In the Old Days

In their later years all old people remember 'the old days'. There is almost always a bit of nostalgia, I suppose because those were the days of youth. Somethings never change in the nature of change. That is to say the music of the young is invariably not the favorite music of the old. And some imbedded biases against this or that group tend to go by the wayside. This is not to imply things are always better and better. Man's inhumanity to humanity simply changes in focus and target. Science has always forced, ever so painfully, many religious dogmas to change, or at least become ignored. In a materialistic society the older population will always remember the cheaper cost of practically everything. What follows are simply changes that have occurred outside of simple price changes, as seen through my own eyes. The days are gone when a mother says to a 10 yr old kid, "You be home in time for supper or you won't get any". That's a big change. And if you went somewhere as a kid you walked, hitchhiked, or rode your bike---there was no parent driving you in a car from one scheduled supervised event to another. A family, no matter the size, only had one car and daddy used it to get to work. Nobody hitchhikes anymore. I can remember hitch hiking from Maine to New York on college breaks. It never crossed anyone's mind back then that we might get molested, let alone be murdered. It was a free ride and often a free meal or two en route. Programmed activities were few and far between. We had a lot of time on our hands and few electronic gadgets to play games on or message anybody. Phone conversations tended to be short and to the point or there would be squawking about the cost. A long distance call was a really a big deal. I can remember as a PRE teenager going to Ebbets Field to see the Brooklyn Dodgers with neighborhood pals. This required getting to a train station, taking the train to New York City and then a series of subways to Ebbets Field. If kids did that today the Police would be called and the parents scared stiff. Just about everybody talked to us kids back then and no one ever told us not to speak to strangers, although many a stranger probably wished we hadn't. Strangers were mostly friends for any sudden need, and part of a community spy network with direct connections to your parents. Parents had a lot of eyes back then. The front steps and sidewalks of a neighborhood bustled with activities, like what else was there to do but hang out and socialize in the neighborhood. The neighborhood today is your face book page. Much of youthful activity back then was planned nonsense born out of boredom. The favorite comedians back then were the likes of Abbott and Costello. In fact most of the TV stars back then seem really unsophisticated and simpletonian now. I guess this proves we have changed with the times. I can't remember even once fearing to go to school lest I get shot. I can't think of any student in my good size suburban school ever getting stabbed let alone shot. Even fist-a-cuffs were rare. Schools were of a far different atmosphere than now. Back then you had a Superintendent of the Schools, a high school principle, a dean of boys and Dean of girls, a guidance counselor, and that was about it. The teacher was King or Queen in those days, respected by students and parents, and it was the teacher alone who decided how he/she taught and what. There were 'regents' exams statewide and this put pressure on teachers to be effective. Actual vanilla sex was difficult back in high school in those days, let alone teachers having sex with students or an array of internet observed kinkier sex. The current encyclopedic array of sexual acts found on the internet today were non existent in our minds. The mouth had yet to become a primary sex organ, and any sexual diseases easily treated. A trip to the Deans Office, if for anything other than the most minor offense, would likely result in some sort of physical lesson, and depending on the nature of the parent, another physical lesson at home. Little of what I am recalling here are things that I am saying should never have changed. The point is times have changed. We can make fun of the endless sensitivity emphasis of today but it was bad for a lot of people back in my younger days. Almost all of discrimination was simply ignored. Minorities, for the most part, knew their place and as kids we were less prejudiced than ignorant. TV probably played the biggest role in bringing to the forefront how certain other groups were really being treated. I can't remember, as a kid, having discussions with other kids about anyone's rights and I can't remember much serious derogatory comments about other groups either. They had their world and we had ours. A black getting elected President, gays getting married, women getting equal pay or playing important positions in government or industry was simply a rarity, or unimaginable. Back then, those in the least paying jobs could at least make a living, afford a used car, a house, and spend a lot of time with family. Today, many people have to have two jobs to support a family and then everyone wonders why unemployment is high. Duh? If people could make a living with one job, like a waitress, truck driver, etc. then maybe there would be a job for everyone. Today we are busy trying to find out how many jobs we can eliminate in order to stimulate the economy? That sounds a bit strange and those who demand this be done never, ever, of course, think in terms of eliminating their own job to stimulate the economy. It was possible, with certain grades or talents, to pretty much pay your own way through college back then. When we graduated we never much were concerned about getting a job, keeping a job, having to work two jobs, etc. There was job security.. Health care was not a big issue in large part because medical knowledge was limited, the equipment not expensive, and there was no capability to keep some cells going in some form or fashion for months and years. You had your heart attack, cancer, diabetes, stroke, etc, and mostly just died shortly thereafter. When I was a kid the doctor sometimes came to your house to treat you. If you wanted a pizza you had to go and fetch it. Pets were common back then too, but more often the pet's territory was the whole neighborhood. People didn't much walk their dog as let them out. You might not see the pet again until they got hungry. I had one pet dog with a 2 mile roaming radius and food was wherever he found an unattended pot roast, a shot deer hung up to cure, and treats enticed from kids who would raid the kitchen for him. His idea of run and fetch was to take your hat or lunch bag and you had to do the fetching. Wrestling was another fun game for this dog but not for the mother who had to get the dirt stains out of her kids clothing. Through all of this he never bit anyone---but did get rides in a police car back home. He looked so proud of himself sitting in the back seat of a police car. My parents looked otherwise. TV was kind of new, and nobody had more than one, and somehow the whole family had to agree what to watch. There were maybe 5 or 6 channels to watch. The big names back then included such dumb ass vocabularists as Ed Sullivan and Lawrence Welk. Ok, now we have Sarah Palin, a vocabularist of the inane sort. Of course no one back then remotely suggested Ed Sullivan or Lawrence Welk run for President. That was Harold Stassen's assigned perennial job. 'Family values' as the term is used now, didn't much exist. It was hard to circle the wagons with your own family, or wall your family off from others back then. As soon as kids could walk and ride a bike they were off making their own friends, their own activities. And God forbid your parents came to watch anything you might get involved in----that was pure embarrassment, to have your mommy and daddy hanging around when you were trying your best to be independent and self important. A friend used to die a thousand deaths every time his mom, as he left the house would yell, "Robbie, where's your hat?" Or who wanted to be at bat and have your mom or dad start yelling supportive statements like you were a baby learning to walk, "C'mon Dicky, you can do it". And then if you grounded out into a double play who needs some booming parent shouting "That's alright Dicky, there is another inning". I always felt the kid should run over to the bleachers and yell, "maybe for me, but not for you, now get the hell out of here". Fireworks on the 4th of July were note worthy only if you and your friends could manage somehow to smuggle in fireworks, then take off and find someplace to shoot them off. The biggest thing for us were 'cherry bombs', a firecracker so dull that now they probably don't exist. Parents did worry about it all, but had little ability to stop it. It was fun back then to prey on the worries of parents. Someone told a parent of a friend of mine that some kid had put a homemade bomb in their family woodpile. That was funny when the mom took a broom and went outside and hit the kid over the head with the broom. Another time a kid was outside in his mom's yard and pretended to argue loudly about this or that with a friend, then covered himself with ketchup and threw the bikes together and he laid under one. The mom looked out the window and nearly had a heart attack. Well, funny at the time. Misbehavior by teenagers was creative but rarely destructive like damaging anyone's property. We didn't like the school bus driver so we would invent ways to anger him. One day we all got off the bus, crossed over in front of the bus and deliberately dropped our books and took forever to pick them up. Finally the driver stopped at one stop and this younger kid got off and dropped his books too. The driver gunned the engine to scare the kid, but his mother was in the yard gardening and saw the whole thing--- she called the Principal and told him the bus driver tried to run over her precious child. That was funny. We liked to get off the bus in the winter time and throw snowballs at the bus. The driver went to the Principal and the Principal told us the next time anyone throws a snowball at the bus they walk home for a month. So, the next snow storm the bus driver stops the bus, and each time he pulls away you could hear the bam, bam, of snowballs hitting the bus. The driver wrote the names down and the Principle followed through except we all said no one threw snowballs. Finally, he called in just the girls on the bus and asked them to write down annoymously whether anyone threw snowballs at the bus and put their hand on the bible when they turned in their answer. Every girl said no one threw any snowballs. And they hadn't. When the bus pulled away some of the guys would kick their feet against the side of the bus to make it sound like snowballs. Anyway, I think such creative nonsense is rare now because kids are too busy being amused by their electronic devices, texting every inconsequential movement of their life to the same small circle of friends. Of course, on the other hand, who needs so much nonsense? Still, one can argue that kids need fun, need some freedom, need to have to create ways to amuse themselves. Robots are good, but robots don't have much fun. I suppose maybe the world has become too dangerous for kids to be loose as in the past, and maybe the current close supervision is necessary and good. At one time the weekends were the heavy traffic days, people used weekends to visit relatives and go to the beach etc. Now the heavy traffic days are workdays when hordes of people travel distant miles to get to work. Some things haven't changed at all in this country. It still takes the same amount of time on a train to get from point A to B. No high speed anything unless it is a missile of some sort. Wars in the past were waged with real uniformed soldiers and real simple bullets. Now, the enemy could be anyone in the invaded country, no one is in uniform. There is no ready aim fire at a visual target, you press a button and some smart missile will chase down the ass targeted, enter and totally rearrange the molecular configuration of the target's entire body. In the past, those with the best weapons won, ask the American Indians, the Japanese, etc. Not anymore, if our soldiers die in a war they most likely stepped in the wrong place, or get hit by sniper fire. And, ever since we did away with the draft, wars occur almost endlessly. The idea of going to war and everybody sacrificing or being eligible to fight, if the right age and no connections, is gone. These are the strangest wars now---we are the invaders, and most people, like myself, find no impact on our lives whatsoever. In fact, if we don't get tax cuts from politicians we don't elect them, war or no war. I suppose this is now catching up with us, but hopefully the lights won't go out and the party be over until we ourselves are over and done with the misplaced priorities. Recently I came across a field filled with bumble bees. I haven't seen swarms of bubble bees since childhood. In fact there are a lot of animals and plants which we will never see again, they are all extinct. The rate of specie extinction is greater now than any time for hundreds of thousands of years. Maybe that just means we truly are God's favorite species and eliminating the rest pleases God immensely. It isn't just certain other diverse groups of humans who are a nuisance, other species get in our way and God wants us to keep on multiplying and rid the earth of all these nuisances. Walking through many 'forest preserves' today is like walking through a graveyard to experience humanity. In many of these forests about only thing left are the trees. Some, like the redwoods, have been alive for thousands of years. A forest without wildlife, birds, bodies of water with fish, and insects yet to even be named, is really a graveyard of sorts., and is certainly not a real forest. Even I know not to worry too much, Time stays, WE GO, just as it did without the dinosaurs. There is nothing inherently sad about all the changes above. Change has been the nature of God's evolutionary process from the start. What is noteworthy has been the extent of change in my own lifespan. It is a different world out there today than it was in my yesterdays and it will be a different world in the future years too. While it is possible to understand the past, the future seems beyond our grasp. I kind of feel something really noteworthy is about to give----that Mother Nature is about to play her cards. In the past when Mother Nature has played her cards, she always has won, corrections small and large are made, and the nature of the game and participants gets shuffled around and a new era gets ushered in. Good night souls of the past, wherever you are.

INFLATED MEMBERSHIPS

Inflated memberships: Years ago I got this application to join the NRA. I ignored it. Several months later I got my membership card. I wrote and told them I had not joined and did not intend to join. Every year until I moved a couple of years ago I would get my membership renewal notice, and each year I would ignore it, and every year a new membership card arrived. When the NRA frightens Congress with how many members they have I always shudder to realize my name is on their membership list and I guess will always be until the NRA has a membership which exceeds the population of the country. As a teenager I was baptized in the Baptist Church. I have never had my name removed and something tells me I am one of the current listed members of the Baptist Church. Ah, what the hell, no big deal. Public Schools which depend on enrollment for state or local funding often inflate enrollment. State College and Universities are often the worse offenders as all they have to do is find a way to get a student to enroll, even if it is under circumstances which they know will cause the student to soon drop out. Some students enroll just to get financial aid and then drop out. This inflated enrollment is often by a hefty amount. Prestigious Universities and Colleges often use inflated tuition figures as a tool to attract the best students. For example, if your tuition is currently at $30,000/yr you can increase tuition by $5000 and then increase scholarship grants by a similar amount and you win both ways: you impress the applicant as to how high up the ladder your University or College is, and you impress the applicant as to how much of a scholarship you will be giving them. I can remember the days when you could substantially work your way through college. I smiled at the experience of some guy named Tom Flynn. He was a member of the Catholic Church and decided he no longer was a believer and wanted his name removed. Finding this not so easy he decided to get himself excommunicated. His research determined that excommunication opportunities for lay-people are of three principal types. He found Canon 1364 which prescribes automatic excommunication in cases of schism (leaving Catholicism and joining another church), heresy (when a baptized Catholic 'obstinately denies' a well defined Church doctrine), or apostasy ( a thorough renunciation of Christ and the Church). Mr. Flynn visited the offices of the Archdiocese of Buffalo in Feb. 2008 and left a package for the Rev. Magr. David Slubecky, Vicar General and Moderator of the Curia. The package included his baptismal certificate, and evidence that he was no longer following certain Catholic doctrines. He requested excommunication. He never got an answer and then took his case to the diocesan office in Erie Pa. Again he got no response. Thus, at this date Mr. Flynn is a member in good standing of the Catholic Church. He is now contemplating excommunication via "desecrating the Sacred Species", which is to say he plans to take a wafer which has been consecrated by a priest and throwing it in a waste basket. The above is not an attack on the Catholic Church but yet another example of how so many organizations falsely claim members they really don't have. Well, I don't contribute to this sort of thing. If I apply to be a member of some group and they accept my membership application, I immediately decline. I don't wish to be a member of any group who would accept me as a member. I mean, how exclusive could it be? Unemployment figures, and only God knows how many other Government figures, are manipulated figures, tabulated in such a way as to minimize or maximize the problem. Even weather reports are often misleading, worded to get attention more than be realistic. I have been on trips and dutifully followed the weather reports back home only to find, upon return, that the weather crisis, as reported on the news, was a typical thunderstorm or whatever, nothing so momentous as portrayed on the weather news across the country. We live in a massive information age. There is very little information out there which cannot be found on the internet. I really like that. Maybe someday arranged marriages will return, only this time not by family, but by the internet. No more bar hopping, church socials, or whatever, you just fill out an accurate account of your own looks, character, priorities, hobbies, etc. and run it through some internet program and boom, just like that, comes the perfect bride or groom. Then maybe once a year both could fill out a form to determine current compatibility and boom, just like that, at the appropriate time, divorce could be declared with a print-out of who gets what---and to lessen the pain, a new spiffy bride or groom be coughed up so that no more than a couple of days of loneliness be suffered through. Of course this massive availability of the internet has downsides too. A good deal of the information is fabricated. And it provides every kook in the world (not you or I of course) to become connected through the internet with similar such kooks across the globe, allowing formerly isolated disconnected weirdos to become an effective force whether it be for good or bad. These kind of internet relationships have mostly replaced the neighborhood, the church, the schools, etc. as the social centers of our lives. People used to hang out on their porches or be busy going to club meetings or church functions, or community events-----not anymore, just block after block of houses lit up only by the dim halo of computer friendships in each person's room. Imagine telling some young person, "You have been bad you must go and stay in your room now until I tell you you can come out". You better say it quickly before they are already in the room and you better be prepared to beg them to come out after a reasonable time. So we find ourselves in a whole new world, at least those of us who are older, and what we are to think of it is an enigma. I kind of like it, the computer certainly makes entertaining oneself a lot easier, shopping a lot easier, getting information a lot easier, organizing a political movement much easier, etc. But the downside is that we all become more isolated entities of our social and physical environment. And what this all portends from an evolutionary standpoint for life on this planet is a $64,0000 dollar question. Maybe a case of the more we know, the less we really know. From an evolutionary perspective it might be garbage in, garbage out. 100 million people are projected to starve to death in the next few years and it will happen without hardly a murmur from any of us. It is the 3000 deaths from the World Trade Center bombing which generated massive response and actions. Imagine this, there will be over 3000 TIMES as many deaths from starvation in the next few years as died from the World Trade Center bombing and absolutely nothing much will be done about it. Reality and justice are too discombobulated for us to get priorities straight, or any justice for all right. All I really know, after all these years, is that TIME stays, WE go. And sometimes we never even get a chance to say goodbye, or good riddance, whichever applies.

Scariest Stats

The Scariest Stats: Some claim you are what you eat. Cute, but not so. Maybe you 'are', instead of dead, because of what you eat, but at some point in age there is so little of the 'real' you left that the 'real' you is sometimes gone long before you are physically dead. Besides, the 'real' you is a changing piece of work. I am not the same person today I was 40 years ago, and to be picky, not even the same person I was yesterday. Any continuity is more an 'essence' of ourselves. Of course the same changing hands of time effectuates changes in families, friends, neighborhoods, countries, and all of humanity. God's evolutionary process, whatever else, is not static. In the minds of many I am some sort of Professor Doomsday. Well, evolution is full of doomsdays. We speak of the age of plants, the age of dinosaurs, the age of humans, etc. I can't really visualize what is next---neither could the dinosaurs----any doomsday mentality reflects the notion of change with lots of individual tragedies, but a trajectory of progress ever upward. Even when we celebrate our own democratic history we like to pretend the founding fathers assembled a perfect Constitution and this perfectness should be the bench mark for all determinations of justice. We do the same thing with religion. A belief established in the past becomes etched in stone and is declared sacrosanct for evermore. What is civil rights if not the continuous battle to bring justice and fairness to more and more? Or to destroy and discard these once sacrosanct beliefs? And what is religion if it is not the Golden Rule? So doomsday essentially means, in the shifting sands of evolution, that change is inevitable, that one species having dominion over another is meaningless, that what may seem sacrosanct in one age becomes history in another. Doomsday is the fate of all INDIVIDUAL living things. The sanctity of life has meaning only in the sense that living cells continue to replicate and reproduce in ways which keeps 'life' itself, a concept beyond human comprehension, continuing on in an ever more complex and advanced fashion. We can no more understand where God's evolutionary process is heading than could the dinosaurs. Life, as we know it today, is doomed. This is of personal sadness to all of us, but hardly any doomsday for the evolutionary process. The stats today, no matter how hard we try to put a positive spin on them, are not good news for life as we have grown accustomed. It is we ourselves, not God, who created man in God's image; we ourselves who gave us 'dominion' over other species; we ourselves who insists God speaks to us through inherited religions; we ourselves who bestowed upon America some sort of 'manifest destiny' and other sorts of egotistical divine notions. In the evolutionary process CHANCE is king, not divine intervention on behalf of individuals or nations. This is no directionless drift in that the survival-of-the-fittest life process really does set the stage for future chances. Evolution is a great and wonderful process for the long run, but never for the short run for ANYBODY, ANY NATION, or for domination of any species. Many species become extinct. What we have before us today are stats, stats which the human species has the intelligence to comprehend somewhat. The dinosaurs may not have had the intelligence to visualize their own demise while humans groups---national or religious in nature---use protective illusions which enable them to be positive and upbeat in the face of impending disaster. Many people my age often admit they are glad they won't be around when the 'shit' hits the fan. I never felt so good politically than when Obama won the Presidency, but the forces which drive the evolutionary process are beyond the control of any species, let alone any individual of any species. HOWEVER, humans are advanced enough mentally to alter the RATE or DIRECTION of evolution. We can buy some time. We, could if we were bright enough, and strong enough mentally, prevent our own demise. I don't mean to imply here that humans will become extinct, but the manner in which we 'rule' the earth today, is doomed. Mother Nature always bats last. That we are God's favorite species is kind of a presumptive notion, let alone any, even worse, presumption that God created man to have dominion over all other species and our environment. That would be like asking someone, "Who are your favorites, your smartest friends or relatives or your pets?" If all life forms are the product of God's evolutionary process, it seems a risky and egocentric mistake to declare your own species God's favorite. Some go even further and insinuate that God likes them and their ilk best. They are, in their minds, God's chosen tribe. I consider this egotistical nonsensical tripe. Life as we know it now is doomed based on the following stats: (Where anyone, or any nation, puts their priorities tells you more about them then what they may insist they are about). It seems there are two general groups in every country---the "if you don't like it here you can leave" and those who constantly push for more justice through change. I agree with James Baldwin: "I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually." The question is, if you only knew this country by the following stats, what image would you arrive at, and what changes would you make? 80 text messages----avg number sent and received by the average American teen every day. Wow. This is more at the level of "Polly wants a cracker" than intelligent discourse. Amount of money spent in 2008 to upgrade military forces: U.S.= $607 billion; the next 9 biggest upgrade spenders (China, France, U.K. Russia, Germany, Japan, Italy, Saudi Arabia, India)= $476 billion. With 5% of the world's population we have 25% of the world's jailed prisoners, and 25% of them are for nonviolent recreational drug offenses. I am quite sure we have the highest percentage of white collar criminals with probably no more than a handful in jail. In 2007 there were 872,720 marijuana arrests, 775,000 of them for possession, not selling. If we just had more police we could manage more arrests! One can only hazard a guess how many police promotions were achieved through mostly marijuana arrests. I know I feel a lot safer. Most of the crimes committed by others against me in life probably were marijuana induced criminal acts! 70% of illegal drug trafficking profits were from marijuana. If marijuana were legal and taxed, the savings from this War on Drugs and the tax monies would would be enough to provide adequate quality health care for every American. Naw, let's keep the game going and lock the SOB's up---but only lock up the poor who use marijuana. 1 out of every 31 adults in the U.S. is in prison, in jail, or on supervised release. 42%---percentage of college students who feel 'down, depressed, or hopeless'. This is the American Dream? 44%---percentage of teen boys surveyed who said they've seen at least one nude photo of a female classmate online or via cell phone. Wow. Maybe someday down the road the pictures in the Class Yearbook will have a different kind of 'reality' look. In 2004----1.3 million new jobs, 26% of which went to non-citizens. I wonder if this has anything to do with' slave labor' wages? By 2008 our whole wage and benefit structure was under collapse. The legal status of abortions in various countries does not predict the number of abortions but just the percentage of safe abortions. Not too different from the legal status of marijuana does not predict the number of users just the number of people in jail. Development assistance globally as percent of GNI: United States is in 21st place at .2%. U.S. government assistance = $23.5 billion. U.S. Private giving=$34.8 billion. Amount of private aid giving: Universities and colleges= 3.7 billion; Foundations=4 billion; Corporations = 5.5billion; Religious organizations = 8.8 billion; private and voluntary organizations=12.8 billion. Charitable giving by average percentage of family income contributed: Those making more than a million dollars = 3.2%; those making between $100,000 and $124,000= 2.3%; those making $10,000 to $19,000= 2.4% Thus, the ability to contribute to charity has little impact on the percentage a person gives. Put another way, if your income at $15,000 goes up 67 times, the percent you give to charity rises .8%. Onward Christian soldiers. Our Iraq War: number of displaced Iraqis= 4.5 million (1 in every 6 citizens); percent of households with clean water = 40%; percent of children in Baghdad that cannot attend school= 70%; number of Iraqi war widows = 1-2 million; number of orphans=5 million; number of dead Iraqis= 1 million one way or another. I wonder how many Iraqis even appreciate OUR sacrifice in this war? Ungrateful bastards. The number of decades the remaining Iraqis will remember what we did to them=who knows? What happened to the sanctity of life? Which country is the undisputed King of the killing fields abroad? This is staggering to me. We lost 40,000 in Vietnam, I think in Iraq it is like 4000, and I don't know the figure in Afghanistan. We killed directly, or indirectly, 2.1 million Vietnamese and so far over a million Iraqis. Hitler's Germany killed 2 million Jews. I mean like where is the Vietnamese Holocaust Museum? For what legitimate reason were they killed? And why was I such an enthusiastic supporter of that war for so long? How can seemingly 'good' 'Intelligent' people commit or support such atrocities on others? And it seems every group except Hitler claimed THE REAL God supporting them. Just baffling. Were I to continue this, the stats would become tedious and endless. Of course there are some good stats too, but their significance seems overshadowed by the consequences of the bad stats. Whether it is education, health care, the environment, global warming, depletion of natural resources, human overpopulation, accumulation of more and more global wealth into the hands of fewer and fewer people percentage wise, number of terrorism deaths (whether by road side bombs, suicide bombs, smart missiles, modern weapons, just plain hacking your neighbors to death,) or homelessness, or death from curable diseases---this big global picture is ghastly, if it is anything. The original hypothesis here was that what a country does with their money tells you a lot about that country. What a person does with their money tells you a lot about that person---what he/she values, what priorities he/she has, how sharing he/she is, and how much respect others have toward him/her. I suppose one can argue it makes no difference what others across the globe think of us. I mean, for most countries, what have they to brag about compared to us? Much like in the days of slavery in this country the slave owners could similarly say, "Who cares what the slaves really think? What do they have to brag about anyway? And if they know what is GOOD FOR THEM they will stay in line and do as told". Of course our country paid a terrible price for that attitude and change eventually came. Perhaps when we say to other countries, "We don't care what you think. What do you have to brag about anyway? And if you know what is GOOD FOR YOU you will stay in line and do as we bid you do." OR ELSE! The trouble is, OR ELSE is becoming a less effective threat to others. The nature of conflict has changed so much today that our massive accumulation of weapons of mass destruction, including smart bombs, have become, for all practical purposes, more and more useless. What good did all this firepower do us in Vietnam? In Iraq? In Afghanistan? In Somalia? in Darfur? etc. We can claim that terrorism is unethical and cowardly, but on what basis? We killed 2.1 million Vietnamese---a high percentage of them civilians. They killed 35,000 American soldiers, no American civilians. In Iraq it is like 4000 American soldiers, and a million Iraqis killed, mostly civilians. It just seems, on the face of it, it is all terrorism by both sides. We are just better at it. We lose because we are the only side with the option of leaving at some point since we are the invaders. I find all of this crazy, senseless, achieving nothing----while the expenditures to do this kind of thing leaves domestic needs like health care, energy innovation, environmental protection, etc. all left underfunded. Thus we fall further and further behind other industrialized countries in just about all areas except the accumulation of military weapons of mass destruction and invasions of other countries. Blind patriotism, like blind religious fervor, in both cases an inherited phenomenon----are self destructive forces. When people run around demanding we all show support for our troops, I feel very patriotic. After all, I opposed sending troops into Iraq and now that they are there I support them by favoring bringing them home. I feel this is the best way I can remove them from harm's way and bring an end to our participation in such slaughters. My support of the Vietnam War was an abomination. It was not patriotism at all. When people say how can the Germans have supported Hitler and the murder of 2 million Jews, I ask myself how could I have supported my country killing 2.1 million Vietnamese. What did our soldiers and the Vietnamese die for? It was senseless slaughter. When I look at the Republican Party these days I am totally baffled and dismayed. Many of these individuals seem pleasant enough on the surface. They are the ones that drape flags over balconies to show their patriotism, want flag burning illegal, and love singing the national anthem at sport contests with marching bands, wounded veterans, and spirited oratorical defenses of every massacre in which we have ever participated---whether it be the Indian Wars, Vietnam, Iraq, dozens of South American countries, Cuba, Philippines, Hawaii, or the more legitimate Wars like World War I, World War II, the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, etc. This is their patriotism---"My country, right or wrong". These same type people fight or fought integration of races, laws to protect children (parents should be the deciders), minimum wages, social security, medicare, worker protection laws, environmental protection laws, equal money spent to educate all children, voting rights, women's rights, universal health care, equal marriage rights for gays, abortion rights, birth control rights, populations control measures, curtailing depletion of natural resources, greater gas mileage efficiency, etc. What they thrive on is making their own religious beliefs the law of the land, the right of everyone to purchase and carry around assault weapons, unregulated capitalism, the right of the wealthy to accumulate unlimited wealth even when it results in 1-3% of the citizens of the U.S. owning 90% of our nation's wealth. When they get on a podium they don't talk about real people with real problems or any real solutions for those with these problems-----no, we get babble about our manifest destiny, about 'family values', about 'freedom', about 'good and evil', about God fearing Christians, about long past glories of conquest and subjugation, and never ever talk about the Golden Rule. Somehow, the Golden Rule escapes all their religious and patriotic fervor. A typical approach of mine when these people get going about their focal points, is to bring up specific cases of injustices so prevalent around us, and invariably they snap, "I don't want to talk about it!". And they mean it. FAITH--inherited FAITH---is the basis for their ethics, never the logic buried in the Golden Rule. Their FAITH is in THEIR God, almost always an inherited God, and dogma etched in stone by human designated emissaries from God. Thus, in their minds, God has spoken, and if God has spoken, the matter is closed. Thankfully for history, matters of injustice and fairness are never really closed, and many injustices they supported, even in their own lifetimes, have been corrected, over---so to speak---THEIR DEAD BODIES. That is not correct, they have only been dead from the neck up. No matter, for us as individuals, the band plays on---God's evolutionary process continues---change driven, always eventually reaching higher and higher plateaus physically, mentally, and ethically. The Golden Rule may yet reign some day.