The Calling of Our Time

The extremes on the right and that which Orwell and other dystopian writers feared are operational all over the world.  Fascist-like extremists from my point of view are the biggest threat to all of us.  They are brutal, inhumane, totalitarian in their hearts and unapologetically violent in their actions.  They are severely anti-Muslim and in the past at least were virulently anti Semitic as well.  If this were simply a sub-group or an out-on-a- limb phenomena it would not worry me.  But we can see from so many states in our union so many extremist right wing Republicans, a Party that has NO room for moderates, people of color and certainly no room for those from the LGBT community.  They are now in control of two of the most powerful three divisions of US power.  If Republicans gain the presidency and both Houses everything and I do mean every good social program that Obama, Lyndon Johnson and even FDR passed that saved a nation and your life will be at risk. I am NOT waxing histrionic.

Across Europe right wing extremism is popular and has resurrected its ugly head.  Just take a look at Mari Le Pen's right wing extremist party which has gained strength in France and this can be said surely most fearfully in Germany, in Belgium and even in the Scandinavian nations.

Am I delusional?  Did not Barack Obama, a supposed liberal Democrat, usher in total control of Congress in 2008?  What happened?  2010 was, indeed, our Waterloo.  All the good feeling and hope melted like ice cream in the heat of the summer. 

I am flummoxed, I am sickened by it all but MOSTLY I live in fear that all the good and hard-fought-for-rights for persons of color, women and the LGBT community will somehow be reversed. All it takes is time and not so much of it at that for a president to appoint local Republican federal judges, and worst of all Ginsberg's SCOTUS seat remains at risk for Republican control.   Now, if a Republican takes the presidency and in 2016 we do not regain at least the Senate than it is possible to see another entrenched-for-decades Republican SCOTUS jurists eviscerating human rights across the board, keeping money unlimited in political campaigns, treating corporations as people and letting big banks off the legal hook for tax payer money they digested because the Congress, especially Republicans, are bought off. It could mean the disappearance of the middle class and the American Dream as we have always known it.

All of this is worrisome to me.  I need to figure out how I want to approach this sickening impasse and whether or not I want to even keep writing opinion and working for candidates like an Elizabeth Warren whom we desperately need to stay in the Senate where she can do the most good in opposing obstructionist Republican politics.  It is the conundrum of my life and the calling of our time to determine how much we can do together to ameliorate the injustice all around us?

Until I decide that for myself we -- ALL of us -- must keep working toward taking back the Senate and CERTAINLY keeping the presidency in 2016.  I am rather tired of saying this as I said it so much about the 2014 midterms.  It obviously did not work as too many of us stayed home and simply let Republicans railroad themselves with ease into power.  I was vociferous about this because GET THIS: OUR LIVES ARE AT STAKE!  I am not kidding when I say that and I am no less fervent about it than I was in 2014 except now I am actually more insistent because time waits for no man and time is running out.

You who will inherit the earth, the wind and all that is vital for life on this planet MUST step up to the plate and for God's sake GET OUR PEOPLE OF COLOR, HISPANICS AND WOMEN REGISTERED TO VOTE ALL OVER THE NATION.  WHEN WE VOTE OUR NUMBERS WE WIN BUT IF WE STAY HOME WE LOSE AND ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE TERRIBLE CONSEQUENCES FAILURE BRINGS!  So I will say it again.  Begin as early as you can because you can be sure Republicans are not waiting and they are organizing  now.  WE MUST GET OUT THE DEMOCRATIC VOTE.  No, Democrats are not perfect but it is the only home we, the 98%, have at the moment.  It is the calling of our time!

Free Speech and that's that

I am for free speech and that's that. Pope Francis today stood on the side of critical religious speech restraint lest it offend. The Pope used his mother as a simile. He said one should expect a punch if anyone criticizes or insults her. I might direct the Pope (whom I rather like) to Saturday Night Live's early days where Father Guido Sarducci's "Find the Pope in the Pizza" was hilarious. How about Andres Serrano work at a Mapplethorpe exhibit which was of a photograph of a Christian symbol submerged in what I will not say lest I offend? The art work was attacked. What about the film "The Graduate?" In the end of the film the two heroic love birds (the bride and Dustin Hoffman) ran from her wedding. He snatched her from the pulpit before she could say I do, left the wood-be-groom in the dust and used a large crucifix placed horizontally in the door of the church so people in the church could not get out lest they try to stop them. I thought that symbolic of religion's penchant for imprisoning its subjects and that love should, in the final analysis, conquer all. Perhaps the Pope would not think as I which is his right.

Too bad, though this time, Pope Francis, I ever so respectfully disagree with you. If I insult your mother and you strike me that is assault and battery. One could go to jail for that. You should not punch me or anyone even if they offended your mama. Who knows maybe one has good reason for insulting her the substance of which the Pope does not know.
 
 I love Bill Maher's views on religion and support him 100%. It is our right to say that in organized religion, as the late Christopher Hitchen's brilliant book alluded, God is not necessarily good. I wish Hitchens were here to have this self-censorship debate.

If one thinks organized religion (emphasis on organized) is a scam that profits madly off frightened people who often cannot afford its hefty price but do anyway then it is our right to be able to say so any way we choose. If we think religion is so irrational and impossible to believe without denying science then it is one's right to say so any way one wants.

It says something, I think, about the weakness of religion that its faith is so tenuous a silly cartoon can ruin its day. Religion is and probably always has been political and like all politics it is up for debate even angry debate because those it oppresses and even kills are so numerous.

I took a course once in rabbinic Judaism and the rabbi who taught it said he saw a car with a bumper sticker. The sticker said "God made Adam and Eve and that's that." Our rabbi instructor said that he knew those in the car were not Jewish. You may ask why. Because, he said, Jews never say God did this or God did that and that's that. It never is the end of the story because religion gives us a plethora of ammunition to debate it by any verbal means necessary and we should!

Paris -- by Russell Brand -- BRILLIANT urge reading

One of the absolute best most articulate commentaries on the subject of our time I have ever read. I could never have written it better. It is perfectly done. I will spread this message as far as possible and urge all to do so as well. Thank you, Mr. Brand, for writing such a wonderful piece. Now, if only the masses would take what you have said to heart!

Paris -- By Russell Brand
 
 Away on holiday in a low signal land events in Paris are glimpsed as if through a crack in a door back to a terrible and confusing world.

This violence now though has the eerie familiarity and bilious dread of a recurring nightmare and can be pieced together with weary glances at airport lounge TVs, foreign newspapers and despairing texts from troubled friends.

Devastation in the City of Love, the New Year already feels tainted, blood stained in January by murder and sieges and grieving widows.

I don't know much about Charlie Hebdo, the satirical magazine where the murders took place. As a believer in God I respect the beliefs of all faiths, as a human being I respect freedom of speech. Where do we go then beyond fear and condemnation, cowed in the valley of the shadow of death two weeks into 2015?

How can any spiritual scripture be used as justification for mass murder? How can the tenet that The Prophet ought never be depicted ever override Islam's most mundane greeting AsSalaam alaikum - "peace and mercy be upon you"? It can't and it doesn't. 

The young, bewildered, pitiable men that carry out these atrocities probably at the behest of older, power hungry men do not speak for Islam or Muhammad or Allah. 

This language has nothing to do with the God I believe in or the God any of the Muslims I know believe in.

These men of murder are the symptom of a creed that lies as far away from God as is possible to conceive and do not represent Islam anymore than George Bush, Tony Blair and Halliburton represented Christianity, or ordinary, secular Europeans and Americans when they profited from the bombing of innocent Iraqis.

I suppose there will now be calls to curb our freedom. There will be tension and fear in mixed communities like the one I live in, there will be a temptation to generalize and damn in the bleak and monotonous tears of these insistent tragedies.

The awful fact is that violence of this type is almost impossible to stop. If any of us decide to yield to the terror within us and inflict violence, misguidedly or arbitrarily then how can it be prevented? More gates and bars and guards? More spying and borders and hate? More division and suspicion and derision? That is the philosophy that got us here.

The only answer is in the territory of the spirit, in the deep interconnectedness within us all. In the acceptance that all action on this plane is the manifestation of an inner realm and violence of an inner malady. Our only hope is compassion and love. To marshal vigorously the only terror and violence we can absolutely control; that which is within us individually.

I don't mean this in a wet, liberal "kumbaye ah me lord" type way. I am saying that we must love as passionately as they hate. We must respect as vehemently as they desecrate. It is not easy to be peaceful and loving in the face of dreadful violence but it's all we have. 

The reason I feel frightened by tragedies such as this is because I think there's nothing I can do, but there is. I can love and tolerate and reach across the fear. In places where secular and religious folk live together we have got to start observing the main message of every scripture; "be nice ."

All the other stuff is speculation; which book is best, which God is the most mighty. None of us know what's beyond the sensory realm, this tiny sliver of material life strewn within the infinite. But we each have the power to create heaven or hell here on Earth, extremists on all sides are clear in their intentions and actions, we, the vast, powerful majority, Christians, Muslims, atheists and undecideds have to be more committed and more determined. We must love life more than they love death. We must love each other more than they hate, in God's name, in Allah's name, in Charlie's name, in all our names.

Beautiful Sentiments; I am for peace are you?

​

Dear Brothers & Sisters,

Assalam-o-Alekum

          The members of the Islamic Center of Boston join their fellow Americans, French, and all people of conscience everywhere in the world in unequivocally condemning the senseless acts of violence that were committed in Paris, France on January 7th, 2015.

          No cause or excuse can be used to justify the taking of innocent lives and causing of wanton destruction and injury. The Holy Qur’an teaches us that the killing of one innocent human being is as if one has killed the whole of humanity. As followers of the Islamic faith, all of us repudiate this barbarism in the strongest possible terms and ask that every thing possible be done to bring the perpetrators of this heinous crime to justice and punishment.

          As members of the American Muslim community in the Greater Boston area, we offer our sincere condolences to those whose loved ones were killed or injured in this random act of terrorism.  May Allah (swt), the same God as the God of Jesus, Moses and Abraham, grant them patience and courage to deal with this calamity.

Mario Moreira
President, Islamic Center of Boston (ICB) - Wayland

Je Suis Charle and Je Suis Charlie

I am having difficulty writing an opinion with simplicity about events last week in France which require not simplicity but complexity of thought to make sense of the senseless.

Je Suis Juif literally and Je Suis Charlie idealistically because I am Jewish in form and I am Charlie in spirit.  I have always thought free speech the most important freedom without which the other freedoms our Founders Constitutionally etched could not exist.  At a very young age I knew the civil libertarian uniqueness of the land of my birth.  I thought I was lucky to be born here and I was.  I questioned everything according to my birthright and my right in the place of my birth.   In 5th grade I was in awe of my free speech ability to ask any question I chose and its importance in overcoming the stagnation of myth for the advancement of man.  Without questioning everything, including religion, man sits where he is and becomes stuck in non-truths, anti-science and error-filled assumptions.

I knew I was a Jew at an early age as my very first memory of self at three years old was that I was a Jew. I wrapped my three year old body in my father’s talis (prayer shawl) and was sure then at three years old that I would become a rabbi.  Being female did not matter.  The fire of the historical monstrosity of the Holocaust perpetrated against the Jewish 6 million in an orgy of anti-Semitism, burned later indelibly in my 10 year old brain.  That fire, to this day, decades later, has never been extinguished. 

To continue: It is rarely reported in western media except by Amy Goodman of “Democracy Now” and a few others in print seen or read by a few that there can be no doubt of western complicity for the Middle East quick sand in which we, the west, have been sinking.  It is vital that it is noticed by the west, admitted and stopped.  It is, in pertinent part, responsible, at least initially, for violence against us and others all over the world.  Muslim resentment of western colonialism and its western wars of lies waged in the oft perceived by Muslims holy land for its oil makes many Muslims wax furious.  The west supported the haves to the detriment of the have nots forcing the anger of them to burn in a fire now almost impossible to stop.

Bad western foreign policy decisions over decades, no centuries, have been responsible for the well of much anger-driven violence waged because of them.  The arc of perceptual injustice prevails and bends not towards justice but away from it.  The cauldron of Middle East anger seethes in response to the indignation of western perpetrated death as its collateral damage drones fly over the Middle East killing many uncounted innocents and producing retaliatory violence against their exuding product – death.

But we cannot stop there in our analysis of the events that took place in France.  Islam is not a violent religion, so many say, but there can be no doubt when the prolific Wahhabi-like violence in extremis is in front of one’s eyes the violent religious extremist part of that religion is what is seen.  It reflects in the western eye a part of Islam that is, in fact, very violent, uncompromising in belief and very extreme.   If one loses an innocent loved one because of it or if one is crippled by it a part – albeit a small part of Islam – is perceived as very lethal and responsible.  Moreover, it can be said Muslim violence on fellow Muslims has meant thousands perhaps hundreds of thousands of deaths occur in the name of the faith they share.  The killing has been brutal and extends all over the world.

The Cretans of psychopathology like an Adam Lanza of Newtown fame or a Timothy McVeigh of Oklahoma notoriety means, in part, sick minds perpetrate this evil but are no one’s fault except, perhaps, a mutant strain of one’s DNA making the prediction of violent events all the more difficult.

Violence everywhere is complex and the rationales for it are different. It is limited to a small percentage of religious, political and psycho-pathological violently irrational fanatics but if the violence happens to you or your loved one it is as if it were 100%.

Finally, Palestinian policy in Israel must be addressed or the conflict will continue in the form of never-ending war.  I do suspect if peace could reign tomorrow in that tortured part of the world there would be fanatics on both sides that would ruin it.  And even if Jews were magically not there I suspect groups within Islam would fight for control of, as Aaron David Miller entitled his book, “that much too promised land.”  The proclivity for violence among them cannot be denied with or without Jews.  Jews, though in reality will remain in Israel and Palestinians will remain there too.  Therefore, if one wants one’s children not to grow up in a madness of mayhem then peace must be forged through the compromise of both.  Compromise is not a dirty word but it is a lifesaving one if one wants to, indeed, save lives.

The American electorate and the west will sow the seeds of their own destruction if they elect leaders who are uncompromising and extreme.  Our Constitutional Fathers gave us a golden document filled with free speech and human rights guarantees.  If it were up to me compromise would be easy and peace in sight.  It can be if people of good will take a seat at the round table and as King Arthur at his Round Table once said "I am King Arthur and we are the Knights of Justice! We pledge fairness to all, to protect the weak and vanquish the evil!" Baruch Ashem (Please God,) let it be so!

Secrets

I first heard the song "Two Can Keep a Secret if One of them is Dead" on "Democracy Now" linked below. I heard it in between interviews on the National Security State.  It is beautiful in its simplicity, profound and it is eerie.  Amy Goodman's interview of Scott Horton who has published a new book entitled "Lords of Secrecy: The National Security Elite and America's Stealth Foreign Policy" I will Kindle and add to my plethora of 1/2 read excellent books in hope that someday before I die I will sit down and read them all.  Hope springs eternal.

My mind staggers at the latest extremist violence this time in Paris.  Where will it be next? There can be no doubt there will be a next.  Will we who yearn for humane policy ever know a world at peace and compromise again?  The more pressing question is how did we get here?

Is violence a part of man's basic tribal nature or are there cultural forces man can control?  The explanations are legion and I do not have the endurance nor the expertise to explain such things in depth but I do know a little that I think accounts for much. 

Post World War II western foreign policy has angered many in the developing world; blood for oil the life blood of the west the riches from which never find their way to the struggling masses; the never-ending corruption of wealth and politics; the secrets of the national security state easily exposed in our technological age for all the world to see and for the least of these brethren to wax angry at the inhumanity of eternal war those secrets engender and the impossibility of keeping those secrets secret no matter how much technology we apply to it are some reasons for consideration.

What matters?  In the end I believe that human beings want to be heard, they want to live in dignity and they resent others to perceptively take it all leaving little for those who often work the hardest.  This story is old.  It is as old as civilized man, as old as Egypt, as old as Rome, and as old as the modern industrial state.  The difference now is injustice is shown as fast as one can click on a mouse. 

At our core I believe the powerless want a voice in the process.  What is more precious to arrive at political process than our freedom of speech? It is, as I see it, the most important freedom because through it we can make our desires heard.

Moreover, for 6 billion on our planet there are billions of different modalities of religious belief and non-belief. Which one is correct? No one, in truth, really knows but man has the right – no, the obligation – to question everything. Nothing is more important than that.

The song “Secrets …” is here or at the link below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bx41b631Yl8

A Recommendation

One of my like-minded politicos gave me a tip on a great documentary that he says I will love. It's called "Ethos." If you have Netflix you can get it on that. It is narrated by Woody Harrelson and dedicated to my own political mentor in days gone by, the late Howard Zinn. I just began it and it seems like it strikes my ground zero.

This is, I am sure, a winner. If you can I suggest you tune in if you feel as powerless as I do to change the sickening injustice we see all around.

How did it come to this? I remember 2008 being in a house delirious with happiness about the Obama victory and the complete Democratic Congress. What are we poised to experience with states totally Republican controlled and a Congress Republican as well? Where did it all go so wrong? I am now going to drown my sorrows in blueberry pancakes. It's not whiskey but it is my only solace -- FOOD! : This is what happens when our side does not vote.

Headline if you want to read: here or http://www.huffingtonpost.com/
RED TIDE: STATES VEER RIGHT

Why we MUST VOTE!

This is what the Republican Party welcomes into their "big" tent.  See story below.  How proud can one be calling themselves Republican when it plays host to what is cited?  This is what we are up against and why I am so vociferously and passionately insistent Democrats, liberal, progressives, moderates and all who believe in a humane, tolerant society and way of life GET OUT THE DEMOCRATIC VOTE IN 2016! 

Story below written  by Emily Shire of the "Daily Beast," a politically liberal site.

Racists Melt Down Over Steve Scalise

White supremacists online whine that the Republican leader addressing one of their groups is no different than talking to the NAACP.

The scandal swirling around Steve Scalise’s address to white supremacists has white supremacists crying foul.

Steve Scalise, newly elected as Republican majority whip, admitted to addressing the European-American Unity and Rights Organization conference in 2002 when he was a Louisiana lawmaker. (EURO was founded by David Duke, the ex-Klansman who ran for Louisiana governor in 1991.) Scalise says he didn’t know they were a white supremacist group and equated addressing them with “liberal” groups like the League of Women voters.

Stormfront.org, the leading white-hate site on the Internet, agrees with Scalise’s defense. Stormfront founder and former KKK leader Don Black wrote he can’t stand the “absolute hypocrisy of the anti-White establishment.”

“Politicians grovel before African-American, Latino and Jewish groups, which openly promote their racial interests,” Black complained, “but they are conditioned to run like scared rabbits at the very idea European-Americans have rights.”

“We are not white supremacist,” insists Popper 504. “We want to live with our own, farthest away from the blacks and jews.”

The Stormfront folks say the forum isn’t about white Christian supremacy, but rights for whites, despite posting how African Americans have “IQs in the range of 80-85” and claiming the “jewsmedia” actively “ignores black on white crime.”

“We are not white supremacist,” insists Popper 504. “We want to live with our own, farthest away from the blacks and jews.”

How dare the “Jewish Supremacist Antagonist” be outraged when no one would care if Scalise had spoken at “NAACP or Urban League or LaRaza,” said Ex-Detroiter. “All of those would be just fine.”

The Stormfront crowd offers its own helpful political advice, not only for Scalise but also for the entire GOP.

“If Republicans truly wanted to take this country back, they would make use of the majority of people in this country -- Whites -- and mobilize,” posts a user named Cyan Sky. “The Dems play identity politics with non-whites. The only way the Republicans will win is if they do the same with Whites.”

My Note:  THIS IS THE REPUBLICAN PARTY YOU WANT TO LEAD A COUNTRY?  GET OUT THE DEMOCRATIC VOTE BEFORE ANOTHER CIVIL WAR TEARS US APART!!

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/12/30/crybaby-racists-support-steve-scalise.html

A Bumpy Ride

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…/john-boehner-steve-scalise_…

John Boehner Backs Steve Scalise Amid Controversy Over White Supremacist Meeting

WASHINGTON -- House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) is throwing a lifesaver to House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R) as the Louisiana congressman faces a...

huffingtonpost.com

The bastard, Representative Steve Scalise, now the Republican Party’s whip, is supported by bonehead Speaker John Boehner even though by admission Scalise acknowledges he spoke at a gathering that sympathized with the KKK, American Nazis, other extremists and white supremist groups.  Scalise incredulously claims not to have known the ideological base of the gathering in front of whom he gave the speech. Believe that lie and he will, I can assure, tell you another.  The group was a more palatably named the “European-American Unity and Rights Organization” founded by David Duke, the former grand wizard of the KKK.  Ground beef is still a hamburger even when it is dressed up with condiments and a tomato.

This is the nature of the power the electorate handed to the Repuglican Party in both the House and the Senate.  2015 could be one of the most discordant, Republican repulsive, and contentious years yet for our nation as Republicrat numbers increased. This is what happens when the liberal, progressive and Democratic Party base do not vote.  Gaaahead keep not voting and enjoy the results of true mean, brutal, murderous and cruel oligarchic fascism, the base into which the Republican Party has morphed.  

As the great Betty Davis said "Hold onto your hats. It's going to be a bumpy ride!"

GET OUT THE GD PROGRESSIVE VOTE IN 2016.  YOU WANT TO ERADICATE ALL THE SOCIAL SAFETY NETS, SOCIAL SECURITY, MEDICARE, MEDICAID, THE ACA AND ALL OUR REGULATORY AGENCIES THAT HELP PROTECT US THROUGH CLIMATE CHANGE DISASTERS AS WELL AS KEEP AN EYE ON NEFARIOUS CEO POLLUTERS, FIND CURES FOR DISEASE AND, OH YES, PROTECT US AGAINST THE BANKS THAT BROUGHT YOU THE GREAT RECESSION? YOU WANT TO KEEP OUR NATION CONSUMING POISONOUS FOOD, DRINKING OIL SOAKED TOXIC WASTE WATER THAT KILLS US AND ALL LIVING THINGS THAT SUPPORT LIFE?  YOU WANT TO KEEP US IN ETERNAL WAR? IF SO BY ALL MEANS DO NOT VOTE AND HAND THE REPUBLICANS THE ELECTION.  YOU WILL GET ALL OF THAT AND MORE. GET OUT THE PROGRESSIVE, LIBERAL, MODERATE AND DEMOCRATIC VOTE OR SUFFER THE CONSEQUENCES OF SICKENING REPUBLICAN RULE. I CAN ASSURE YOU IT WILL BE HAZARDOUS TO YOUR HEALTH!

Blue

It is sad that one must choose whom to support -- the police or black men killed especially Mr. Garner who was video shown crystal clearly to be robbed of his life for an allegedly trivial offense by law enforcement using an unnecessary choke hold frowned upon police behavior even in its own manual.

I mourn for the two policemen viciously murdered by a deranged man thinking that act would say and do something in protest of the assaults on black men. It did quite the opposite. It placed people in polar opposite camps when, in fact, they should join together to mourn the injustice in all camps where the innocent are slain for no good reason.

I support our men and women in blue emphatically and without equivocation as they are entrusted by us to protect and to serve. Their jobs encounter dangers most of us will never know but when wrong is done by any I speak out against that. The men in blue turning their back on Mayor DeBlasio was an insult and an assault on sensibility in a season of supposed good will. The mayor after the Garner unnecessary death at the hands of police was trying to calm an otherwise angry -- very angry-- black community which could have erupted at any moment into unchained violence that would rain down on a city which has known too much death.

The mayor has said MANY times that he supports and mourns both Officer Ramos and Officer Liu's deaths as if it were an attack on the entire city and, indeed, on him. All unjust murders should be protested. Mr. Garner, Officer Liu, and Officer Ramos suffered the same fate -- brutal deaths none of which should have occurred and should be protested by all.

"Wild"--A Review

Reese Witherspoon, as in other performances I have seen of her, is brilliant in her performance of "Wild." I loved this film. There were many moving moments but my rating of excellent revolves around what I see as the centrifugal force from which all other aspects of the film flow.

This film, a true story, of a woman whose life is shattered by the death of her mother whom she adored and from whom she drew breath is I think an example of endurance, strength, courage and the sheer will to survive the near impossible obstacles nature presents hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. The understatedly arduous hike of a woman with a back pack perhaps weighing 75 pounds or more along the Pacific Crest Trail to recapture her shattered life is amazing.

I thought the film a metaphor for many who have suffered, as Shakespeare's Hamlet says "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" that life can convey but go on despite those hardships and sometimes because of them. A road not taken or a life's love lost the consequences of which can seem insurmountable until we do persevere. We may learn from those difficult experiences; we may take another road leading to other, perhaps, better things or those tragedies may have no meaning at all. The film allows for that and it allows for us to see a woman go where few women have gone to defeat the obstacles that nature places in her path, greet impossible odds and overcome them. Some people help her along the way and some do not but she bravely encounters them and goes on.

I thought this film, too, a metaphor for life. We may encounter great hardships, perhaps, even seemingly impossible ones but endure and survive as she did. This film is not tied into a neat bow though. It leaves the viewer the ability to draw our own conclusion as to whether her journey down the Pacific Crest Trail and the arduous journey she and many of us face throughout life is worth it or not. It appears she did think it worth it and it seems most of us usually do.

Another View of The Interview

My opinion on the alleged North Korean hacking has morphed.  Amy Goodman from "Democracy Now" (Link here or below.) interviewed two experts on North Korea. Both had entirely different analyses from the mainstream corporate media including the "liberal" MSNBC.

It is unlikely to me, now, that N. Korea hacked into Sony's computer system.  While it is not impossible I am, however, inclined to believe North Korea was a convenient fall guy.  There are larger intertwined economic and powerful nation state interests which may have had US/Asian balance of power issues and even the omnipresent US military industrial complex realities at its core. 

The Sony hacking is, perhaps, either an inside job by a disgruntled employee(s) OR was perpetrated by a lone wolf or wolves for reasons not yet clearly known. Information on the relationship between Sony and the US government is more clearly illuminated in the "Democracy Now” segment.

I believe the US may be taking advantage of the Sony computer hack for political reasons.  The Korean War (1950-1953) and US foreign policy and economic interests in that Asian neck of the woods cannot be ignored.  Moreover, the mainstream media has vested interests in ratcheting up the alleged North Korean threat to thereby cement our large Asian footprint, the alleged humanitarian democratic value of which the American public is quick to swallow.

The difference between the MSNBC analysis of the alleged N. Korean hack and the analysis of "Democracy Now's" experts is wide.  Which view is true? I cannot know but seems unlikely to me, now, that N. Korea – isolated nation that it is –would have had the technological capability and expertise nor the national self-interest to institute the hack despite what the FBI says.  One must not forget our government lies and it does so all the time.  

Where are the weapons of mass destruction used to justify the invasion of Iraq leading to the ultimate destabilization of the Middle East, the killing of hundreds of thousands and the exiling of millions?

My motto: Question everything.   Howard Zinn’s motto for any foreign policy entanglement: Ask the question who profits and why?  I ask and so should you.

http://www.democracynow.org/2014/12/22/the_interview_pokes_fun_at_north

My guy Krugman -- Brilliant NYT article -- Read and learn-then Vote Democrat ALWAYS!

Keep Republicans away from the halls of power! Work and vote for Democrats!

Krugman:

Conquest Is for Losers

Putin, Neocons and the Great Illusion

More than a century has passed since Norman Angell, a British journalist and politician, published “The Great Illusion,” a treatise arguing that the age of conquest was or at least should be over. He didn’t predict an end to warfare, but he did argue that aggressive wars no longer made sense — that modern warfare impoverishes the victors as well as the vanquished.

He was right, but it’s apparently a hard lesson to absorb. Certainly Vladimir Putin never got the memo. And neither did our own neocons, whose acute case of Putin envy shows that they learned nothing from the Iraq debacle.

Angell’s case was simple: Plunder isn’t what it used to be. You can’t treat a modern society the way ancient Rome treated a conquered province without destroying the very wealth you’re trying to seize. And meanwhile, war or the threat of war, by disrupting trade and financial connections, inflicts large costs over and above the direct expense of maintaining and deploying armies. War makes you poorer and weaker, even if you win.

The exceptions to this dictum actually prove the rule. There are still thugs who wage war for fun and profit, but they invariably do so in places where exploitable raw materials are the only real source of wealth. The gangs tearing the Central African Republic apart are in pursuit of diamonds and poached ivory; the Islamic State may claim that it’s bringing the new caliphate, but so far it has mostly been grabbing oil fields.

The point is that what works for a fourth-world warlord is just self-destructive for a nation at America’s level — or even Russia’s. Look at what passes for a Putin success, the seizure of Crimea: Russia may have annexed the peninsula with almost no opposition, but what it got from its triumph was an imploding economy that is in no position to pay tribute, and in fact requires costly aid. Meanwhile, foreign investment in and lending to Russia proper more or less collapsed even before the oil price plunge turned the situation into a full-blown financial crisis.

Which brings us to two big questions. First, why did Mr. Putin do something so stupid? Second, why were so many influential people in the United States impressed by and envious of his stupidity?

The answer to the first question is obvious if you think about Mr. Putin’s background. Remember, he’s an ex-K.G.B. man — which is to say, he spent his formative years as a professional thug. Violence and threats of violence, supplemented with bribery and corruption, are what he knows. And for years he had no incentive to learn anything else: High oil prices made Russia rich, and like everyone who presides over a bubble, he surely convinced himself that he was responsible for his own success. At a guess, he didn’t realize until a few days ago that he has no idea how to function in the 21st century.

The answer to the second question is a bit more complicated, but let’s not forget how we ended up invading Iraq. It wasn’t a response to 9/11, or to evidence of a heightened threat. It was, instead, a war of choice to demonstrate U.S. power and serve as a proof of concept for a whole series of wars neocons were eager to fight. Remember “Everyone wants to go to Baghdad. Real men want to go to Tehran”?

The point is that there is a still-powerful political faction in America committed to the view that conquest pays, and that in general the way to be strong is to act tough and make other people afraid. One suspects, by the way, that this false notion of power was why the architects of war made torture routine — it wasn’t so much about results as about demonstrating a willingness to do whatever it takes.

Obama is not getting enough credit for how he handle the Ukrainian issue and this thug. The President took his queue from a Grand Master of Neocon dreams took a beating when the occupation of Iraq turned into a bloody fiasco, but they didn’t learn from experience. (Who does, these days?) And so they viewed Russian adventurism with admiration and envy. They may have claimed to be alarmed by Russian advances, to believe that Mr. Putin, “what you call a leader,” was playing chess to President Obama’s marbles. But what really bothered them was that Mr. Putin was living the life they’d always imagined for themselves.

The truth, however, is that war really, really doesn’t pay. The Iraq venture clearly ended up weakening the U.S. position in the world, while costing more than $800 billion in direct spending and much more in indirect ways. America is a true superpower, so we can handle such losses — although one shudders to think of what might have happened if the “real men” had been given a chance to move on to other targets. But a financially fragile petroeconomy like Russia doesn’t have the same ability to roll with its mistakes.

I have no idea what will become of the Putin regime. But Mr. Putin has offered all of us a valuable lesson. Never mind shock and awe: In the modern world, conquest is for losers.

Pope Francis the Great--from Punnishment to Peace

Pope Francis's words to the Vatican bureaucracy were scathing much needed criticism. Why should I a Jew care about the Vatican? I care because because Papal history and the history of the Roman Catholic Church has been intertwined with not only world history but, specifically, with the history of the Jews. We could not escape it. The Pope sets the stage and the tone of the Church's essence and its essence affects people all over the world. What the Pope says matters to 1.2 billion Roman Catholics. Therefore, what he says should matter to all of us.

I have always been critical of the Vatican but under this Pope my position has changed by an order of great magnitude. He has the greatest acceptance for the least among us and no matter how much men/women are afflicted he has room for them in his heart and places them within in the many mansions of the supreme being in which he believes.

He has brought much needed change to the Vatican bureaucracy, its cardinals and its bishops in a Church guilty of so many egregious sins against the innocent over centuries. Could and should the Church change more? Of course, there is always room for change but Pope Francis has changed the aura of the Church from one of punishment to one of peace, love and forgiveness -- the true essence of what Christianity, as I see it, should be.

Blue Mood

The assassination in cold blood of two NYPD officers helps no one, and, yes, everyone should decry it. I have empathy for our police who put their lives on the line so we may live safely free of anarchy. I also have empathy for Mr. Garner who was ridiculously choked to death by out-of-control NYPD officers abridging their own codes of police conduct.  Their assault and killing of Mr. Garner because of a woefully minor offense allegedly selling "loosie" cigarettes should be an affront to all of us.

 

One does NOT have to say one cares less about one death and everything about another. All of the killings were bad. The pertinent question, of course, is if Mr. Garner were not choked to death by an NYPD officer and a sidecar of other NYPD pile ons would the assassination of the NYPD officers yesterday have happened? It could have as the killer of the cops was mentally deranged. He killed his girlfriend too. The question if the Garner police killing did not happen would the two assassinated police officers be alive today is unknowable.

 

My instincts tell me the shooting of the NYPD police may not have happened if the African-American community were not, all over the nation, so enraged at the perceived unjust treatment of them at the hands of law enforcement.  Moreover, the shoddy prosecution of police perpetrators who commit egregious crimes should be an embarrassment to the nation.  It flies in the face of prosecutorial justice and civilization's ethical codes of conduct for police who enforce the law.  The police are, after all, the only ones the public trusts to protect us and to carry weapons, the specific purpose of which is to threaten and/or kill.

 

While our blue mood nation may have lit the spark for the policemen’s deaths we can never know that for sure because a whole community did not kill the NYPD officers but one out-of-his-mind man did!

The Miracle Worker

 "Obama Ends 2014 With Swagger ... "

The article in Huffington by Sam Stein is linked here or at the end.


It is a miracle the President, as the article states, has done all he has done in his so called "lame duck session." It is the eighth wonder of the world that he did all the things he has done during his entire presidency despite an obstructionist Republican Party of very white racists who could not stand the sight of his melanin hue in the White House.  They stymied everything he wanted to do to lift the nation out of its 30 year mostly Republican induced and George Bush promulgated coma.   Barack Obama was handed a pile of lemons and the lemonade he made is settling our collective stomachs.

My father always said that you could not argue with success.  The President now has much to crow about, the ebullience of which, one could see at his pre-Hawaii Christmas vacation press conference.  From Cuba to health care to the economy to getting a formerly intractable China on board with a climate change fix and everything in between if Republicans want to undo all the good this president has done, okay, go ahead make my day.  They will sow the seeds of their own destruction in 2016.  A new color in the political spectrum rainbow should be called Republican Obsolete.  The people, too, must vote to usher out the Republican Party of mendacity. Republicans cannot love America as they say they do when they really want to stagnate and sink it keeping what remains of its monied carcass for only them, the 1% wealthiest.

What God giveth God can taketh away.  Republican victories can be turned into defeats.  As some say in Hebrew parlance "Baruch HaShem" translation: Praise God, let it be so. The Republican Philistines must be crushed if they destroy the many good things this president has done since he was handed the 2007 Bush nightmare economy in free fall and a brutal savage war made up of lies that killed so many. 

Barack Obama, I've stuck with you and can easily say I love you.  All my life I have looked for a new FDR whom my father, though a staunch Republican, loved.  This president may be my miracle answered even though in November I thought all hope was lost.  It wasn't.  It was lying there underneath the radar screen.  As the miracle worker, Annie Sullivan, the great teacher of her blind and deaf student, Helen Keller said after much struggle: "She sees" and, now, so do I!

ONWARD TO A 2016 DEMOCRATIC VICTORY--NEVER GIVE UP, NEVER FALTER and DO NOT FAIL!

 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…/19/obama-2014_n_6354900.html

A Note to Chuck Todd and NBC

I quickly wrote this with no attention to prose.  It is to NBC, the Today Show and MSNBC:

I am nauseated by the absolutely ridiculous criticism of the president re: his Cuba relations miracle.  While some in the Cuban community .... some ELDERLY someones in the Cuban community in Florida are critical MOST are not.  So cut this president some slack IF it is in your DNA not to report excessively on unthinking critics of him.

Just how much more hostility to the so called "Cuban brothers" do people that Todd reports on think should be given?  Our record for ALL to see if the know nothings would simply look, is atrocious toward Cuba.  From assassination plots by the US to poisoning, to spies, to planned invasions over numerous presidencies of this small nation 90 miles to our south. 

NOTHING worked as the US strong arms wanted it to.  Just what WAS Cuba's egregious sin?  It did not do in our hemisphere what the US daddy wanted it to do economically.  It defied economically the US parent.  How dare it.  It nationalized industries and now US embargoes have brought the Cuban people to their knees.  HOW ABOUT REPORTING TRUTH FOR A CHANGE that does not make the US look so good.  We do not give a rat's petuti if the regime is democratic or not. We support right wing tyrannies all over the world even depose leaders we do not like and institute men who the US wants to do its economic bidding.  What the US does care about is how capitalist it can be and how much it can make for US corporate interests in the regions.

Without opening up relations with Cuba things will stay the same only hurting the Cuban people.  All I ask from the corporate media is TELL THE  WHOLE truth.  Watch Amy Goodman's interview about US policy toward Castro and GET the truth and READ the book below written by Saul Landau an expert on Cuba!

WATCH: Saul Landau on U.S.-Aided Anti-Castro Militants, the Cuban 5 and the “Real Terrorists”

These Republican beasts will in the last two years of the Obama presidency do NOTHING in bipartisan fashion. Will they ever build the embassy?  HELL NO they won't.  They will do everything they can to thwart the president.

Again I say it get DEMOCRATS into office with a Democratic president and watch the nation flourish!

It's only a movie--REALLY?

I would have supported Sony not bending to strong-arm computer hacking tactics of tyrannies which forced the company to cancel the film, The Interview -- a comedic spoof on the attempted assassination of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un by two tabloid figures. How many spoofs of that caricature "leader" does one think are out there in public view? Answer: Many.

With the public and the theaters that could have shown it notified it seems to me adequate security could have been provided and adults could make their own decision whether to see it or not. Giving in to tyrants simply makes tyrannies want to do more tyrannizing. George Orwell (my favorite dystopian writer) could not have named the terrorist group perpetrator of the threat better "The Guardians of Peace" -- yeah right. Just like our George Bush war based on lies in Iraq called the war "Operation Iraqi Freedom." Has one taken a good look at Iraq today over ten years from the Operation? I might use a lot of words to describe it but free is not one of them. Don't you love it when the lions lie down with lambs at least on paper or one hears the fallacious oratorical mendacity of the political lies they speak? Isn't "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques" just another euphemism for what it really is: torture. I digress. Let's not mince words. Freedom of speech is the oxygen of this nation that allows it to breathe and me to critique any policy and view anything artistic I want.

Of course, life must be protected but so does our Constitution as it is the life of our nation. When the Jewish Torah (the Law) is aged or burned it is buried in a cemetery as if it were a person. For some, it is considered life itself. I am not religious but that is exactly how I think about our First Constitutional Amendment. I loathe anything that abridges it. It is, I believe, the First Amendment for a reason as it gives life to all the other freedoms we are supposed to enjoy. Moreover, it gave birth to our nation wrapped within its protective amniotic fluid for all time. It is the most important Constitutional guarantee -- the pinnacle and the bedrock upon which all other freedoms exist.

If a human being can think there is nothing that should not be capable of artistic and opinionated expression unless one is yelling "fire" in a crowded theater. I figured out the genius of our Founders in 5th grade. Evidently for Sony that lesson was seemingly not learned very well or subject to conditional restrictions.

I agree with Aaron Sorkin, the producer of "Newsroom," shame on Sony for pulling this film. If I did not want to see it before the brouhaha I want to see it now. Is it really only a movie or is it the life of our nation itself that is at risk!

Thanks to Pope Francis!

The Pope's efforts in Cuba along with the President's have been nothing short of miraculous and in time for Hanukkah too freeing Alan Gross after 5 years in a Cuban jail.  This man has made a difference for the better. 

I who have been an ardent critic of historic Vatican policy now say as I have often said after the Pope's many humanitarian efforts, I love this man who has made a positive impact in our sad world!

Cuba Libre

 Yet another reason to elect a Democrat to high office. This is BIG!

What are the odds this would have happened under Romney?

Cuba Frees American Alan Gross, Held for Five Years

Here or below!

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/u-s-cuba-relations/cuba-frees-american-alan-gross-held-five-years-n269926

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/u-s-cuba-relations/cuba-frees-american-alan-gross-held-five-years-n269926

130+ Children -- Angels' Lost Wings

The Pakistan school massacre of 130+ CHILDREN should strain the credulity of all of us; Australia, Canada, Boston, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Israel, Gaza, Pakistan, Newtown and so many more I am sickened by ALL and I do mean all the violence.  When a child dies like this or any way by the hand of man many angels lose their wings! 

What an unnecessary loss of life everywhere over the last 13 years.  It can never be justified.

The whole world mourns for these children, all children and everyone who suffers because of man's inhumanity to man.

Peace begins with us all.

Transparency through the Opaque

This latest budget 1.1 trillion buck madness bill stuffed with funds for our eternal wars and goodies for Wall Street has now somewhat transparently passed in Congress differently from its usual opaque nature, the contents of which are often hidden from the public. Eventually, we often find out when another social program or regulatory agency that worked for us has been dismembered and finally killed taking us, the 98%, with it. This time someone smart found the bank stuff out as Elizabeth Warren the Great of Massachusetts railed from the Senate floor against the stealth bombing.

Mostly Republicans (although not entirely) through corporate contributions to their war-chests, the massive minions of money intend to seize it all and eradicate, by any means necessary, those who would oppose them. Through their mendacious tactics, suppressing the minority vote and the use of gerrymandered electoral districts they will get all of it. As George Carlin in his oft-quoted-by-me "American Dream" soliloquy so accurately put it “…. they already have captured the Congress, have the courts in their back pockets, have the media that controls the news and information you get, and have most of the state legislatures and local governments.” They control it all with their legions of lobbyists filling bloated congressional coffers with unlimited amounts corporate Citizens United cash.

They defund education keeping us unquestioningly dumb, underfund regulatory agencies and anything that keeps a vigilant eye on our environment, our money and our health. Polluting oil, coal and fracing gas corporations for profit can do anything vile they want to us and get away with it. As Carlin said. “Soon they will be coming for your Social Security. And they will get that too ….”

Bank deregulation over decades brought you the Great Recession and soon you will be welcoming another. Congress approved the 1.1 trillion buck budget and at the same time took out one of the most important mandates of the Dodd/Frank bill passed after the 2007 Great Recession. Republicans continue to snow us with trickle down economic lies that really trickle up and not down. 

Dodd/Frank tried, at least somewhat, to ensure the crushed economy did not get crush again by prohibiting government bailouts to the banks if they engage in risky stock and hedge fund bets that tanked the US and the world economy in 2007 putting millions out of work, out of homes, out of health care and out of luck for years and still counting.

Our do nothing Congress finally did something. They slid this return to Wall Street deregulation under the radar into the middle of the budget bill nearly word for Wall Street word and then the good Christian hypocrites quickly got out of town for Christmas, the alleged birthday of the Prince of Peace, the nation celebrates. This move of madness by the corrupt swill that has paired money with power and has become Washington Corporate Lobbyist DC made me cringe.

The budget bill, yet again, allows banks another life at selling risky Wall Street bets to the woefully ignorant. If the bets fail not to worry you and I will pick up the tab for the multi gazillionaires while they walk away with our billions and bonuses to boot and the 98% walk away with a colossal headache.

In bipartisan fashion unheard of in our time there were many Democrats and Republicans who would not sign onto this bill but in the end it, of course, passed. The president to avoid another Republican threatened government shutdown unenthusiastically signed the horrific thing. That is what corporate money in the hands of Congress gets you – total access to unlimited power.

Add to the budget psychotic event the Republican electoral stomach turning result in November, the unjustifiable killing of unarmed Black men by white police everywhere and SCOTUS, their hearts made of unethical stone, declaring a "post racial" nation as the noxious five eviscerated the 1965 Voting Rights Act and I am temporarily yelling “uncle.” The film Network’s character, Howard Beal, said it best: “I’m mad as hell and cannot take it anymore. I'm a HUMAN BEING, God damn it! My life has VALUE! Things have got to change. But first, you've gotta get mad!”

Unlike Howard Beal, though, for the moment, I must retreat from the cacophony of music screech blowing a hole in my eardrums -- okay maybe for a day or two or three. If I do not, for those of you who watch "Newsroom," I will end up as the ethically good ACN Newsroom boss Charlie did. [Spoiler Alert] He compromised with evil to keep the company afloat and ended up flat out massive heart attack dead!

Elizabeth the Great!

No time now BUT Elizabeth Warren showed why the great state of Mass. elected her and why I keep her picture up on my wall.  She is a force and that is an understatement.  Long may she occupy that seat.  What a great replacement for Teddy not that Markey is not good but Elizabeth is better and brilliant!

More later. 

NEVER GIVE UP!

LAST NIGHT'S JOHN STEWART

LAST NIGHT'S JOHN STEWART -- THE DAILY SHOW Floor Show SEE IT.  IT IS AMAZING AND

even made me cry!   Here or below.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/12/11/jon-stewart-is-very-glad-that-john-mccain-defended-the-release-of-the-senates-report-on-cia-interrogation/

Torturous Examination of American Exceptionalism

I am trying to wrap my mind around the torture our nation has perpetrated on human beings in various Middle East black sites around the world during the last ten years.  It has done so in our name with seeming abandon allegedly in response to the horror of 9/11.  9/11 was, no one can doubt, a killing field monstrosity – 3000 innocents crushed into the dust of falling buildings that became their coffins on a sunny day in NYC.  It was destruction on a massive scale.   Many others were killed at the Pentagon with half a building taken down and in Shankesville, PA. in a plane on track to hit the Congress but crashed instead into a lonely field killing everyone on board.  The audio of passengers’ stating “Let’s roll” still rings in our ears as they tried valiantly to stop the perpetrators of the doomed flight.  We, over and over again, keep reminding ourselves of that day of its own infamy which prompted our nation to commit the illegalities of a war based on lies and torture on a scale most thought unthinkable.  The president and vice-president of the previous administration enlisted a host of eminent lawyers within the Bush Department of Justice to compose the legalese rationales for it. 

Never forgetting the reasons for the perpetration of torture by this nation, I try to think of other reasons for man’s history of Torquemada-like torture using Middle Ages techniques and the modus operandi of tyrannical Communist and Fascist regimes evidenced in modern history.  How, but more importantly, why would such things be done to human beings?  We could collect quite a menagerie of numerous instances of monstrous description but rather than disgust you with the unimaginable details we must find some other explanation for them besides a response to 9/11.

From the torture chambers of the Middle Ages and its religious wars, to the trenches of World War I and the use of poison gas, to the gas chambers of WWII Europe and its mass murder containers of six million dead Jews, to the Agent Orange of Vietnam, to the Iraq War based on lies, and to the ISIS beheadings man never stops killing brutally.  And yet some, perhaps most, put a brake on our basest inclination to perpetrate a violent act and, simply, refuse to do it.  Most would not nor could not hurt an innocent.  Most would not nor could not hurt an animal.  

What was done through torture by our nation in our name after 9/11 is repugnant to those of us who like to think we are humane.  It rises to the highest level of brutality and flouts Nuremberg jurisprudence a once great yardstick against man’s inhumanity to man.  Its ethical verdict was supposed to be universally applicable.  In history, though, examples of man's inhumanity to man are legion.  Human depravity perpetrated against another is commonplace. We ask how a man is ethically able to do the most repugnant things to another.  The salient question, though, we must ask is:  why is man capable of doing repulsive uncivilized things to his fellow man without becoming nauseatingly sick?

There are those among us who, I am convinced, incredulous though it may be, enjoy torturing.  Yes, they like it and take pleasure in the strength that torturing someone else allows them to feel.  Some take pleasure in revenge but it cannot be denied, I think, that some who signed up to inflict torture including, mind numbingly rectal torture, simply liked to do it and worse the more vicious the torture the more pleasurable it became to them.  Sadism is a word, a condition, and it is an illness which some men have but others do not. The larger question, therefore, becomes why can some do such heinously repulsive things and, indeed, rationalize it but others cannot. What separates some people from other people who enjoy the sadistic impulse to maim and kill?  Perhaps the answer to this cancer, lies in one’s DNA and the organization of one’s genetic code. 

What the nation has done in our name is surely not new but it is different.  What makes it different to those of us with at least a shred of empathy is that this nation was founded on principles that are supposed to ensure men with power not stoop to man's lowest madness. Our Founders knew the most important thing was to put a brake on man's most murderous instinct, government's legal authority to perpetrate it and man's ability, through government sanction to abuse power.  Our Founders gave birth to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights – the fundamental bases on which our much touted exceptionalism rests.  The nation's perpetration of torture makes mockery of that.  No one will be held accountable for these egregious acts but a Black man allegedly selling loosie cigarettes is killed for it.  What is wrong with this picture?

I feel duped, I feel sad, I feel powerless and wonder if the nation can ever recoup our own Jacobian birthright to its exceptional character again.