We are now being tested, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. What progress we have won seems to be slipping away, not by the natural forces of time and change, but by the sinister forces of greed and wealth and power and deceit. Like our predecessors whose radical ideas have gone before, we must persist.
In the wake of a bipartisan agreement to establish new spending levels through fiscal year 2019, the Republican Administration sent out an official White House statement: …we were forced to increase spending on things we do not like or want in order to finally, after many years of depletion, take care of our Military… Discretionary…
Listen to what we are being told:
Fear those who cross our country’s border from Mexico – the are rapists and murderers and drug lords.
Fear those who cross our country’s border from Mexico – the are rapists and murderers and drug lords.
Fear those who cross our country’s border from Mexico – they are rapists and murderers and drug lords.
Fear those who run from brutality and death in Syria – they are terrorists who hate our freedom.
The story of America cannot be told in terms of what we are or what we have been. The American story is that we are a people in motion – we are going someplace. Someplace better than where we are or where we were. It’s not about where we are, it’s about the journey we are on.
It’s not about what we are, it’s about what we are trying to become.
Burke’s book was a great introduction, for me, to the central tenets of the Deadhead community – that sense of sharing, of helping one another, of finding your place within the world around you, and of keeping that place intact against the familiar pressures of everyday living.
More than just a story – though certainly an interesting and entertaining story – F.T. Burke’s “The Bohemian Adventure” shows us how we can grow, even in middle age, to re-center ourselves into a sense of purpose and value. That value isn’t found in ourselves as solitary individuals, but in the community of like-minded people, sharing among that community.
In liberal views, if people donʻt benefit – if wages donʻt go up with productivity, if houses arenʻt affordable, if medical bankruptcies are rising, if school debt is crushing, if lives are lost – then the economy is failing.
It plays on your sense of guilt that you missed an email, that you rudely ignored an email, that the sender is really interested in helping you – when, in fact, this email is just a pretense.
A Matter of Fact On the fact question, there are three elements to the question of responsibility and one to the question of exculpation. These four elements, as questions, are: (1) did it happen? (2) did he cause it to happen? (3) did he intend to cause it to happen? (4) did he (try to)…
I remember Nixon’s “enemies list” – a list of people and organizations that Nixon considered to be major political opponents. So I expect the new president – being far more paranoid and more sensitive to any criticism – to have an enemies list as well. And it would, of course, include anyone who is effective…
I think people always operate in their own self-interest. Always.
And I think we rarely know what someone else sees as their own self-interest. Instead, we impose on them what we believe they should be interested in.
