The news has been bad all week and the hopes for good news is misplaced at best, worsening as we go. I don’t dwell on the news as I have no control and fretting on it is like the man hitting himself on the head with a hammer. Question; why? Answer; it feels good when I quit. But I am not in denial and I can’t help but chew on that bone from time to time. How else would anybody know (as if they care at all) what I chew on. But I want someone to know and maybe care. I try to be concise but sometimes backstory and spinoffs get in the way.
I tend to question the thoughts and ideas that I want (am inclined) to believe. If my truck pulls to the left when I get on the brakes, that is something I should know and then drive accordingly. When my brain (mind) does that, I should recognize the risk and to think accordingly. That wonderful Human mind, besides its preoccupation with conscious experience it behaves without permission, unawares, it just does. Mostly, that subconscious part wants to feel good and will be less than honest in order to provide the (Mirror-mirror on the wall) experience. Then the BS is easy to digest and all seems well. But nobody wants to here that from me. Feeling good is hard to compete with, consider drugs, smoke, gambling and all the reasons addicts give for not wanting to quit.
If Putin’s war in Ukraine wasn’t enough, Hamas (Palestinian militants) are considered terrorists by western countries bit embraced by Islamic sympathizers in middle east. They decided it was time to wage war on Israel with a Pearl Harbor like surprise attack. So the stage is set for another round of Jihad against Jews. There is blame enough to go around. Israelis are not good at peaceful compromise either but to keep feeding on that bitter pill, one would think they try something different. But ever since Moses and Pharaoh, several thousand years of Zero Sum game, eye-for-an-eye, it’s hard to find a winner. There are no good guys, only bed-fellows. Iran sides with Hamas while the U.S. and most European allies have Netanyahu’s back. A Proxy war is when you get someone who depends on you to fight your battle, in their country, against the friends of your enemy who are stuck in the same predicament (Iran & The U.S.A). This conflict might fall into that category but the experts all put their own complicated, opinionated spin on the story and in the end the world is left again with a lot of blood, death, muddy rhetoric and bravado. I’m sad for innocent victims on both sides.
There is an argument for peace that I’ve been hearing all my life. It goes, Hate has to be learned and if we can break that cycle then maybe peace has a chance. But we can’t sell that package even to our neighbors here at home. Love has to be learned too and that lesson would facilitate peaceful outcomes. Rather than Zero-Sum games where having winners necessitates having losers we should try a Win-Win strategy. With love and peace, Win-Win games skip the hostility with no victims, no prisoners, everybody gains something they want. But Win-Win games fall way short of Winner-Take-All appetites when selfish, aggressive, motivated competitors want everything, they want it all.
For them Win-Win is like kissing your sister. So the nation of Israel got its homeland back after World War 2. God himself had given the land to them several thousand years earlier with no statute of limitations. After WW2 the U.N. granted Jewish survivors most of their historic homeland back. With that act, millions of Palestinians were displaced whose legitimate claim to the same land stretched back for centuries. Evidently their claims did fall under a statute of limitations. Jews & Muslims worship the same god but through different channels. In that context, roughly 80 years later they are still trying to balance the equation with Winner-Take-All tactics except they negotiate with smart bombs and rockets now and the U.N. isn’t any help. Predictably, their leaders (anyone who might be perceived as a leader) are as much or more concerned about expanding their own power and framing their own personal legacies to suit their egos.
But pointing fingers comes easy when you can perch on a self righteous stump and place blame on some (other) shameless reprobate. I’ve been reminded that when you point a finger at anyone, there are three other fingers on that hand pointing back at you. What I cannot deny is that I live in a nation that is both wonderful and terribly flawed in the same breath. The wonderful part is showcased every patriotic holiday but much if not most of that tale stems from several hundred years of Winner-Take-All practice where we won.
Those indigenous people who had sustained in North America for thousands of years before Plymouth Rock or ‘Rockets red glare’ they couldn’t compete with gun powder and technology. They tried to flee or to assimilate but Euro-Americans weren’t having any of that. Native Americans were nearly eradicated by ethnic cleansing and genocide. African slaves were trapped in an evil scheme that propped up an agricultural juggernaut. The horror of slavery has worn thin and is generally dismissed as conditions of the times (denial) and we’ve forgiven ourselves for our forebearers’ indiscretions. Yet, millions of African Americans still suffer under the weight of racism 150 years after emancipation. The good intentions of well meaning white folks are simply piss in the wind, lipstick on the pig. No need for me to expand on the horror of slavery, Jim Crow and popular white supremacy but the unmerited privilege of being white has (never felt better). I can’t change any of it, at best I vent some disappointment and anger, even my anger, toothless as it may be.
Years ago I took the train, ’City Of New Orleans’ from Chicago to N.O. In the gray shadows of early morning we slowed down for a little town in mid Mississippi. Not 50 feet from the tracks I noticed small, unpainted, broken houses with boarded over windows, some with lights on inside. Someone lived there. My first thought was, ‘This could be a time warp back to the slave days in the mid 1800’s.’ I was snatched out of my peaceful sleep by an uncomfortable feeling that would, years later, be rightfully coined ‘White Privilege’. For me and others like me, the unmerited mantle of social, economic and educational privilege weighs uncomfortable and dulls any sense of American Exceptionalism. Mind boggling would be too much to say but it was absolutely, totally sobering. Shame was the feeling, stirred awake to see the poverty of the poorest neighborhood of the poorest town, in the poorest state of my glorious country. I had grown up with the American Dream, that anything is possible if you work hard; and there I was passing through the bowels of that dream. I had been weaned on the idea that poverty was the reward for those who were either stupid or lazy. But I would get my own look at the harsh reality, where taking care of your family while living in poverty is the hardest, most difficult, most disrespected job there is. Some may be able to deny a real, first hand experience with poverty, paint it a soft, pastel shade of blue and imagine the scent of lavender but I can’t seem to get over that hump.
I don’t remember much about that trip now. It included an incoming hurricane and the inconvenience of several families holed up in a high & dry place with downed power lines and not phone. The only crystal-clear memory from that trip is the three or four minutes of train sounds and poverty. It occurred to me in that little window of experience that the people in those pathetic shacks were waking up to the other American Dream. I presumed they were all black and their stupid, lazy fault had been that they were born the wrong color and into poverty.
By definition an (Ism) is a practice, system or ideology where its proponents require their particular beliefs should not only be observed, formalized and taught but also be protected and defended at any cost. Racism, Sexism, Classism, Conservatism, Liberalism, Communism, Socialism, Capitalism; people fall into one trap or another and kill each other with clear conscience and I hate it, I really do. Many if not most people fall back on denial to ease their conscience and take comfort in a prosperity that has been purchased with an evil tradeoff. I just happen to be one of the ones who see through the smoke, who can’t escape the hypocrisy by making believe it isn’t there. With evolution there is neither good nor evil, so long as it keeps on keeping on, replicating and reproducing. So I get to live out the rest of my life in comfortable retirement and grow even older, profiting from policies and practice that I hate.
I tend to question the thoughts and ideas that I want (am inclined) to believe. If my truck pulls to the left when I get on the brakes, that is something I should know and then drive accordingly. When my brain (mind) does that, I should recognize the risk and to think accordingly. That wonderful Human mind, besides its preoccupation with conscious experience it behaves without permission, unawares, it just does. Mostly, that subconscious part wants to feel good and will be less than honest in order to provide the (Mirror-mirror on the wall) experience. Then the BS is easy to digest and all seems well. But nobody wants to here that from me. Feeling good is hard to compete with, consider drugs, smoke, gambling and all the reasons addicts give for not wanting to quit.
If Putin’s war in Ukraine wasn’t enough, Hamas (Palestinian militants) are considered terrorists by western countries bit embraced by Islamic sympathizers in middle east. They decided it was time to wage war on Israel with a Pearl Harbor like surprise attack. So the stage is set for another round of Jihad against Jews. There is blame enough to go around. Israelis are not good at peaceful compromise either but to keep feeding on that bitter pill, one would think they try something different. But ever since Moses and Pharaoh, several thousand years of Zero Sum game, eye-for-an-eye, it’s hard to find a winner. There are no good guys, only bed-fellows. Iran sides with Hamas while the U.S. and most European allies have Netanyahu’s back. A Proxy war is when you get someone who depends on you to fight your battle, in their country, against the friends of your enemy who are stuck in the same predicament (Iran & The U.S.A). This conflict might fall into that category but the experts all put their own complicated, opinionated spin on the story and in the end the world is left again with a lot of blood, death, muddy rhetoric and bravado. I’m sad for innocent victims on both sides.
There is an argument for peace that I’ve been hearing all my life. It goes, Hate has to be learned and if we can break that cycle then maybe peace has a chance. But we can’t sell that package even to our neighbors here at home. Love has to be learned too and that lesson would facilitate peaceful outcomes. Rather than Zero-Sum games where having winners necessitates having losers we should try a Win-Win strategy. With love and peace, Win-Win games skip the hostility with no victims, no prisoners, everybody gains something they want. But Win-Win games fall way short of Winner-Take-All appetites when selfish, aggressive, motivated competitors want everything, they want it all.
For them Win-Win is like kissing your sister. So the nation of Israel got its homeland back after World War 2. God himself had given the land to them several thousand years earlier with no statute of limitations. After WW2 the U.N. granted Jewish survivors most of their historic homeland back. With that act, millions of Palestinians were displaced whose legitimate claim to the same land stretched back for centuries. Evidently their claims did fall under a statute of limitations. Jews & Muslims worship the same god but through different channels. In that context, roughly 80 years later they are still trying to balance the equation with Winner-Take-All tactics except they negotiate with smart bombs and rockets now and the U.N. isn’t any help. Predictably, their leaders (anyone who might be perceived as a leader) are as much or more concerned about expanding their own power and framing their own personal legacies to suit their egos.
But pointing fingers comes easy when you can perch on a self righteous stump and place blame on some (other) shameless reprobate. I’ve been reminded that when you point a finger at anyone, there are three other fingers on that hand pointing back at you. What I cannot deny is that I live in a nation that is both wonderful and terribly flawed in the same breath. The wonderful part is showcased every patriotic holiday but much if not most of that tale stems from several hundred years of Winner-Take-All practice where we won.
Those indigenous people who had sustained in North America for thousands of years before Plymouth Rock or ‘Rockets red glare’ they couldn’t compete with gun powder and technology. They tried to flee or to assimilate but Euro-Americans weren’t having any of that. Native Americans were nearly eradicated by ethnic cleansing and genocide. African slaves were trapped in an evil scheme that propped up an agricultural juggernaut. The horror of slavery has worn thin and is generally dismissed as conditions of the times (denial) and we’ve forgiven ourselves for our forebearers’ indiscretions. Yet, millions of African Americans still suffer under the weight of racism 150 years after emancipation. The good intentions of well meaning white folks are simply piss in the wind, lipstick on the pig. No need for me to expand on the horror of slavery, Jim Crow and popular white supremacy but the unmerited privilege of being white has (never felt better). I can’t change any of it, at best I vent some disappointment and anger, even my anger, toothless as it may be.
Years ago I took the train, ’City Of New Orleans’ from Chicago to N.O. In the gray shadows of early morning we slowed down for a little town in mid Mississippi. Not 50 feet from the tracks I noticed small, unpainted, broken houses with boarded over windows, some with lights on inside. Someone lived there. My first thought was, ‘This could be a time warp back to the slave days in the mid 1800’s.’ I was snatched out of my peaceful sleep by an uncomfortable feeling that would, years later, be rightfully coined ‘White Privilege’. For me and others like me, the unmerited mantle of social, economic and educational privilege weighs uncomfortable and dulls any sense of American Exceptionalism. Mind boggling would be too much to say but it was absolutely, totally sobering. Shame was the feeling, stirred awake to see the poverty of the poorest neighborhood of the poorest town, in the poorest state of my glorious country. I had grown up with the American Dream, that anything is possible if you work hard; and there I was passing through the bowels of that dream. I had been weaned on the idea that poverty was the reward for those who were either stupid or lazy. But I would get my own look at the harsh reality, where taking care of your family while living in poverty is the hardest, most difficult, most disrespected job there is. Some may be able to deny a real, first hand experience with poverty, paint it a soft, pastel shade of blue and imagine the scent of lavender but I can’t seem to get over that hump.
I don’t remember much about that trip now. It included an incoming hurricane and the inconvenience of several families holed up in a high & dry place with downed power lines and not phone. The only crystal-clear memory from that trip is the three or four minutes of train sounds and poverty. It occurred to me in that little window of experience that the people in those pathetic shacks were waking up to the other American Dream. I presumed they were all black and their stupid, lazy fault had been that they were born the wrong color and into poverty.
By definition an (Ism) is a practice, system or ideology where its proponents require their particular beliefs should not only be observed, formalized and taught but also be protected and defended at any cost. Racism, Sexism, Classism, Conservatism, Liberalism, Communism, Socialism, Capitalism; people fall into one trap or another and kill each other with clear conscience and I hate it, I really do. Many if not most people fall back on denial to ease their conscience and take comfort in a prosperity that has been purchased with an evil tradeoff. I just happen to be one of the ones who see through the smoke, who can’t escape the hypocrisy by making believe it isn’t there. With evolution there is neither good nor evil, so long as it keeps on keeping on, replicating and reproducing. So I get to live out the rest of my life in comfortable retirement and grow even older, profiting from policies and practice that I hate.
We paddle in a sea of never ending catch-22s, quandaries, compromises, and tradeoffs straining to decerne and chose the better shades of grey at best.
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