Turn, turn, my wheel, all things must change,
To something new, something strange;
Nothing that is can pause or stay;
The moon will wax, the moon will wane,
The mist and cloud will turn to rain,
The rain to mist and cloud again,
To-morrow be to-day.
‘Keramos-The Potter’s Wheel’ by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807 –1882)
Yes, it is quite certain that everything changes. And that change we might call a perception, a belief. Of what, one might ask? Say a perception of reality, perhaps. As a child we have little problem with our visual senses. We come to count on certain realities we know to be in place. Out skin tells us when it is hot outside and when it is cold. And in the morning we are not surprised that the sun is up again and warming the edges of day in our world that is our reality. We hear the sounds of birds in the morning, or of traffic rushing by on the freeway in the distance. We know that we have hands and fingers, and we extend them to make sure they are still there to use when we need them. We seldom question what we see or feel in the physical world when we are young. We know the sun is warm, sometimes hot, and sometimes playing tag with the white clouds against the powder-blue sky. We know that we are alive. All this is the truth of youth.
The familiar smells of hay in the night air are good, too. Little gusts in the summer night still carry the smells to us, and the chittering crickets at night tell us that the earth is good and all is in place. If, say, we are out a-fishing and our foot slips on a mossy bank rock in a mountain stream, maybe the Chama River out West, the quick chill of cold water shocks our senses to tell us that, hey, something ain’t quite right, ‘cause that’s something freezing, something different, something to avoid. And reassess our reality of the moment. All these sensory things in our youth, in the early years, tell us that we are home, on our place in the universe. Our ubiquitous senses of perception deep within, seem to be alive and well and perfectly calibrated. We do not question, nor are we quick to question, our realities that we saved in our human memories.
Time passes fast in the life of a human. Then all the realities of childhood become a blur. You learn about considerations and new ways of looking at TRUTH. Other humans, in their individual realities, try to convince you that their realities and perceptions are correct. And if different from yours, they will argue theirs because they are convinced that theirs are right on and maybe you need to change yours to match theirs. Enter your next door neighbor with an opinion. Or worse, a political consultant with a sack full of money. Paid for political ads help change the landscape, and when you look back sometimes things are more subtle and unrecognizable. You turned on the TV and you never saw that Mack Truck that just hit you.
You come to the place where you no longer pause to smell the roses or watch the bees pollinate the countryside and your backyard flowers and summer vegetable garden. With all the notions and human considerations floating around out there you begin to question what once was real. You lose a kinship you were crack-fire sure of in childhood. You learn about Republicans and Democrats. Of enemies of America, Communists and terrorists and all. Your listen to our talking-head leaders on TV, and if they say it is okay to attack a country because they had a hand in the attack of America on 911, you pause to think it over and then you agree. You got to trust somebody. And, after all, they swore to protect and defend the Constitution, and we somehow, do not care to take time away from our own personal business to check them out. So we let them unleash the dogs of war. On another country. Without proof, without affirmation that they are telling us the truth.
We learn about Christians and Muslims and what religion our Founding Fathers endorsed. That it was Christianity is well-accepted as truth in the 21st century. And because most of us are God-fearing Christians, it is a delightful notion that we are on the right side of God. All the pastors in church and on their television ministries tell us so.
No one remembers history. All the Christian denominations have excised the fact that our Founding Fathers were Deists. Deists focused their beliefs on one god, and that was the end of the road for their theology. They believed in a supreme being. But the word “Deist” was not mentioned in the classroom or in Baptist, Methodist, or Catholic Sunday Schools.
Most Americans will not know nor understand the nit-picking point. But reality can change, given time passage and repetition of the “new” history. My first time to hear about it was a shock and surprise to hear how Franklin, Jefferson, and Madison were not Christian. They were Deists, you see. And try to find 5 out of 10 Americans on the street who know what a Deist is.
Our Founding Fathers, Deists? Seems wrong at the start. Very unlikely and unbelievable. ‘Deists’ even looks like ‘Atheists’ on the printed page. The truth has become distorted with time. It suits the present day Christian groups who have a grip on America to say that Jefferson and his peers were Christian. Not Deists! Even though the popular view is wrong! You won’t catch Pat Robertson even uttering the word. But the new Pope might. He seems like the most human, most intelligent Christian to come along in years.
Earlier we discussed how Karl Rove went to work to find an avenue to justify to the taxpayers of the need for us to borrow and spend an extra $3 to $4 trillion in the eight years of the Bush presidency. I mean, c’mon, Republicans ain’t really that cuckoo are they? Borrowing money and all? To finance a war against what the Decider labeled “The Axis of Evil?” That Biblical reference to ‘Evil’ Bush told us was Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. They needed to be attacked, just because. The world would be better off, was the feeling I got out of it. Not that they had committed any crimes against Americans, you know.
But (by Zeus) we needed to spill some blood. Over 3,000 innocent Americans had been killed on 911! We needed some instant revenge, doncha think? Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld all said to find some wrongdoing on Iraq and Saddam Hussein in the whole 911 tragedy. So for openers they set out to say Osama bin Laden was big buddies with Saddam Hussein and had conspired to attack America by bringing down the Twin Towers in New York.
Many honest statesmen like Richard Clarke, e.g., said it was absurd to try and link bin Laden with Hussein, that they had been enemies from the git-go. Then George W. Bush in his address to the nation in that followed next January, said that Hussein had weapons of mass destruction aimed at American cities AND had attempted to buy weapons grade Uranium (Yellow Cake) from a country in……………………wait for it………………….Africa. We all heard him say it. The African country he referred to was Niger. But it never happened. British Intelligence had said that the information was 100% bogus and false. And the CIA Chief George T. Tenet told the White House NOT to use the information because it was stinking false information. So what did George W. Bush do? He used it to scare the shit out of Americans and the rest of the world in his address to the nation speech anyway. Wow. So the dominoes began to fall. We were off to war. Based upon bogus information and lies. And anybody that opposed the White House view at the time were destroyed. Enter Valerie Plame’s husband Joe Wilson. He went to Africa to reveal the lie about the Yellow Cake in Niger and Saddam Hussein’s trying to make a purchase. So someone in the Bush Administration offed Plame, Wilson’s wife, as an undercover CIA Agent which also exposed all her agents who she was covering. We may never know the consequences of that dark maneuver of shooting ourselves in the foot.
But who cares? It was the patriotic thing to do. We had been attacked. And we needed to forego logic and even truth to get even. Even if it was with the wrong Middle Eastern country. Even if it included killing thousands of innocents when America brought shock and awe bombing to Baghdad. Never mind that we spent longer occupying Iraq with our boots on the ground than in any other war in American history. Forget that we sacrificed over 4807 dead U.S. Soldiers, not to mention the staggering deaths sustained by our Allies. And the civilian Iraqi dead. Forget all the wounded that will need care and treatment for the rest of all our lives. And forget what we accomplished by attacking the wrong dictator and the wrong country. And shot thousands of rounds of tank artillery shells tipped with Uranium 238 that has a half-life of 4.5 Billion years! It is now a part of all the sand and dust and other matter on the surface of most of Iraq now. Uranium penetrates metal armor better, doncha know? But what of the human race that will be breathing radioactive Uranium particles in every Iraq dust storm for the next few Billion years?
Forget that al Qaeda is now in Iraq on steroids since Saddam Hussein was killed. And forget the new formation of ISIS that is worse than any problem before in Iraq before we invaded and brought “democracy” to Iraq.
Pay no attention to the rhetoric of Bush when he was looking for dollars for the war effort when he said it was okay to borrow and spend. “What are you going to do? Abandon the troops? Refuse to allot money for the wars? Give them second-class gear and weapons so that maybe they will not be safe? Get killed, maybe?” The Congress gave in every time. And now our debt is approaching $19 Trillion. Good work, George. Good work, Karl Rove. You pulled it off and got the American people to go along. In the worst farce of a war in our history. Think Reagan would say we are better off? Think again.
So what’s the difference between God and the GOP? I don’t really know when you have a false DECIDER in the White House who with Rove and all his other Goebbelesque trolls can and do effectively sell Americans on the idea that 2+2=5! And no one ever questions the outcome of the idiot decisions that harmed and killed thousands of Americans and other earthlings just because we were stronger. Nothing to do with morals. Right and Wrong. Just POWER. To no intelligent end. It really looks like the difference between God and the GOP is pretty simple: The GOP is markedly more violent in its fake retributions and punishments for its perceived enemies. When we have a renegade Decider in charge of decision-making. Makes God look like a piker in His destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Makes Joshua look a bit lame by blowing them ram’s horns to lay flat the walls and city of Jericho. And even God would not spray the land with radioactive isotopes that would continue to afflict mankind for a mere 4.5 Billion-Year punishment!
The forces of the GOP even strut about and talk like gods. Witness the lofty prattling’s of Karl Rove in the elections of November 2004 when a reporter told him that he did not seem like such a scary guy after all. Rove replied: “I AM a scary guy. I change constitutions; I put churches in the schools.” Such godlike self-adoration, what EGO. One must assume that, godlike, Rove creates false realities by his words. To wit, he lies. But then, Rove knows that better than anyone else, even George W. Bush (Duh). In truth, could Karl Rove change constitutions, put churches into schools, and put a dolt in the White House to become a Decider that changes history by telling the truth? And if you believe that how do you explain our attacking Iraq? Did anyone tell the truth in that stupid dark place in the history of the entire world?
Do we know today what is truth and factual as opposed to what years of repetitive acceptance has told us to believe? Or are we all victims of the saucy lies of minions like Karl Rove who (albeit is worth $6.6 Million for his work) perpetrates ongoing lies and misinformation on the human race while building up his net worth? What is REALITY then? Does it matter? So what is the difference between God and the GOP? Maybe it is something like this:
God is just.
The GOP is just..... A bunch of destructive, deluded, misfits who sometimes like to play God.
Author’s Note: Forgive me for collectively blasting the GOP as being all bad. I jest. Of course they are not guilty. Just a few of them of late must think that maybe winning at all costs is everything, though, you think? So are the Democrats, all good? Not even close, no party has an exclusive on human goodness or badness. That’s absurd! It’s not about party politics, partisanship. It’s when humanity in both political parties runs amuck and stacks up onto itself like a derailed freight train in a cesspool of blame and criticism of the other guy, the other party. And people suffer. That’s when we all lose. And the loss of our collective SELF is the worst loss of all. We must stop this idiot behavior so we can get home again.
But as humans there may be hope if we dedicate ourselves to being less greedy, lying less (especially on the lies that cause us and armies to hurt and kill others), and committing to the eternal truth that we are all in this together and need to get our shit together! To start caring and giving a genuine best effort to embracing humankind and doing good works for our neighbors and ourselves, alike, perhaps. And stop looking so terminally dumbass when regurgitating GOP or Democratic Party talking points. Relax. It’s all fabricated BS. And how can we be so cock-sure that our information is correct, anyhow? It’s simple. Just stop. What have we got to lose? Oh, I don’t know. If we keep fast to the same road, the planet, maybe?