OBAMA PROMISES AMERICA'S DAY!

I recall walking a memorial walk with many African-American students and youths the day after Martin Luther King was assassinated and how we felt and how far away the American Dream of equality and freedom felt on that day. I have been in tears more than once over the past months and days and hours as I witness America's reawakening. I feel, at age 71, as if the America of my youth has returned, those past days when with innocent and hopeful feelings, I believed in the American Way and its hope and promise for the world. These past 8 years I witnessed American leaders who thought nothing of torturing helpless captives, spying on Americans and acting in ways I've always associated with the worst of world leaders. Now those dark days are past, I hope for good.

PHILOSOPHY, RELIGION MUST BE FOUNDED IN SCIENCE

"My truths, three in number, are the following: first, humanity is ultimately the product of biological evolution; second, the diversity of life is the cradle and greatest natural heritage of the human species; and third, philosopy and religion make little sense without taking into account the first two conceptions." —Edward Wilson

Would that make Wiccan religions a place to start? Their connection to the natural world? One day I sat eavesdropping on a coffee shop meeting of Wiccans as they talked about places in nature where they felt natural highs, where they felt connected to nature. I recall driving up onto Mesa Verde one morning at dawn. It was off season and I was alone, looking out over the landscape in a weak sunlight morning. I felt a high, a natural high. A friend who had been born in that region said that all the people in that region felt those connections.

ANOTHER NATURAL HIGH

So proud of America. Its election of Barack Obama to be its president. Gives me hope that many Americans are truly pragmatic and open. When the chips are down, they vote for a man's intelligence and put aside religious nonsense. I know that he did have to pass a religious test but Americans are looking for practical answers to our financial mess rather than at dogmatic solutions to social problems. Isn't that hopeful?

NAV. SEC. BLUNDERS ON OBAMA

"... the feeling that there is a common humanity" even with adversaries "is deep in his own personal experience and his DNA," say Naval secretary Richard Danzig, speaking about Obama in a long past Newsweek I happened upon in my doctor's office today.

Okay! In his DNA? Who made this guy a Naval secretary? What kind of brain numbness does his statement show us? By what evidence can he claim to know Obama's DNA?

Besides the stupidity of such a statement at the surface level is the truth of what underlies it far beyond what a Naval officer actually knows. The truth is, and a very important truth is is, there is a "common humanity" in all of us just by the definition of "humanity". We all share it in common and to the same degree and depth. It is exactly that "shared humanity" that ought to show us humans the way to a world peace that is lasting and satisfying.

It's only when we see someone as an enemy that we forget the common humanity they share with us and begin to dehumanize them. That navy guy is ignorant as cow manure. He does not even realize the important truth that underlies his superficial analysis of Obama's character.

What we need is a world full of people who understand that we all share a common humanity and that if we were them (the other), then we'd see that they are doing just as we'd be doing if we were in their shoes and trying to deal with America's aggressive stance toward the world under neocon leadership. If that navy dupe would only use his own "common humanity" to interpret and understand his enemy's behavior, we'd soon see an end to violence in the world. He's got it all right at his fingertips, but he can't see it because of neocon blinders.

NEOCON GANGBANGERS

It occurred to me this morning as I noodled around in the shower, alternating between bursts of song and thought, that neocons and gangbangers have approximately the same idea about how to "win ? and influence people". If Americans elect Barack Obama as president of these United States, we will gain tremendous respect around the world. Our melting pot promise will once again be fulfilled, but neocons have a different idea about how to influence the world. They want the world to fear America. It's in that wish that one can see the gangbanger influence in neocon thought. Gangbangers talk about "respect" all the time, but as far as I can tell, they mean "fear" when they say respect because it usually accrues to the banger with the biggest gun. It's a typical confusion for emotionally immature children to confuse fear and respect. Nazis and Fascists also confuse those terms. Now... I'm not saying that neocons are fascists. It's just that they think like fascists. Now that wouldn't make them fascists, would it?

CHECK THIS OUT

[cut]
I watch McCain throughout the sermon. When the story is over, he flashes his creepy Count Chocula smile — the same one he pulls out, teeth bared, after his That's not change we can believe in! stump line — but otherwise doesn't react. Everybody on our side of the chapel is glancing over at him.

In a way, this scene says everything you need to know about McCain's dilemma. The man is a relic from a previous era of conservatism, when privacy was sacrosanct and public expressions of religiosity were considered vulgar and in bad taste. McCain comes from a generation of American men for whom religion was a ticket you punched once a week, a low-effort symbol of conformity to go with your two-car garage, your sorority-girl wife and your weekly golf game with the fellas. The whole braying-to-the-moon, born-again Promise Keeper act perfected by the Bushes and Huckabees of the world is as alien to his sensibility as an Iron John man-poetry retreat. Sitting here in the North Phoenix Baptist pews, he has a look on his face like he'd just as well suck a cock as do an altar call. It's one of his most likable qualities.
[paste]

Matt Taibbi really gets into John McCain, but the subtext is a good trashing of Fundamental Xtians and their hold on political power which seems to be slipping. In a way, Taibbi’s essay, in a twist, could be said to backhandedly support poor old John’s attitudes about religion. According to Taibbi, McCain really doesn’t like them, but he’s got to court them, yet he isn’t able to court them. It turns his stomach. Read it for yourself at

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/21896154/without_a_prayer

IT'S BEEN AWHILE

Well, what a day! Today I've been reading my friend's poetry in his latest book, Crazy Stairs. And dipping further into Foreign Affairs magazine for July/August while alternately journaling in my paper journal bits of poetry influenced by Geoff Peterson's work and odds and ends of political and cultural thought entering and exiting my 70 year old leaking brain as fast as they can. There's also more to enter from the Gould book I'm reading, The Mismeasure of Man. I finished Brautigan's book, The Revenge of the Lawn (my bathroom reading these past weeks) and am really disappointed by it. Poor dead suicide. My new bathroom reading will be Art For Beginners by Dani Cavallaro. Well... take a breath... I won't get that all in today, and who'd read it if I did?

BARACK OBAMASERVATION

Barack Obama is a man of the 21st Century. John McCain is a man of the past, a left over jingoist, cold warrior from a dead era. More than anything we need an Obama. If we fail to elect a man of the 21st Century in this next election, America may find itself irrevocably behind and out of the touch with the developing and modern world. I mean, we need more than change, we need someone who in his psyche and very synaptical being is modern. This is it for America. Get with it or get lost. Will the religionists hold America back and multiply its inevitable decline?

Today, Sunday, I passed yet another rich suburban church, it's lot crammed full of SUVs and other gas hogs, i.e. terror supporters. I imagined I was seeing the ancient linkage of the rich and powerful and the church, just as one found them linked in Franco's Spain, pre-revolutionary Russia, and Dicken's England, and currently, Arabia's Imam's and political rulers. The fat ladies are singing all over America. One out of four Americans is now obese. Is the game nearly over? And has America lost it? Or, at minimum, lost the way?

CHINA'S OLYMPIC SPRINT IS NEARING ITS END

As you newspaper readers know, China's international image is supposed to be enhanced by its Olympian effort, but internal and external politics, repression and secrecy have made them to show themselves as exactly what they are, a despotic government, but, strange to say, China's history with the West has made its average citizens extremely mistrustful of our motives. (The imperialist past coming home to roost?) So there's a twist on the old story about empires, dictatorships and democracies that we don't often meet. Read below and weep:

[SNIPPER]
If the Games do not go well, there will be infighting and blame shifting within the party's central leadership, and it will likely adopt a bunker mentality. Vice President Xi Jinping, the government's point man on the Olympics and President Hu Jintao's heir apparent, would likely face challenges to his presumed leadership.

A poor outcome for the Games could engender another round of nationalist outbursts and Chinese citizens decrying what they see as racism, anti-Chinese bias, and a misguided sense of Western superiority. This inflamed form of Chinese nationalism could be the most enduring and dangerous outcome of the protests surrounding the Olympics. If the international community does not welcome China's rise, the Chinese people may ask themselves why China should be bound by its rules. As a result, Beijing may find the room it has for foreign policy maneuvering more restricted by public opinion. [All we have to do is imagine how Americans feel when their national honor is challenged. Stupid, yes, but explained by evolutionary biology? Yes also.]

This is from the magazine I hold in my hand (to your right) from July/August 2008 by Elizabeth Economy and Adam Segal. Damn, I can't get it to turn itself right side around. Well, you'll just have to read backwards or print it out and hold it up to a mirror. No wait, I flipped it upside down, snapped the picture, then turned the result upside down. At least I think I did.
[PASTER]

LAZING AROUND THE UNIVERSE

I had a successful day staying home and saving gas yesterday. Read a lot, watched "The China Syndrome" with Jane Fonda and Michael Douglas. He sure looks funny in that hippie beard, and how I long for another glimpse of Barbarella! I miss the Jane Fonda (and the Holly Hunter, for that matter) before they got saved, but we atheists always have managed to make out okay even when others go crazy with their needs and fall by the wayside into the mental aberration that is the god concept.

Took a walk in the park out behind the apartment complex, up and down its steep hill two times, then into the hot tub followed by a shower (while in the hot tub it rained and what fun to get out of the tub and let the cold rain drench me before leaping back into the hot water), then more reading, then watching the election results come in and listening to Obama's acceptance speech.

What's with Hillary, anyway? It's always interesting to get emails from her campaign which thank me for my support when, long ago, I went over to the Obama camp and informed Hillary's website that I was an Obama voter. This only goes to prove that no politician or politician's representative ever reads an email directed to them. Unless one is a lobbyist with oodles of do re mi to spread around, no one gets in to see his representative or to speak to him/her personally on the phone. I suggest that every politician spend at least an hour or two a week randomly calling and/or accepting calls from the average people he/she represents.

SPEAKING OF OBAMA

I've been thinking a lot about Obama, and he represents, for me, a truly modern man whereas Hillary and McCain represent the past. Funny thing is that I don't want to explain what I mean by a modern man because it'll get him in trouble with those Americans who are still stuck in the last century—for religious folk, it's the 1st Century and before, they're stuck in. So, I'll just say Barack Obama has the look and feel of a modern man suited to deal with the issues of the 21st century.