I'm 30. Guilty as charged of using too many parentheses.
Currently watching Zeitgeist, The Movie, though with a dubious eye that Eris would be proud of. Anyone thinking of revolution or atheism/agnosticism should check it out. It's like Pink Floyd meets Fahrenheit 9/11.
I'm saddened by the apparent failure of the local morning and afternoon liberal talk radio shows on KUDO 1080. I will miss all the interesting conversations, though I'm glad a garage transmission is still going on at another frequency (two frequencies?). And congratulations to Jonathon Teeters for making Organizing For America happen in Anchorage and beyond.
I'm okay with the idea that Bush supporters, tea baggers, and anti-tax anti-christ's (which is a term I use to reference the true meaning of Christ - "the annointed one", as in: the annointed one who we all annointed by voting him and his administration and family into the white house, even though saying such a thing is traditionally called blasphemy) are stubborn and busy detractors of Obama; such people make sure we aren't lax in our efforts to change things, even though they chaffe our sensibilities by suggesting grassroots efforts of reform amount to masses of obedient sheep who deserve to be burned for their betrayal of non-thinking America. No leader can or should command the idolatry of 100% of a population - doing so would violate the principles of evolution and surely lead to the demise of all (which stems from the nature of variation - if everyone is the same, then someday we'll all make the same mistake or catch the same disease, as lemmings to time's slaughter). Instead, the purplish map of the U.S. has been remade by thousands of people switching sides (of which there are two in this two-dimensional political salience cross of red and blue). These new converts to progressivism are stubbing along on tender new feet towards a simple, archetypal goal: ushering in a new age, where the status quo has no place. I have my version of what the new age should be and you have yours. I'm okay with that difference because we have all the time in the world to talk about it and get it right. Plus, life has taught me that even at my best, I'm not completely right about just about anything. Life has also taught me that neither are you.
I'm also okay with the idea that you, as detractors, aren't going to help be the primary force in shifting the dialogue from old left and right to new left and right (and green and orange...the old ways enlightened by the yellow from the sun, which is the sun of superman's powers...). In the game of Row-sham-beau, you chose the rock of tradition and we chose the paper of the Law. The Law protects gay partners who would be at the bedside of their only friend in the world when they faced death in a hospital bed. The Law seeks to prevent World War II from happening again by holding the Geneva Conventions up above the flood plain of self-interest that destroyed the lives of so many Prisoners of War throughout history. The Law is the promised land of religious tolerance that so many Immigrants have needed (backwards and contrary to this as the Plymouth Rock Pilgrims might have been, they nevertheless hoped for and sought the sanctuary that our First Amendment promises). The Law that protects your ability to speak out against abortion and pursue that happiness of yours, is the very same Law that says freedoms will be maximized. It is only the Law that makes a Supreme Court decision from many years ago about how the State can mandate morality or not in your reproductive decisions mean ANYTHING AT ALL to us today. The bulk of human history shows that Kings have an unacceptable average rate of raping their subjects in the name of eliminating potential enemies and spreading superior bloodlines - thank god we are free of that tyranny. Roe vs. Wade protects U.S. citizens from the One Child policy that China has so horrifically cast on billions of human beings (even though they may have saved the planet by doing so when they did). If, god forbid, China were to conquer the U.S., pro-choice and anti-choice alike would march together to keep State Laws off our bodies. Meanwhile, short of banning abortion in all cases, I'm more than happy to donate some of my earnings through government taxes in order to attempt to collectively solve the problem of unwanted pregnancies. (How many times does it take, telling a teenager to wait, and if you just can't wait then you'll be in big trouble if you don't put on that Jimmy-Hat, before the message finally sinks in and they do it? 42 times? Give me a room full of teenage boys, a power point show, and Carte Blanche to swear and scare the bejesus out of them, and I'll show you a room full of teenage boys frightened of what will happen to them if they go unprotected into unfamiliar territory).
I love the fact that you, as detractors (not the readers - your're awesome) of the much-vaunted "Change" we're all talking about, totally disagree with me. I love you for it, since I know it isn't easy to disagree with practically everything being talked about. I was there myself for many years recently (still am in many ways), and some people who have really high moral ideals for this nation have actually been there in a place of screaming minority for the entire history of this country. And, were they to live forever, some tiny little minority of people would always rail against the status quo, whatever it may be, because nothing is ever perfect. Justice, fairness, wisdom, civilization; these are all words that are redefined every moment, every year, every era, and every age as the world stage keeps changing. So, you disagree with me, and refuse to engage the new dialogue, and are continuing to say and believe things that are old irrelevant ideas - fear of the "enemy", mistrust of a government purported to be Of, By, and For the people, blindness to out of control military expenditures - old and comfortable ideas for you, old and detestable for me. So you hate the idea of political correctness, and can only see socialism as an evil thing from rhetoric past. So you mock and deride those who pledge to support new collectivist ideas. I'm sorry you don't see how zealous individualism has enrichened our lifestyles while destroying our way of life, but enough of us have reached that conclusion now that we're going to act on it, whether you like it or not. We won't take away anything you have right now. We won't stop you from doing anything. We just want to stop borrowing time, money, resources, and clean air from our great-grandchildren. This country must live within it's means ASAP, but if all you really want to do is Jet-ski, you're more than welcome to continue.
The actions I take as a progressive will be voting, organizing, writing, talking, and most of all, critically thinking about our collective problems and our collective solutions. I apologize in advance if I fail in any of these duties, or if you are harmed in my haste to correct injustices.
Forgive me for I am being long winded, but such length of commentary is inevitable in the age of exponential information; with so damn much to talk about, it's no wonder reading is getting so boring. Then again, maybe that is just the effect of constant comparison to video. Crash! Boom! Fanfare! Hardly could the meditative imagination of books compare with the flickering lights in the long run.
Speaking of which, there was a great great book I once read called "Four Arguements For the Elimination of Television." I'd dare to say that if it wasn't already in the book, that T.V. will be the demise of literature should be Arguement Number Five. T.V. is like crack for the somnambulant mind. Like in Idiocracy, only unreasonable people truly believe the world should conform to their particular worldview, are willing to let the world come to them, and somehow this ends up empowering idiots to breed like rabbits (hence, since the human race is numbering billions, we're clearly an unreasonable people). But, I try to take the magnanimous view: bunnies are cute and fuzzy, and all they need is the right environment to educate them enough to prevent their own demise. Really all the heaviest of the heavy breeders need is some lessons in Biology and Comparative Religions/Comparative Ethics from the right teacher. As always, a little bit of algebra can show why exponential population growth invariably leads to chaos, destruction, and basically Armageddon for life as we know it.
Oh, and all this recession business: don't panic. As human beings, all we have to do is make sure everyone gets fed, watered and sheltered (which by the way, we are more than capable of doing without any money whatsoever if we actually put our minds to it and got to work on it) and everything else will take care of itself. Stuff is just stuff, and economies are just the numbers of stuff that stuff is happening to which affect your ability to have stuff, do stuff, and make more stuff. So stuff the stuff, focus on the bare essential stuff, and stuff will take care of itself. Just don't panic; you don't have to be afraid of losing your stuff.
Currently reading the Universal History of Numbers. It is a forbiddingly detailed tome of the simplest of all things: counting. Meanwhile, Carey is counting the days until summer break releases her from work bondage, albeit noble work.
At this point, anything more than one or two days might seem practically uncountable to a pre-historian and defaults to the next natural counting stage after one or two; without being able to say one or two weeks, solely relying on days, everything larger than the first one or two might just seem as "many" and indistinguishable from each other to a human born of a culture before this last 1% of Human History; before language regimented math theory in the decimal system (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9, and last but ironically not least 0).
While the awesome power of counting hundreds and millions of years (or dollars, or cars, or glasses of orange juice) we can count gives us a mental capacity to absorb at least the mere order of Human History (if not it's complexity of content), I find it interesting to ponder how qualitatively different today's humans feel about "the meaning of life" when our approach to infinity is so much less mysterious than that of our ancestors. We have a logical definition for infinity, whereas they viewed the cosmos through the naked eye and unindoctrinated heart. Did they take it for granted that the sun would rise and set every day? Does the fact that our scientists inform our culture that the sun will burn on for billions of years - more significantly, that we have a number for that - change the experience of watching a sunrise?
Is that why Douglas Adams was so brilliant for suggesting that the answer to the question of "Life, the Universe, and Everything" is 42? Does he suggest that the answer is meaningless without understanding the question, and simultaneously point out how quantitative precision trades off with qualitative vision in a human mind which graduates towards one direction or the other as the mind develops in childhood? Were Neanderthals spiritual geniuses who eventually became shamans?
Lastly, I'll add to that last little idea by saying this: if we can count precisely the number of people in the world who don't have food, shelter, or water (let alone liberty and the pursuit of happiness that the Great Statue on Liberty Island holds her torch as a beacon of), does that precise count somehow lessen the qualitative psychological understanding and feeling of the sheer volume of suffering that such a precise number may represent? Are we committing a sin in the artificial intelligence that we recieve in the form of numbers, when significant dimensions of the data - the qualitative meaning of it - are lost by and large by a T.V. audience nation? Is FOX and everyone else morally detestable for purporting to hold valuable information that satifies our duty to understand what is going on in the world, or is the failure of most modern media just another way of reminding us to be vigilant in our attention to detail and our active pursuit of the truth, constantly showing us where we are weakest and how to proceed to victory by the items they omit from their broadcast messages?
Here is a brief message I wrote to President B.H.O. and Co. regarding www.healthreform.gov.
The question they ask is "Why do we need health reform this year?"
If you need to be convinced of WHY we need health reform, then you probably also think Saddam had something to do with 9/11 and there is no hope for you or your children in the long run. Sorry.
Far more important is what to do about health care reform, and health and well-being reform. The latter is a matter of the public being informed of it's own self-interest through education and a comprehensive locally sustainable farm movement across the whole country (indeed the world). Unfortunately, status quo agribusiness will block any political effort through lobbying. Ergo, we just need to teach the kids how to garden, and rely on age-old, mostly free techniques (call it blood, sweat, and tears, or call it the "old-fashioned" way). At the very least, make sure every child attending school in America receives a fresh, nutritious, and delicious breakfast and lunch (otherwise most of the money poured into public education is truly wasted on minds that can't learn too good).
The Health Care System, being tied to our semi-free market economy is pretty simple to fix (again, if it weren't for the lobbyists and pig-headed behaviors of politicians - no offense). Subsidize medical school loans for med students, but only in the broadest of specialization fields - General Practice, etc. Additionally, provide federal grant money to attend college for doctors and nurses who take lower paying clinical and relief work (encouraging rewarding careers as altruistic healers of people who normally drive up the cost of the system, and increasing the number of doctors which is key to making medicine cheaper - they can live without the Beemer's and the country clubs will lower their prices if membership gets too low).
Lastly and most importantly, we must do whatever it takes to make sure that ninety-nine cents of every dollar spent on health care is used to pay for the actual health care received, not the administration and profit-taking thereof, otherwise everyone is screwed - even rich people. Health Care is a right. Some different ways to accomplish this would be: open a can of Anti-Trust Whuppin' on insurance, drug, and medical care companies, pass that law you've been talking about making it illegal to deny coverage for prior conditions, mandate collective bargaining for everything from drugs to MRI's and cancer treatments (sorry private industry, you've abused us so long that the system won't correct itself until we abuse you for a little while - trust me, this little shot in the arm won't hurt a bit *wink); basically just give the people who make profit on health care seem just as bad as war-profiteers (which people used to care about) and give the industry hell until it covers everyone reasonably or until they fail. If the private sector cannot provide health insurance on these terms, then capitalism has failed us in that arena and another solution must be found. Technically, if we found ourselves in such a tight spot where capitalism didn't do the job, we might try asking, say...ANY OTHER INDUSTRIALIZED COUNTRY IN THE WORLD to see how they do it. At that point, no matter what they say, it will be a better solution than anything the free-market can produce.
Alternately, you could quit spending money on war and arming the world through weapon sales. Then we could afford all kinds of social reforms that would actually help the American Dream thrive, instead of ever increasing the number of depressed and violent Americans. Despite all evidence to the contrary, if we stop building bombs, we won't all die of terrorism (a little bird told me that ridding our homeland of weapons of mass destruction will actually prevent terrorism on a global scale - you figure that out for yourself.)
Good luck with your task. I hope you are a far better person than I to be able to solve such a dilemma.
Sincerely and audaciously-hopefully,
Phillip K. Bunker
Anchorage, AK
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Friday, March 27, 2009
Critique of "The Winnable War" by David Brooks
[Critique of]The Winnable War
Khyber Pass, Afghanistan
Readers' Comments
Readers shared their thoughts on this article.
I came to Afghanistan skeptical of American efforts to transform this country. Afghanistan is one of the poorest, least-educated and most-corrupt nations on earth. It is an infinitely complex and fractured society. It has powerful enemies in Pakistan, Iran and the drug networks working hard to foment chaos. The ground is littered with the ruins of great powers that tried to change this place.
Afghanistan has been the playground of power for thousands of years and we know a lot about it. I take exception to the portrayal above, if nothing else than on the grounds that it is vague in details in a journalistic kind of way, and the rhetoric supports the status-quo (most favored current foreign policy direction) which always puts me on my guard. I'd just ask what measures are used to determine "poorest, least-educated and most-corrupt."
Furthermore, is the society being "infinitely complex" any different than any other society? Additionally, is the society fractured or "infinitely" fractured. Which of these fractures or which of the infinity of fractures is the "it" referred to as having powerful enemies in Pakistan, Iran and the drug networks? Lastly, we were one of those great powers, and without otherwise being proved wrong, I'd say presumption in this situation leads to every indication that the "great powers" that were in power to use Afghanistan in a proxy war, are still more or less in charge today (the proxy of the proxy who leads the proxy-ing). At least cursory examination is required:
From Wikipedia:
Afghanistan (pronounced /æfˈgænɪstæn/[4]), officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country that is located approximately in the center of Asia. It is variously designated as geographically located within Central Asia,[5][6] South Asia,[7][8] and the Middle East.[9] It is bordered by Pakistan in the south and east, Iran in the south and west, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan in the north, and China in the far northeast.
Afghanistan is a crossroads between the East and the West, and has been an ancient focal point of trade and migration. It has an important geostrategical location, connecting South and Central Asia and Middle East. During its long history, the land has seen various invaders and conquerors, while on the other hand, local entities invaded the surrounding vast regions to form their own empires. Ahmad Shah Durrani created the Durrani Empire in 1747, which is considered the beginning of modern Afghanistan.[10] Subsequently, the capital was shifted to Kabul and most of its territories ceded to former neighboring countries. In the late 19th century, Afghanistan became a buffer state in "The Great Game" played between the British Indian Empire and Russian Empire.[11] On August 19, 1919, following the third Anglo-Afghan war, the country regained full independence from the United Kingdom over its foreign affairs.
Since the late 1970s Afghanistan has suffered continuous and brutal civil war in addition to foreign interventions in the form of the 1979 Soviet invasion and the recent 2001 U.S.-led invasion that toppled the Taliban government. In late 2001 the United Nations Security Council authorized the creation of an International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). This force is composed of NATO troops that are involved in assisting the government of President Hamid Karzai in establishing the writ of law as well as rebuilding key infrastructures in the nation. In 2005, the United States and Afghanistan signed a strategic partnership agreement committing both nations to a long-term relationship. In the meantime, multi-billion US dollars have also been provided by the international community for the reconstruction of the country.
Government and politics
Politics in Afghanistan has historically consisted of power struggles, bloody coups and unstable transfers of power. With the exception of a military junta, the country has been governed by nearly every system of government over the past century, including a monarchy, republic, theocracy and communist state. The constitution ratified by the 2003 Loya jirga restructured the government as an Islamic republic consisting of three branches, (executive, legislature and judiciary).
Afghanistan is currently led by President Hamid Karzai, who was elected in October 2004. The current parliament was elected in 2005. Among the elected officials were former mujahadeen, Taliban members, communists, reformists, and Islamic fundamentalists. 28% of the delegates elected were women, 3 points more than the 25% minimum guaranteed under the constitution. This made Afghanistan, long known under the Taliban for its oppression of women, one of the leading countries in terms of female representation. Construction for a new parliament building began on August 29, 2005.
The Supreme Court of Afghanistan is currently led by Chief Justice Abdul Salam Azimi, a former university professor who had been legal advisor to the president.[58] The previous court, appointed during the time of the interim government, had been dominated by fundamentalist religious figures, including Chief Justice Faisal Ahmad Shinwari. The court issued several rulings, such as banning cable television, seeking to ban a candidate in the 2004 presidential election and limiting the rights of women, as well as overstepping its constitutional authority by issuing rulings on subjects not yet brought before the court. The current court is seen as more moderate and led by more technocrats than the previous court, although it has yet to issue any rulings.
Moreover, we simply do not know how to modernize nations. You mean we don't know how to mind-control sovereign nations' populations to make them economic colonies with pliant business partners, right? Western aid workers seem to spend most of their time drawing up flow charts for each other. They’re so worried about their inspectors general that they can’t really immerse themselves in the messy world of local reality. They insist on making most of the spending decisions themselves so the “recipients” of their largess end up passive, dependent and resentful.
This bit makes me wonder what Western aid workers he is referring to, and why he's painting them as exactly what most Western foreign policies seems to involve. We all know that the U.S. has had the option as a superpower to make practically any policy. Until our business partners became powerful enough to tell us differently, our GDP soared because of our relative position of power in the world. I'd claim that the events listed in the official record have more to do with difficulties in Afghan diplomatic relations than any wanker of largess at large with some flow charts.
Every element of my skepticism was reinforced during a six-day tour of the country. Yet the people who work here make an overwhelming case that Afghanistan can become a functional, terror-fighting society and that it is worth sending our sons and daughters into danger to achieve this.
Our definition of terror and Afghan perceptions of terror probably have unique differences, and I'm not sure we should send our sons and daughters anywhere to help create a "terror-fighting society" (does he really say we need to build jails in Afghanistan? Is that even a reasonable foreign policy goal, or just an opportunity to profit from asserting control over a sovereign population of human beings?)
In the first place, the Afghan people want what we want. They are, as Lord Byron put it, one of the few people in the region without an inferiority complex. They think they did us a big favor by destroying the Soviet Union and we repaid them with abandonment. They think we owe them all this.
1st: this 1st point, as Lord Byron would have put it when (egotistically superior) Britain controlled the Afghan people, is ferociously and infinitely vague or at least too far from being "infinitely complex" that it may be in fact laughably simplistic.
That makes relations between Afghans and foreigners relatively straightforward. Most military leaders here prefer working with the Afghans to the Iraqis. The Afghans are warm and welcoming. They detest the insurgents and root for American success. “The Afghans have treated you as friends, allies and liberators from the very beginning,” says Afghanistan’s defense minister, Abdul Rahim Wardak.
My skepticism leads me to ask, for every Afghan that has treated us "warm and welcoming" how many aren't - what is the ratio? I'd like to know.
Second, we’re already well through the screwing-up phase of our operation. At first, the Western nations underestimated the insurgency. They tried to centralize power in Kabul. They tried to fight a hodgepodge, multilateral war.
2nd: Coalition forces may learn how to fight wars better, but violence isn't going to learn to solve problems better. An impressive leader would know that.
Those and other errors have been exposed, and coalition forces are learning. When you interview impressive leaders here, like Brig. Gen. John Nicholson of Regional Command South, Col. John Agoglia of the Counterinsurgency Training Center and Chris Alexander of the U.N., you see how relentless they are at criticizing their own operations. Thanks to people like that, the coalition will stumble toward success, having tried the alternatives.
When militaries stumble along, people die.
Third, we’ve got our priorities right. Armies love killing bad guys. [Two sentences previous are Non-sequiter and morally repugnant]. Aid agencies love building schools. But the most important part of any aid effort is governance and law and order. It’s reforming the police, improving the courts, training local civil servants and building prisons.
Why the sudden shift from talking of military to talking of aid - are they the same things? Are we writing checks to warlords to buy powerful friends? I mean, we've done it before.
In Afghanistan, every Western agency is finally focused on this issue, from a Canadian reconstruction camp in Kandahar to the top U.S. general, David McKiernan.
Fourth, the quality of Afghan leadership is improving. This is a relative thing. President Hamid Karzai is detested by much of the U.S. military. Some provincial governors are drug dealers on the side. But as the U.N.’s Kai Eide told the Security Council, “The Afghan government is today better and more competent than ever before.” Reformers now lead the most important ministries and competent governors run key provinces.
Everything is relative, including your definitions of drug dealer, improving, better, and competent.
Fifth, the U.S. is finally taking this war seriously. Up until now, insurgents have had free rein in vast areas of southern Afghanistan. The infusion of 17,000 more U.S. troops will change that. The Obama administration also promises a civilian surge to balance the military push.
Does this refer to U.S. military (who would naturally be taking the only other war on the table other than the doomed Iraq war seriously) or the U.S. public (who voted for change - from war to no war - not from war to another war), or the U.S. political leadership (who are made up of politicians). Worse yet, I challenge Obama to tell us what the hell a "civilian surge" is.
Sixth, Pakistan is finally on the agenda. For the past few years, the U.S. has let Pakistan get away with murder. The insurgents train, organize and get support from there. “It’s very hard to deal with a cross-border insurgency on only one side of the border,” says Mr. Alexander of the U.N. The Obama strategic review recognizes this.
6th - Pakistan has been on the agenda, we just like India a whole lot better until Osama and Co. ran into the Pakistani hills and the cowboys of the executive branch tried to get after him.
Finally, it is simply wrong to say that Afghanistan is a hopeless 14th-century basket case. This country had decent institutions before the Communist takeover. It hasn’t fallen into chaos, the way Iraq did, because it has a culture of communal discussion and a respect for village elders. The Afghans have embraced the democratic process with enthusiasm.
Apparently Iraq has no culture of communal discussion or respect for village elders, and furthermore that must be why Iraq went so poorly. I'm all for protecting emerging democracy but the rhetoric surrounding using "military and civilian power to promote democracy, nurture civil society and rebuild failed states" is the exact same rhetoric that has justified the business of killing human beings since the beginnings of rhetoric. Critics and average readers beware.
I finish this trip still skeptical but also infected by the optimism of the truly impressive people who are working here. And one other thing:
After the trauma in Iraq, it would have been easy for the U.S. to withdraw into exhaustion and realism. Instead, President Obama is doubling down on the very principles that some dismiss as neocon fantasy: the idea that this nation has the capacity to use military and civilian power to promote democracy, nurture civil society and rebuild failed states.
Foreign policy experts can promote one doctrine or another, but this energetic and ambitious response — amid economic crisis and war weariness — says something profound about America’s DNA.
It says we still exhibit the DNA traits that animals all have - we kill each other for the mutual benefit of the survivors. Hopefully America rises above its profound DNA to live up to some profound ideals of peaceful, prosporous dialogue without mass violence.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
If Only They Were Song Lyrics
From Wikipedia.org
Teddy RooseveltConservationist
In a speech that TR gave at Osawatomie, Kansas, on August 31, 1910, he outlined his views on conservation of the lands of the United States:
— "Conservation means development as much as it does protection. I recognize the right and duty of this generation to develop and use the natural resources of our land but I do not recognize the right to waste them, or to rob, by wasteful use, the generations that come after us. I ask nothing of the nation except that it so behave as each farmer here behaves with reference to his own children. That farmer is a poor creature who skins the land and leaves it worthless to his children. The farmer is a good farmer who, having enabled the land to support himself and to provide for the education of his children, leaves it to them a little better than he found it himself. I believe the same thing of a nation.
— Moreover, I believe that the natural resources must be used for the benefit of all our people, and not monopolized for the benefit of the few, and here again is another case in which I am accused of taking a revolutionary attitude. People forget now that one hundred years ago there were public men of good character who advocated the nation selling its public lands in great quantities, so that the nation could get the most money out of it, and giving it to the men who could cultivate it for their own uses. We took the proper democratic ground that the land should be granted in small sections to the men who were actually to till it and live on it. Now, with the water-power, with the forests, with the mines, we are brought face to face with the fact that there are many people who will go with us in conserving the resources only if they are to be allowed to exploit them for their benefit. That is the one of the fundamental reasons why the special interests should be driven out of politics.
— Of all the questions which can come before this nation, short of the actual preservation of its existence in a great war, there is none which compares in importance with the great central task of leaving this land even a better land for our descendants than it is for us, and training them into a better race to inhabit the land and pass it on. Conservation is a great moral issue, for it involves the patriotic duty of insuring the safety and continuance of the nation. Let me add that the health and vitality of our people are at least as well worth conserving as their forests, waters, lands, and minerals, and in this great work the national government must bear most important part."[citation not included for purposes of, and clarifying within, the outermost vis-a-vis respect and regard to...ahhhhh...brevity.]
And, one might say, it makes me think about the biggest industry blocks in history (at the time) that Teddy broke up, or at least what that anti-trust debacle eluded to that may or may not exactly be relevant today, or had been for our parents, and our grandparents also under the industries weight in lobby; and will be again relevant to our children unless we've given over to some consensus on what reasonable amount of hard earned dollars should be spent on weapons of war, legions of bureaucracy, advertising and media, and less and less on the grassroots our tax dollars were meant to nourish. Given the wakefulness and duty we've had to shoulder in our own lives, it seems too taxing to toy with; balderdash, we say, I'll go my own way.
But, in the end, our history somehow boils into: we've been here together, we're here together now, and one day we'll all be gone together, and the rest is up to us.
If you're liberal, be liberal, and think like a forest instead of a tree. If you're conservative, be conservative and think like the shepherd who makes his staff from the tree. But for all of our sakes, just don't let anyone else tell you what "being conservative" means AT ALL, otherwise you risk acting like a buffoon, duped into the con-game of misinformation and while you're saying one thing, the people you vote for will actually be doing another thing. Be a democracy and do the things that democracy does. Run forests, run.
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