliance or admiration of the process. For those surviving to old age, contentment seems directly proportional to how gently one is willing to go down the stream. I try to pick a stream where the water flows gently with ample opportunity to spend time out in nature, avoiding every opportunity for pushing and shoving. It is best when older to leave others alone, let them live their lives their way, and if anyone throws a punch---duck and change directions. If you fail to see the punch coming and you get hit, well don't worry about it---no doubt you deserved to be punched for something or other. Just get up, dust yourself off, and still change directions. Too many older people stand in one spot and let themselves be some sort of punching bag. And if you have a need to see some deserving people get punched out, vote for Obama. Let a good guy with a small army do the punching out. Me, I think I will now go and eat something scrumptious for lunch, sit for a rest, doze off, and be as useless as possible for a few hours each day.