#455 – Dick Bernard: A Decade of Difference. A concert celebrating ten years of the William J. Clinton Foundation.
This entire program is accessible here. In all, the program is nearly four hours, but worth a watch.
#453 – Dick Bernard: Occupy Wall Street
As I write, October 13, the Occupy Wall Street initiative seems to be gaining momentum.
Two weeks ago, September 30, I submitted an opinion piece on the issue to my local newspaper at a time when the metro newspapers were ignoring the happenings in New York. I was motivated by the video clip of the folks on Wall Street balconies sipping drinks while overlooking the protestors below. You can view the clip here.
My op ed, “Wall Street Protests Matter to Us”, appeared in yesterday’s Woodbury Bulletin, and speaks for itself.
Tomorrow there is a demonstration in Minneapolis which I will likely try to attend.
The protests are spreading.
But I am reminded of some cautionary thoughts, which seem different, but to me are very directly related.
1) Right or wrong, the Wall Street folks feel that they deserve their excess wealth. This time of year is bonus time “on the Street” and (I hear) $1,000,000 bonuses or more are not uncommon. Folks who get these bonuses are slaves to making money, and labor very hard to make that money for whomever, and have come to expect this wealth, whether deserved or not. If the bonuses are cut somewhat (a likelihood this year), you will hear the weeping and gnashing of teeth all the way out here in the hinterlands.
I recall conversations with a woman about my age at a workshop thirteen years ago. Her daughter was a young analyst on Wall Street, and the previous year had made $800,000. The number sticks in my mind because I was a hard-working guy, in what I felt was a pretty well paying job at the time, and this young woman’s annual take was ten times my own annual salary.
The Mom got some benefits from her daughters success, and who of us can argue when one of our kids makes good? And in our society, the almighty dollar is the usual evidence of making good.
As I say, “right or wrong, the Wall Street folks feel that they deserve their excess wealth.”
(There is nothing intrinsically wrong with money, in my opinion. The ‘devils in the details’ are abundant, however. First is greed, which affects not only aspiring billionaires, but can take root far down the economic ladder as well. As important, if not more, is the lack of long-term vision when it comes to money policy. Wall Street has come to look on this as short-term (annual bonuses for performance, for example); and has imposed even more harsh markers on Business. Talk with anyone in big business, and the “quarterly numbers” will come up. One doesn’t achieve long term goals by being stuck on short-term thinking….)
2) As for protests, they can be good, a means to an end, but they cannot be the end in themselves: (Here is a fascinating column about the New York City Occupy Wall Street group.)
As noted it is possible that I’ll be at the event in Minneapolis tomorrow, but it is unlikely that I will be there for more than that single event. It is a big commitment to drive a distance to such things, and there are competitions for one’s available time and resources.
The protests, which were largely invisible in the national news media when I wrote the op ed two weeks ago, have now become very visible, and they are spreading, and that is good.
But sooner than later they will ebb and once again become invisible on the national media screen. The opposition – the rich 1%ers – know this reality: you simply have to wait out the protests and go on with life as usual.
If the organizers and supporters of these protests are wise they are already planning the next steps beyond the protests.
Next steps include things like I did: submitting a letter or an opinion to the local paper; communicating with others we know, including lawmakers, etc., etc.
The reality is that the ‘system’ we love to hate will ultimately have to create a reasonable solution. Anarchy or the like isn’t a viable option, even though it’s fun for awhile.
3) Finally, there is an argument about “class warfare” out and about.
I don’t doubt at all that there is such a war, and it was a preemptive strike by the privileged 1% against the rest of the population.
But it is important to remember that those 1%ers are not a monolith, all thinking alike.
Always keep in mind the folks like mega-billionaire Warren Buffet who are out there, doing their part as well, and moderate views are an extremely important part of this struggle.
Protests are good, but they are only one tactic in what is a very long term struggle.
#448 – Dick Bernard: Ken Burns "Prohibition"
We watched the first segment of Ken Burns latest documentary on PBS last night. (Part 2 of the 3 part series is tonight at 7 p.m. Sunday nights program here. More details including archived material here.)
I very highly recommend watching the entire series…and doing more than just watching: it is a natural for very serious reflection.
Disclaimer: I am not a tee-totaler. On the other hand, if I was the statistical average for consumption of beer, wine and spirits, the alcohol industry would scarcely exist. My parents were, I believe, tee-totalers. They never said why, but my guess is that for both of them, their opinion was formed through earlier family experience. I’m the family historian. I can speculate.
As I watched Prohibition last night, I kept thinking of the arrangement on my office bookshelf, which has been directly behind me whenever I’m at this computer screen, and has been the same for many years (you can click on the photo to enlarge).
Front and center is a Crucifixion in a bottle, one of several made by my Grandfather Bernard at some point in his life. The bottles, all the same, were said to be whiskey bottles. Grandpa in his early life was a carpenter, a lumberjack and miner, later in life chief engineer in a flour mill. According to my Dad he did these creations himself. They are rough yet precise works. It is unknown when he crafted them. He died in 1957.
To the left of the whiskey bottle is a goblet made of shell casings by my Uncle Frank, Grandpa’s son and Dad’s brother, in the machine shop of the ill-fated USS Arizona (where Frank died and his burial place). Behind the goblet is a model of the Arizona. To the right is a mini-Peace Pole given to me by my friend Melvin Giles some years ago. And behind all of them is a portion of an American flag. Invisible to the right is a model of the Destroyer Woodworth, on which my Mother’s brother, Uncle George, was an officer in WWII.
As I say, all of these have a long history at this particular place in my office, behind my computer screen. Together they evoke “America”. And at the center of it all is a Whiskey Bottle and a Crucifixion scene….
Part One of “Prohibition” recounts the nearly 100 year effort to ban alcohol in the United States. It is a story full of personal tragedies, zealots, charismatic evangelists, superb lobbyists, and the usual collection of political characters, saloon keepers and charlatans.
Prohibition became the 18th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States in 1920.
Part two and three of the series will detail the failure of this campaign prohibiting a behavior and the ultimate repeal of the Amendment – the first (and last) such action ever in the 224 year history of the Constitution. What good it might have done was likely exceeded by the negatives.
The learning opportunity from this film comes, in my opinion, not from the event itself, but how it relates to all manner of schemes and causes to require this, forbid that, or condemn the other.
The list is very, very long. Pick your particular bias – something that you think should be done, and required of everyone. It’s on my list. And there’s some charismatic leader who can sing a mean song, and some passionate zealous followers who cannot conceive a country or a world without their passion being enacted to their satisfaction. The cause is their crusade.
As prohibition proved, such things never ever work. The experiment in prohibition should be an object lesson.
But, you say, “that was then, and this is now”?
Sure it is.
Think.
UPDATE October 5, 2011: We watched Parts 2 and 3 of Prohibition on Monday and Tuesday evening.
I’d highly recommend the entire Prohibition series for stone-sober viewing and then deep reflection about what will (not “can”, but “will”) go wrong, for any zealots, ideologues, moralists, etc. who think they can successfully manipulate American diversity by their own scheme or design. This includes the ones who claim to have the objective truth, not to mention God firmly on their side.
As the five hour series demonstrates, you can reach a peak in power and influence, but it is a long and certain fall from the pinnacle in ways you could not anticipate, and in the process you inflict considerable damage upon the very society you proclaim to save.
As I mentioned, I am neither a tee-totaler nor a drinker worthy of the label.
Makes no difference, I’ve seen the ups and downs of this and many other issues over the years. The ideals collapse upon very different realities.
I never studied the subject of alcohol (and tobacco) consumption, other than by observation during my adult life. Legally mandated notice about such as the dangers of alcohol and tobacco use certainly did have a positive impact. But, I think, the greatest impact on the body politic was simple changes in the way people were, together. It used to be, for instance, that you could find accommodation for smoking everywhere. Today smoking is by no means an endangered vice, but it doesn’t hold a candle to what it used to be, and nobody had to pass a constitutional amendment to make that so.
This will not stop the power people from attempting to move their own political agendas, from attempt to outlaw certain kinds of marriage, to mandating war without end, to perpetual and enduring peace, to ridding the world of abortion, or to rendering irrelevant certain political factions which hold different opinions from the temporarily dominant majority. Dreams ultimately collide with reality.
All the carefully concocted schemes will, at minimum, collapse over time, leaving rubble in their wake.
Will our societ collapse along with them?
Go to the link at the top of the page to rewatch the series, or check with your local PBS station.
Don’t miss it.
#446 – Dick Bernard: 2012. What if the radicals win?
A few days ago, at a political fundraiser in St. Paul, a 3-term Congressman told us that “Congress” as an entity has a 12% approval rating. That is about as close to zero as it is possible to get. I knew this number from earlier reports, and I’ve always observed that we Americans, who select Congress, after all, must really be fools.
At about the same time as the fundraiser, I read a fascinating column by Steve Benin in the Washington Monthly about the American Congress and the U.S. President in the year 1983. It is here. The nub of the article was this: 1983 was a productive year, as such things go in Washington. There was a Republican President; the House of Representatives was heavily Democrat; the U.S. Senate was majority Republican but well below the 60 vote threshold needed to avoid possible filibuster. (You can see makeup of U.S. Government in recent history here: Congress 1977-2011001
The government composition in 1983 was essentially the opposite of today…but government worked, because the representatives of the two parties respected each other and worked together. Sure, they fought. But it was genteel compared with today.
There was no single-minded determination to destroy the opposition, to make the President fail, or to win by refusing to compromise, as is true with today’s radical leadership.
It is no secret that today’s Republican Party is different from the long ago versions. The current version is a take no prisoners, win at all costs, just say no, bunch. This is true in states as well as at federal level. (On the other side of the aisle, consistent criticism of President Obama has been that he has persisted in trying to work with the opposition – a la 1983 – rather than fight fire with fire.)
As we speak, there are many efforts around the United States to reconfigure legislative and congressional districts, and make it more difficult for people to vote, to bring about Radical Religious Republican nirvana: a Permanent Republican Majority.
I recently wrote to my two Republican state legislators saying “your party’s strategy of making the Democrats a permanent minority seems to be working – state and national. The sole Republican programs are to defeat President Obama, and refuse to raise taxes or support any recovery initiatives that work – these will just help Obama, they reason.
People have no clue about consequences they face with Norquist/Rove as their model long term.”
Of course, the Republican long-term strategy won’t work…long-term.
Probably, it won’t work short-term, either, even if the evidence (Republican President, Republican House, Republican Senate, Republican Governors in all State Houses, and Republican legislatures universally, and de facto Republican Supreme Court majorities) come to be in 2012.
It doesn’t take a genius to compute that the new era will not be ushered in by strains of kumbaya.
“As you treated others, so will you be treated” is an axiom that comes to mind.
An accomplished radical Republican dream will be a nightmare for everyone.
Even if they prevail in 2012, their dream of permanent dominance likely will not happen. If it does, refresh yourself on the American Civil War, 1861-65.
At another source, in the last few days, I read that in 2010 only 41% of Americans even bothered to vote. That means, of course, that of every 100 voting age Americans you come in contact with in an average day, 59 did not even show up at their polling place in 2010. It was a recipe for national disaster in 2010: the angry voters prevailed.
(The Congressman we saw on Wednesday described well the unreasoning anger. It goes something like this:
“You people have to cut wasteful spending.” (Government as “them”, not “us”)
“Fine. What do you suggest we cut, specifically things you benefit from.”
(Silence.)
Here’s the difference between good things happening and (in my opinion) horrid.
Be informed. Find out the rules for registration in your state, and help people get registered, and help them become informed about what is at stake if even more of the same we’re now experiencing is the aftermath of 2012.
NOTE: I’ve written frequently about political behavior, most recently here on Sep. 29, and expect to continue this practice, perhaps once or twice a week. Scroll down in the right column of this blog, and there is a category titled “Politics” which archives what I’ve written (and will write) on the topic.
#445 – Dick Bernard: A Political Fundraiser
Late yesterday we went to a small gathering of people in St. Paul. It goes by the generic label: “political fundraiser”.
As such things go, this was a small event. The candidate was there: a three term Congressman from southern Minnesota; a Democrat in a district that is probably shaded Red (Republican) historically, and reaches from Wisconsin to South Dakota. The candidate has all of the appropriate credentials to win in November 2012: he’s lifelong midwest; he’s long lived and worked in the district he’s been representing; he’s a career public school teacher and coach; a retired military man (National Guard); family man…in short, he possesses everything that builds what should be a winning image.
There have been no scandals on his watch.
The Republicans have no one yet to oppose him; and are trying to gerrymander his district in mandatory redistricting due to the census, to make it more difficult for him to win in 2012 (redistricting won’t be accomplished till sometime in early February, 2012), etc.
As is typical at such events, roughly half-way through the fundraiser, the Congressman made a few remarks, and then answered a few questions for us.
He noted that as a body, Congress is reviled by the American people: something like 12% approval rating…he also noted that, ironically, it is those same American people who freely elected he and his colleagues. 73% of this same public disapprove of the job of Republicans in the current Congress; 62% disapprove of the job of Democrats in that same Congress.
Poll numbers are the pulse, as it were, and what the people are thinking.
Perhaps polls are also used to manipulate opinions?
The Congressman talked about a poll not long ago in his district showing he was up by 13% over a still hypothetical opponent. Shortly thereafter the Karl Rove operation tossed $800,000 into a political advertising campaign in his district, and the following poll showed him as being in a dead-heat with the same hypothetical: it’s the power of political advertising. Hateful as it is, political propaganda works. And advertising costs money, which is why the Congressman is early on the circuit to raise money for his own campaign.
He talked about the poisonous atmosphere in Washington DC, at the Capitol where he works.
He’s a gregarious fellow, a friendly guy, and he’s no stranger in Congress. The ascent of 94 Tea Party types to Congress in 2010 poisoned further the already tenuous relationship well in the U.S. Congress. These days, he said, it is not uncommon to just say a friendly hello to a colleague in a corridor, and get no response whatsoever. Congressional colleagues have become enemies, rather than partners to build a better United States.
The Congressman talked of other things as well, but the basics are as noted above.
Scarcely thirteen months from now the American people will vote (including by not even bothering to vote, or voting on a whim, without even basic knowledge of the consequences of their vote.)
The day after the election of 2012 we will have something better, more of the same, or something even worse than the gridlock we are now experiencing.
The future is completely in our hands.
Every one of us will make a huge difference, for good or ill.
#440 – Dick Bernard: "Class War" and "the American Dream"
Sometime in 1987, well into President Ronald Reagan’s second term, I was in San Benito TX visiting my father.
One evening, he and I went out to dinner with his good friends, also retirees in San Benito. It was just a night out. I knew them both from previous visits. He was a retired locksmith, and she a homemaker, both originally from Minnesota.
Sometime during the dinner, the talk turned serious. They were telling Dad and I a tragic story. They had just lost their entire life savings – I remember it as $170,000 – in a bank collapse in their community.
This was a time of de-regulation and they had moved their savings from an insured account into an uninsured account that promised much larger returns. The bankers scheme didn’t turn out and they lost everything except their social security, and whatever small property they owned (a trailer home in San Benito, and who knows what ‘up north’).
I’ve watched assorted schemes and scams as they’ve taken place since then, most all of them involving money and greed as twins.
It was called “trickle down” economics in the Reagan years.
George H.W. Bush got in trouble for referring to it as “voodoo”.
In the late 90s there were feverish and successful attempts to regulate regulations of banking out of existence, to ‘let the free market do its thing and bring riches to us all’.
Then came the folly of big (and foolish) tax cuts and huge un-funded Medicare benefit increases (great politics) twinned with big war in the first decade of the 21st century. Three years ago this month, it almost came completely undone with the bank collapse, and the real estate collapse which remains an unmitigated disaster.
But, oh was it fun while it lasted! That’s how it is, living on the credit card.
And here we are, same story, some of the same actors, but some new ones as well. Same insane message.
The Big Lie of the anti-government Norquist generation of lawmakers, state and federal, will bring disaster, but probably won’t be noticed until disaster actually strikes. That’s the way it seems to work in our casual society, where paying attention to policy, and who makes it, is boring to most who are affected by that same policy.
Big Business is run by Wall Street; Wall Street is run by Quarterly Results (the numbers); Wall Streets business is to make money now, not to build a stable economy long into the future.
I muse often about whether there is ANYBODY in those corporate structures or Wall Street Towers who are really paying attention to the implications of destroying the Middle Class. The Middle Class is, after all, the source of their wealth. Their market for their goods.
The Middle Class can turn this around – we are massive in numbers – but far too many of us are shills for the wealthy who, by and large, have no interest in us except what we can do to destroy ourselves.
I’ll do what I can. Each of us has to do what we can….
At minimum, don’t believe the shills who proclaim that there’s “class war against the rich”.
It’s the other way around.
Just look at the long term results.
(The best succinct graphic I’ve seen about the national debt and how and why it happened can be watched here. It is succinct and powerful.)
#437 – Dick Bernard: Sykeston vs Goodrich, 1957; Us vs Us, 2011: How are you on the field, or not?
Soon after 9-11-11 I received a “real” (with postage stamp) letter from a great and long-time friend: “Enough 9/11 already. [My son] contends that if we put the same energy into remembering victims of battering and child abuse, it would be well served. I am not unsympathetic, but where is the energy for other injustices? Am I being a cynic I wonder.”
Fair enough. In fact, I agree. My 9-11-11 post is titled “The first day of the rest of our life as a people“. My comment on 9-11-01 itself is titled “Have we learned anything these last ten years?”
The letter caused me to reflect on a long ago event and how it applies (I feel) to today’s world.
In 1957 we moved back to Sykeston ND. It was my senior year in high school, and we’d been elsewhere for the previous six years.
For the only time in my life I was in a school having enough boys for a football team, though only six-man.
Sykeston Football 1957
As the photo shows (I can remember almost all of the team members, I’m in front row, third from left) we did not look terribly impressive. The yearbook says we only played two games, winning the first against Goodrich, 26-0, and the second against Cathay, 40-2. The other two games were “postponements”. At any rate, when we played we apparently did all right. I had one touchdown, the yearbook says.
Ah, Kenny Chesney’s “The Boys of Fall”. Undefeated.
I remember vividly something during the Goodrich game (we were the visitors). At some point in the game I found myself running towards a big horse of a kid running towards me down the field. All I remember is that he was BIG, and I hit him head-on, and it hurt bad.
Nothing broken, or even bruised, but I knew he and I had met. At minimum I stopped him cold.
That was the Goodrich game: 26-0, Sykeston. It was no Kenny Chesney moment, but it was a moment.
But how about “Us vs Us, 2011”?
I know there are readers of this blog who don’t like football, and that’s okay.
But the U.S. body politic is very seriously fighting against itself these days, and just like that big horse of a guy and me in 1957, either you’re on the field, or you’re on the sidelines, in the stands, maybe not even showing up to support the team, but only being a “Monday morning quarterback”. Absence from action is dangerous for us all.
We’re a Nation of One’s and we’re at risk. It’s the rare person I talk to who doesn’t have his or her sole first and primary priority for this country, and bases his or her judgments on this single priority. All too often, deliberately, problems are cast as President Obama’s fault.
It’s not President Obama’s game to win or lose, it’s ours as a society.
And the function we can serve in the winner-take-all fight that faces us is to be on the field, getting bruised up.
If we’re on the sidelines, or not at the game at all, the opposition has free rein, and we’ll all suffer, including the people who think they’re winning.
Here I am, 54 years from 1957.
In that long-ago game, I met the bruiser head on and we won 26-0. Sure, that’s meaningless…or is it?
Where will Kenny Chesney’s “Boys of Summer” be 54 years from now?
Directly related posts: Sep. 9(Reflecting on Sep. 11, 2001, and the ten following years); Sep. 11 (39 comments to date about the Sep. 9 post); Sep. 14 (Vietnam Vet Barry Riesch); Sep. 15 (But/And); and Sep. 16 (Political models).
#436 – Dick Bernard: Politics: An Awkward but Essential Conversation
The specific intention of this blog post is not to define the problem; rather than to encourage serious dialogue among people of differing political minds. Directly related posts here; here; and here.
Six years ago I was completing the family history of my mother’s family. By then I had already spent 25 years delving into the roots of both my mother and father, and I knew well that family history is much like American History, or World History: someone decides what that “history” is; it consists of what those in power agree can be told; and it leaves out much of the most interesting – and often most relevant – parts of the story.
I decided I needed to somehow address the obvious, and I put together a single page – 113 in the book – titled “Sex Religion Politics” and how the ‘no talk’ rule tends to rule the conversation. The entire page is here: SexReligionPolitics2005001. A few days later the book was published, ironically coincident with Hurricane Katrina devastating New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. At the time we were in the early years of the Iraq War, which we had presumably ‘won’ two years earlier in early May 2003; and the political gulf, already wide, had become a chasm.
Stay away from Politics if you wanted a civil gathering.
If you’re reading this you’re interested in the topic, and you may know whether I’m in your own circle or not.
Regardless of ‘truth’ (a truly elusive concept, even if you or someone else thinks they know the ‘truth’) I think it is helpful to at least create a framework for possibly discussing this whole business of our political world. After all, we are facing an uncertain future in about as radically a divided society as we have experienced in many decades. At least it appears divided, from the political and pundit and pollster class.
For consideration and conversation I offer this.
Years ago I did a rough sketch of how I saw the political world of people in general. It is illustrated below, as I sketched it at the time (click to enlarge).
Yes, this is a rough sketch. In the sketch the height of the vertical axis represents intensity of feeling and action. The horizontal axis represents left, right and center. It speaks for itself.
Recently I read an interesting variation on this description, which caused me to seek out what turned out to be called a “truncated cylinder”, which looks like this:
This cylinder represents the political ‘scrum’ as described by a professor of Jeremy Powers, someone on one of my internet conversation groups. This is how Jeremy described it:
“I had a college political science professor who taught that the political spectrum was not a flat line, but a circle. And most of the people are inside the circle, rather than on it, as we all have beliefs that run contrary to standard liberal or conservative thinking. The further you get to one extreme it starts to circle back to the other extreme. Libertarians, for instance, inhabit both the extreme left and extreme right of the spectrum.
I think this is just a reality of the professor’s teachings.”
Blending the professors description* with mine, basically both have the intensity of left and right, but ironically (and perhaps even logically), the left and right (vertical axis E-F) have far more in common than either would like to admit, even if they hate each other. Most of us just swim around, too many of us clueless, somewhere within the circle. Not healthy.
Agree or disagree, it’s something to talk about.
And talking is urgently needed if our society is ever going to heal and move forward.
UPDATE
* – The professors description (I don’t know the name of the professor and thus can’t acknowledge him or her) turned out to be different than I had assumed. His illustration is below (click on it to enlarge). At the same time, I believe my ‘model’ also is legitimate. The extremes of both left and right have many traits in common, differing, of course, in what they want.
#435 – Dick Bernard: But/And
Directly related posts here; here; and here.
Tuesday night I was invited to a closing event of a well known program of Landmark Education, a world wide and well known personal improvement program.
I’m well acquainted with Landmark Education, having taken much of their curriculum 13 years ago. The event was an evening very well spent.
We were given a very simple exercise: to identify (my interpretation of the exercise) some decision making quandary of two options, separated by the word BUT.
A personal example of mine might be:
I’d like to lose a few pounds, BUT I like pie and ice cream (amongst a large array of such temptations)
There are endless variations on this quandary.
Then, the instructor asked us to replace the BUT with AND, so my statement would now become:
I’d like to lose a few pounds, AND I like pie and ice cream….
(I had my annual physical yesterday and the dreaded scale at the beginning of the process shows which of these has won. I wasn’t surprised.)
There followed an interesting discussion of the distinction (again, my interpretation) between these two statements.
When we use the BUT word in such matters, we are, in effect, making a decision: one option over the other. The word decision is in itself an interesting word. It shares a root with words like suicide, homicide, insecticide and on and on and on. When you decide something, you elect one fork in the road, and kill off the other.
Often a decision is made in anger, with frequent unpleasant results. Prisons are full of people who made decisions out of anger and killed somebody. (Whole societies can make decisions which ultimately cause their death, too. That includes our own American society, at this point in our history.)
The AND word connotes a right to choose, and in fact to change one’s mind. With choice, you’re not killing off other options.
Both BUT and AND have their merits and their problems; BUT, however, tends to be terminal. Deciding ones route tends to burn the bridge to the other route.
Before the exercise, the person who invited me and I were discussing some of the happenings in our respective lives. She happened to mention a meditation group that she had chosen to join, with some reservations, but had come to find very fulfilling for her.
In the course of the conversation, she mentioned a friend who had a weight problem, who was in the meditation group. In some manner, at some point, her friend chose to focus on a single meal each day, rather than look on the transformation as a 24 hour a day seven days a week task.
She took on her choice and over a period of time lost 35 pounds.
Apparently a very good choice.
I’m like everyone else, with plenty of BUTs impeding me in my life.
Time to replace a few of them, at least, with ANDs.
Maybe looking at that “pie and ice cream” as “sugar and fat” (which is what they are) will make a difference (I was going to say “can make a difference”, but that’s a cop out.)
As individuals, and as a society, we can make good choices or awful decisions.
We will choose what decision to make.
#434 – Barry Riesch: Reflections on 9-11
Note from Dick Bernard: I know Barry Riesch from nine years involvement with the Minnesota chapter of the national organization Veterans for Peace. Barry served in the U.S. Army 1968-70 and was a Mortar man in Vietnam 1969-70. Barry has been the inspiration for an ever more successful Memorial Day commemorative at the Vietnam Memorial on the Capitol Grounds in St. Paul. The photo is from the most recent gathering in May, 2011 (click on it to enlarge). I am proud to be a member of Veterans for Peace.
This post is also comment #36 here.
Barry Riesch opens the 2011 Memorial Day commemoration at the Vietnam Memorial on the Capitol Grounds, St. Paul MN
Barry Riesch:
While it is important to take time to pause and reflect on the horrible events which occurred on September 11, 2011, it is also time to ask ourselves whether the price we and the world has paid as a result of the path our leaders chose to follow has been worth it.
I offer a few of the consequences: Loss of Civil Liberties; Loss of any real privacy with the establishment of massive security surveilance system with 850,000 Top Securty officals and contractors (as reported by the Washington Post and printed in the StarTribune); compromised America’s basic principles (like Habeus Corpus and the right not to be tortured); undermined our economy; weakend security; a conservative estimate three years ago of $3-5 trillion (not counting our latest excursion into Libya); 6,000 dead soldiers and 100,000 wounded, many suffering from multiple amputations, brain injury, and post traumatic stress (PTSD); 50% of returning veterans receiving some sort of disabilitty payment; 600,000 treated in veterans facilities (estimates of future disability payments and health care costs $600-900 billlion); social costs reflected in veteran suicides (which have topped 18 per day in recent years); traumatized children and family breakups; first war (Iraq) in history paid entirely on credit card thanks to Bush; unemployment and deficit, both threats to America’s future traced to wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; increased defense spending and Bush tax cuts are largely why we went from a fiscal surplus of 2% GDP when Bush was elected to is perilous deficit and debt position today; direct government spending on those wars amounts to roughly $2 trillion- $17,000 for every US household, with bills yet to be received increasing this amount by more than 50%; macroeconomic weakness (disruption in the Middle East has led to higher oil prices thus forcing Americans to spend more on oil imports than on buying goods produced in the US); US Federal Reserve hid weaknesses by engineerig a housing bubble that led to a consumption boom which led to excessive indebtedness in real estate; Bush tried to undercut war costs by refusing basic expenditures for military (armored and mine-resistant vehicles and adequate health care for returning veterans); more than a million Iraqis have died directly or indirectly because of the war, even the most conservative studies say at least 137,000 civilians have died in Iraq and Afghanistan, 35,600 in Pakistan; among Iraqis alone there are 1.8 million refugeess and 1.7 million internally displaced people, a total of 7,800,00 war refugees and displaced persons- equivalent to the people of Connecticut and Kentucky fleeing their homes; both US invasions were to help restore Democracy but both now have more segregation today by gender and ethnicity.
Not all the consequences have been disastrous, as much of the Global War on Terrorism has been wasted on weapons that don’t work against enemies that don’t exist and now those resources are likely to be redeployed and the US will likely get more security by paying less.
These few examples of the price paid in getting to this point in the US and elsewhere have been enormous and mostly avoidable. These mistakes will be with us for a long time, maybe someday we will try a different approach. Not all of this can be attributed to George Bush as Barack Obama has continued to carry out the same policies.
*sources of information Brown University