End of Year Thoughts: December 31, 2107

Sometimes a person feels conflicted. Tell someone you disagree with them and you create ill-will. Don’t and you imply agreement. That is a bipolar paradigm that doesn’t bode well. Many of our leaders, news sources, and wealthy contributors are feeding this polarization, the reason is anybody’s guess. It certainly isn’t aimed toward the common good.

Is there another form of interaction? I hope so. To that end, I’ll mention a few things that bother me these days. I will do so without, I hope, denigrating or insulting those who don’t agree with me. These are my feeling only. I don’t intend for them to change your mind. I only hope that, if I disagree with you, you might leave with a better understanding of why.

Here goes.

I worry about discourse that divides us. Simply adding the phrase “I know some thoughtful and reasonable people disagree with me, but this is how I feel” could certainly “make the medicine go down” a bit easier. Please take that as a prelude.

I worry about (and this is certainly not a new phenomenon) the use of the press to destroy an individual’s character.) Moreover (and this is new), I worry about the use of social media to spread the hate. It bothers me to see how little most people understand about politics—how few people see that it is not the art of the perfect, but, as Ben Franklin said, “the art of the possible.” It is messy and can’t be evaluated by the criteria of perfection.

I worry about the use of personal destruction in politics. When a woman who has devoted her life to public service and protecting the least of those among us is subjected to upwards of $200 Million in investigations, invectives, innuendoes, and false news, only for legitimate investigators to say, in the end, “We find no criminal fault with this woman” is amazing, in my opinion. Mistakes? Yes. Ill-considered comments? Yes. Poor speaking skills? Yes. Deserving of bitter hatred? You decide. In my opinion, she should be our president. Feel free to have your own. Ad hominem attacks will not change my mind, and, assuming they wouldn’t yours either, I’ll leave it at that.

I am a veteran of the United States Navy. I carried a rifle for a year in Vietnam. Later, I was offered the chance to return and serve on river boats. I lacked both the patriotism and the personal courage to accept. But, and I have friends on both sides of the political spectrum, I will never vote for a political party that attacked the character of a brother-shipmate who did drive Fast-Boats in Vietnam and was awarded multiple Purple Hearts. Sorry, just can’t do it. You vote your conscious as well. I don’t condemn individuals. That isn’t my job in life. I only condemn party leaders that would promote such injustice toward someone who served this country with bravery.

I worry that war brings too many profits to too many powerful institutions.

I worry about our worship of guns and the belief that they solve problems. I don't want your guns confiscated. I just want you to shut up about them. I've almost been killed by firearms several times in my life, mostly by careless friends, and once by a neighbor who liked to take his out and wave it around to show how harmless it (i.e. his gun) was when he he'd had few drinks. 

I worry about what I see as a lowering of noble standards. I never thought I would live in a country that would nominate a person for high office who was captured on film mocking a disabled person. Just my reaction. You are welcome to yours.

I worry about the economy. While it is true that the stock market has risen consistently for the last nine years, and has continued with a bump in 2017, there is a physical concept called gravity that enjoys a kinship with financial concepts. I worry that the present bump resulted from the anticipation by corporations that, soon, they wouldn’t even have to pretend to pay federal taxes, and could operate in the regulation-free world that saw rivers catching fire and toxic chemicals buried next to residential areas, or deposited in our waters. Those are not policies that imply a good future for us. Gravity will come into play, I fear, and there will be, in my opinion, great wailing and gnashing of teeth. Timing the market is hard.

I worry about our hatred of taxes. It is allowing our infrastructure to crumble and abetting the end of retail business. I fear future neighborhoods will simply become areas filled with “storage containers” for isolated and unconnected individuals.

I worry that entire "Christian" religious groups have abandoned the teachings of the Galilean, who promised mansions “in Heaven” in contrast to the teachings of the “Prosperity Gospel” adherents with their customized planes and multiple mansions here on Earth. I further worry that these groups are guided by homophobia, fear of science, and by choices that could best be reduced by sex-education, birth-control, and increased responsibility placed on the male-half of the equation, all of which are eschewed at present by the same religious groups.

I further believe, as did the founders of the country, by no means perfect men, but wiser than some, that religion is a personal matter best controlled by the heart and not by the government. Theocracies haven't worked historically, nor at the present in the Middle East and Africa.

I will believe, until reviewable and falsifiable evidence indicates to the contrary, that trust in science is more efficacious than trust in mythology. Science eliminated smallpox and polio from our lexicon of fears. Consequently, a vice-president who denies science scares me to my bones.

I believe, on evidence I have examined by the most educated among us, that homo sapiens are destroying our planet’s ability to sustain us and that distrust of science will hasten the apocalypse. I’ll make it through, but I worry for friends with children and grandchildren

I’ll stop. Believe as you will. My only feelings toward you are that you live long and prosper. May we all be guided by our consciences and not by false promises made to excite our embedded prejudices. That may be our greatest challenge for the future.

Happy New Year.