America's Time to Stop & Think

It's common for hysterics to pronounce every Presidential election as the "most important in history." Let me state as clearly as I can that the 2008 election is not that significant. Sure, lots hangs on the outcome, but probably not as much as partisans believe.

Over the past few weeks, it has become clear that both major party contenders, plus the leaders of Afghanistan and Iraq, plus the U.S. military leadership, are all converging on a common set of understandings. If there is one person out of step with this consensus, it is the GOP candidate, John McCain.

Let's check the list. Obama almost alone among U.S. politicians stated clearly that the U.S. invasion of Iraq was a mistake. All credible analysts now agree.

Obama said the proper way to conclude this unnecessary war is the withdrawal of U.S. troops within 16 months of when he takes office. All responsible parties now agree, except, of course, McCain.

Obama has said that we must devote more forces to Afghanistan, which is the real venue for the fight against terrorists like al-Qaeda. (Iraq never was.) Everyone else now agrees, except of course McCain.

When one considers these factors in an unbiased way, it is remarkable that a relatively young, inexperienced Senator has been right so often about so much. Leadership has always been more about instinct than experience. Experience can be a bad teacher.

In McCain's case, his years as a POW have clearly perverted his judgment. He is still, emotionally, fighting a war that long ago ended. He also is conflating that war, during which he suffered unimaginable cruelty, with the present wars. But the analogy is deeply flawed.

McCain is stuck with an outdated world view. He thinks the U.S. is the strongest country in the world and that therefore our will should be imposed wherever we perceive our "national security" to be at risk.

Give me a break. What "national security" issue existed in the secular dictatorship of Sadaam Hussein's Iraq? Sadaam hated al-Qaeda and Osama bin-Laden. He was a petty dictator, if an especially vicious one.

But since when has our country cared about the human rights of foreigners? Since when has our main goal in the world to be "exporting Democracy." Trust me, if that was a national priority back in 1969, our experiences as Peace Corps Volunteers in Afghanistan would have been far higher on the Nixon Administration's priority list than they in fact were.

McCain knows or understands none of this. He is lost in a past that will never return.

***

Race. The issue has been injected into the Presidential race by the GOP. This is sad but inevitable. So, now that McCain has chosen to play the race card, let's examine the facts. McCain is descended from a Mississippi slaveowner family. His male ancestors slept with their black female slaves, leading to children, inclduing most notably, Mississippi John Hurt, a direct blood relative of John McCain, though he never acknowledges this.

I, however, have copies of the handwritten slave rolls and therefore the written proof of McCain's racial history. Why does he remain silent about this? It is possible, given the sexual exploitation of slave women by the McCain men, that the current GOP candidate is part-black himself.

In this context, now comes Barack Obama, a half-white, half-black individual who has chosen his African-American side as his personal identity.

So, the 2008 election in fact poses the son of slave owners against the son of an educated African. It is not exacty back and white. The next time Republicans play the race card, trying to undermine Obama due to some freakish rapper's comments, or some errant minister's comments, somebody should demand this documented history be part of the discussion.

Until you talk about the whole picture, you are spouting nonsense. Tonight, I am sharing public record truths. There is no black-white race for the White House this fall. But there is a race between a slaveholding family and a man whose parents only met 100 years after all of this ugliness ended in America,

Think about that.

Frightening Thoughts

One in ten Americans think Barack Obama, (an all-American guy if we've ever had one), is a Moslem. In fact, he is a practicing Christian, not that that should matter. His opponent, John McCain, is not religious at all, which, in my view, is a point in his favor.

But there is so much fear, ignorance, and residual racism in 2008 America that Obama's prospects to be elected may hinge on whether these retarded attitudes can be overcome or not.

I believe John McCain is an honorable man. But if he is willing to be elected President by exploiting fear, ignorance and racism, he does not deserve any thinking person's vote.

And, unfortunately, this 71-year-old former POW (who has few other credentials to be running for President) appears to be all too willing to exploit the ugliness that still exists in America to achieve his political ambition.

My hope, and my belief, is that enough thoughtful voters will recognize that we are at an urgent crossroads in history, and our only hope, is to embrace the difficult complexities of our future, as opposed to our past.

So much rides on this election that all other elections in my lifetime pale by comparison. This is an era where we need a new vision, a new courage, a new sensibility about our role in the world. We are no longer, nor will we ever again be, #1. That self-destructive fantasy needs to be discarded.

Americans need with our full hearts to join the global community, give up our unwarranted privileges, and embrace our geographical advantages in a compassionate way. We can continue to be a rich people, as long as we reduce our carbon footprint, stop imposing our geopolitical will on others, reduce our absurd military fantasies, and respect the true diversity not only of the planet, but in our own communities. (Look around.)

Old Times

From time to time, it occurs to me that a long life does indeed permit, through the awful grace of error-making, some small drips of wisdom to seep through aged pores.

Just a very few, mind you, hard-won drips of wisdom per life. What we have is almost over before we realize this, most of us, except of course for the hyper-sensitive poet musicians, the emotionally wise mutants among us.

Age brings many unwelcome discomforts, physically, many of which are simply unmentionable. Then, there is the disconcerting loss of pure physical prowess, not to mention mental acuity. Emotionally, an aged person dwells in a hell of regrets unless and until (s)he finds resolution, and the strength to move beyond all the terrible errors a long life guarantees.

Many find comfort in faith. Though I am not among them, I share the peace of certain pieces of music, especially "Amazing Grace...How sweet the sound, to save a wretch like me."

As my older daughters, Sarah and Laila, sang this with me at my father's memorial at Rolling Hills, Michigan, in the summer of 1999, I could feel that his spirit was truly at rest. He loved music, especially religious music, which was odd because he was not a particularly religious man.

A better word for the kind of wisdom I am thinking about tonight is compassion for our collective vulnerability as a species. As my mother and my nephew Jim and I spread Dad's ashes over his favorite fishing holes around Mud Lake after that ceremony, I noted the beautiful, milky calcium-rich stream that was all that was left of Dad, which we deposited in this, his long-time, favorite fishing haunt.

So many times he pulled a big bass or a pike out of these waters, and brought it back up the hill for my mother to fresh-fry for our after-dark dinner, I'm quite sure he was happy to be eternally returned to the waters that sustained us for so many summer nights.

I've never been back there, or anyplace similar, since Mom died in '02 and we buried her ashes near his in the summer of '03. But sometimes, I find myself in a rural place, a warm field after dark, and see the fireflies that blink here, there, and anywhere around me.

It's a quiet, fleeting state, but this is when I feel that my parents, as well as the souls of many other loved ones, are again nearby. Fireflies. Shooting stars. The sound of a bass jumping and slapping the surface of a pond well after dark -- these all are strangely familiar.

The smile of a child, when you've used your power as an adult to surprise them, and make them happy, simply because you love them more than any words will ever express. The sweet tunes of that artist without a name, whose heart has been bared, in music, in words, in images or performance that unexpectedly releases your own soul from the awful confines of life's painful coffin.

The sounds worth dying for. Because that's what the aged are seeking, at the end, the way to exit this existence, taking nothing and leaving only what may prove useful to those who remain. Of course, this is but a passing insight, "with miles to go before I sleep," a glance sideways at the woods we all seek, eventually.

Me, I could care less what is done with my ashes after I die. My hope is that my children will look up at the night sky, waiting for a shooting star. That would be me. Or that they lie down in a summer field, and watch the fireflies. That, too, would be me. Or, swim among the phosphorescence, though I rarely had the courage to swim at night, because that might be me, though a rather frightened me.

Hell, they could separate a bunch of coins or stamps or seaglass into groups and that most definitely would be me.

Enough of this, already. I don't intend to depart anytime soon, so this post is not about me or mine. It is meant to be about all of us, as we live, and age, and pass on. We have a finite opportunity to share whatever it is we feel is important to share.

I've tried to do a bit of that here, in this modest little corner of the blogosphere, where for all I know, nobody much ever visits. That's okay. I got out what I needed to say. :)

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Parenting

Math and Geography: Two subjects any parent has to deal with during homework time on school nights. Here's a project my 9-year-old daughter and I have used this summer to keep engaged in these subjects.

The U.S. Mint has issued quarters honoring all 50 states. Checking our quarter collection, Julia and I have collected 44 of them. We still need Alabama, Florida, Arkansas, Alaska, Hawaii, and New Jersey...

This blog...

...slogs on and on, what can I say?

It feels like "back to the future" for me. No, that's not right. It's "back to the past."

Tonight, it's just my oldest son, Peter, and me staying in this place. That's what it was like a couple years back. So much has happened since then, but here we are back where we were then.

The two of us seem to have more or less parallel luck in relationships, but that's all I'll say about that. It is simply great to have him around, even if our schedules mean we rarely overlap in this bachelor's pad. Thursday night, when Aidan is back from his trip to Maui, the three of us will eat steak.

For a dad, it doesn't get any better than that -- unless Dylan could be here too.

But he and his little sister are visiting there grandparents back east, and won't get home until Friday.

Don't you love summer? Everyone's always going here and there. Everybody but me. I am just here, at home or at work, or of course in between, commuting again and again up and down US 101.

I wonder when that highway's expansion project will finally be finished? The bottlenecks are predictable and tiresome in these, the waning days of SOV (single occupancy vehicles).

Okay, that's enough of a personal update. Otherwise, I just might write something I'd regret.

:-)

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My Office

Here's my desk at Predictify.com. If it has any sort of style to it, you'd have to call it "retro." But, as it turns out, "retro" depends on generational perspective. My memory reaches back to the '50s, but my imagination is more stuck in the '30s.

After all, I lived through the '50s, so returning to that era is only nostalgia. But, to me, the stylistically attractive era was the '20s and the '30s, when a certain care of craftsmanship was still apparent in office decor.

But I probably cannot obtain specimens to suitably outfit my desk in an authentic way. So, what you see will have to do. Old typewriters. Old awards. Old press passes. One thing I wish I had is an old, black, dial telephone, like those that sat on desks from the '30 through the '50s.

But they cost a bundle online, these relics. So I can only dream that someone I know has one and would donate it to me.

Dream on.

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The Essence of Leadership

This fall's Presidential election is the most critical in a generation, maybe two. Some obvious parallels exist with the 1960 contest between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon. But, from a governance perspective, a better precedent would be the 1932 election between Franklyn D. Roosevelt and Herbert Hoover.

Then, like now, a crisis in the role of government in the lives of its people is a central, if poorly understood, issue. The economy is lurching, and we are living through a time of extended international tension.

Of course, we are at a different point in history. Wise leaders now must comprehend globalization and the transformation wrought by digital technology in all of their complexities. The old foreign policy paradigms -- us (good) against them (evil) -- no longer suffices. I'm not saying there are not bad guys -- there are extremely bad guys out there. I'm saying that the line between "us" and "them" has eroded substantially

The reason the Bush administration gave for issuing a guarantee to save the faltering Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac last week is that they are "too big to fail." No kidding. They also have so much foreign investment behind them that to allow them to fail would trigger a global financial panic -- not an option anyone likes to contemplate.

"We" are no longer who we were in 1932, or even in 1960. Look around, and see the rich integration of every ethnic, racial, religious, and cultural group of the human species, all living in peace here in America. Our diversity is our greatest weapon against the forces of hate, fear, and unchecked nationalism.

The unchecked nationalists of the '30s were, of course, Hitler's Nazis, one of the most evil regimes in modern history. But, as many people as the Nazis exterminated, they were neophytes compared to the brutal version of Communism practiced by Josef Stalin, and its stepchild, the genocidal evil that swept through southeast Asia in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos in the '70s.

When I was still in school, I considered U.S. involvement in that area "imperialism" -- and in retrospect there was tangible evidence in support of that position -- but my comprehension of the larger picture fell short, analytically. What the conflict was really about was geopolitical posturing between "great powers" -- the U.S., China, and Russia.

In the end, none of these great powers prevailed. Instead, the people of Southeast Asia took back control of their own fate, which -- in a pre-globalization sense -- is exactly what should have happened. Thus, the U.S. did not "lose" the Vietnam War; the Vietnamese people regained control over their own land and their own destiny.

Thanks to this "victory," these days, they are attempting to become close trading partners and allies with the United States, a society the Vietnamese admire deeply. Such is the cycle of history.

Domestically, Americans are suffering through the equivalent of an acid reflex discomfort as our overheated housing industry, fueled by greed and debt, collapses under its own bloated and corrupt weight.

I do not want to sound heartless, but as one who has bought and sold five houses, three in the Bay Area, over the past 20 years, I did learn to read the fine print on all of those documents I was signing. And, despite the winks and the nods from real estate "agents," (i.e., hustlers), I never lied about my income or debts or any other financial factor just to get a loan. In fact, I always understated my assets, holding some in reserve so that the most important party to the deal -- me -- could be assured that the loan would truly be affordable.

From my perspective, getting the home was not the point -- being confident that I would be able to pay for was what mattered. As it turned out, I always could until I made my fatal financial mistake the 5th time around, buying a house at an inflated price in order to be able to relocate my family back to San Francisco after a failed attempt to relocate to the Washington, D.C., area.

It wasn't a failure on a personal or professional level for me. I quickly grew to like it back east, as any political news junkie understands. The best part, professionally, is I was a short flight or train ride away from the great center of the media/publishing industry -- New York.

My love affair with New York goes back decades. Had I lived a different life, without family obligations; or, if I had succeeded at a greater level on the West Coast, I could have afforded to move to New York.

But I didn't and I didn't. Any hopes of becoming an East-Coaster dissolved when my second family's D.C. experiment did not work out to my second wife's expectations, so I secured a job back out in Silicon Valley, and made a hasty decision to purchase an expensive house in Noe Valley.

In our family, we call this the "pink house," since its exterior was painted pink at the time.

It was summer of the year 2000 and my new job, though it involved a commute down to Redwood City, was at a company that -- from the outside -- looked likely to generate enough wealth via stock options for me to retire by age 56, at that point just three years hence.

It didn't turn out that way. For once I hadn't studied the fine print.

***

The next President, whoever that is, faces the need to transform the relationship between government and the U.S. economy in ways every much as profound as was necessary in 1932. The power of free markets and free trade are beyond debate. The inability of centralized governments to efficiently run economies or provide for their citizens is a matter of record.

Those points settled, what is the proper role for government?

To me, the most troubling aspect of the Fannie & Freddie intervention is that these institutions are purportedly "private" companies. But that all goes back to the wink and the nod that got so many home-buyers in trouble. The government never said it would step in to save these giant financial units, but everyone assumed that it would.

Last week, it turned out that everyone was right. So, what is the meaning of the word "everyone." In this case, it means investors, stockholders, speculators, foreign governments -- everyone except the American citizen who is working hard and trying to buy a house.

We are not part of the winning crowd. When our government guarantees to underwrite a failing company, we pay the bill through our taxes. And, mind you, this is not the old "tax and spend" liberal crowd who's propping up failure; this is the "compassionate conservative" wing of the Republican Party.

Turns out the compassionate part isn't directed toward us, but toward speculators, naked short-sellers, and flip traders. As far as I'm concerned, these greedy bastards should all rot in hell.

The next President has to sort through all of this mess and establish some new regulatory parameters for the role of government in helping guide an economy that no longer resides mainly at home. It's an economy that is dominated by companies earning much more money overseas than here -- to them, the failing dollar is a good thing.

It's you and me, my friends, who need an advocate who grasps the implications of what I am describing here. We need a new social compact. We need a new regulatory philosophy. We must eliminate the power of big money in politics, because it is the big money spent by Fannie & Freddie's lobbyists that created the blind eye in Congress and the White House that allowed them Mac twins to acquire a massive portfolio of bad loans.

For a long time, I liked McCain because of his attempt to reform the influence of money in politics. Under the pressure of running for President, he appears to be backing away from that commitment. I like Obama for lots of reasons, but I've not yet heard what I need to hear about his economic regulatory vision.

In fact, neither McCain nor Obama has yet articulated an economic regulation regime of the sort I am waiting for. If one of them does, that will be the candidate who gets my vote come November.

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