Kicking the Can Down the Road

America has always been a trigger happy nation.  We slaughtered off the Indians and never gave it a second thought.  My old Spanish teacher from my sophomore year, Mr. Landry, said that “America has broken every single treaty we made with the Indian tribes”.  Bob Dylan wrote about this mode of conduct in the song “With God on our Side”.  We killed a hundred thousand innocent Iraquis in the war of the last decade under George W and nobody gives it a second thought.  And we wonder what possible resentments the Islamic community might have against us. So my motive in having wanted Obama to intervene in Syria was not to take lives per se, but to save lives.  A lot of people don’t get this.  Thus President Obama has never had the knack of making a decision in “a timely manner” to quote legaleze.  Now it’s too late.  He should have stepped up to the plate two years ago when the prospects for peace in the Syrian region were much better.  Now on Face the Nation they say that Syria might not even exist as a nation in another six months, and that Al Qaeda is alarmingly entrenched in the whole northeast sector of the country.  Do you remember what Harry Truman said when Castro first took power in Cuba.  He said “I would sit Mr. Castro down and tell him he can either get military aid from us or from the Soviets” and lay out reasons why he’d be much better off going with us.  The tea party feeds on hate.  They would like to resurrect the sort of blind hatred we exhibited twords the Northern Plains tribes post Civil War.  They apparently have been successful in bringing back gunslinger laws of the Old West.  You know.  Where you have the right to gun somebody down if they so much as look at you cross-eyed.  But it dawned on me while watching “Face the Nation” this afternoon, that John Boehner and President Obama are a lot more alike than either of them would care to admit.  Neither one wants to say what their goals are or what they are actually for because, “If I came out for something it would only polarize the nation and create opposition”.  Like I say, I was raised on those “Profiles in Courage” films of the 1960’s where great politicians were the ones who stepped up to the plate when their hour came.  This is not the case today.  Everyone is a coward.  Cowardess is very fashionable now in America.  John Boehner says his job is not to take a stand but to be “a facilitator of dialog”.  The thing is- - most people want to know what your real agenda is.  In most cases you know damn well what you intent to do.  Just as Justice Suitor knew how he intended to vote on the Abortion question is it ever came up, but he wouldn’t tell us.  Of course it will become obvious what Mr Boehner’s “intents” are.  All we have to do is see what actually happens in the House of Representatives on the Immigration Bill.  And I think we all know the answer to that.  But even Jesus Christ is guilty of this.  When asked by what authority he did his “mighty works” Jesus turned it around and said “Tell me then, by what authority did John the Baptist do the things he did?”  They would not answer the question and neither would Jesus answer them.  So Jesus and President Obama are more alike than either would admit.  Both are talkers and not doers.  Now, Oscar Schindler in that movie- - was a Doer.  Laura is a “doer” because she has been giving me really generous second portions these past few days.   If Jesus had really been a “doer” and not just a talker, he would have fulfilled the Hebrew prophecies of what the Messiah would do when he came to Earth.  But even in the halls of the Supreme Court, they are going with this agenda of “kick the can down the road”.  So they kick back the voting rights laws to local governments, or refuse to rule whether for instance a gay couple married in New York could travel to another state such as Virginia without being arrested or something.  You know they used to say “It’s not that Cults get members from brilliant recruitment.  It’s not a decision to Join the cult;  it’s just that people keep Postponing their decisions to Leave the cult once they’re there for a Visit.”  So it was with the Viet Nam war.  Nobody sat down and actually said, “I think we ought to get involved in a nine year long war”.  If you fail to plan then you are planning to fail.  Or to quote a Rush song, “If you refuse to decide, you still have made a choice”.  We know that resentment tword the United States will only grow among minorities if we don’t legislate some sort of a “pathway to citizenship”.  In like manner - - the refugees in Syria may cry out in pain and desperation now.  But in time they will grow bitter and when Al Qaeda comes along and says “The United States isn’t listening to your pleas for assistance, but we’ll help you”.   And yes there is even a story in the Bible about THIS too.  (There’s a story about everything)  People need to get off the Throne of their own Pride and begin really dealing with their problems.

I think one major failing of President Obama on a personal level is that he has no “instincts” of things he either should or should not do.  You should not have gone on that “apology tour” to the Mideast.  You should not have made it a priority to get Health care passed, because its failure in the eyes before the fact, of the American people, foredoomed your administration.  Advice does not necessarily have to “sound rational” or “make sense” for it to still be timely.  One Black on Meet the Press said that Obama’s problem is that he needs more “Kairoy” or “Kairos” moments rather than “Chronos” moments.  In other words, for the Ward Cleaver cliff notes on this is- - the Actual -  will trump the theoretical every time.  It’s pointless to ask what the “odds of something occurring” are good or bad after the fact.  I’ve even fallen into this trap from time to time.  Some soap opera plots are bizarre and defy all odds, but people wouldn’t watch them if somehow they “weren’t part of peoples’ own experiences”.  Like say you are a Loner.  And in your time of greatest need, your wife abandons you, and your own mother, who you thought you were close to, is nowhere around.  The “law” is on your side, but that doesn’t matter, does it?  People see you as the “Goat” in the story.  Sometimes in life people will say they want to help you, but nine tenths of their motives in offering help is not helping you per se, but how they think it will make themselves look in the eyes of people they really want to Impress.  Take problems Israel was having last year with neighbors.  All the flame throwers of the tea party were heaping gasoline on the smoldering embers- - and Israel is saying “Please don’t help me anymore”.  These people may think Obama is a closet Moslem in disguise.  But President Obama was not the one who barred them from nightclubs, or organized the Spanish Inquisition, or put them back on boats to Germany when they tried to flee to freedom.  It was not the President who said “I persecute you in the name of Jesus Christ”.  That was Martin Luther.  But now all you have to do is sing a few Jewish sounding hymns in church- - and people fall for the big con job.  Or getting back to the President for a moment.  He can emote about Black culture till the cows come home.  But what is he going to actually DO about it, where he puts his own butt on the line?  Nothing.  He could have pointed out for example, that the case was built around unsworn testimony of one highly suspect invidual an d a known liar, and sociopath.  The President didn’t care.  As someone on “Face the Nation” just said, juries are 12 people for a reason because they might hang up on ten to two or something.  “It’s easier to manipulate six people than it is twelve”. (Selah)  He as much as announced ahead of time (as he is wont to) I am not going to do anything about these issues.   (Selah)  He’ll go to the mat for the gays; he’ll go to the mat for “socialized medicine”, but he’ll say just enough on race to insure that the other side has “something to complain about’ thus fanning the flames of hatred even more- - but won’t lift a finger to do one step twords actually solving the problem.  I said in my last posting- - that my contempt for George Zimmerman and “accusation” against him- - is not his race - - that is “being White”.   On the other hand it’s not us but the Other Side who condemns Black people a priori as guilty before the fact, and if you let them talk on they’ll actually say it.  They will condemn Black people because of not your experiences but their OWN warped perceptions, and in the spirit of Norman Bates, who assumed his Mother was as possessive of him as he was of her, so these racist Whites, assume wrongly that you condemn people for merely being White.  (Selah) 

Last night on the Mc Laughlin group they talked at length about “stand your ground” laws and of course Pat was for them.  Pat spoke of “all those nifty karate moves that Martin lad learned” forgetting it was Zimmerman who’d worked out with an instructor for eight months. The four others all ganged up on Pat for his response to the immigration bill.  It has been stated that tax revenue would go up and business would end up being stimulated.  Hence revenues would go up and the deficit would go down.  But Pat kept talking about these “eleven million new people being dumped on the job market”.  Well, in case Pat hasn’t noticed, those eleven million people are already here.  (Selah)  They say that “It’s only human nature given a choice to screw the national interests of your own party, and fight the inevitable tide of history - - or else elect yourself for another term, most people will go with the immediate satisfaction.  There was talk about Detroit going bankrupt and Pat Buchannon said that “Detroit reached its peak in 1945 and after that the government began canceling defense contracts”.  OK.  They said that Detroit peaked out at 1.8 million people and now has just over 700 million people.  People thought the Superbowl would revive the town and it didn’t and the auto bail out couldn’t.  This is because the number of workers actually in the auto industry has dropped ninety percent, believe it or not.  Who would guess that a “liberal” democratic President would turn a deaf ear and a blind eye to Detroit’s ongoing problems?  I guess the bigger question is - - “When has this President ever put his own butt on the line for a right cause?  The Fed Reserve chairman is not going to institute any crack-down till the unemployment rate falls below seven percent. 

 I’m going to put up “Face the Nation” in a few minutes.  It’s two o clock now.  (elapsed period of time here)  I just went down to the courtyard for two cups of coffee from Laura.  I had the feeling “July 21, 2013” would be a jinx day and it was too close of a near miss.  You know there are some strange realities to life.  That which you say you don’t believe in, could well be the thing that does you in.  It’s a fact of life that if you learn a secret you shouldn’t know and you say “I promise not to tell anyone” your word may be deemed worthless, and the other party says “I have no incentive to trust you when I can kill you and remove all doubt whether you tell”.  Of course it all isn’t “omens and tea leaves” in my case.  I experienced a near theft - - - but there was twice recently when I left my door closed or locked- - and I came back and the room was wide open.  Yet I never did any follow up.  And it’s a fact that if somebody did steal something- - they have every incentive to lie about it and keep what they stole and leave you uncertain- - rather to admit it and in their eyes it would put them under condemnation from you because it “removed all doubt”.  Also it’s s strange fact of like if that Merissa woman had taken dead aim at her husband in that confrontation and shot him dead on the spot, she’d have a better chance with the police because He would not have been able to say “She was trying to kill me” and said whatever untruths he told about her.  People should be more aware of omens and jinxes and premonitions.  The other day, perhaps yesterday, I got the preminission, “If you go up this particular stairway with that cup of coffee, you will jinx yourself”.  That voice was enough for me to turn around and not do it.