What role is racism playing in the 2008 election?

In keeping with the completely non-political theme of my blog, giggle, I submit today an email I got this week. Just read it. You’ll get the point. :^)

Democracy is not average people selecting average leaders.

It is average people with the wisdom to select the best prepared.

Facts are powerful!!

Obama/Biden vs McCain/Palin, what if things were switched around?…..think about it.

Would the country’s collective point of view be different?

Could racism be the culprit?

*Ponder the following*

What if the Obamas had paraded five children across the stage,including a three month old infant and an unwed, pregnant teenage daughter?

What if John McCain was a former president of the Harvard Law Review?

What if Barack Obama finished fifth from the bottom of his graduating class?

What if McCain had only married once, and Obama was a divorcee?

What if Obama was the candidate who left his first wife after a severe disfiguring car accident, when she no longer measured up to hisstandards?

What if Obama had met his second wife in a bar and had a long affair while he was still married?

What if Michelle Obama was the wife who not only became addicted to pain killers but also acquired them illegally through her charitable organization?

What if Cindy McCain graduated from Harvard?

What if Obama had been a member of the Keating Five? (The Keating Five were five United States Senators accused of corruption in 1989, igniting a major political scandal as part of the larger Savings and Loan crisis of the late 1980s and early 1990s.)

What if McCain was a charismatic, eloquent speaker?

What if Obama couldn’t read from a teleprompter?

What if Obama was the one who had military experience that included discipline problems and a record of crashing seven planes?

What if Obama was the one who was known to display publicly, on many occasions, a serious anger management problem?

What if Michelle Obama’s family had made their money from beer distribution?

What if the Obamas had adopted a white child?

You could easily add to this list. If these questions reflected reality, do you really believe the election numbers would be as close as they are?

This is what racism does. It covers up, rationalizes and minimizes positive qualities in one candidate and emphasizes negative qualities in another when there is a color difference.

*Educational Background*
*Barack Obama* Columbia University – B.A. Political Science with a specialization in International Relations, Harvard – Juris Doctor (J.D.) Magna Cum Laude

*Joseph Biden* University of Delaware – B.A. in History and BA. in Political Science, Syracuse University College of Law – Juris Doctor (J.D.)

vs.

John McCain*

United States Naval Academy – Class rank: 894 of 899

Sarah Palin* Hawaii Pacific University – 1 semester, North Idaho College – 2 semesters – General Study, University of Idaho – 2 semesters – Journalism, Matanuska-Susitna College – 1 semester,
University of Idaho – 3 semesters – B.A. in Journalism

Education isn’t everything, but this is about the two highest offices in the land as well as our standing in the world.

You make the call !!!!!!!

If today brings even one choice your way choose to be a bringer of the light :^) gene

That Ol’ Jet Airliner

Listening to the radio the past few weeks, I’ve been hearing a song from my younger days that has had me turned inward a bit. It’s an old Steve Miller band song called Jet Airliner. The part that keeps running through my head is the first verse, “Leavin’ home, out on the road, I’ve been down before, Ridin’ along in this big ol’ jet plane, I’ve been thinking about my home, But my love light seems so far away, And I feel like it’s all been done, Somebody’s tryin’ to make me stay, You know I’ve got to be movin’ on.”

That pretty much sums up where I’ve been the past couple months. I feel like its all been done, yet I feel I have a part yet to do. The somebody keeping me here, is of course, Jenna. It is she who is my lovelight and she who tells me I have much left to do here, even if I feel its all been done, she says no one has done what I will, nor in the way I will. So though I feel my “home” is calling me, it is here that I have to stay. Which puts me in a sort of push-pull situation of the kind I really don’t like. Part of me is pushing and part of me is pulling and it is hard for me to know which part to let win. The stasis is Jenna, it is she who swings the balance here for me, she is the reason I keep on keeping on – which is also in that song. Part of my feeling within, is how long must I. Steve sings that you’ve got through hell before you get to heaven. And I believe there is no such place as hell. Rather I believe that life on earth is what hell is. Because here we do not know who we are nor where we come from, nor remember our life there, our Creator. For me, hell is having forgotten these things – and a bit more than a little of having to listen to the world fight about exactly that. It matters not what reason the parties involved give for the fight, whether that be countries at war or two guys at a bar, or for that matter, two guys or two girls in a ring engaged in “sanctioned” brutality – I do not consider any event in which the sole purpose is to do harm to another, sport, which lets you know how I feel about boxing and ultimate fighting, etc. – fighting, with fists or with words, to me, is an always wrong thing to me. And while I do not believe in mythical hell nor a mythical Satan, I DO believe that when are separate from the knowledge of our home and our creator, when we are uncertain about what to do or believe or that there is any place but this one for us, that we have indeed descended into Hell. Unfortunately for us, our experience does not last but three days only, it lasts the entire course of our lifetime.

Why? Why do I believe this? Because I’ve seen the light of home, I’ve felt the peace and love that go with those lights, that exists in the presence of those lights, and though they were but seconds long experiences, nothing that has happened in my entire life here on earth can compare at all. The highest level of joy I’ve experienced here was the birth of my sons. And with one, it did not end well, and I’m not sure it will with the other either. No other experience approaches the joy I felt in the presence of the light globes. Not even close. I guess then, that the length of our stay here, is also the length of our stay in hell. Though certainly not all of the time we are here can be called hellish, because it isn’t. There are many wonderful moments and days and weeks and years in which we are quite happy and content. Real hell is when we lose our connection with the love that made us. And we do that in many ways, personally and generally, as people and nations, as members of one religion or another which vie with each other for converts and believers, particularly those religions which are willing to kill to prove themselves “right”. I’ve said before that I think anything which divides us is not of divine origin but human alone and I include in that statement every religion that exists or has ever existed. I do believe that at a point in time yet to come, we will overcome those divisions and understand that we are in all truth, one. At that time, religion will cease to exist, it will be replaced by love. And we will not be a civilization until we reach that understanding and our faith in it is such that nothing can shake us loose from it, nor from each other.

None of which makes living this life any the easier, I know. I am living proof of that as are many, if not all, of you. In a way I can both understand and accept that. The road to heaven passes through hell. The rational give in CWG is, well, rational. You can’t know what one thing is if you have never experienced anything else. Here OR in heaven. We can’t know what hot is unless we know what cold is, we find such things out here in the relative universe, along with a lot of other less pleasant dualities. And, we can’t know what love is, until we have an experience involving a lesson about what love is not – and there are many of those to be had here too. War, divorce, alienation, mental illness, physical disabilities, death. Since we come from a place where love is all there is, it makes sense to me that our creator would give us an opportunity to know how wonderful THAT place is by allowing us to experince what it is like being in a place that is not like our home. So I get that. But I don’t have to like it, because the experiences I have called to myself have been so difficult, I’d like to think I could have realized how wonderful home is with a good bit less difficulty than I have through what I have lived through, seen and done. Jenna says though that all of it was necessary, that I could not possibly be the man I am without the life I’ve lived. She says that is important. I can’t argue, but I don’t have to like it. Just accept it. Which part is easy enough because I can’t change the past, only remember it. Nor can I see the future, other than in the way we all do, if I do this, then that will likely happen, we can see the future consequences of our actions, but we cannot see behind the curtain. Death is the only way we can do that. God says in CWG that death is the most wonderful moment of our life here because in that instant we are again home, where love is all there is. And I gotta say, even here, I have been a homebody, and I am very much looking forward to being one in my original home.

When waiting is filled and my time here complete, I will be both grateful and ready. I’ve learned a lot here, about who I am and who I am not, about what happens when we forget the highest part of ourselves, and, of course, what can happen when we have NO IDEA at all about who we are, where we came from, who our creator is, and where we are going when we leave this existence. When we forget those things, and the vast majority of people living on this planet have, thoroughly and completely, forgotten any memory of home, which is what allows us to be so barbaric to each other everywhere across this planet, from the caves of Afghanistan to the corporate boardrooms to the spirit crushing rule of dictatorship to the selfish rule of freedom as in my own home country, where the prevailing attitude is “I got mine, screw you”. Love is not known in these circumstances and conditions. I guess so that when we return to our real home at the end of our lives here, we will appreciate home even more than we did to begin with, because having lived in conditions in which love was not present, we will understand and feel more clearly appreciation for our creator and for our life there. But I gotta tell you, it seems an awfully long road to that final destination. It may all have been necessary as Jenna says, but if I were doing the designing, well, there are parts I would have left out. Since Jen says it was all necessary, then it must be so, she is not capable of lying, nor dissembling, nor even misleading me. Still, I yearn for the love and peace I left behind when I came here. And truth is, I don’t ever want to leave that again. She says I won’t either, that this is my first and last trip to relativity. And what I say to that is thank God! Once was more than enough for me. There is more, much more, and she says, as God does in CWG, that everyone has an opportunity to have every experience, to be the audience and to be the actor. Poet, pauper, piper and king. We all have the chance to have each of those experiences and a virtual infinite variety of others. And most of us will choose to do so. I will not. So she says. And, I feel deep within the truth of that. And, woo hoo, is all I have to say about it. There is good in choice. May you all have that which YOU choose. much love, :^) gene

If today brings even one choice your way choose to be a bringer of the light :^) gene

So, let’s talk a bit about politics.

You’re right, this isn’t normally a political blog, nor is it my intent to turn it into one now. But it is not possible to be alive in this world now and be unaware of the connections between our spiritual and political lives. I suppose one might also need economic lives at this point given the current state of the American and world economic conditions.

It seems that many in America are deeply influenced in their political lives by their particular spiritual traditions. We have in our constitution protections for spiritual liberty, the idea being that each of us should be allowed to practice whatever faith tradition, including none, we have without interference from our government. That is a far cry from, for instance, Islamic countries, where Sharia, or Islamic Law, IS the government and none other is tolerated. There are gradations, of course, but ours is a secular society and was designed to be so by those who wrote and established our constitutional form of government.

So where am I going with this? Well, let me tell you. Various groups in this country, including the Republican and Democratic parties, claim to have kidnapped Jesus and have exclusive knowledge of His will for us. And they will use His words, or His Father’s, selectively to “prove” their point. There are those who would have us believe that were He here now, He’d be driving a big old truck with a gun rack and watching Nascar. There are those who would have us believe He’d be marching in the streets with those demanding things like universal health care and secure retirements for all citizens. Truth be told, my own inclination, and my Jenna, have me squarely in the second camp.
But, and this is a huge caveat, since He is NOT here among us physically, NONE of us has the right to speak for him, nor tell others what to do on His behalf. If you wish a certain outcome, be man, or woman, enough to say so on your own without trying to sway your listeners by also claiming to have His backing. Because you don’t. When He wishes to make known what He wants, other than what he is quoted as saying, sometimes in documents written more than a hundred years after He returned to where we all come from, He will. Until then, use the persuasive power of your own intellect to move others toward the reason of your position, not invoke someone who is not actually running in this, or any other, election.

That said, I want to comment a bit on the current presidential campaign. I am not an “undecided” voter, by the way, I will vote for Obama on November 3rd without doubt unless evidence comes to light between now and then that convinces me he is a serial killer or something. There are several reasons for my certainty that he is the candidate I want elected.

First, 8 years ago we had a budget surplus and a 5 trillion dollar national debt AND a plan to have it reduced to virtually nothing by now. Now we have a half trillion budget deficit annually and a 10 trillion dollar national debt. That tells me that something we did in the last 8 years did NOT work. And that something is the SAME thing John McCain proposes to continue doing. He has taken to blaming Congressional Democrats for our difficulties, but it must be noted that the Republican party controlled both Houses of Congress from 1994 to 2006. He is part of that history. One of my favorite movies is the Coen brothers, Oh Brother Where Art Thou, for a lot of reasons, beautiful, varied music, wonderful writing, superlative acting and a fun story line. One of the things I remember from that movie was the incumbent governor’s campaign staff suggesting he run as a reform candidate. He reacted by throwing his hat at him and saying, you can’t run as a reform candidate when you are the incumbent. Someone should suggest John McCain see that movie. He can’t run as a reformist, he IS the incumbent in this election or his party is. THEY got us to where we are today.

Second, Sarah Palin. I simply cannot accept the idea of that woman being a heartbeat from the presidency. She may be a qualified governor, but I don’t think she’s been in office long enough to even know that much about her. What I do know is that she has no experience in any area of national government and what I know of her views I completely disagree with. I understand John met her twice before naming her to his ticket. Can you imagine what THAT says to the rest of his party? I have looked high and low throughout the land and the next best Republican, to me, of course, qualified to be president, is NOT one of you in the lower 48 with substantial governmental experience but rather this woman I met in Alaska who likes shooting wolves from airplanes. Sorry. I don’t buy that argument and frankly do not understand how the rest of the Republican party has either.

Third, after 911 we had the largest outpouring of support for our country we have ever had, the largest amount of good will aimed at us, felt for us, and we have squandered it completely with our arrogant and unilateral approach to global affairs. I believe Obama will be a bridge-builder, not a bridge destroyer and I believe THAT is what our country, this planet, needs right now in an American president. No one can deny the influence our economy has on the rest of the world as markets in other countries fell just as ours did earlier this week. Some countries are so aware of this effect that they feel they ought have a way to vote in our presidential elections because what happens here affects the world so much. I’m not sure I’d go that far. Today. But it is undeniable that we have become one world, if not yet one people, and that what happens in one sector of the world DOES affect what happens in others. That is as true economically as it is ecologically and meteorology. We humans inhabit this world, we don’t own it. We just think we do. It was here before us and will be when we are gone, however that comes about and there are a number of scenarios to that as well. We need a president who can reach out to other countries and be accepted as a man of peace and honor. I believe the fresh approach of Barack Obama will be better received around the world than the continuation of the failed Bush policies that McCain intends to push forward with.

Fourth, no one wants to talk about race, but it is a factor in this election. It is TIME this country had a president of color and it is time we have a female president too. That will come. It WILL come. Obama’s election will do more to raise the hopes of our citizens of color than anything that has come before it. Suddenly young men and women of color will have a role model who is not an athlete but a world leader. He will give them hope, something so many in our inner cities lack completely. The hope of a tomorrow that is not what today is. Generations of Americans of color have been raised to believe that what they have is all they can ever have, that every business, every institution, including our political institutions, had “glass” ceilings beyond which they could not go. Obama’s election will demonstrate to them, the disenfranchised, that in all truth, anyone can become President of the United States. I think that will do more for the hopes of young Americans of color than any number of professional athletes ever have. I think it will help them believe that they too can do anything with education and hard work. He will be good for America in so many ways, I find it virtually impossible to believe he won’t be our next President. And if my vote counts, he will be. much love, :^) gene

If today brings even one choice your way
choose to be a bringer of the light :^) gene

People, Ideas and evolution.

Wow! I bet you are wondering where the H this is going, huh? :^) So do I. As I’ve mentioned, my own personal life has been in turmoil and change for the past couple months as my son has moved back home. After living alone for almost 12 years it takes a good bit of time to get used to having another person in the house. Particularly one who does not share your own perspective on things. He and I agree on most things on a global/political scale, but when we move from macro to the micro, well, that just isn’t the case. I’m not a neat freak, a look around my place would soon prove that, but he has absolutely no sense of neatness whatsoever. He has problems and issues, lots and lots of them. I won’t violate his privacy by going into any of that here. But I gotta tell you it drives me nuts being his maid. He never picks up, rinses off or puts anything away. Putting an item in the sink, to me, does not mean you are through with it, it needs be rinsed and put in the dishwasher. He doesn’t get that part. Floor are not closets which doesn’t seem to be the way he thinks either. It isn’t that we haven’t talked about these things, in fact, I’m pretty sure, he thinks they are all I talk about. I’d quit talking about them, if he’d begin doing them. He doesn’t make that connection either. There are a lot of compromises that need be made in living with another human being. Just how many I’d forgotten after so many years of it being just Cisco and I. We’ll get through it, but it is not easy.

Which explains my absence here. Well that and another knee surgery in mid-September. I had a torn meniscus in my right knee three years ago and had that arthroscopically repaired. That one was a piece of cake, I was okay from day one, could take care of myself and Cisco, recovery was swift and easy. This one was not like that one. That tear was on the inside of my knee, this one was at the back of the meniscus and it was very hard to find so the surgeon was in there twice as long as the first time. When I woke, the nurse really encouraged me to take crutches. I thought, piffle, I didn’t need them before why would I now? Still she insisted, so I took them. Good thing too, because for that first week I could do nothing but take pain meds and lie on the couch with my leg in the air and an ice bag on it. The extra time in surgery and having to trim away a lot tissue and poke and prod just to find the tear caused a lot more swelling and pain than the first surgery did. It’s been a month now and I am still quite sore. The week I took off last time for recovery, this time turned into two full weeks and a third of half days. I suppose it doesn’t help that I keep crashing into things either, lol. The day before I was to come back to work, expecting full time, I took a tumble down the stairs. I thought I could come down normally but as my left leg took my full body weight it buckled and down I went. Nice thick carpet though. Still, my knee blew up on me and that familiar fire under the patella – which had just disappeard on the Friday before came back. I saw the surgeon the next day and he said no damage he thought, I just “stirred” things up in there a bit. And my right knee looked worse than the left from the rug burns, lol.
So recuperation is still ongoing. And the time I used for writing here is not all mine anymore. When I was living alone it didn’t matter what time I ate, or if even, but with two of us we need more regularity than that. Hard getting used to. Jenna says not for long will it be like this. Gene says good and thanks. I love my son with all my heart but living with him ended 15 years ago and at some point I will need my life back because there are things I have to do, want to do, that Jen and I have been talking about for years. And I WILL, if ever I am able. She says I will be and I say good. But still in this moment, this is what is.

What brought about the topic idea in the subject line was a discussion I had with my son about inconsistency. He thinks I am inconsistent in my approach to life. He is sure that is whim, when I want one thing, I am okay with it, at other times I am not. I am supposed to be on a restricted fat/cholesterol diet, but it is his observation that only sometimes do I follow that, for instance. At first, I thought, no, I AM consistent, just in my own way. Later though as I thought about it, I could see his point more clearly. But what he was seeing as inconsistencies were actually “exceptions” I made when with him. He assumed that was how I ate all the time, when in truth it was not, but I do see how he’d get that impression. The same holds true for other things. There are things I may do on an individual basis that I do not believe would be good for the population at large. For instance, I think that compassion, forgiveness, love for all of life are critical components of a true civilization, but am I those things at all times at a personal level. No. I’m not a perfect person. I am a work in process, in the midst of my own evolution. A process I think will continue until my last day. I would like very much for my largest ideas to fit perfectly into and be mirrored precisely in my private life as well. But they are not. Yet. That is a goal, an objective, not a truth. It is my desire that I grow closer to that larger truth by the day, yet I can see from without, that others may see things I do not, or interpret things I do as not consistent with my avowed truths. So that is where evolution comes in. We are each a work in progress, we evolve each day, some of us perhaps devolve on some days, in fact I am quite sure of THAT too. But even baby steps ARE steps. And as long as there more of them taken forward than backward, I find that to be progress. A setback, of whatever nature, does not eliminate all that went before and does not mean one starts all over again. It is like falling down the stairs in a way. You land and lie there a moment checking to see what works and what doesn’t, then you pick yourself up and continue on. Life is just like that. Don’t you think? much love, :^) gene

If today brings even one choice your way
choose to be a bringer of the light :^) gene