Reconciliation: 25

Regulations derive from laws. I’m not sure a lot of us understand that. For example, regulations involving the protection of the air we breathe are designed to carry out or protect the provisions of the Clean Air Act of 1970 and the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990. These were signed, respectively, by those famous flaming liberals Richard M. Nixon and George W. Bush. As things are progressing, the current leader of their party is not likely to sign any such laws, but that is a story for another day.

The point is, if we deplore regulations, we should go back to the law that spawned them. In our current examples, they were laws designed to protect the air being used to keep humans, including the newborn, alive. If we don’t think that is a worthwhile goal, we simply need to elect politicians who feel the same way.

Oops. Belay my last.

So that is where my friends on the other side of the political spectrum and I must agree to disagree. I stood on the balcony of an apartment in Los Angeles in 1967 and felt my eyes burn to the point of producing tears. I could only wonder what my lungs were thinking. I like clean air. Sorry.

People calling themselves libertarians might say, well just move to a state where they regulate such things as air quality. I’m afraid they fail to understand, among many other things, that the forces of weather and climate neither recognize nor reflect state boundaries. We’re all sort of in this thing together.

So, I respect regulations while realizing that regulators can and do run amok from time to time. Fining a corporation for not painting, “Do not stand here” on the top of a stepladder seems, to me at least, to deny humankind some small measure of hope for improvement to the gene pool. I believe, along with my conservative friends, that regulations should, from time to time, be forced to fight for their lives, so to speak.

That having been said, what concerns me now is the number of mean-spirited laws being passed or proposed at the national level and state levels. These are not laws designed to protect any aspect of health, safety and welfare, but rather to make a statement that we don’t love—in what seems to me to be in direct contradiction to the words and life of The Galilean—everyone around us.

Further, these laws are neither policy-based nor evidence based. For example, some states are rushing to require drug testing for certain recipients of public financial assistant. Not farmers, corporations, churches, or home-mortgage holders, but food stamp recipients, the vast majority of whom are children.

Meanwhile, according to state data gathered by ThinkProgress, in the seven states with existing programs — Arizona, Kansas, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Utah — statistics show that applicants actually test positive at a lower rate than the drug use of the general population. The national drug use rate is 9.4 percent. In these states, however, the rate of positive drug tests to total welfare applicants ranges from 0.002 percent to 8.3 percent, but all except one have a rate below 1 percent.

The fact is that some of the politicians we have elected lately find it nauseous that we, as a society, should assist “the least of those among us.” Go figure.

As regards drug testing, one recent proposal in particular makes me nauseated: a proposal to require the unemployed to submit to drug testing in order to receive benefits for which they are entitled. Yes, I mean unemployment benefits.

Friends, on November 11, 1970, I was honorably discharged from the United States Navy after four years of service. I had no idea when I might find employment because the draft-dodgers had all the good jobs. So, as a matter of precaution, I filed for unemployment. It was one of the most humiliating experiences of my life, not because of any feelings of guilt, but because of the way they treated applicants.

It turns out that I found a job within a couple of weeks. It didn’t pay much to start but it launched me upon a successful career. At any rate, I never needed any unemployment benefits.

I can’t begin to tell you what I would have felt if I had needed unemployment assistance after serving my country for four years—one of which was in a war zone—and some knuckle-dragging, Bible-thumping, mean-spirited sonof …moron had suggested I be drug tested.

Okay, Okay, I’m all right now. I simply want folks to think about what it means to thank someone for their service. Actions do speak louder than words.

    

Reconciliation: 24

Everyone makes decisions. Some are more horrific than others. This month, back in 1944, young men their 20s were facing dreadful choices. Last evening, that came to mind afresh. We watched Twelve O’clock High, the classic Gregory Peck film, and it brought to mind something told me by the late Hal Naylor, a precious friend and hero.

Leaving college during World War Two, Hal became pilot of a B-17 flying from England to Germany before his plane was shot down during, if I recall, something like his sixth mission.

He told me how the young pilots of the squadrons faced one faithful decision even before leaving. They could take off and fly in the opposite direction for some time in order to gain altitude before turning and heading toward the German anti-aircraft emplacements in France. This improved survival odds but expended precious fuel.

Alternatively, they could head straight across the English Channel into enemy fire before gaining relatively safe altitude, but be assured of enough fuel to return to base. In the Eighth Air Force alone, 26,000 did not. Their duty almost rose to the level of suicide missions. I have read where, though they selected volunteers who were small in stature for the job, the space allotted a ball-turret gunner didn’t allow room for a parachute. Hal told me the pilot and co-pilot spaces were so cramped that they tied parachutes to their legs in hopes they could don them if they had to exit.

Decisions. Sometimes I think of the young men and women and the decisions they had to make in those days when I read where modern college students must have “safe places” where they are protected from hearing thoughts and ideas that don’t coincided with their world view. That would probably amaze a nurse who had faced the horrors of medical triage after a battle.

An amazing fact is that, today, less than one-percent of Americans will ever serve in the military. They will never face decisions like having choose between attempting to land a crippled plane and save wounded comrades, or abandoning their craft over the English Channel.

Those who have faced the ultimate sacrifice, those “happy few” as Shakespeare called them, probably have a different view of life because of the experience. The awarding of trophies of excellence to every member of a children’s sports league must seem a little tedious to a “grunt” who had to write that blank check on his life, payable to us, in order to wear the coveted Combat Infantry Badge.

Further, the fact that so few serve, in my opinion, opens all Americans to the danger that we will be drawn into useless wars that will, at first, only affect the children of others. That such adventures may eventually affect us all seems to be lost on so many. If it doesn’t affect me, what do I care? It seems to be more important that I select the best cell phone plan. I read where most of us cannot locate, on a map, the place where the last American soldier died in combat.

Sacrifice? Has it become an obsolete concept? Today we will pay service of some sort to the fallen B-17 crews, along with the sailors, infantry soldiers, medical personnel, and desert fighters who paid the awful prize for serving our country. Will our main decision be what beer to bring to the picnic? A much better decision would be to choose to become aware of the issues facing our great land and to serve, in whatever capacity we can, to solve them.

It should be an honor to serve out country, but any death in a war is a tragedy.

And gentlemen in England now a-bed

Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,

And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks

That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.
- William Shakespeare

Reconciliation: 23

Old sayings are just that, but some are true, like “The chickens will come home to roost.” I’m afraid we are due for some arrivals in this country. These comings home may not be pretty.

For example, I fear we will pay a price for our present obsession with violence. I often udpdate the lessons from Europe in the 1930s and 40s with my own status. To wit:

First, they came for people of color, but I’m white.

Then they came for the poor, but I’m white and male, meaning I was born with enough advantages that poverty was easy to avoid.

Then they came for the women who dared speak out, or take control of both their destinies and their bodies.

Now they are coming for news reporters. I’m not one, but my courage will be tested for I have friends who are, and I respect the profession. Will I stand tall when the time comes? I wonder. I even made up this little bit of doggerel to express my concern:

I can’t but wonder how brave I’ll be.

When they come for my friends, but not for me.

Oh, they’ll come for me eventually. They’ll even come for my friends who don’t share my political beliefs. You see, they are all good people who simply have a different view of governance, and good people will surely be on the list. Goodness and decency are so rare as to make headlines lately.

Another returning “chicken” will be the price we will pay for the coming annihilation of public education in our country. My darkest nightmare is a world like that described in The Time Machine, the 1895 novel written by H.G. Wells. In his imagined world, there exist, above ground, the gentle but clueless and helpless Eloi, food for the underground monsters, the Morlocks. It is a world reduced to ignorance and violence.

Why one of the richest families in our state, along with the owners of our only statewide newspaper and our present Secretary of Education, would seek a future of this sort is a mystery. Perhaps it would leave just enough room for computer operators and worker drones, along with the very rich and the mercenary warriors necessary to guard the belongings of the rich. Who knows?

I’m just glad I won’t be part of it.

In religion, I fear that, in this country, we will pay a price for the abandonment, by so many, of the Social Gospel in favor of the Prosperity Gospel. The life and words of the Gentle Galilean can be twisted into a powerful and destructive tool by the greedy and uncaring.

We are seeing now the beginnings of the chickens of “hate media” coming home to roost. Those with any knowledge of history are increasingly horrified.

But why worry? The planet is going, by all current indications, to get us first. That chicken isn’t coming home to roost. It is coming home to exact the Sixth Extinction.

Oh, and have a nice Sunday.

Reconciliation: 22

Ear-worm of the week: “He do the police in different voices.” This is, perhaps, my favorite line from T.S Eliot’s classic The Waste Land.” Why did national politics initiate it as germinating thought?

Wait one.

Eliot must have liked the quote as well, for he used it as working title for the poem. It is, actually, a quote borrowed from Our Mutual Friend by Charlese Dickens. A character named Betty is complimenting a savant orphan named Sloppy: “You mightn't think it, but Sloppy is a beautiful reader of a newspaper. He do the Police in different voices.”

As for Eliot, who can guess completely what he had in mind. A most difficult poem, I spent the first year of my life following discharge from United States Navy studying it. I came of the experience freed from religious mythology but otherwise clueless. Perhaps, in a moment of cosmic prescience, he intended the poem as a cacophany of voices of the type that would eventually determine our fate. 

Which brings us to politics. Seems a reporter had the temerity to ask a Montana candidate for the U.S House of Representative a question about a matter coming before House, on the night before the election. The candidate's answer was a physical attack. Then the “different voices” started.

The reporter: “He body-slammed me.”

The assaulter’s campaign manager: “It was the reporter, actually, who attacked our candidate.”

The Police Chief: “Too many witnesses for ignoring the event. The reporter was, without doubt, attacked for asking a question about national events. Let’s just say it was a misdemeanor and let it go at that.” (There is a persistent rumor that when someone started turning to the First Amendment to the United States Constitutes, the Chief, who had donated to the miscreant’s campaign, ordered him stop, adding there was nothing to see there).

The leader of the Republican Party, Donald Trump: “A glorious [political] victory.”

The Democratic Party leaders: “This man must not be seated by the House.”

The voters of Montana: “He (the assaulter) is our man. Kudos.”

This blog’s right-wing correspondent: “Summbitch got what he deserved.”

This blog’s left-wing correspondent: “Impeachment.”

The rest of America: “Groan.”

The upshot of it all was a resounding victory for the misdemeanorant. (Is that a word? If not, let’s make it one. We may need it in the future). What are decent folks to think?

Some of us are in hopes that this sad moment in our nation’s history may be, figuratively, the “My Lai” or “Kent State” in what has been a long battle in our country against common decency and civility. Perhaps it might even lead to … to … shall I say it … reconciliation?

One can only hope.

James Thurber forseeing the current
state of political discourse in America.

Reconciliation: 21

“School’s out,” I thought. “Three months of cowboy hideouts, baseball, and fighting pirates along Bayou Bartholomew.” It is the longest one in the world and passed within a half-mile of our little rural world. It was a magic world of fishes, snakes, turtles, abandoned treasures, and assorted dangers—paradise for a group of boys with no responsibilities for three whole months.

Then my mother told me I had to accompany my sister to Vacation Bible School.

Aaargh!

After fruitless arguments, I loaded into the family car as my pals all filed down a little dirt road called “King’s Road” after its lone inhabitant, an elderly black man with a sour disposition and a bad dog. Once safely past that, though, we followed it to a vast forest where we had once discovered a whiskey still. They were headed for our favorite hideout with a partial bag of Bull Durham tobacco, a book of papers, and some matches that Bobby Joe Hester had filched from his mother. In short, the promise of a fine day.

They were headed to have fun in the glorious splendifery of youthful boyhood. I was headed for the worst ten years of my life: two weeks locked in an unheated church suffering the indignity of having the chance of a righteous life pounded into my head, one so hard that it has been a wonderment of efficacy for eons.

It was a cousin’s Baptist church, moreover, so no one, save the cousin, knew us. The Tyrant, our name for the one who signed us up, got my sister’s name down correctly. Though we made it abundantly clear that we were brother and sister, she insisted upon listing me as “Jimmie Valentine.”  I am positive she effected the mistake on purpose, based on the several times she called my mother to report my lack of cooperation with “the salvation thing.” Not many years ago, while sorting through a box of family memorabilia, I came across a document verifying that Jimmie Valentine had, indeed, fulfilled his complete sentence, and had been let out on parole from the nightmare known as Vacation Bible Shool. I burned it with great ceremony.

The days consisted of things like drawing pictures of places where the Dark One would find you and claim your soul, i.e. hotbeds of ruination. We were fairly limited in our experience with sin, so we stuck to the normal ones with which we were constantly indoctrinated: swimming pools, movie theaters, skating rinks, anywhere people danced, and that sure-fire center of iniquity, the Methodist Church. I didn’t include smoke-infested hideouts, a sin of omission for which, on the darkest nights, I still fear retribution.

That all wore out quickly, so we practiced our coloring of saintly figures for a couple of days. The girls loved that part, especially when they got to cut out the finished products with which to decorate the sanctuary so the adults would know that The Tyrant was keeping us righteously occupied.

The boys did not fail to notice that none of their colorings made the, no pun intended, final cut. Some things never change, do they?

Then came blessed news.

The Tyrant was bringing a friend to teach us woodworking. Oh joyous day! That night, I began a list of projects that I wished instruction upon:

- A bunker with gun port for our hideout,

- A sawhorse for my saddle, in case I ever got a horse,

- A cage for keeping captured snakes,

- A go-cart with which to fly down the hill at O.D. Walker’s house,

- A box for housing stolen contraband, and

- A boat for crossing the bayou.

Then we learned the truth. We would spend two days making crosses.

What? Why?

The Tyrant answered, “To donate to the poor people at the “nigra” churches in our city.

Didn’t, we wondered, those people suffer enough indignations without religious fervor causing the piling on of more? Some things never change, do they?

The ordeal finally ended. We endured “Boo Hoo” day during which the church pastor gave us a sermon. That’s when, each year, we learned, the girls all “got saved,” some for the fifth or sixth time, and the boys all made mental plans for resuming a productive life.

I found out, upon release, that the tobacco was gone and the smoking of it had been one of life’s most glorious moments, although Nicky Austin did tell me once that the experience had been less than great, not as awful as our experience with chewing tobacco, but not great.

Perry Don Poteet’s daddy had taken everyone to the zoo in Memphis one day. It was an epic catastrophe that would require a Homer or a Tolstoy to do justice in the telling.

Milton Shilling’s cousin, Sally Mae Durant from Hot Springs, had come for a visit and had snuck off to the hideout one day with Benjamin Shannon, the oldest of our little band. We couldn’t imagine why. Girls didn’t smoke, chew, throw baseballs, or use slingshots worth a darn in those days. They wouldn’t even ride stick horses most times, for they said it wrinkled their skirts. What possible thing could they offer a real cowboy?

Let’s just say I missed a lot and may have missed more than I knew. Some things never change, do they?

Ah, Cowboys and Indians on a summer's day

Reconciliation: 20

I increasingly fear that America is reaching a mindset where any disagreement that can’t be handled with fists is handled with a gun, and most Americans aren’t very good with their fists.

It seems to have gotten to the point that a reporter can’t even ask a politician a question without being physically assaulted. Believe what you will, but I believe that we, as a nation, are overdue for a long period of introspection, examining the roots of our anger.

After that, we might drift away from our obsessions with films and TV shows that consist of constant physical violence and the settlement of disagreements with ultra-violence, or simply “ultra-vio,” as Anthony Burgess called it in A Clockwork Orange. As for me, I have abandoned film and literature that embraces death and destruction as the only cures for our problems.

Can’t we just talk to one another anymore?

I write this from a farmhouse in rural Arkansas. The building has stood since the early 1900s on the site of a previous building that pre-dated the Civil War. My wife’s grandfather’s family moved here during The Great Depression. A short distance up a gravel road is another farmhouse, where a man lived who, according to my mother-in-law, was known locally simply as “Uncle Dutch.”

What is striking is how she recounts, “Uncle Dutch was a Republican and Daddy was a Democrat. On many an afternoon Uncle Dutch would walk down and he and Daddy would sit on the porch and argue politics.”

They called it “talking politics” down where my parents were raised, in LA or “lower Arkansas.” Over checkers (that game was allowed, but playing cards was a sin), they would engage in the topic of politics with friendly banter. The sharpest criticism I ever remember hearing was, “Calvin can’t help it. He’s a Republican. You can just tell.”

That’s far cry from “Lock her up. Lock her up.”

If I remember correctly, it was George Washington, the so-called “Father of the Country,” who said, “Observe good faith and justice toward all nations. Cultivate peace and harmony with all.”

When we fail to do this, we, I believe, embolden such groups as the Klu Kux Klan and the Aryan Nations. The further result is the creation of home-grown terrorists such as Dylann Roof or Timothy McVeigh. I think we would all agree that this needs to stop.

What can we do? I think maybe Marcus Aurelius gave us good guidance when he observed “He who lives in harmony with himself lives in harmony with the universe.”

I would only add, using language from our national obsession with victory, “If we wish to conquer hatred, let us first conquer ourselves.”

The natural result of hatred

It's an "earning day" so I was off early. Will make a new post Thursday. Here are some ideas that trouble me so while I'm driving:

- The severity of the proposed national budget

- The mindset of a person so influenced by religion that they would harm children

- The future of areas of the country that have been bypassed by the modern world

- Why we have, in some ways, turned toward being a mean-sprited nation

- Implications of a "post-reality" paradigm

- Images of New York, Miami and other cities after the polar icecaps melt

- The soothing power of music

As I used to hear when I lived in the Haight-Ashbury: "Peas and harmony grits."

Reconciliation: 19

“Get to work or lose your benefits.” What a sentiment. At what ages, over five and under 70? At what stage of MS, cancer, heart disease, kidney failure, or other dread disease? Under what burdens of a disadvantaged childhood? Further, where shall we warehouse the miscreants?

My personal opinion is that Americans sometime make pronouncements that don’t stand up to rational scrutiny.

The truth is, recognizing the existence of, and caring for, the poor among us is a profoundly complicated issue. Even the Old Testament can offer contradictory direction. As Rabbi Jill Jacobs has written: "A striking feature of [ a passage in Deuteronomy] is the apparent contradiction between verse four, 'There shall be no needy among you,' and verse eleven, 'For the poor will never cease from the land.' We expect the omnipotent God of the Torah to keep promises; we are therefore surprised to hear the Torah promise to eradicate poverty and then, almost in the same breath, admit that this promise will never be fulfilled.”

The New Testament is clearer. The Galilean didn’t have much time for those who valued riches over honor, exhorting his followers to avoid eternal rejection, in Matthew 25, by caring for “the least of those among us.” Before that was written, though, the writer of Second Timothy urged us to be “a worker who needeth not be ashamed.” The Galilean himself was not kind, though, to the capitalists in the Temple who were engaged in what would be considered today an exalted and exemplary profession. It is no wonder that we develop contradictory feelings.

Without doubt, there are those who wish to live upon the charity of others. In addition those too lazy to work, we must include corporations and institutions that decline to pay a fair share of taxes, those who are protected from failure by the public, and even those who are publicly subsidized for home ownership, (often while voting for politicians who promise to end rental housing assistance for their poor fellow human beings). It just all fails to make common sense to me. That is why I must respectfully disagree with some dear friends whose conclusions are different from mine.

Let us once again turn to Rabbi Jacobs and note what she writes: “The overarching Jewish attitude toward the poor is best summed up by a single word of the biblical text: achikha (your brother). With this word, the Torah insists on the dignity of the poor, and it commands us to resist any temptation to view the poor as somehow different from ourselves.”

I conclude from my reading and study, that if are to say the all children must go forth and be self-sufficient and successful or “lose” our concern and assistance, we are forced into some perilous beliefs. We must believe, for example that a child in dirty diapers on the front porch of a shack in the Arkansas Delta, who waits for his mother to finish “turning a trick” for enough cash for her next meth hit, has the same chance at that self-sufficiency as the children of Donald Trump.

Believe as you will and serve whom you please. As for me and my household, we will help the poor whenever we can, and will support a government who does not abandon them. We don’t do it in hopes of obtaining a heavenly reward in return. We simply do it because we believe it is the right thing to do as members of a greater brotherhood and sisterhood: the family of humankind.

We are also touched by a story the Rabbi narrates concerning a group of passengers in a boat. When one pulls out a drill and begins boring a hole in the bottom of the boat, to the consternation and complaints of his fellow passengers, he says, “Why should this bother you? I am only drilling under my own seat.”

In the end, the bad or good we do in life flows across our communities like a destructive flood or a healing rain. It is our choice.

Back to the factories or coal mines?

Reconciliation: 18

Lyndon Johnson told the story of a Texas schoolteacher who, faced with a school board divided on whether the world was round or flat, concluded, “I can teach it both ways.” That’s how I feel about the current controversy about removing confederate statutes. That may not be surprising for someone who had great-grandfathers who fought on opposite sides or our Civil War.

On the one hand, I worry that, when we start removing history, we lose more than we gain. Remember how the Taliban blasted ancient monuments away as target practice? In the more distant past, after her death in 1457 BC, Hatshepsut's monuments were attacked, her statues dragged down and smashed, and her image and titles defaced, information lost—we regret—to future scholars for all times.

On the other hand, those who find themselves apoplectic over the removal of statues of Robert E. Lee should read a good history of the United States and its civil war. Consider then, that there are no statues of Benedict Arnold in the courthouse squares of America, and no controversy attached to their absence. Sadly, Robert E. Lee was as dedicated to, and capable of, destroying our country as it existed in his day as Arnold was in preventing its creation in his.

Both, as loathe as we may be to admit it, abandoned their oath to America in order to support her enemies.

I know that Lee is considered by many to be “an honorable man.” When I first gazed upon the mile of open fields that his troops were ordered into in the tragic three-division assault on Cemetery Ridge on July 3, 1863, I  was no longer sure exactly how he merited that praise, but so be it. Let us simply try to understand those whose ancestors were owned by Lee’s wife and over whom he held total authority of life, punishment, or death. Let us further consider how, according to historian and author Elizabeth Brown Pryor, he referred to the family’s slave children as “my ebony-mites.” Is this an American badge of honor?

Were our ancestries different, so might be our feelings.

As a final thought, I primarily regret seeing another divisive movement settle upon our country like a primal, festering sore. Surely there is a need: poverty, the abandoned American Delta, collapsing infrastructure, and the need for decent healthcare for all, that could occupy our attention more productively.

Back to sending 15,000 men toward Cemetery Ridge for the purpose of preserving the institution of slavery, there have been moments when much of America wasn’t that great when we recall them. No matter how we may feel, couldn’t we, instead, recall the beaches of Normandy, and other times when she was?

Perhaps it's an institution
that isn't worthy of
monuments to its supporters.

Reconciliation: 17

Remember how Captain Kirk, from the Starship Enterprise, would confound computerized foes by introducing so much illogic that their electrodes would catch fire? That odor you smell is from mine frying.

Was doing some reading in the Holy Bible. Came across this from the Old Testament: “You shall not commit adultery.” That’s from what they call the Ten Commandments, a pretty important item in Judeo-Christian theology.

Later, I moved over to the New Testament and read this, attributed to The Galilean. "Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery."

Can we assume then, that the attitude of Jesus on adultery mimics the words Calvin Coolidge, according to Will Rogers anyway, when he reported, to his wife, his preacher’s attitude on sin: “He was a’gin it.”

If so, then imagine my reading where POTUS, the current head of the Republican Party, is nominating Callista Gingrich as ambassador to the Vatican in Rome.

She is the one, remember, who hooked up with Newt Gingrich for years while he was married to his second wife, having divorced his first while she lay in the hospital with cancer.

Oh, it is reported that Callista claimed Newt never “sent her flowers” during the six-year affair. I’m doing a Biblical search now to determine if this constitutes grounds for a “waiver of sin,” so to speak.

I know I’m supposed to be in a reconciliation mode. I will strive to be. Really. I will get over it. I willingly grant that POTUS has the right to nominate ambassodors according to his preferences,

But do I have some slight right to be flabbergasted?

Suffering from a major case of flabergastion

Reconciliation: 16

Nothing costs local governments more than hiring human resource directors who have neither the experience nor the education for the job. Most often, after three federal lawsuits, all lost or settled at significant expense to the city, the director sometimes “grows into the job.” The cost, meanwhile, may come close to the cost of hiring someone and sending them to college ere giving them responsibility in the first place.

The chief culprit is almost always the same: not understanding the simple necessity of documentation. An employee gets drunk and exposes himself while on city business. Another sends a city crew to pave her church’s parking lot. A truly crafty one fakes a disability and is later caught water skiing.

Or so someone says.

The miscreant is fired. The Firing is overturned by the court. Why? It is because the first question even the most incompetent defendant’s attorney will ask is, “may we see the documentation?” Sadly, a frequent answer is, “Well, we didn’t see the need to document all the times it happened. That would have taken a lot of time away from city business and, anyway, everybody knew it was going on and they’ll testify to that fact.” (Background sound: “Cha ching, cha ching”).

Documentation. A Master’s Degree in Public Administration will teach a myriad of useful things, none more important than “if ain’t written down, it didn’t happen.”

Administrators at the local level often learn this, not in college but at the “school of hard knocks.” Local government is not the highest level of government but an extremely important one. As they say, it is where “the rubber meets the road.” It is good when we learn lessons while there is still time to ward off total destruction. Kudos to our cities and the great people who work in local government and learn painful lessons early on before the storm clouds descend.

One would think, hope—pray perhaps—that those folks at the highest level of government would understand, beforehand, the simple necessity and practice of documentation. If they don’t employ the practice themselves, at least they understand that seasoned administrators do. They anticipate documentation and act accordingly.

Apparently, some do and some don’t. Those that do will win. Those that don’t will whine that they aren’t being treated fairly. This is a sad spectacle to watch on national TV.

As a mentor of mine remarked recently, “We need to start electing better people to public office.” That isn’t a partisan fact. It is an American fact, and a simple one at that.

Reconciliation: 15

We Arkansans who remember the assault of Kenneth Starr and his army upon our state are amused at the current party leader who’s whining about being “mistreated.” The tragic trail of families disrupted, reputations defamed, and lives destroyed by this man and his legions, will remain in collective memories for years to come. They include those of a dear lady who witnessed her personal library subpoenaed because some books “contained coded messages,” according to a Starr operative. These consisted of dates with suspicious lettering beside them, such as “tg, pc, mp, ml, and fc.” The worst James Bond villain couldn’t have posed a greater threat to our national security. The only thing missing was crime-scene tape.

Not a soul offered an apology after discovering that the cryptic offenses referred to the daily menu at our state capitol’s cafeteria.

I’ve only eaten breakfast there and then only a couple of times, but I’ve heard the meatloaf was delicious back in the day.

So, I ask all my friends, those on both sides of the political spectrum, to claim the right to elect politicians who understand that there will always be “heat in the political kitchen.” It’s best to withstand it or get out.

When we hear a sitting president say, “No politician in history — and I say this

with great surety — has been treated worse or more unfairly,” simple astonishment isn’t enough. Starr and his clan spent $70,000,000 attempting to destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton. Trey Gowdy spent another $20,000,000 on Hillary alone, we are told. Only Roger Ailes knew how much he spent. And the Koch brothers? They are still at it. The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, to mention only two, had daily editorial fodder for more than a decade. Fair? Who’s to say? It just happens, that’s all.

Mistreatment? Were theirs the worst? Ask Abe Lincoln who, on his best day, was only compared to a gorilla.

When I was but a youth, Harry Truman suffered greatly for, among other things, his sin of integrating the military. I well remember attending a rodeo on my home town at which the clown presented the following ditty, repeated over the speakers by the announcer:

Mary had a little Lamb,
Its face was almost human,
and every time you raised its tail.
You'd look at Harry Truman.

It’s too late to ask President Eisenhower how many adoring editorials he received from the Southern news media, with the notable exception of the late Arkansas Gazette.

It might help us heal as a nation to moderate our language. It is no more proper to paint Donald Trump as Adolph Hitler than it was Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barrack Obama, or Hillary.

I’ll even start by toning down my resentment of the Starr episode. I’ll just refer to it as that "that late unpleasantness." Original enough, eh?

Let us also strive to deal in facts and not internet-inspired “truths.” Facts such as: the sun came up this morning. And, though predictions are difficult, especially when they involve the future (a phrase I coined myself although some folks wrongly attribute it to Yogi Berra), the sun will probably come up tomorrow morning, barring one of Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s “Black Swans.” (Recommended reading).

It is up to us to determine what kind of world that sun will shine upon.

Old Harry came out all right.
Will we?

Reconciliation: 14

Don’t know about you, but I rejoice to know we still live in a nation governed by laws. The country had, it seemed to me, been drifting too much along the lines of the Weimar Republic to permit a comfortable night’s sleep.

Politics is a messy business that many people don’t understand. In my household, decisions involve only two people. Even then, they may involve hours of analysis, scenario-imagining, alternative analysis, and fiscal computations before she decides what we will do and I begin figuring out how to do it.

Imagine, on the other hand, if you had to convince a majority of 99 other people to follow your thinking on the resolution of a single issue. Imagine further that a majority of that majority will not form a decision based on your logic, or any logic at all. Factors as disparate as ideology, party loyalty, donor demands, and personal prejudices will control any number of votes.

The truth is, it is a miracle that laws ever get passed at all. The rare individual who is good at getting them passed at all may be a creature more ruthless than redemptive. But, consider Lyndon Baines Johnson. Hardly admirable in his personal habits, and unable to evade the tragedy of Vietnam, millions now have health care and millions more are free to exercise a right to vote because of this man who wouldn’t shrink from the most deplorable methods to pass a law.

Perhaps that is why we often hear the quote, “One should never watch sausages or laws being made.” It is ofttimes attributed to Bismarck. Don’t know if he actually said it, but it’s popular from time to time to attribute quotes to him, so what the heck?

That having been said, there should be boundaries that we don’t cross, and it seems we have crossed a few lately. When such a danger looms, it is the rule of law, not prayer, that saves us as a country, one more reason for the First Amendment separation of church and state. Is this to say personal spirituality doesn’t matter in our voting patterns? Of course not. I even place my voting habits on a segment of Christian literature. Yes, I do. I always try to offer my vote to the candidate who best fits my favorite scripture in theology, to wit:

Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven.

Blessed are those who mourn: for they will be comforted.

Blessed are the meek: for they will inherit the earth.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness: for they will be filled.

Blessed are the merciful: for they will be shown mercy.

Blessed are the pure in heart: for they will see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers: for they will be called children of God.

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.

Does anyone ever make all eight points? Of course not. The real terror is that we elect so many that fail to score even one point, while trying to force their own brand of religion upon us.

Just thinking.

Reconciliation: 13

Some days, any effort at reconciliation stalls at the starting gate. Some days, a primal fear that our very way of life is ending overpowers a wish for us all to “just get along,” as the famous line goes—the one that Tony Soprano attributed to Dr. Rodney King.

When a respected conservative columnist, with a sterling international reputation, describes the leader of one of the two primary political parties in America as a child, perhaps it is time to accept the fact the we no longer face simple political differences. Political differences, after all, are based on real issues, such as

- How much influence should various religious dogmas play in the exercise of government?

- What are reasonable limitations on freedom of speech?

- What powers of government should be left to individual states?

- What approach to criminal justice would best serve the country?

- Is individual health care a right or a privilege?

- Is what’s best for General Motors really best for the country?

- Do deficits really matter?

Whether it is proper for a foreign country that has been our country’s avowed enemy since the 1940s take an active role in electing our president does not a political difference.

Whether it is proper for a president of the United States to spend time on social media spreading falsehoods and ad hominem attacks on individual American citizens does not constitute a political difference.

Whether it is acceptable for a president of the United States to lie to the American public, whether it be about the results of a sexual affair or the results of an election, does not constitute a political difference.

Whether it is acceptable for a president of the United States knowingly to try and divide us in our feelings for our country by utilizing hatred, prejudices, and fears, does not constitute a political difference.

I think I’ll take a day off from thinking about all this. Maybe I’ll go somewhere private and practice my primal scream.

Ahh. That feels better.

Reconciliation: 12

Vice-President Al Gore was lambasted most unmercifully in the press for things he didn’t say, but he can take credit for voicing one polarizing term: “An Inconvenient Truth.”

That happens to us at times, adding to the divisive condition that permeates America. We read or see things that simply don’t fit our preconceptions. After a fact-check proves they are indeed true, we have the choice of ignoring them or altering our thinking. Therein lies the rub.

This morning, I came across such a truth. I had suspected it, but hadn’t realized its full impact. It is a piece from the British news source The Guardian. It outlines growing evidence that home-grown terrorism may be, under the category of “an inconvenient truth” a growing and frightening threat to the American way of life. It is called, “They Hate the USA.” It concerns extremist groups that hate our government to the point of plotting violence against it. It outlines some scary facts.

I, for one, was shocked by the following:

“According to data from the Anti-Defamation League, at least 45 police officers have been killed by domestic extremists since 2001. Of these, 10 were killed by leftwing extremists, 34 by rightwing extremists, and one by homegrown Islamist extremists.

Note the qualifiers “domestic and homegrown.” We must not expand this beyond the given facts. Still though, it should cause us to think, and to be very afraid, particularly when we see the growing audacity of groups such as the Klu Klux Klan.

Can we all agree that we should spend time talking and thinking, rather than hating?

Let us remain on guard.

Reconciliation: Day Eleven

It’s Mother’s Day. Mine died a long time ago, but I still carry some of her teachings with me. Some would rest on one side of the political spectrum and som on the other. I try not to judge.

She carried through life, as did almost all women with similar ancestry and background, the belief that somehow a creator had made the white race superior to others. I’m not sure she would have willingly accepted a man of color as the President of the United States. Of course, I’m not sure she would have willingly accepted a man with multiple divorces either, given some of the things he has said publicly. We can only speculate.

She only ever spoke of two gay men, best as I can remember. One was a former schoolmate, and she considered his behavior more with bemusement than with fear, hatred, or bigotry. The other was Liberace, and I don’t think his sexual orientation mattered much to her. As far as any others, she detested rude behavior more than about anything, including sexual preference.

Oh, and I’ve mentioned before, she had no use for those whom she referred to as “religious fanatics.” Now she wasn’t referring to genuinely religious people. She was referring to those mirthless, meddling, mendacious, merchandisers of hatred and fear, who intruded upon her life, like the unfortunate soul who dared reprimand her because she didn’t send her children to a “revival” on a school night. She watched, late in life, with horror, a beloved relative being taken in by a charlatan TV evangelist. (I know that I repeat myself). I think she would have strangled the man had she ever gotten her hands on him.

She told me the most interesting thing once, when I was distraught about losing a girlfriend. I’ll never forget it. She stopped her ironing and snapped me to attention, as only she, with her five-feet-four  of raw power, could do. Then she said, “Love? Let me tell you something. When I married your daddy, I wasn’t in love with him. I was courted by some much more appealing boys than him. And the von Tungelns were considered a little odd in the community anyway. I married him because I knew if I did, I would never have to go hungry again. I knew he would work. And I knew he would help take care of me.” I wasn’t ever sure how much help she would have needed, but it’s nice to know she felt safe.

She continued. “So, I married him. We sharecropped and picked cotton by day and butchered hogs when we finished. On the weekends he would peddle meat from the back of a panel truck in Pine Bluff. We made enough money to buy a grocery store and struggled with that 14 hours a day. Bessie Shannon said we were so dumb that it took both of us to drink a coca-cola.”

She stopped and made sure I was listening. “Then do you know what happened? I woke up one morning and found out that I worshipped the ground he walked on.”

I’ll never forget that.

So, on Mother’s Day, I recall the one literary passage that I’ve always felt best summed up my sainted mother and her sisters. It is from the Betty Smith novel, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. The author describes the young heroin’s mother and aunt, the Rommely women, trying to survive bitter poverty and despair in a strange city: “They were all slender, frail creatures with wondering eyes and soft fluttery voices [but] they were made out of thin invisible steel.”

If you must have a legacy, that’s not a bad one.

If it turns out there is a heaven,
and if you happen to get there.
Take my advice if you will.
Don't cross this woman.

Reconciliation: Day Ten

Sales trainers tell us that sometimes, when objections involve falsehoods, one must be firm. Reconciliation only goes so far. “That’s just wrong,” we must say, if it is indeed, and we have facts to back it up.

I feel that way a lot lately. There is so much false information being promulgated on both sides of the political spectrum. Unfortunately, much of it flows through the so-called “hate-media” and onto social media. I’ve never listened to or watched false news programs or hate-filled broadcasts. Lately I’ve decided to dismiss any unsupported posting on the internet. That’s pretty much all of them.

Call me old-fashioned, but I respect traditional journalism. I know that it has a doctrine involving both fact-checking and verification through multiple sources. Do they sometimes miss the mark? Certainly, we are all human. To guard against this, I rely on multiple news sources, including

- The New York Times

- The Washington Post

- The Los Angeles Times

- The Guardian (from England)

- The Christian Science Monitor (recently recommended by a highly-respected journalist).

Call me unfair, but I tend to disregard televised news sources. With the death of the giants like Walter Cronkite, TV news too closely resembles the nightmare presented in Paddy Chayefsky’s 1976 film “Network.” Now we have, added into the mix, unschooled readers of the news pontificating on highly complex matters of governance, military matters. or foreign policy, reminding us of another great film “Broadcast News."

Life imitating art. Who in the world would have “thunk it?”

I won’t go into magazines or websites. They are out there. I would just point out that anything posted by the Brookings Institution or Michael Neiberg is sound and unbiased.

In the meantime, if we disagree, remain polite, and I feel you are misstating the facts, I’ll try to soften my response in the spirit of reconciliation. How about my borrowing a line from the film “Fargo?” I’ll just say “I don’t agree with your detective work.”

Just thinking.

Reconciliation: Day Nine

 I’m not quite sure why, but there is lots of controversy today about our LGBT brothers and sisters. Seems everyone has an opinion. I know that I have mine. And I will try to understand yours.

Mine isn’t based on religion. I think religion should be limited to a spiritual examination of one’s own self and not of others. Again, I learned that from The Galilean.  That said, my opinion, if that’s what we may call it, derives from science. If Watson and Crick led us anywhere, they led us to a glimpse of how vastly complicated is the human genome.

Although I’m not smart enough or educated enough to understand the makeup of the DNA structure, I can, barely, glimpse its marvelous complexity, and see how a minor connection here and there can determine our sexual preferences.

It’s that simple, again in my opinion. Some of us are born one way and some another. We all, as fertilized eggs, start out as female. In fact, Stephen Jay Gould wrote that all mammals start as amazingly similar fetuses. Phsycial diversity occurs with devlopment, as should mental diversity.

 Anyway, a less fortunate (as ranked within our household) fetus will undergo a fold here and a wrap there and eventually produce a male of the species. I don’t find it hard to believe at all that somewhere in this amazing process, a sexual preference is formed that transcends the male-female preference orientation. Moreover, I can easily imagine how a fetus of one gender becomes transplanted as that of another gender. Don't know why. It just does.

It is just science, I believe, not sin, not a conscious choice, and certainly not a fit subject for the judgement of others. It is a wondrously complicated Universe in which we are fortunate enough to exist for a brief millisecond, and the quiet contemplation of it, it seems to me, is much more satisfying than spending time nourishing our prejudices, whether from the Bible, the locker room, or the coffee shop.

You may believe differently. I will try to understand that, to the extent that your belief is based on sound analysis, and you don’t allow your belief to escalate into some sort of hegemonic torment—physical, legal, or mental.

Marriage among the similar sexes? If you wish to attend a church that doesn’t allow that, the First Amendment to the United States Constitution allows it. Remember though, marriage between two people is a fairly recent idea. Will and Ariel Durant suggested that marriage was originally devised, in Western civilization, as a mechanism whereby a man could possess a legal claim to, and protection of, his harem.

I don’t think my wife would buy into that concept in this day and time. My point? Ancient concepts of morality can, do, and should change.

Finally, for those who may find their images of what same-sex partners do in the privacy of their bedrooms distasteful, think of something else, like, maybe helping the poor, or the least of those among us. It is accepted dogma that one can’t think of two things at once. We should all try to choose wisely.

As for distasteful acts, consider how the orchids must feel when they contemplate what goes on in your bedroom under the guise of procreation.

And, for the individual who once reported the claim by a professor at a major central Arkansas university (no, not mine), I have found absolutely no evidence whatsoever that one can actually determine if someone is gay by a bump in a certain spot on their forehead. Sorry.

Just thinking.

Reconciliation: Day Eight

 Perhaps no topic is more controversial among Americans as taxes. We run a wide gamut of opinions, to say the least. There was the famous Civil War veteran and jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. who wrote, in a dissenting opinion while on the U.S. Supreme Court, “Taxes are what we pay for civilized society … .”

At the other end, we have the work of political kingmaker Grover Norquist who states, “I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.” He works at doing this by exacting a pledge from candidates who want the support he can provide. The pledge is, basically, never to vote on enacting or raising a tax.

So where does this leave a sensible person? My friends are free to make any decision they chose. I can only hope that decision is not based on a knee-jerk reaction fulfilling an allegiance to a person rather than the people as a whole.

Personally, I tend toward the Holmes version. He was a veteran of both our most divisive war and the Supreme Court. He must have spent long hours contemplating the complexities of both history and government. Analytical thought is good, I believe.

Does the government waste money? Oh yes. As I write this, our military is still trying to explain the evaporation of over a trillion dollars during our adventure in Iraq.

Does the government spend money on frivolous or unneeded projects? Oh dear. Does the term “pork barrel” ring a bell?

On the other hand, can we seriously contemplate such varied things as Hurricane Katrina, Yellowstone National Park, the invasion of Normandy, 9-11, Oklahoma City, Sesame Street, the elimination of polio, Social Security, Medicare, The Smithsonian, and a postal service that connects us to even the most remote areas of our country, without admitting the government can be a source of good for many, if not all of us?

Of course, some of those items represent programs that are more popular with our diverse society than others. Still, I’ve observed each of them providing great solace to our people, many of whom represent the “least of those among us.”

As complicated as the topic may be, and as elusive as answers may be, I choose, myself, to pay taxes willingly. I do this even when the paying may not benefit me directly. Though we have no children, we steadfastly support our public school system. An uneducated population, incapable of analytical thinking, may seem a worthwhile goal to some, but I beg to disagree. Does an H.G. Wells book called “The Time Machine” strike a chord?”

Let us each view taxes in our own way, each of us. I choose to not attack the concept, but to be on constant vigilance toward the administration of the concept. This is consistent with my belief that freedom, within the bounds of enlightened control and regulation, is truly what can make America great.

My country is too great ever
to become a place of depair.

Reconciliation: Day Seven

Some mornings, it’s harder to extend a hand of reconciliation to friends with different world views, than on others. Today is one of those days.

There are times when I fear so deeply about the future of my country that I find it almost impossible to converse with those who don’t.

But I will try.

There have been times in my life when I believe our country was on the verge of what Richard Wagner called Gotterdammerung, or “downfall of the gods.”

Geo-politically, I believe this nearly occurred when a national moral collapse led us into, and kept us in, the debacle in Vietnam, leaving hundreds of thousands dead, crippled, or scarred. I, personally, cannot help believing we are currently escalating another, less winnable, conflict against an enemy that has no concept of “forget and forgive,” meaning the destruction will never end. What will folks tell their grandchildren?

Internally, I think the Joe McCarthy era was such a test of our national morality, as was the Watergate era.

Regionally, I believe, to paraphrase William Faulkner, the “Jim Crow” period in the American South has left a curse on this area, if not the entire country, that will last for more generations to come.

During each of these, we survived as a nation because reasonable people acted. They transcended their pre-formed alliances and acted in the best interest of the country as a whole. I cannot help contrasting this with the public statement recently by a U.S. representative from our state that he “was elected by a group (with specific political leanings) and he would serve that group,” presumably to the exclusion of anyone else. Other elected officials have admitted the need for specific action but cannot vote accordingly because they signed “a pledge” to one individual that prevents them. Are these the attitudes that will make America great?

These things bother me, so I’m probably less conciliatory today than perhaps I might be. I will keep trying.

The foregoing are conclusions, based on my experience and education. If yours lead you to different conclusions, let us talk. By all means, let us talk. There are issues about which reasonable people can and do differ. That was once a more entrenched American attitude that it seems to be today.

Still here. Still thinking.

Reconciliation: Day Six

No attempt at reconciliation could succeed without a discussion of the intemperate language that has pervaded our society. One must look no further than a typical comment-stream on You Tube to witness the degradation of our ability to discuss even the most sublime Mozart sonata without resorting, within ten exchanges, to “MFs,” and worse.

What has happened to us? I don’t know. In my youth, knowing adults used the word “prejudice” to warn us against pre-judging others without beginning to understand the issues behind their life. There were no outright power dynamics involved, but prejudice was filled with the subterranean seeds from which could grow a stronger and more active predilection: bigotry.

We were quick to replace the word “prejudice” with “bigotry,” which implies not only discriminatory thought but behavior as well. Thus, those who grew up with unfounded impressions suddenly became bigots. Would the trials of carrying a name eventually affect behavior? Maybe.

It got worse. Both terms were replaced by “racism,” or the use of power to retain power over others by whatever means necessary. Soon, the mildest expression of negative thought toward a person of a different background was termed racism, and the accusations continue to fly until this very day. Reconciliation was tossed into the same linguistic bonfire as understanding, civility, good manners, and friendly discussion.

Why bring this up? To me, prejudice is a condition that one can work on and stifle in its infancy. Perhaps the first step is an admission that it exists. Any time I hear someone deny that they are at all prejudiced, warning bells go off. To doubt a person fully would be an act of prejudice itself, but warning bells are warning bells and useful at times.

Following self-awareness, a second step might involve an attempt at understanding, and a comparison of backgrounds. It happened this way with me. One day I realized that there was no way in the world I could fully comprehend the effect on me had I heard a 16-year old call my 45-year old father “boy.” Nor could I comprehend how it must have felt to see any depiction of my race in the movies as a “happy domestic slave” or a shiftless, stumbling idiot. As someone once remarked, it wasn’t the fact that Lincoln Theodore Monroe Andrew Perry, better known by the stage name “Stepin Fetchit,” consistently portrayed lazy, shiftless black men. The real tragedy was that he was so good at it.

We remain stuck with our prejudices, as F. Scott Fitzgerald said, “… boats against the current.” I must fight the inclination to regard the uneducated as slow-witted, although my own father, with an 8^th-grade rural education could work algebraic equations in his head without ever having studied algebra. Then there was my father-in-law, blessed with a similar educational background, who could construct an entire house without ever making a mark upon a sheet of paper. My sainted mother read my college books, including Dostoyevsky, while I was visiting home.

The list goes on, and includes the self-taught technician who can stand ten feet away from a malfunctioning automobile engine and diagnose its problem. What a wondrous and diverse world we live in, if we only stop to observe it without pre-judging. (Oh, that pesky Galilean keeps interfering).

My own promise today is to work on my prejudices, and hope, beyond hope, that they never progress into bigotry or racism. That will keep me busy enough that I shouldn’t have time to think ill of you. It should also keep me away from comment threads. I’ll try. In the meantime, I’ll follow the advice of my long-time hero, who said:

Reconciliation: Day Five

Yesterday, I bared my soul, so to speak, about religion, and I’ll say no more on that specific topic. I would like to comment further on the question of separation of church and state. I know this is a touchy subject, and I’ll tread lightly. It is one that we must face if we seek to reconcile our feelings, so I will start with my thoughts.

For openers, I don’t question for a moment an individual’s decision to allow their personal feelings to influence their political beliefs. I think this is a basic American value, enthroned forever in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. I think this flows into one’s decision to hope that people who share core beliefs are voted into office. As with all manners of navigation, it is a matter of degrees. I would hope that education, thought, analysis, experience, and suspicion be added in setting our final course.

What worries me are the vast complexities of both religion and politics, in which we must make decisions. Once again, in nautical terms, we might compare these with charting the crosswinds, fickle tides, hidden shoals, and unforeseen storms of life. These, I believe, are so pervasive that simple decisions are alluring, even seductive, but dangerous. At some point, we either moderate, or compromise, our beliefs, trim our sails, so to speak, or we will end up allowing tricksters to steer us into a political shipwreck.

For example, I personally feel pretty strongly about war as a means of settling all political disputes. I know, however, that electing a legislature that would outlaw war entirely would both be impossible and unrealistic. I have to moderate my decision and consider the vast fabric of goals a candidate must bring into office with her or him. If someone supports the military unequivocally, along with social justice and the health, safety, and welfare of our planet and its citizens, a carefully weighed and complex decision must be made. I would just hope that I make the best decision instead of striving for the perfect one, considering how near impossible it is to achieve perfection.

Thus, I see dangers in one’s decision to base their sacred vote on one single issue. To do so, I believe, invites charlatans who will promise to address that issue from one side of the podium while trashing all other time-honored values from the other side. I would, personally support a candidate who espoused one idea I found distasteful, but who supported remaining goals that would benefit humankind. The idea is that it would be easier, in the long run, to alter a person’s stand on one issue by urging careful analysis and exemplary living, than it would be to repair the damage done by the morally and ethically challenged.

In summary, I know that some of my friends believe that a person will not be judged according to a lifetime of toil, despair, tragedy, joy, satisfaction, and fulfillment, but upon one emotional and spiritual decision. The oath I took in 1966 to defend the Constitution of the United States requires that I defend that belief. I did and I will.

But I don’t share it.

I believe that, if we are to judge at all—and the Galilean, as I pointed out previously, recommends against it—let us judge according to the life of an imperfect but right-minded person who will grant unto all of humanity, including the least of those among us, the same rights and privileges hoped for and sought so earnestly along the way for herself or himself.

There. Now that’s simple, isn’t it?

Just thinking …