I continue on my chemotherapy, feel tired, sick, and wonder what the outcome will be. The Sunni shop keeper in Baghdad is visited by the criminal extorting money and goods, al Queda threatening torture and death if he doesn't cooperate, and the Shiite militia wants him out of the neighborhood because his presence remind them of harsh days under Hussein and they are filled with resentment and desire for revenge. He wonders if he can bring his family back from safety in Syria, what will happen to civic order when the Americans pull out, and what the outcome will be. Whatever our daily concerns and fears, his are likely greater, his sleeplessness more persistent, nights longer, days filled with dread and fear. Yet he soldiers on, biologically driven, like the wildebeasts fording the crocodile lined rivers during spring migration in Africa, and spiritually filled with unquenchable hope for certainty, security, and peace. We are one in our fears and hopes.
Obama was here this weekend and spoke to those of us crazy enough to get up a 4:30 am to get in line for a 10:00am appearance. He didn't say anything profound just the usual stump speech. He did talk to us like we were adults and acknowledged and admonished us that there were many sides to most issues and we had to listen to and articulate the opposing sides positions. Whether one agrees with his positions or not he does lift the level of discourse. He has put the "King" back into the "King's English".
HL Mencken offers a glimpse of political discourse from an earlier day for comparison. Are we evolving to a higher state?
"When a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is the fact that they are quite incapable of weighing ideas, or even of comprehending any save the most elemental--men whose whole thinking is done in terms of emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread of what they cannot understand. So confronted, the candidate must either bark with the pack or be lost... All the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre--the man who can most adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum. The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."
- H. L. Mencken, in the Baltimore Sun, July 26, 1920.
The Jehovah's Witnesses are at the door. Three very kind gentlemen visit me regularly, leave me free books, earnestly convey the message in the Bible and that all the answers are there. They think they have me nibbling on the bait, but actually I have them sniffing the bait and hidden hook around the idea that maybe there is something to the idea that Life's DNA is always changing, offering new life forms a chance to succeed or fail, and that life didn't begin 4000 years ago on a Thursday morning with the wave a some old guy's hand. We haven't touched on the subject of why the Creator has to be a man yet. We have to get the intelligent design-evolution subject settled first.
Now is the only time you own. Use it well. Love to all, Eric
