THE ONLY WOKE PERSON ALIVE

  Mark Twain gets credit for the quote; “If you have nothing to say then say nothing.” That’s where I’ve been stuck for some time now. I should be writing but my muse has been silent and I seldom get past the 2nd paragraph before the idea dies on the vine. All I want to do today is try to process what I’ve read and listened to since last week’s mid-term election and writing is the best way for me to do that. I hope I can keep this relatively short and to the point.

According to the experts, millions of former Trump supporters vented their disapproval and anger upon the President himself, the MAGA agenda and his corrupted disregard for the rule of law. I’ve been sitting on that same disapproval and anger like a chicken sitting on an egg that won’t hatch. I’ve been holding my breath for the past decade as if I were the only “Woke” person alive. There is nothing to be gained by me rehashing what expert commentators have already posted. For the past week my wake-ups have been met with renewed hope.

On my YouTube feed MSNBC and CNN are having a field day and as I understand it, Republicans and their media junkies are keeping their heads down waiting for the smoke to clear. In March of 1945 Hitler was holed up in Berlin in his bunker with a handful of loyal aides while his generals in the field were trying to hatch their own plans to survive the inevitable. Some escaped to Argentina while others had to bite the bullet. The message in Washington is not all that different. High ranking Republicans are looking for ways to cushion their fall without being punished. VP Vance has done little things to distance himself from the beleaguered narcissist but too much too soon is no better than too little too late. The timing is critical and  the rats are lining up to abandon ship. 

My state (Missouri) has turned from blue to purple to red in my lifetime. I attribute the swing to LBJ’s part in passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964. At the time southern Democrats were socially conservative and blunting the tradition of Jim Crow persecution of people of color was too much of an insult for Democrats there and they flipped over to the GOP in a heartbeat. I’m not an expert but I am comfortable with that observation. Missouri has 8 seats in the House of Representatives. Traditionally, 6 of those rural seats have been filled by Republicans and the other 2 from urban working class Kansas City and St. Louis, both by Democrats. 

When Trump told Republican governors to Gerrymander their voting districts in favor of Republican candidates for this year’s mid-term election our Governor (Mike Kehoe) went along, realigning boundary lines. It would split up districts with strong Democratic history so they couldn’t win in November. The likely outcome would be 8 Republican representatives and 0 Democrats strengthening Trumps control over the House of Representatives. The Governor of Texas was set to do the same thing with a lot more seats to juggle than Missouri had. But then the Governor of California fired back that if Texas did Gerrymander against Democrat held districts that California would respond in kind. At the end of the day Texas Democrats won 4 of 5 spots up for grabs and California flipped 5 Republican seats into the Blue column.  Reflecting on last week’s results, in spite of Gov. Kehoe’s complicity the  traditionally Blue districts in St. Louis & Kansas City reelected Democrats. In keeping with the Blue sweep, a formerly Red district voted a Democrat into office making the measure 7 (Red) and 3 (Blue). 

For at least a decade my confidence that America would make a course correction and demonstrate a measure of clear-eyed conscience was beaten down so that I gave up, stopped pushing back. I remember being told that there were only 2 things you should never-ever worry about; those things that you control and those things you do not control. It begs a chorus of Bobby McFerrin’s “Don’t Worry, Be Happy”. I’ve also been advised, “The world is broken, you didn’t brake it, you can’t fix it. But you can be the best person you can possibly be, do unto others, be the change you want to see and find the joy.” I want to think this past week has given us all a flash of clear-eyed conscience and the idea of becoming the best person I can possibly be is something I can work on. 

I don’t think it matters how long it takes for Trumpism to lose its appeal but it will. Still, when the next charismatic, authoritarian, narcissist bullies his/her way into power we may very well find ourselves again trying to find the tenacity and courage to say “No” and then “Hell No!” People who are vulnerable to that kind of wannabe populism are like the children in the fairytale, The Pied Piper of Hamlin. The piper rids the town of a plague of rats with his magical music but the people refuse to pay him. So the piper lures the town’s children away with seemingly magical music from his pipe and the town never gets them back.

Kris Kristofferson recorded “Silver Tongued Devil”in 1971 and here I am 55 years later trying to shed light on another agent of deceit and self aggrandizement, enriching his own wealth and power at the expense of his devoted followers. I’ll not labor the lyrics here but I do recommend (if anyone cares) google it on YouTube and listen closely. If it isn’t a foreshadowing of DT then it’s close enough not to matter. 

Tomorrow’s a new day and things are looking up. 

TRUST THE SCIENCE

  I cannot speak for others my age, or any age for that matter. I trust science much more than tradition or common sense or what I was programmed with when I was young. So saying, I need to define science before I can speak to it. First, Science needs People, without them forces and matter would still operate as they do. But unobserved and unquestioned they would just be force and matter. Second, there needs to be a Process that organizes information, considers possible cause & effect relationships and draws conclusions. Last and most important, to some extent that information has to be transformed into a Product that can take the form of new or better knowledge itself or a useful application of that knowledge such as a tool or article that serves a purpose. 
People, Americans in particular, want facts and truth that are absolute, that will be true for ever; and they want it now, right now. But that’s not how science works. Universal truth is the business of philosophers who frame their understanding to match their beliefs and beliefs are too many for them all to be true. Likewise people frequently if not always bring a bias to significant questions as to what is true and what is not. We are inclined to believe what profits us or what we want to believe. In the 1950’s & 60’s every research university that received support from the tobacco industry proved conclusively that smoking was harmless to smokers. The rule of thumb for researchers is that you must disregard any bias (preconceived notion) that might skew your process in favor of one outcome or another. Neither wisdom nor Belief rely on unbiased peer review in the vetting of their conclusions. 
One can think of it as good science vs. bad science. Set up an experiment that will yield results that are both credible (measures what it claims to measure) and reliable (can be repeated over and again with the same results). Bad science may be driven by profit or passion or random strokes of misinformed incompetence. Pure research would have, should have us, “Do the math, check your math, use credible-reliable methods and go where the numbers take you.” But doing science is expensive and research universities need sponsors to help underwrite the costs. Unfortunately sponsors can be (often times are) motivated by profits in the marketplace. The politics of that arrangement generate opportunities for bad science and it is what it is. But even then, I trust the Science. It can take a lot of time for good science to trickle down through the peer review process but in the long run good science does prevail. 
Astronomer Carl Sagan wrote, “We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.” He went on to observe that living in that kind of dependency has the potential for devastating outcomes. Ella Al-Shamahi, a prominent British paleoanthropologist & evolutionary biologist explains that human (brain) biology has not changed in over 20,000 years; that 99% of our history is evolved to a hunter-gatherer society. Modern technology has arrived in just the latest fleeting moments of our species timeline and our bodies and instincts are stuck playing catch-up with a modern world. 
Between Sagan and Shamahi I get it. Two of the most credible scholars in recent history come at the same dilemma from different points of view and present the same qualified reservations. They’ve done the math, applied proven logic and meet at the crossroad. I am an old man, something I allude to more often than I care to admit. With that I’ve had a long time (in human years) to weigh and measure this human journey. With enough experience I have grown comfortable with big numbers, 20,000 years of reflecting on our beginnings and the long backstory my prehistoric ancestors left in their fossilized remains and artifacts. We are Super Social animals and we truly need each other. Born with the need to share time and space, to care for one another and be in community. But there is another side to the human personality. We also dwell with competitive, hostile, selfish, greedy nature and the two-sided ‘Self’ has to navigate that impasse.
This has been a rambling reflection; I blame it on old age and the acceptance of my human condition. I prefer cooperation to competition and affection to malice. The difference between being #1 or being #10,000 is irrelevant. When our sun goes super nova and glows red the earth will vaporize leaving no fossils, no artifacts, nothing to speak of. But my story and myself; it is real and we were here.

NOT HERE TO JUDGE

  Today is Thursday but every day is special; my mother would say today’s the day the Lord has given us, Eleanor Roosevelt would say it’s a gift - that’s why they call it the present. I think it special because I woke up this morning and that’s not nothing. It’s the day I usually volunteer with the HOT (Hunger Outreach Team) at All Souls Unitarian Church. Whenever I mention my church I feel the need to qualify that identity. Collectively we are secular humanists who focus on human behavior and what we truly believe will be manifest in what we do. However one does or does not address God or gods in their spiritual practice is their own business. On Thursdays a group of us from All Souls and a couple of other organizations meet to prepare and distribute a fresh meal and bag lunches that can be saved for another day. We fix food at the church and serve hungry people at a public park in Kansas City, Missouri. That’s today and I’ve got about an hour before I head that way. 
Depending on the season and the weather we serve from 150 to 250 folks every Thursday who are, for whatever reason, food insecure. Some are homeless, others can’t hold a job but there is a tangible reason they will go to bed hungry tonight if someone doesn’t share what they have and that’s us. Some of the hungry are regulars, show up every week. Some are the dregs of society with little or no hopes of repairing what it is that’s broken. They’ve all come up short for one reason or another but we’re not there to judge. 

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Just after 8 p.m. getting home from kitchen cleanup at All Souls. The feed went well but every time out is a new adventure. It’s been hot, really hot for the past week and everyone is stressed a little. The park where we usually feed was reserved for an Irish Fest, street blocked off and a big crowd. Across the street diagonally and up a block there is another smaller park with no place to park so couldn’t take all the vehicles. So we went over the curb and set up under a tree, set up tables and arranged a serving line. Most of our customers were milling around the Irish Fest, not knowing where or if we would show up. At 6 p.m. it was in the mid 90’s. Our ragged people started trickling over from the crowd up the street. The meal was really good; I was serving pasta salad that was loaded with cherry tomatoes, black olives and cheese cubes. Along with that was french fries, curry chicken with chick peas and chopped green veggies. I sampled the leftovers before we packed up to leave. 
Leftovers were consolidated and back in the van, serving tables folded and in the truck when a medium size black man, maybe 40 came up to me. He was late, couldn’t find us and hadn’t eaten all day. His clothes all fit and he wasn’t carrying any belongings. That may not have meant anything but at least he wasn’t carrying an oversized backpack or dragging a bicycle or grocery cart. I had several protein snack bars that had spilled out of a brownbag sack-lunch and gave them to him along with a water bottle I had picked up for myself. He was polite and well spoken, thanked me for the food & drink and sat down in the shade.
Around 7:00 a clean up crew shows up at the church to help us unload. Shortly after we arrive two or three people are ready for doing dishes, pots & pans. They determine what can be repackaged and served on the Saturday feed and what goes in the garbage. When I pull out of the parking lot the sun is low, I need my headlights and it’s still 90 degrees. It’s a good job. It needs to be done and I can do it. I’m not a self-righteous bigot who thinks they are qualified to judge people who cannot meet their own needs, that they get what they deserve. I am one of those people who know that sh*t happens and it does not discriminate. I believe the three most important choices we make in our lives (all of us) are; choosing our parents, choosing our teachers and the neighborhoods we grow up in. I believe that this life is a crapshoot from the start and the cards we get are the only cards we get to play. That’s it; still really hot and it’s been a long day.

HATE THE BASTARDS

In April of 1962 I was 22, fresh out of the army working nights at an entry level grunt job in a factory for $ 2.72/hr. It wasn’t a bad job, not sitting at a machine assembling pieces and parts which it very well could have been. I got to walk around, pick up and clean those parts, put them in boxes and deliver them to quality control. John F. Kennedy was President. To say he was a rich man’s son would be a dreadfully serious understatement. Like previous rich men’s sons in that office, the Roosevelts, Teddy and FDR; he aligned himself with ordinary people and a greater good which infuriated the barons of big business. 

In April of ’62 JFK was embroiled in a battle with the Steel Industry. He had just pressured steel workers to sacrifice with a modest pay raise for the sake of holding down inflation. The steel companies followed with a significant price increase to their customers which gave the appearance that JFK had conspired with big business against the union and its workers. The President’s response was captured in a private conversation which of course was leaked to the press. In so-many words he shared what his father had told him about businessmen, that they were all a bunch of bastards; that he hadn’t believed it before but this changed his mind and punctuated his feeling with, “I hate the bastards.” 
At 22 with little more than 3 years of rigid military conformity and a few months of swimming in corporate conformity I was more like half-baked bread, almost ready but not quite. But now, 65 years later I have most of the puzzle pieces in place. I learned how important trade unions were for us in my growing up and how the teacher’s union protected my family’s best interests. The biggest problem with trade unions is, in order to succeed they’ve learned to fight fire with fire. Union leaders and members are willing to adopt the same underhanded dealings and deceitful schemes that the Business stereotype had employed from the beginning, the Bastards. 
This story may be a stretch and I may be overreacting but then it’s my story. My garage door broke last week and I couldn’t park my truck inside. I googled for businesses near me that do that work and started calling. On their websites I noticed the absence of their address, only that they serviced my town. I asked  if they did in fact repair broken garage doors and whether or not their business was located in my zip code. It didn’t seem to matter who I had on the other end, male or female, scheduler or the guy driving the service truck; all I got was vague answers. All they wanted was my address and a request for service. I’m full of questions, it’s my nature and nobody I talked to wanted to answer my question about where their business was located. I like to hire local people. It keeps local money in the community and I get a local name and face to go back to if need be. It’s not uncommon for the voice on the other end and myself to argue and be confrontational and I don’t like being that way. But they want to charge me for a $75 service call when they make an estimate, even if I don’t hire them. They say, “We have to pay our drivers.” I reply, “My time is as valuable to me as yours is to you. I have to spend valuable time waiting for your service tech to arrive and you tell me it will be sometime (sometime) that afternoon. If he runs late then so do I. My time is valuable too so I’ll pay you for the service call after you pay me the same amount for me having to wait.” I don’t have to elaborate on how those conversations end. I got my garage door repaired but neither of us were happy and the tech was grumbling as he left.
Going back to JFK’s off the cuff remark, my mother told me there are two different sides of business. One is where you give someone the business which is to exploit the vulnerable person/group so you maximize your gain at their expense. The other end of the business is the vulnerable person/group who is being exploited, getting the business. The underlying rule is; maximize profit, whatever it takes, whatever you can get away with. And yes; Bastards is a good fit.
True, individuals and groups of individuals can vary greatly to the extent of how accommodating or how manipulating they are pursuing Business. People like myself would prefer the two doing business to view themselves as equals trying to meet the other’s need in a mutually beneficial transaction. It seems to me the fewer individuals involved the easier it is to be collaborative; in the end you  all have to feel validated for it to succeed and 2 is a much more accommodating number than sales, supervisor, manager, purchasing, president and board of trustees. The farther one is removed from the interface the easier it is to fall back on Bastard behavior. 
Think of it as a game; the formal game is called “Zero-Sum”. For Zero-Sum to work there has to be a winner and with that distinction there has to be a loser. Without a loser there can be no winner. In each case the competitors knows their role in the outcome. If you cheat and win it’s still a win. The opposite game is called “Non-Zero-Sum”. Rather than competing in a winner-take-all interaction they can negotiate terms of agreement. The perfect outcome is a “Win-Win” where both sides give up something in return for a concession on the other’s part. 
I have been taking my vehicles to the same shop for scheduled services for so many years I can’t recall; oil change, rotating tires, safety inspections, etc. I’ve done the math and don’t see how he makes a good return on my business. While I’m there they check things that aren’t included in the description on the receipt. By now the owner and I are on a first name basis and he is genuinely interested in my travels. His shop employs 6 or more techs, a bookkeeper and an assistant. It’s a rare day when he doesn’t have to turn work away because his plate is full. 
When something goes wrong with my truck that one of my mechanical sons can’t get to or is too big a project for them, John (the business owner) works me into the schedule as soon as possible. I understand that return customers are like vegetables in the garden; if you don’t cultivate them they die on the vine. John knows that too. I think of it as a “Win-Win” game or maybe just Paying It Forward but we both benefit and the cost of playing that game is worth it. 
I’m afraid JFK’s father was right, if anything has changed since 1962 I don't know what it is. The Bastards are still bleeding the public and the ordinary people still being exploited.
 

FOUNDING FATHERS

  Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950) was a highly accomplished American poet, playwright and author. I’ve borrowed from her many quotes before. My favorite is; “It's not true that life is one damn thing after another; it's one damn thing over and over.” I’m feeling that (one damn thing-thing) now when I write. Most every time the voice inside my head pushes my buttons and I start fretting over things I don’t control, like Edna’s one damn thing. So I throw a few words at the page in self defense. Then, sensing a dead end ahead I hit delete and walk away, do something I do control. 
In 1776 the Founding Fathers had no idea how their struggle against England would turn out. They didn’t want to start a revolution but with no tangible rights and oppressive conditions in the colonies, they felt compelled to push back. Long story short; bullets were fired, England responded with bullets and more Red Coats and we had a revolution that dragged out for 8 years. The battles are well known but the process of creating a government gets largely overlooked. 
All 13 colonies sent representatives to the Continental Congress from which the Declaration of Independence emerged. To be sure, they  were not common folk, all influential white men of means with much to lose if they failed. Every colony considered itself more of a micro-nation rather than an integrated state in a grater body. Freedom from British oppression was their common cause but they didn’t trust and didn’t like each other. The difference in both the culture and economy between North & South created a stumbling block for a united nation to emerge. The cold, rocky North was suited for small farms, industry and lumber while the South had large tracts of tillable land and a warm climate suited for plantation agriculture. The resulting dichotomy explains the distrust. They all wanted freedom from England but they couldn’t agree on what freedom should look like.
In the North, Freedom was measured out primarily to men of means with land or property and a pathway for upward mobility. In the South, Freedom would be reserved for white men who owned land or property. There would be a path for upward mobility but it would be observed within a tightly structured, elite, white aristocracy. Without slave labor the plantation system would collapse under its own weight. African slaves transported to the colonies had for over a century been considered to be subhuman, the property of white men, not unlike domesticated animals.
In order to frame a constitution that could be approved in congress the language had to be vague and indirect. They kicked the can down the road for the next 80 years until it wouldn’t kick and we fought the Civil War. So far this piece draws from common knowledge but I do have a bias and opinion that will spill through.
Reconstruction was meant to emancipate former slaves but it failed. Vigilante intimidation and violence (Jim Crow justice) was measured out against newly freed blacks with little or no effort to find perpetrators. Jim Crow ruled in the South for the next century until the Civil Rights Act passed in 1964 but even now, racist policies and practice have been systematically normalized in public actions. 
I am disturbed but not surprised that after two & a half centuries our national government is still divided in a two party system where counterparts neither trust nor like each other. While their issues may have changed the math is the same; we all love America but we don’t want to live together in the same country. Slavery has taken a back seat to competing systems of government. The controversy is framed by whether or not or to what degree we preserve a a self-righteous tradition of the rich getting richer and the poor staying poor. I’m not saying that the South’s slavery driven culture has evolved into conservative politics but if it quacks and looks like a duck; just sayin’.  The underlying truth prevails; Everything is legal as long as you don’t get caught, the legal system protects the wealthy from the poor and poverty is the reward for stupid, lazy people. Times change but the fundamental snag is the gap between healthy ambition and unmitigated greed. Power and material wealth are after all, interchangeable; one begets the other.
Liberal ideology recognizes the group’s interdependence. Individuals need willingly sacrifice some of their own Best Interests for the sake of the collective (Culture). Conservatives do not like that idea; they say, “I got mine, you get your own!” They believe one must  take care of meeting their own needs. If they cannot, then they suffer the brutal consequences, sacrificed to the god of greed. Most people demonstrate both behaviors and things usually find a working balance. But not everyone can live with balance and the rub comes determining where to draw the line between winners and losers.
Of the Founding Fathers the names that pop out are Washington, Jefferson and Franklin. After they won the war their greatest fear was that the new nation’s government would reinvent the British monarchy or some other form of fascism where power was concentrated in a ‘Strong Man’ authoritarian who would concede to ego and greed. They created checks and balances in the constitution; two different bodies of legislators, three branches of government Executive, Legislative & Judicial, so power was divided. Still, the Later Greeks (Plato) perceived a fundamental flaw in democracy (self rule). “ . . . it allows people to elect poor or dangerous leaders.”
As I see it Plato’s fears were shared by Thomas Jefferson in particular and they are being realize in America now. I share those fears but I don’t control anything. I am concerned but my voice doesn’t raise even a tiny ripple in a minuscule puddle. Like many others of my generation I take comfort in the fact that my life story is approaching its conclusion and even the super-rich narcissist who’s calling the shots cannot undo my backstory. From Bunker Hill in 1775 to 2021 and the January 6 attack on the Capitol, Americans have been using poor judgement or no judgment at all choosing leaders. Adolph Hitler was a hero until he wasn’t and his collaborators either perished with him or found a rock somewhere to hide under. 
I’m too old to immigrate, nobody wants poor old foreigners  tapping into their economy. At this stage abandoning my family and network of friends would be nothing more than spite on my part. So I can’t run away and denial doesn’t solve anything. I still want to take the high road which, as I see it, models an old axiom that I take to heart; Be the change you want to see. I can’t change the world but I can leave some fingerprints behind. My writing may suffer but then again, maybe not. If I can dwell on possibility instead of the ugly side of human nature, then the words might come easier. Edna was clever but she gave up too soon. 

THE PAST 300 YEARS

  I’ve been writing some but when I come back to it the next day it doesn’t measure up. I don’t delete it but neither does it belong in the blog. Sometimes I post articles that have no legs. Still I keep throwing words at the page in the hope it grows into something that does have legs. I got a text message from my daughter in law; “if you want to hate the world watch the news and if you want to love the world then travel in it”. I already share the sentiment but it’s nice to have someone agree. I don’t watch the news, didn’t need her advice. But I go. I don’t think of myself as a traveler, that suggests to some extent planning, expectation and adequate resources. I just go; something to do with being in motion, curiosity, meeting people in their culture and finding a niche. I hope I never lose that appetite. 
Leon Trotsky was instrumental in the Russian Revolution (1917) He said; “Old age is the most unexpected of all things that happen to a man.” To be more concise he was lamenting the rapid passage of time and the ironies of this life. Unlike Trotsky my aging out has not been unexpected, I’ve seen it coming for decades. The irony is, to my way of thinking, I’ve seen enough and weighed cause and effect transactions to my satisfaction. I’ve compared my observations to what others believe. From training and experience I challenge what I think is correct and what I want to believe until it either collapses under its own weight or it rings true. The irony is that I am confident now in just about everything that is worth knowing or believing but no one cares. I’m just an old man. Times have moved on and my contribution is perceived as irrelevant. In reality I am aware of my shortcomings, I don’t really know all that much but it’s enough.
‘Perception’ is the process of organizing, identifying and interpreting sensory information. That's how we understand the world, our culture & ourselves. The process translates raw sensory data from the five senses into meaningful experiences. I don't get to experience reality, all I get are perceptions. Millions of neurons turn data into ideas and understanding but we are unique individuals. We can be in the same loop and come away with different perceptions. Is the barking dog going to play or bite? It depends.

If this sounds like navel-gazing then that is your perception but by my sense it’s where the rubber meets the road. For nearly a million years small clans of hunter-gatherers practiced a culture that was predicated on cooperation and peaceful resolution of differences. A single life in the clan was too precious to risk unnecessarily and you had to be able to carry everything you owned. Material wealth and political power were yet to be and fighting didn't meet the need. That culture went unchanged for nearly a million years. In the last 10,000 years (+ or -) civilization has evolved, changed rapidly in culture and technology while the human animal has not evolved noticeably if at all. Experts, real-deal, bonafide experts are concerned that we now have technology and machines that can replicate brain function in certain skills and tasks much faster, more reliably, and more efficiently that our outdated Hunter-gatherer brain. As this phenomenon unfolds the implications are scary at best.
In this old man’s irrelevant view it suggests something about human nature. Since the introduction of civilization (cities, farming, war, etc.) creative problem solving, advances in tools & weapons, machines, etc. have accelerated exponentially. In large part those advances have been manifest in the past 300 years. Considering all of the factors involved, humans do very well with creating things that work for the culture and civilization at large. But we haven’t advanced Human nature to favor a more efficient, peaceful, cooperative culture. Humanity seems obsessed with a win-win, zero sum culture that profits from tribal prejudice, intimidation, violence and ultimately war. That was deadly enough when weapons were spears and bullets. But powerful nations now have weapons of mass destruction and the danger is global rather than local. 
My perception is that the world is becoming more and more ugly with lust for power and material wealth more appealing than noble hyperbole about democracy, freedom and peaceful cooperation. I remember when willing sacrifice for the greater good was considered a virtue but now who ever has the biggest penis calls the shots. 
With this post I have shared stuff that I’ve always kept to myself. I do so at risk of being dismissed as an irrelevant old man but if I want to be perceived at all it’s a better choice than trusting squeaky clean, mundane old-man chatter. I know there are much younger, much better educated, more eloquent, truly expert sources who write books and I read those books. Collectively they have expressed the same concerns that I have noted here. At the end of the day I don't have much faith in intelligence to save us from ourselves and certainly none in humanity to evolve an improved human nature. That is how I perceive things. 
I’m heading out on a roadtrip in a few days. I speak just enough Spanish that I’m concerned I’ll be pulled over by masked ICE agents and sent to a concentration camp. I say that out of my hate for what the news conveys. By the time I see my daughter in law my disposition will hopefully have improved. 

THERE IS A CRACK

  I read somewhere that an adventure is any ongoing experience where you have at least some control with the possibility of a good outcome as well as the risk of something not so good. The adventure could be anything from skydiving to trying to finish mowing the yard before it rains. Helen Keller told us that life is to be lived courageously rather than passively when she wrote; “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.” I wish I had that kind of insight. Eleanore Roosevelt is often credited with; “Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery but today is a gift. That’s why they call it the present.” I like that. It's the only time I can put my hands on it. Eckhart Tolle wrote a tiny-little book, ‘The Power Of Now’ . The book begs awareness that clock/calendar time is a man made device to organize human activity. But Tolle hits us over the head with the stark realization; time is a fluid dimension that propels us through the human experience but nothing ever happened in the past nor will it happen in the future. Everything happens in the moment, the present. That would be now, right now. For the sake of clarity it can be a few seconds, minutes or even hours depending on the situation but once it has moved on there is no going back. I imagined the metaphor; traveling by train, watching the world go by but the train never stops. The view outside changes as the action moves from present to the past and into what had been the future. You can’t take a 2nd look the way a movie director shoots the scene again and you cannot experience the flashing lights of the Railroad crossing until you and the crossing are in the same moment.
Certainly Tolle wants to sell books and get people into his workshops but it resonates with that same sense of urgency Helen Keller spoke to. Time is precious, don’t waste it, be prepared. That fleeting, fluid moment carries us along with it whether we like it or not and if you’re not paying attention,  a ‘Daring adventure’ might lose its luster and be experienced as, ‘Nothing at all’. 
I spend a fair amount of time (frequently) thinking about people like Helen Keller and Eleanore Roosevelt and how their life experience translates to the rest of us. They’re not the only ones, I could make a long list but they are a great place to begin. When it comes to taking refuge in ideas and understanding I keep a huge collection of quotes. I default to them the same way my mother read her bible. My heroes are like life coaches who council me through the wisdom they leave behind. I would rather dwell in their shadows than bemoan my culture’s dive into unmerited hubris and lust for power. So I avoid both news and social media. In Leonard Cohen’s song ‘Anthem’ there is a line; “There is a crack, a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” That’s how I get my news. By then it’s old news and like standing water it finds its own level. 
I just finished watching a four part Netflix series; FDR. What stood out was exactly what the producers wanted us to understand, that  the 32nd President was driven by an unlikely array of circumstance and experiences that made him both a lightning rod of controversy and beloved at the same time. Born into a politically powerful family, vested in social status and great wealth it would seem likely for him to follow his uncle Theadore into politics as a Republican. But he married a strong-willed woman who championed the underclass. At 39 he was struck down by Infantile Paralysis (Polio) leaving him crippled for the rest of his life. 
FDR was able to win the Presidency but his physical limitations gave him a perspective that most Republicans could not identify with. He could not dismiss the way people fall victim to events and forces beyond their control. When the working class and underclass needed help, they needed help.  He would not follow the party line where government was organized to benefit big business, banks and the rich and they hated him for that. Factor in the Great Depression and WW2; he pushed social reform, the New Deal, etc. His wife worked relentlessly to advance women’s rights and their gainful employment. Between them his administration was viewed as a dictatorship by rich Republicans and as a savior by ordinary people. Some of the same schemes we attribute to the DT administration were employed by FDR. The big difference is that FDR was driven by a sense of duty. Growing up in the Roosevelt legacy it went without saying, "Those blessed with advantages, wealth, or power hold a proportionally greater responsibility to serve others." The Trump legacy is an altogether different story, one of unquenchable ego, self obsessed avarice and a case of self righteous narcissism. 

    The framers of the Constitution agreed on the principle of; ‘Liberty & Justice for All’. But from the very beginning Federalists modeled British aristocracy with centralized government, national banks that were ruled by the few; when they said "All" what they really meant is us (just us) the rich & powerful few. Over time Federalists evolved into Republican Conservatives but their interpretation of "All" is still double-speak for the privileged few who rule. FDR changed the rules by embracing the underclass and now, nearly a century later the powerful-rich are still cursing his name.