Try This

To the honorables Senator Diane Feinstein, Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, Senator Patrick Leahy, Congressman Charles Schumer, and President Trump

 I am writing you the leadership of the Democratic wing of the United States of America to urge you to come together on behalf of the American People to get something done ASAP with the Republican wing of the United States of America to find the common ground that binds us all together and can give us, we the people, a future.

  I urge you to forge a deal with President Trump.  

  I did not vote for President Trump but I very well may the next go round. Please wake up, and put aside all the emotional manipulation and cries of racism and fight four square for the American People (people of all colors). Zero tolerance is a policy that should have been enforced years ago. Your constituency those who you have sworn to to your best and to serve are American citizens. There is a power and responsibility in a Democracy. Those who vote and those who serve for those who vote. We are all connected and the people we serve are the existing community. That does not mean we do not care about those who would wish to join us in our community, that does not mean that we drop our sense of caring and our responsibility to all the people of the world. We are a global community. It does leave you all duty bound to serve the best interests of the American people, by best serving the interests of the American People we will help bring justice for the rest of the world.

   This letter is directed to 5 people who have witnessed many changes, you all have reached a point of longevity that brings a perspective and experience of American history that a person of barely 30 years old cannot comprehend. We are moving into crisis stage on many different levels on the planet, but these issues that demand our attention and challenge our business as usual daily grind need fresh eyes and an imaginative and creative response. 

   South of the border we have some 300 (?) million people who live in countries that have nothing like the security, infrastructure, educational systems, judicial systems the entire power and goodness of the world's first democratic republic. These people need to know that they can achieve what we have achieved and they can make it their own. 

   Instead of the physical border that President Trump has proposed I urge you to offer some suggestions that can eliminate the need for a wall. 

  

    1.) Accept President Trump's policy of zero tolerance. 

     2.) Join President Trump for an economic summit in Central America where you and the leaders

  of these countries will meet and could create a joint agreement. The agreement is that these countries will embrace the American Bill of Rights as their own. That these countries have the right to build economic independence and interdependence with it's neighbors. That all it's citizens have freedom from violence and the fear of violence. That good schools are available for all it's children. That 20 (50?) new Universities and Colleges will be built that 40 (200) new hospitals will be built. 

     3.) To restore the fabric of life of a healthy and just community. Is not going to be created overnight. The people of these countries need to be shown that real and viable steps are being

taken. Police forces need to be trained well and paid well. Teachers need to be paid well. A renewed culture of respect, kindness and generosity needs to replace a corrupt, cynical and violent one. A ban on violent movies that currently routinely get exposed to all children. 

     4.) A population goal of steady state will create opportunities for the young. An economic bill of rights that each country holds to restrain the looting of resources by foreign interests. Only citizens of each country can own a business in a given country. Cap foreign investment at 40% yet open the door to foreign investment. (figure it out)

      5.) Expand National Parks and foster an Environmental Consciousness and pride among the youth and the people.

      6.) Institute a weapons buy back plan that could be promoted as twice (3 or 4x ?) a year … Help people who have chosen a criminal path get back into being good citizens. Reward people for their loyalty to their people, their community, their country.

      7.) Stand with President Trump and make clear your American solidarity, with respect for our own laws of immigration. let the people of Mexico and Central America that we stand with them in their fight for rights and genuine improvement of their society and community.

      8.) Be willing to spend money on resources and electronic sensors etc at the border to create security and to discourage illegal entry. 

      9.) Guarantee the dreamers dual citizenship. Build bridges (figuratively) across the borders. 

      10.) Stand with President Trump. Zero Tolerance…. and show that we the people of America demand something new from all the people and countries of the world including ourselves.

    

Solidarity

    There are many lessons to be learned in life for all of us. One of the more difficult lessons is to discover the nature of our own paradigm. 

    Here in the Bay Area if one was to hear the word 'solidarity' spoken it might be heard as a call towards an idea of progress. This might harken to a sense of brotherhood and sisterhood with all humanity and a notion of a political ideal still to be achieved. When that call for 'solidarity' is proclaimed we all would serve our own good and the good of future generations to question exactly

what the parameters of this word aim to achieve. In other words what are you being asked to believe in to achieve this unity.

    All are welcome. Does this clearly generous and open invitation ever have an application that is

 not beneficial for a community? Is a person who rebels against another's certain sense of 

'solidarity' morally wrong? How do you teach the younger generation? Is embracing Solidarity

 similar to embracing conformity. Does 'All are welcome'  answer the world's problems ? 

 Does it succeed in shaming another's lack of empathy? What are the demands of the Planet? 

 How do we transition through towards a healthy and sustainable world?

 Is there room for dialogue that questions 'solidarity'?.

    We might remember what JFK said:

 " And so my fellow Americans: ask not what America will do for you -- ask what you can do for your country. "

  My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man."

  

Find the Common Ground

 The crimes (I say crimes in deference to the investigation and any and all transgressions that any one mighty point at rightly or wrongly of his lifetime)  of President Trump are dwarfed by the crimes of the ship that we all are a part of …. and the state of crisis our nation is in leaves me with only one overriding desire. PLease sit together and solve the problems of the moment. 

  The crisis at the border effects every American. We cannot take care of our own. Find the common path for the American good. Give Americans a chance. Come together sit down and address the problems with courageous power to be honest and vulnerable to forge something on behalf of the American People that protects them and the fragile strength, wealth and integrity that we have created. 

   The lesson is we need to share our good fortune with the world. The power of wealth comes from

different sources but the power that makes America the magnet for the world's people comes from our being a fair people of self rule and people who creates a harmonious place to live through our adherence to the laws we create for ourselves through our elected representatives.

   The previous paragraph has one serious untruth, we are not creating a harmonious place, we are strongly headed in the wrong direction. This wrong direction can be corrected if we have the courage to face it. The answers are not necessarily very easy, but one of the biggest is our state of overpopulation. It is a disaster. The developers have had the upper hand in California for a hundred years that has to end. The idiots of both parties who play this game of rewarding big wealth accumulation need to  Wake Up….. to be continued.  

   Will try to get this in letter form sent somewhere.

JFK's words... Finding Home.

  Where is home? Does anyone else feel that way in the USA? Am I the only one who feels

 sickened by what America has become? Probably not.

  Though don't start the 'blow up the white house' with me. I will get to Trump in this letter but maybe at the end. 

   I was born in 1951 some 67 years ago. I still have most of my cognitive facilities intact. Enough to have a perspective that a person born in the 1970's can't share. This is true of course of generation after generation. This by no means suggests or guarantees that people of my generation will agree with me but whether we agree with our opinions of the flow of history we indeed at least did share it.

   By the time I was starting to grasp the world of adults this is what I was seeing… a beautiful country (ours) rich with opportunities, from my Dads meager salary as a Unitarian Minister we found a way to live in houses that gave room for a family of 5 kids and parents. A home with a yard. That was going to be yours if you applied yourself. I grasped the world of conflict ….. Communism the threat vs Democracy a cloud of fear hung over us as we experienced The missile crisis of 1962, children had nightmares, adults had nightmares… The anti -Nuclear movement beginning.. The magic of JFK, never had a President seemed to embody such a completely positive direction for America… meanwhile the police dogs chasing Negroes in the South, riots in the North in my hometown.. the realization of how far we needed to go for justice at home… the assassinations and the steady growth of the Vietnam War..

     I think of JFK frequently and think of what we need to be reminded of.

     'Genuine  peace must be the product of many nations, the sum of many acts. It must be be dynamic, not static, changing to meet the challenge of each new generation. For Peace is a process, a way of solving problems ….

      'Let us examine our attitude towards Peace itself. Too many of us think it is impossible. Too many think it unreal. But that is dangerous, defeatist belief. It leads to the conclusion that War is inevitable --that mankind is doomed -- that we are gripped by forces we cannot control.

       'We need not accept that view. Our problems are manmade---therefore, they can be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings. Man's reason and spirit have often solved the seemingly unsolvable --and we believe they can do it again….  (reason and spirit)

      So let us not be blind to our differences -- but let us direct attention to our common interests and to the means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can make the world safe for diversity. For in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal."

    From a commencement address @ Georgetown University June 1963

     In the 1960's I realized that America's population had grown from my sixth grade days when our 'weekly reader' informed us that we were a nation of 160 MIllion and by the time the decade ended we were approaching 180 million population. Back in the weekly reader days we read of China and their 400 Million people and,  Ooooohhh! That's a lot of people some of us thought…. woooh aren't we lucky to be such a smart people to only have the 160 million… Times change. By the 1970's and I am experiencing a bit of college and I read and we all read… and a world doubling it's population… and maybe doubling it again. Oh my but someone will speak out ...  leadership will arrive...

     

History .. the thoughts are broken..

At what level to humans is history important? Does the knowledge of history give us a sense of direction that is of value? In our age of information have we become more ignorant of our history?

It's a hand-me-down, the thoughts are broken
Perhaps they're better left unsung
I don't know, don't really care
Let there be songs to fill the air

Ripple in still water
When there is no pebble tossed
Nor wind to blow

In Robert Hunter's lyrics to 'Ripple' the classic song by the Grateful Dead .. written about 1970, the band is contemplating their own role in transmitting a knowledge. In this mystical exploration of their expanding role as emissaries to this consciousness that was breaking down walls and firing up the imagination of a new generation. If life is a oneness, if Life is a Unified field, if all of us ride on this River, if power is in knowing complete vulnerability.... as I try to gather the words that if I poured into some container, some flask, the alembic …..then. Then what ….? We partake this knowledge and like some great solvent it cannot but spread itself out in a uniform manner throughout the great biological field of Life on Earth.

 I get hung up on history and I revel in it. My love of a million ancestors (yours and mine) and all their work and struggle and the passing on. In Washington DC, there is a beautiful building adjacent to the Supreme
Court building and more or less across from the Federal Capitol .. … It is the Library of Congress and in it there is every book that has ever been published in the USA (rumor has it) … It's faux marble interior, beautifully designed with artwork, as you look up to the ceiling, set in panels, some American Artist has depicted the whole story of  'passing the message'. Handing the baton from the older generation to the newest, what is there to venerate? What is the aspiration of the founding fathers? these sons of immigrants from England what was the nature of the Lightning in the Bottle that they brought into being. Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. How radical, how powerful, how to this day this notion reverberates in so many across the globe. Passing the baton, the hand-me-down, Hunter sings .. 'Let their be songs to fill the air'... He doesn't say let their be books to fill the air. Let their be histories to fill the air. He is speaking to the role of the bard and singer, the soul communicator.

There is a road, no simple highway
Between the dawn and the dark of night
And if you go no one may follow
That path is for your steps alone

Ripple in still water
When there is no pebble tossed
Nor wind to blow

Am I hung up on illusion as the newspapers go through the daily work of telling us what is going down. All this happened today.. I mean yesterday.. last week.. a million keys are being pounded on keyboards around the globe and then a million more to interpret and we all should have some sense, you would think by now that it is all pretty clear cut.

  I read myself to bed, I stumble on new revelations of the human experience, and somehow I can't stop and it seems fresh and I believe that it is all about, the spiritual quest. I read now the first book of the 6 volumes called the Tales of Genji written by Lady Murasaki, back in 1000 AD ... some say the first novel, but what about the Library of Alexandria … https://www.britannica.com/topic/Library-of-Alexandria....
 
   Meanwhile here in 2018 does any young person know about JFK. The answer is yes, but a resounding yes? Not quite. Martin Luther King stands stronger in our history but has his deep Christian ethic lost its way... or at least it's voice.

GWB

American History .. Re George W Bush Senior... from Mark Lane's 'Plausible Denial' published 1991....

" Perhaps the cynical assessment that Kennedy's death may have benefitted our nation arises out of our distance from the events of 1963. The case is twenty-eight years old. {Now 55 years}

That same distance, however can be argued now more than ever is the time to let the truth be known. It is emerging slowly anyway, in fits and starts. Dulles and Phillips are dead. Helms and Hunt have been disgraced in legal proceedings. Haven't all the important players in the Kennedy drama retired or passed away?

They have not. George Walker Bush, the former director of the CIA and now President of the US is still on the scene. Ongoing revelations about his apparent role in the Reagan team's October Surprise and Iran Contra Scandals make his little known activities on behalf of the CIA in the early 60's more worthy of note. ......