The People

We the People of the United States,

in Order to form a more perfect Union,

establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility,

provide for the common defence,

promote the general Welfare,

and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity,

do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

The People, thus capitalized, is a powerful two-word phrase rather unique to the United States. Not only is it documented in this Preamble to the Constitution, but also in Lincoln's powerful Gettysburg address when he emplores, 'of the people, by the people, for the people..." Carl Sandburg wrote, "I AM the people--the mob--the crowd--the mass..." La Liberté guidant le peuple, "Liberty Leading the People" by artist Eugène Delacroix, inspired the Statue of Liberty.

There is a delicate dance that must be performed between a democratic government of, by and for The People and other forms of governance. Communism, as history shows, often becomes just as corrupt as right-wing dictatorships. It's much like the Goldilocks tale of balance: "not too hot, not too cold."

It's always difficult to play the middle when the extremes are so much more comfortable. Parenting, for example, is much more challenging from the center than at the two extremes, which is why parents often gravitate to one of the extremes.

So too with governance. Frequently, "The People" become the victims of overarching political schemers. The vision that Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, Adams, Hamilton, Jay and Washington dreamed for this new nation was pure and unblemished. Surely, they were not altogether ignorant of the possibility and probability that this virgin government would be repeatedly raped by men who had their own personal agendas and ambitions. These so-called Founding Fathers had to know, deep in their souls, that this quest for a government of The People would soon be challenged, compromised, by aggressive men who would use their power for specious purposes.

And so it has been, over these 233 years. Nauseously, every four years, we hear of yet another a new plan, a new set of promises, a new line of verbiage which promises that The People will be better served through this or that set of politicians. We are often hoodwinked. Our dreams deferred.

Perhaps a government of, by and for The People is surreal. It may only exist in theory. The innate human quest for dominance, power and greed may trump this ideal. Fantasy posing as reality.

America as Pimpmobile

The essence of our nation, on this eve of the celebration of our birth, is solid. We were born out of a yearning to be independent of tyrants- huddled masses longing to be free. Our Declaration of Independence says it all; our Constitution defines our essence: an egalitarian self-governing system of social order. Of course, it had to be amended as social ideals and values mollified as our history unfolded.

As a people living in this newly formed, and quite unique experimental vision of governance, it was understood that our Constitution was a dynamic, living document that ought to reflect the common interests and the common good of The People.

The People were to be served. The People ought to decide. Not a tyrant, not a clutch of ideologues. For centuries, our European relatives suffered miserably under both. America was born of a new vision for The People.

Yet, as with all good ideas and good intentions, the miscreants in society saw an opportunity to carve their own agendas and their own personal values into this burgeoning virgin government. And they still do. They have their own pimps in government positions all across this land- shysters who work for an agency, a business, a narrow political agenda. Not for The People.

Presently we see them hard at work in Congress to maintain the current system of medical insurance companies rather than a simplified and egalitarian low-cost insurance plan. We watch them support the oil, gas and coal industries, working against both our environment and our economic welfare. They chip away at the foundations of our public school system. They support the mining and logging companies at the ruin of our public lands. They block environmental safeguards for the benefit of big business. Others are hard at work attempting to instill religious beliefs and values onto The People.

For the past six years, we have witnessed perhaps the most egregious and flagrant imposition of personal-agenda-meddling in our government of all time when the small knot of neocons, with their own vision of World Order, were able to convince an American president to invade a foreign nation on specious allegations. The Iraq War will, no doubt, be chronicled in our history books as the moment when our national Common Good was bastardized. The stain of that highly parochial decision by the President and Congress ought to persist in our collective memory for a while so that we might learn from such a corruption of American idealism.

The People were pimped, plain and simple. Not just pimped, but propagandized with petty Patriotic fervor- a most irreverent blasphemy of our national pride. The flag, symbol of all that we stand for, was waved before our eyes, obscuring the dastardly plans of that small clutch of ideologues, the neocons. We have blood on our hands- a stain that is difficult to remove. We ought not rush to wash it clean lest we wipe our memories in the process.

The essence of America, its fight for independence, the visions of the Founding Fathers, the writing and amending of the Constitution, the Flag, and all of the trimmings associated with our American government might be used as a metaphor with a car. I do not wish to trivilize the importance of this message by suggesting that we look at an automobile for comparison, yet that image struck me as to what might happen to our nation, what in fact has happened to our nation, when in the hands of those described above. The attempt to add on layer upon layer of personal belief, parochial thinking, narcissistic ideals and deviant political meddling might transform our nation, that car, into the obtrusive, individualized concoction displayed above.

Of course, everyone has the right to customize and individualize one's own automobile. But not one's own nation. A nation ought to be left unadulterated. Alterations thereof only at the behest of The People, by The People and, most importantly, for The People.

Long-lasting Propaganda Effects

I was in a conversation yesterday with a young teen from Mississippi while the two of us were doing some work for his grandfather here in Toledo. "What did you-all think of the war?" he asked me. "You mean Iraq or Afghanistan?" I questioned. "The one about 9-11, you know, Saddam and all," he said. Puzzled and curious, I asked him, "What does Saddam have to do with 9-11?" His answer should not have surprised me, but it did. He said, "Saddam and that other dude in the mountains planned that attack on us!"

His dad is a Marine Reserve who never traveled much out of Mississippi until he went to Iraq. Obviously, his dad believed all of the Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rice propaganda, especially the Iraq/9-11 linkage that was carefully juxtapositioned in each of those speeches as well as those of George Bush. Lots of Americans believed the bullshit wrapped around Patriotism and our lust for vengeance. Emerson warned that when we are blinded by Patriotism we ought to explore the cleanness of our hands and purity of our hearts. I wonder even today whether we have done that.

Most Americans these days have come to realize what some of us knew bang-off: it was a stinking piece of propaganda to convince the citizens of this nation to support the neocon's principle of preemption for a New World Order. The South, on the other hand, has been slow to admit that they were, in fact, bamboozled. Their Patriotism, their love of the military, blinded them. And even today, the residual effects of the propaganda fester, like salmonella on a warm afternoon.

After yet another attempt to set the lad from Mississippi straight on the facts of the Saddam non-involvement, he then asked the most important question, "Then why DID we invade Iraq?"

Yes, son, why did we? The naivete of youth. Surely there were other youth in other lands in other times who asked a similarly pointed question of the elders. No doubt, the German children must have asked in the years following Hitler's demise, "Opa, warum hat das deutsche Volk glauben, Hitler?

Indeed, why?

The answer, my son is because there have always been scoundrels and miscreants and egomaniacal despots who have risen to power, who lacked the wisdom and moral fiber required of them to lead their people carefully. History books detail their bloody misadventures and the subsequent abuse of the young men.

When will we ever learn? Perhaps never.

The Evolution of God

The New York Times Book Review featured Robert Wright's newly released book, The Evolution of God. Newsweek's Lisa Miller and Andrew Sullivan in TimesOnline have written other reviews of this book and excerpts of each chapter are found on the website, EvolutionofGod.net.

'God has mellowed,' begins NYT reviewer, Paul Bloom. He continues, ' The God that most Americans worship occasionally gets upset about abortion and gay marriage, but he is a softy compared with the Yahweh of the Hebrew Bible. That was a warrior God, savagely tribal, deeply insecure about his status and willing to commit mass murder to show off his powers. But at least Yahweh had strong moral views, occasionally enlightened ones, about how the Israelites should behave. His hunter-gatherer ancestors, by contrast, were doofus gods. Morally clueless, they were often yelled at by their people and tended toward quirky obsessions. One thunder god would get mad if people combed their hair during a storm or watched dogs mate.'

Bloom goes on, 'In his brilliant new book, “The Evolution of God,” Robert Wright tells the story of how God grew up. He starts with the deities of hunter- gatherer tribes, moves to those of chiefdoms and nations, then on to the polytheism of the early Israelites and the monotheism that followed, and then to the New Testament and the Koran, before finishing off with the modern multinational Gods of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Wright’s tone is reasoned and careful, even hesitant, throughout, and it is nice to read about issues like the morality of Christ and the meaning of jihad without getting the feeling that you are being shouted at. His views, though, are provocative and controversial. There is something here to annoy almost everyone.'

'To annoy almost everyone.' Excellent! People need to be annoyed, but not preached to. I'm thinking of presenting the topic of this book, God has evolved, to the next session of our book club. Rather than pick a book, as we have always done, at the next meeting we are to present a topic upon which to chew and perhaps find a collateral book to accompany the topic. Apparently this book is high on the list.

Surely author Robert Wright has 'annoyed' the funny fundamentalists with his title which includes the ever-volatile word, evolution. Further, and equally annoying, he suggests that the man's concept of 'god' ought to be an ever-changing process. Judas Priest!

The older non-fundamentalist Christians and Jews might wrinkle their noses at this second suggestion- that their 'god' is in flux- and find that idea difficult to grasp. Long ago their idea of who 'god' is and what his characteristics are were solidly cemented in their mind. I feel sorry for these people who have built up a fortress of belief to surrounding themselves and do not wish to entertain anything new or different. I especially think of the old ladies at daily Mass who rattle their rosary beads during the service; who are we to insist that they take a fresh look at the concept of God? If they are happy with all the accoutrement surrounding their religiosity, let them be.

Rather, it would be a worthy task to enlighten the young and those who are open to new ideas as well as the skeptic who long ago walked out of church in disgust and distrust.

Paul Bloom continues, 'Wright makes it clear that he is tracking people’s conception of the divine, not the divine itself. He describes this as “a good news/bad news joke for traditionalist Christians, Muslims and Jews.” The bad news is that your God was born imperfect. The good news is that he doesn’t really exist.'

'Wright also denies the specialness of any faith. In his view, there is continuous positive change over time — religious history has a moral direction — but no movement of moral revelation associated with the emergence of Moses, Jesus or Mohammed. Similarly, he argues that it is a waste of time to search for the essence of any of these monotheistic religions — it’s silly, for instance, to ask whether Islam is a “religion of peace.” Like a judge who believes in a living constitution, Wright believes that what matters is the choices that the people make, how the texts are interpreted. Cultural sensibilities shift according to changes in human dynamics, and these shape the God that people worship. For Wright, it is not God who evolves. It is us — God just comes along for the ride.'

I like that last line, '...it is not God who evolves. It is us-God just comes along for the ride.' This is where the fundamentalist gets mired in the past and whose feet become cemented. Their 'god' is the Jewish god of 1000 BCE. He has little or no relevance to the 21st Century. We humans have changed over those three millenia and, as the author suggests, are much more interrelated and interdependent than that provincial, war-like Middle Eastern tribe. The god of the Israelites was a parochial, insular god who 'served' the people of that time and that minuscule spot on this immense planet. To conceptualise that this god, in our time, and in this place, has any relevance to 21st century Americans is at best dim and at worst dangerous- dangerous because it puts the trivial land of Israel as the epicenter of this 21st century world. And we all know what blood and treasure has been spent with that concept.

Bloom goes on, '“When people see themselves in zero-sum relationship with other people — see their fortunes as inversely correlated with the fortunes of other people, see the dynamic as win-lose — they tend to find a scriptural basis for intolerance or belligerence.” The recipe for salvation, then, is to arrange the world so that its people find themselves (and think of themselves as) interconnected: “When they see the relationship as non-zero-sum — see their fortunes as positively correlated, see the potential for a win-win outcome — they’re more likely to find the tolerant and understanding side of their scriptures.” Change the world, and you change the God.'

The John Lennon hymn, 'Imagine' comes to mind, especially when he imagined, 'And no religion too.' and 'the world will live as one.' Wright says that the next step in this evolution of god [following the advice of John Lennon] is for practitioners of Abrahamic faiths to give up their claim to distinctiveness, and then renounce the specialness of monotheism altogether.

Whoa! Can you imagine that? Can you envision a people giving up the 'my god is better than your god' scenario? They'll be lots of kicking and screaming and more lethal forms of resistance to that. Lots of excommunication and expulsions ahead [as if that really matters any longer].

The review ends with this statement: 'Also, it would be a terribly minimalist God. Wright himself describes it as “somewhere between illusion and imperfect conception.” It won’t answer your prayers, give you advice or smite your enemies. So even if it did exist, we would be left with another good news/bad news situation. The good news is that there would be a divine being. The bad news is that it’s not the one that anyone is looking for.'

That's really bad news especially for those launch-pad christians awaiting rapture. There they stand, looking upward, awaiting the UFO that will carry them to Paradise, when, in fact, paradise is under their feet.

Surrounded by a Bunch of Old Men

Last evening my wife and I spent the evening in the company of a group of old men and their wives. I had warned my wife before we arrived, "I won't recognize anybody." And I was correct. Fifty years ago these old men and I walked across the high school stage and were handed our diplomas. We didn't look like teenagers any more. Time does terrible things to one's body. Twenty were already dead.

There were conversations about bypass surgery, stents, enlarged prostates and other sordid topics that I recall my older relatives discussing after Thanksgiving dinner long ago. Yet, these were my classmates, those energetic, narcissistic and optimistic fellow graduates who I last saw in June of 1959.

No one looked the same as that small photo glued to our name tags. When approaching someone, each would quickly glance at that 18-year-old graduation picture, before speaking. "Bill! nice to see you." "How are you, Harry?" "Remember 4th period study hall?" "What ever happened to Jim Smith?"

Surely, each of us, had we been brutally honest, would have said, "Damned, Bill, you sure don't look like that photo stuck on your shirt; what the hell happened to you?"

Fifty years of gravity, stress, sun-exposure, and careless health choices had made their marks. It was clear- we were a bunch of old men. Nonetheless, we were a jovial lot throughout the evening, telling tales of our classroom misadventures and rating our teachers. "I hope he's burning in Hell!" was a common phrase said about one of our history teachers. I may have been the first one. He really was a bastard. Lots of sentences began, "Remember when...?"

Tales of another time, another world. Kennedy was just a senator and the Washington Senators were customarily at the bottom of the American League standings. Jim Bunning a pitcher for the Tigers, and no one then thought he's become a U.S. Senator. No one had walked on the moon; no one had a cell phone or a PC. Typewriters and White-out for errors. 'Mack the Knife' "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" and "Stagger Lee" on the new transistor radios. Studebakers, DeSotos and Packards in our driveways. TV's were tuned to Rawhide, Bonanza and, of course, American Bandstand. Two new states, Alaska and Hawaii. The word 'astronaut' entered our conversations as did Cape Canaveral. Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and the Big Bopper go down- the day the music died. Doris Day and Connie Francis and, of course, Annette Funicello lit our fires. Some cigar-smoking revolutionary named Castro topples the Cuban regime. Here in Toledo, the St. Lawrence Seaway opens to bring international ships to our city. Our youngest sisters have Barbie Dolls in their bedrooms and our girlfriends might be wearing pantyhose. Two monkeys were shot into space and a far-distant place on earth called Vietnam began to catch our attention.

Ancient history to our grandchildren. Just yesterday for us.

Little did we know, as we gathered those 50 years ago for photographs with our classmates and family, how our world would would change and, in fact, define us . We were at that ripe age that kings, dictators and other political miscreants sent off to foreign lands to fight the old-man wars- for glory, greed and vengeance. The killing fields of Vietnam awaited us. Vietnam would forever both define and scar this graduation class. Some would return in body bags; others with life-long PTSD.

Who knew, in that summer of '59, that America would fight another war? Our dads and uncles had just come back from Japan and Germany, and our oldest cousins from Korea. Surely we thought, in our naivety, that our generation would be smart enough to avoid yet another war. Our new and young president would not ask us to go 'over there' and fight 'the enemy,' would he? We had college and marriage and careers ahead of us, not another war. Surely not our generation. Surely not us.

A Goat For Azazel

If we modern-day men slew an occasional goat, would we feel better about ourselves and the condition of our lives? Did the act of casting a goat off of a cliff those eons ago actually wipe men's hard drives clean and cleanse their psyche? If so, perhaps we ought to create a new holiday here in America: National Scapegoating Day. It would, naturally, be another excuse-to-drink holiday that we love to celebrate here.

In all of those historic, mythical-searching strands of time, there was apparently a 'need' to periodically purge oneself of both guilt and fear, especially fear of the unknown, the unseen, and the spirits that haunted both the world and underworld.

Psychologists have recently begun to talk about memes- a postulated unit or element of cultural ideas, symbols or practices, and is transmitted from one mind to another through speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena. Wikipedia notes this about memes: Theorists point out that memes which replicate the most effectively spread best, and some memes may replicate effectively even when they prove detrimental to the welfare of their hosts.

Do men pass on the goat-meme to their sons? Have men, in fact, been crippling future generations for Milena by passing down a meme that has proven detrimental to the welfare of their hosts?

So why do modern-day American men need to purge? Surely we are no longer afraid of demons and devils from the netherworld. Nor evil spirits. And, as science daily unravels for us the 'mysteries' of life for us, surely we modern men are less afraid of those once-esoteric, cryptic mysteries. The Boogieman is no longer in our closets.

It seems to me that American men are an angry lot and growing ever-more-so. This economic crisis, as the newspapers report, has brought about even more family and spousal abuse cases. Shelters are overflowing. Men are shooting people more and more these days- another of those detrimental to the welfare of their hosts memes that rampantly festers like salmonella in the summer heat.

Some Christians believe that they have discovered a man, 'a pure suffering one,' who would be sacrificed to rescue mankind from its fear and hopelessness, one who would release them from the anger of the Father by taking that anger upon himself, one who would offer an example to lead human minds into a new truth, a new attitude about the world and their place within it. He would be an example to show how they could relate to one another on a higher moral level, with love and compassion.

The 'anger of the Father' is a curious line. Of course, Bible-ists think that it refers to the mysterious and mystical Man in the Sky. Yet, might this peculiar reference to the anger of the Father connote something altogether more closely related, literally? Why should a loving, good and gracious God have 'anger' as one of His component characteristics? Coincidentally, the History Channel has been advertising a program to be aired this Monday evening titled, Banned from the Bible- a list of books that were too angry, too violent to be included in that book.

War-mongering, fear, hate, bigotry and abuse have characterized the human male ever since records have been kept. The Jesus-as-scapegoat concept hasn't ameliorated the psyche of the American male too very much as our recent history denotes. That' s why I'm suggesting a yearly, perhaps monthly, goat-over-the-cliff ritual for men. A soul cleansing event for and by men, accompanied, naturally, by ritual fire, music, dance and intoxicants. Each town, city and village all across America could build its own special and unique goat-scaping arena, not unlike the sports stadiums of today or the purifying temples of yesteryear.

It becomes more clear each day that American men are not behaving less barbarically than those men written of in the Bible or in history books. American men, and those soaked in the Bible, still cannot keep their pants zipped, are still seen with nooses in their hands, or guns, or clubs. Still have reddened hands from beating their children or wives. Whether politician, preacher, or family man, the reports of men acting in barbaric ways towards others continue to cross the airwaves and the newspapers of America. Men in this 'Christian nation' reflect the same savagery and wild, primitive behaviors that men have always demonstrated.

The Christ-as-scapegoat story has become blase, meaningless and hollow. Some Jewish insurgent, put to death by the Imperial Roman occupiers, doesn't seem to satisfy the modern American male, to satiate his inborn meme that desires retributional sacrifice.

Real goats. Monthly slaughter. Ritual accompanied by fire and chanting, may be a cure for the angry American male.

Stone Age Flutes Found in Germany

A bird-bone flute unearthed in a German cave was carved some 35,000 years ago and is the oldest handcrafted musical instrument yet discovered, archaeologists say, offering the latest evidence that early modern humans in Europe had established a complex and creative culture.

A team led by University of Tuebingen archaeologist Nicholas Conard assembled the flute from 12 pieces of griffon vulture bone scattered in a small plot of the Hohle Fels cave in southern Germany.

Together, the pieces comprise a 8.6-inch (22-centimeter) instrument with five holes and a notched end. Conard said the flute was 35,000 years old.

Conard's team excavated the flute in September 2008, the same month they recovered six ivory fragments from the Hohle Fels cave that form a female figurine they believe is the oldest known sculpture of the human form.

Together, the flute and the figure — found in the same layer of sediment — suggest that modern humans had established an advanced culture in Europe 35,000 years ago, said Wil Roebroeks, an archaeologist at Leiden University in the Netherlands who didn't participate in Conard's study.

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Imagine that, people were listening to and inventing tunes some 35 thousand years ago! What melodies did they play? What kind of scale [if any] did they use? For what events in life was a musical accompaniment attached?

The right brain enjoying the freedom to discover, invent, dream.

To hear how this flute sounded, scroll to the bottom of this link

And we thought that only recently had humankind developed divergent and disparate thinking. Our 'picture' of life back then is becoming more complete with each new discovery. Apparently this cave region in Germany holds a treasure trove of infornation about our distant ancestors. With each new discovery, they seem to have been quite like us in many respects. They found time for art and music, so perhaps their life was not merely survival among the beasts, the weather and other tribes.

God-Pimping Over?

The Party of God, also whoringly known as the Republican Party, has just about run out of proselytizing prostitutes who claim to be the First Born Son of family values. Yesterday, yet one more holier-than-thou GOP politician admitted adultery, or euphemistically, an 'extra-marital affair.' The shock waves from the admission of adultery by GOP Senator John Ensign were not yet spent when the newest 'family-values' politician wept before the cameras. Has former GOP Senator Larry Craig managed to keep his zipper up lately? And what about down in Louisiana? Has the adulterous Senator David Vitter been in bed with any new women since he 'came out' about his 'sexual indiscretions?'

Oh sure, the Dems have their own zipper problems, but members of that party aren't hucksters selling worthless crap to the public election after election. It remains to be seen whether the public will be 'buying' the standard GOP line of bull next November. That God, guns and gays package has lost one worthless piece of tripe, maybe two. Just the guns are left, and definitely, they do love their guns.

Corn, Tomatoes and Peaches

Summer is here at last. It's not the date nor the 90 degree heat. Rather, it's the fruit and vegetables. I rode my bike to the market this afternoon and came home with sweet corn, big fat field-grown tomatoes and ripe peaches. Now I know it- summer is here at last!

It is Clear Why America Rejected John McCain

Most of us were smart enough to figure it out before November last year, but for those who voted the 'party' ticket, here's why 70 million Americans voted for Obama. Yesterday, McCain was asked by a reporter, 'Whose side do you think President Obama is on, Ahmadinejad or the people in the street?' It was a slow-pitch softball question but McCain struck out. He couldn't decide if our president was 'on the side' of the tyrant or the people of Iran.

I guess when he sang, 'Bomb, bomb, bomb-bomb Iran' during the election campaign, many of those seventy million Americans figured the guy out right then and there. Just imagine the horror we would be facing this morning with McCain in the White House. I shutter thinking about it.