Had a question recently, “what’s with the business books?” The answer is “because, I like writing them!”
I’ve always felt like two people when it came to my working life. I had a business degree, was a CPA, functioned as a Controller, CFO and was a business owner. All that life is connected. Much of it is due to my experiences in the 1960s and 1970s as a young, poorly financed business owner. I had some luck but increasingly became aware of my weakness, an understanding of the financial side (numbers, ugh!) of business. Going to school was supposed to teach me to be a better business owner.
Working for yourself is incredibly rewarding but can also be an unforgiving drain on time and money. Many of the people I knew then were beginning careers with thriving companies, I became envious. I was working long hours, plus going to school, and it seemed like I was falling behind the people who just chose to work for someone else. They had a job, that they often left completely behind at work, I had a job that never left me alone.
Once I got the degree and the CPA, I applied for those jobs where you made a lot of money and never worried about having to make payroll. That lasted for some years (and off and on have gone back to employment, usually to lick my wounds from self-employment woes) until I saw how unfulfilling those jobs were. Also, while a corporate employee I couldn’t keep my mouth shut. I think you should do this……whatever this was, usually was not what the leaders were doing and my suggestion on how to be better was not welcomed.
Some of that frustration led to new investments in business ideas and a rather long career in what amounted to consulting. Many of those years the focus was on helping small businesses find the resources they needed to grow. Also, some chunk of time in M&A activities.
Never lost my fascination with what makes a business successful.
The books are a way for me to pass along some advice, opinions, observations, and suggestions about business and what it “really” means to own a business. Both good and bad.
The biggest contradiction in my life was between this love and fascination with business and the other passion to create things —such as art and books. It doesn’t seem to fit, but for me it was just natural.
Each passion was a critical part of who I was, they may seem like different people to some, but for me it was always “normal” to be fascinated with numbers AND bold colors. (In case you’re wondering I never painted by numbers—maybe should have?)
By Tommy Jacks (character in the Muckraker Series)
Clifton’s focus on Pacheco & Chino and now Chino and Tonto leaves some of us grasping for attention. My series, The Muckraker Mysteries, have all but been forgotten. So, who cares about poor old me—well of course I do, and Ted’s co-author Stan Nelson probably does? I mention Stan even though I have never talked to him, Clifton has forbidden any of the characters in their co-written books to approach Stan—something about he has more important things to deal with and can’t stand whinny characters.
You may, or may not, have read any of the Murder books (that’s what we call them), but if not, you should. These are terrific stories. I think some of Clifton’s best—maybe because of Nelson, although I’m not completely sure there is a Nelson. It is possible Clifton just made that up (he makes up stuff all the time—including me) so he could blame him if anything went wrong.
Let’s begin with Murder So Wrong. I’m just starting out in my career and have been hired by a start-up newspaper in competition with a behemoth owned by the richest man in the state. Bunch of history here about the race for governor and how the looser, who had some money, decided to open a competing newspaper because of the unethical tactics used by the existing paper to make sure their guy won. Yes, there is murder but a lot more stuff going on, including my first love, ending in a great tragedy.
This was loosely (very loosely) based on a real newspaper war in Oklahoma City during the 1960s when both Stan and Ted lived there. They knew some of the people involved in the start-up paper and heard all kinds of stories about the underhanded dealings that were going on. One of the people Ted knew was a political columnist who took no prisoners when it came to his “over-the-top” reporting (or more accurately gossip mongering). He and Ted even worked together for a while, but he was less pleasant close-up—some of our most famous people really are assholes—best to keep your distance.
The series continues into Murder So Strange. This book looks at police corruption and the drug problem that existed in Oklahoma City during a time when most people thought there wasn’t a drug problem. Inter-twined with political intrigue from Oklahoma to Washington DC. Lots of twists and turns in this one.
The last in the series is Murder So Final. This book returns to a statewide political race and involves some unforgettable characters. The oil field thug, who now owns the largest oil and gas company in the state, who is running for US Senate. His opponents consist of a preacher and a professor. This three-person race becomes nasty and deadly. Also includes a major, almost city destroying, oil field fire in Tulsa.
As a reporter/columnist I was there for all those events. While I’m the main character, the charm of these books is the supporting cast of characters. My dad, who was running the state Democratic party before he was put in jail by the owner of the powerful newspaper, a lawyer who doesn’t seem to have any scruples and possesses a very colorful vocabulary, my first love, my second love (now my wife), newspaper people who are so close to real that it seems like they are made up, my mentor who fell into a pile of crap and never recovered and more and more. Lots of interesting people doing interesting things.
Authors Note. Some of the people in these books were based on real people (no names please), while others were just created because they were needed in the story. Not sure I can tell which is which anymore.
As to Mr. Jacks concerns about the “Murder” books, I am sympathetic. I also feel those books were some of the most interesting. The fact that Pacheco and Chino sold better was not a statement about the stories themselves, more about timing and having a dog featured in P&C. It was by agreement with Mr. Nelson that there would only be three of those books—so maybe Mr. Jacks is feeling like he has more to say and nowhere to say it. It’s a tough non-life being a fictional character.
Something new! Audio Dramas based on my book characters (and some new ones) now available. They are free! The first series is Vegas Dead End a Chino & Tonto Mystery. (Adult language)
I cannot teach anybody anything; I can only make them think.
– Socrates
My wife and I have had more discussions about public education over the years than probably anything else, except maybe our children and grandchildren. Often, we have been united in our belief that education is being ruined by demanding parents who don’t have a clue. Parents want to protect their children from harm, physically and mentally. This goal gets in the way of logical thinking, especially around education.
We’ve reached a point where public education may not survive. Now for all those people who experienced absolute hell in Middle School or High School that would seem like a good thing, but is it? Education, public or not, is always hard to evaluate. We don’t have controlled groups of kids who went thought public education or other options, to compare how they turned out. Most people in hindsight give public schools a thumbs up, but also have a lot of reservations about some of the methods employed to achieve certain results.
A solution many parents are approaching today is a more controlled environment that agrees with their beliefs, such as a religious school. It is in our nature to want to congregate within our identified groups, but does that make us a better society? Religion often has a whole set of beliefs that run counter to the overall educational goal of achieving a level of critical thinking. And of course, there are a lot of different religions.
The consensus seems to be that public education is broken, and there is no way to fix it. I think the reality is that society is broken, and each camp wants its own way to “educate” the children. This may be a result of parents feeling they have lost control of their children, not just at school but also at home. The massive, invasive nature of communication has created an independent world for even young children to explore without much control. Parents feel threatened.
Yelling at the internet is probably not very satisfying but yelling at a school board or a principal can make you feel you have regained control.
This issue is really what do you do to fix this unhappiness. The answer is usually worse than the current problem. Parents are mostly bad at educating their own children, even if they think they are good at it. Education is not limiting what you know, it is expanding it. Parents too often just want to limit what they see as destructive information.
Another problem with public education is bad teachers. Everyone has a story about some horrible teacher. We, probably, know how to fix that problem. However, often the “bad” teacher is one that is not popular for one reason or another; and the good teacher is a pushover who everyone thinks is “cool”. Those qualities are not based on being a good or bad teacher.
As I said at the beginning, many problems with schools start with parents who want to put their thumbs on the scale. The parents who resent any criticism of their children and will use all the influence they may have to make sure their kids have the “right” teacher and that the teacher understands the parents have huge influence. Those same parents want to demonize school boards for not being in the right political column. Politics and education are opposing forces that will not comfortably co-exist.
My solution? Yeah, I don’t know what’s right either.
How about?
Public Education exists as is up to the fifth grade. This will provide an educational basis for the basics, reading, writing and arithmetic. The three R’s? So, government sponsored education to give each citizen the skills to be a minimal participating citizen.
Beyond that basic there is financial support at some level for private schools—all optional. The government does not force anyone to attend any formal educational process after the 5th grade. I know that sounds backwards, but there are amazing resources to educate yourself, if you so choose. Maybe ignorance is a constitutional right?
Establish apprenticeship programs for almost every job opportunity. Structured educational programs that are focused more on job skills.
Rethink public service jobs so that every teenager is given the opportunity to participate in their community with decent paying jobs.
Establish educational systems that use existing facilities to promote continued education from the 6th grade until the 10th.
Overall goal is to stop making education, after a minimal level, mandatory.
Book Updates
Started work on the next Tumbleweed mystery book. This one will feature a girl, from the same town as Johnny, who is going to West Side Elementary. During one of the Saturday double features at the Sky Train Theatre, she discovers something that totally changes her world. Not going to tell you anymore right now, but I think you will enjoy this story from the 1950s that will feature a silent film star, the A-bomb, several odd friends and, of course, Tumbleweed and Ratty—and a surprise appearance from the Air Police.
Still anticipate that book versions of Chino & Tonto, Dr. Hightower, and Mr. and Mrs. Sims will be published later this year, or early next.
Audio Updates
Recording every day. Would expect to get onto a regular schedule soon with new episodes of one of the three audio series posted almost every day.
The greatest risk to democracy (or a republic) is complacency. “My vote doesn’t count, why bother.” “The Elites control everything, I can’t change that.”
Percentage of votes in recent presidential elections.
Voting Age Pop % vote
2008 229,945,000 57.1%
2012 235,248,000 53.8%
2016 249,422,000 54.8%
2020 257,605,088 62.0%
That 2020 percentage is impressive. On the other hand, even at that level it meant almost 100 million potential voters did not vote. 100 million people who thought it was best to let someone else decide how the country they live in is run. How is that even possible?
I live in Colorado, a state that for many years has embraced the idea of making it as easy as possible to vote, a notable contrast to many states. Driven by an efficient and reliable mail in voting system Colorado had almost 90% of potential voters voting in the 2020 presidential election.
In ballpark numbers that is almost 30 percentage points better than the national numbers. That difference nationally would be over 75 million people who did not vote, if the country achieved the same result as Colorado. Could the country achieve those results if every state adopted Colorado’s proven system?
So, why don’t we? Because the people who decide such things often don’t want more people voting.
By any measure you want to use we are governed in most cases by people elected by a minority. In that presidential election where 62% voted the winner only received 32% of the potential voters—that is a minority by any measure.
If your goal for winning is getting one-third of the vote, do you really represent the whole country? Probably not—you represent that one-third who may or may not have any interest in doing “things” that benefit the whole country. That is a system that will eventually lead to disaster. Or maybe already has.
Sure, you can have someone elected by the minority who tries to represent the whole, but it is hard. The minority who won feel entitled to run things their way and eventually the act of compromising because something evil. We won, fuck you—is not a unifying slogan.
There are many suggestions on how to improve participation in elections but at the heart of the problem are citizens who choose not to vote. The reasons they do that are varied and many. Some of the voting age population has lost the privilege to vote, some don’t really care about the country they live in, some fear the process of voting because they have felt threatened, some feel a strange sense of superiority because they have become non-citizens, and some are probably unaware they can vote.
The country has a long history of limiting the vote. For most of our history, certain races could not vote, and women could not vote. The country was founded by rich white men who owned property and most likely they felt that they should really be the only ones allowed to vote. That mind set still exists today.
Power seems to be dehumanizing. Often the most powerful people have lost something that might be the most human aspect of being human—their sense of right and wrong. We need leaders with unifying voices, but our system demands loyalty to a minority to become a leader. We are the problem.
Tonto is the dog
Have been working on some new projects, audio dramas. These are currently being released through Patreon. Interested in listening to early releases join me as a member for as little as $2 per month and you can cancel anytime. Thanks for listening! (Adult language in audio)
“There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution.” –John Adams in letter to Johnathan Jackson, 1780.
“Party knows no impulse but spirit, no prize but victory. It is blind to truth and hardened against conviction. It seeks to justify error by perseverance and denies to its own mind the operation of its own judgment. A man under the tyranny of party spirit is the greatest slave upon the earth, for none but himself can deprive him of the freedom of thought.” –Thomas Paine, The Opposers of the Bank, 1787.
Cult, “a misplaced or excessive admiration for a particular person or thing.” I’m sure we have all heard the statement that “nobody joins a cult.” The statement means no one sits down and analyzes the pluses and minuses of being a part of a cult. In most cases people become involved because they think the group offers some benefit to them, such as belonging to something, or they think the group is doing something beneficial, protecting the country from those other morons. Cults are often based on some need for a religious connection. Most religious groups probably started as cults.
The pattern with cult members is that they join for a reason that made sense to them, they stay because they feel threatened if they leave. The first decision was relatively easy, join and benefit, the last decision is extremely hard, leave and lose a lot, maybe even yourself. Cults are built around isolation and a closed world. Believe only what the cult leader tells you, everyone else is lying.
There are and have been many personality cults around politicians/leaders. There is no question those groups are cults, but they are relatively benign. I know many might disagree with that statement, but I think it is true. They usually break up with little harm to the individuals. However, the groups themselves may be extremely dangerous, think Nazis or Ku Klux Klan. The degree of danger in any cult is entirely up to the cult leader. It is that person’s personality that the cult begins to emulate. An evil leader will eventually lead the members into evil.
You may think I’m talking about our latest personality politician Trump, but I’m not. What worries me is Identity politics. This is about groups forming their political bond because of the group. This can be race, religion, gender, anything that binds the group. One of those things is political party. There has always been concern from the very beginning of our country that political parties could represent a danger. We now have a country deeply divided along party lines.
For probably thirty years of my voting life my party affiliation has been rather fluid. I have been a democrat, a republican and a nothing. Often when I was a democrat I voted for republicans and vice versa. I can’t say for sure, but I would guess much of the country was that way.
Now we are making non-political decisions based on political parties. Where to live, what school to go to, what church to go to, who to date, who to marry, who to hate; my goodness how did that happen?
One of the ways that has happen is the political parties have used hate and division to attract voters. We have had honorable people stoop to the lowest forms of political rhetoric to win an election. Shame on them. But shame on us for following for that obnoxious ploy. Calling your opponent misguided, wrong, ill informed, not fit for office might be okay; but calling your opponent a Nazi, a communist, a moron, the devil; well, that is going a bit too far.
I stopped being a republican when Bush’s supporters demonized John Kerry. You may not like Kerry, but so what; he was an American hero who fought in a nonsensical war with honor, and then had the guts to say the war was wrong. All the nationalist, warmongers hated him for his honesty. The Bush followers created the false narrative that his heroism was fake. False medals, fake injuries all to benefit their draft dodging candidate. That was too much for me, I became a democrat. Now I’m leaning independent, which is no-party.
Is it time to junk this two-party charade? Maybe! The two-party system was thought to limit the extremes gaining power, because the party leaders would make sure the nuts could not win. That’s not working, now the party leaders are people who previous party leaders would have kept on the sidelines.
At least one of the political parties has lost interest in democracy. If you do not believe in majority rule you do not believe in much of anything, except power. If I have the power, I will do whatever I want, and getting that power is the most important thing. The ends justify the means. If those are your beliefs, what kind of Constitution would you write. It sure wouldn’t be ours.
Groups who only want power will always turn to violence. Ugly rhetoric will only go so far, when your enemy is the devil, you must kill the evil to make the world a better place.
I doubt this current trend can be reversed without some major changes. I think the best would be doing away with party affiliations. How would that work, not sure? There still needs to be some controls on some aspects of running for office, but at this point those controls are in the wrong hands. Maybe no controls would be better.
If we really believe in democracy, maybe it’s time to try it.
Eliminate the Electoral College.
Eliminate District lines drawn by people. Have a national computer model that draws the lines in equal squares as best as possible to divide the state in standard shapes with the appropriate number of people.
Eliminate Party Affiliation Registration.
Establish Senators on a scale related to population. 2 senators for each state, 3 for states with population of 5M-10M, 4 for states with populations of 10M or more. (I just made up those numbers without much thought)
Establish a Cabinet Position for Development of Rural America. We need to better utilize the rural assets that are underutilized today. Remote work can help build better jobs in rural areas.
Place all military power under a new quintet made up of President, Chief Justice, Speaker of the House, Majority Leader of the Senate, and Minority Leader of the Senate. Majority rules, use of nuclear power takes a unanimous decision. No one person should ever have the power to destroy the world.
Supreme Court Justices are limited to one 10-year term.
All Federal Judges are limited to one 15-year term.
All Federal positions are age limited. Must be X age (can vary by position) to run and no one older than seventy-five can run for election.
Create a subsidy much like social security for people in their twenties. This would have free medical care (Medicare) and a first house benefit. The monthly amount would be a standard (say $1K per month from age 21 to 29). The one-time housing allowance would be a $25K down payment allowance and a reduced interest rate (or no interest) for the first 10 years of the mortgage.
Establish with clarity the separation of church and state. Eliminate all tax advantages for religious organizations that promote political agendas.
There’s lots more of that kind of stuff, I’m sure you’ve got some ideas.
Will any of that happen? Probably not. We in effect have minority rule and that minority is not going to give up power; and will seek even more power. Beware of the righteous.
The best baseball players are usually almost done by their mid-thirties. A great, physically skilled athlete cannot do what they did in their twenties in their thirties, it is just reality. We’ve had great thinkers who have offered some of their wisest words into their nineties, but it is not the norm. The mind and the body start a downhill run at a point in life that can be surprisingly young and once on the downhill slope, you do not get better.
Why do we have so many politicians who think they are best suited to lead us while they age into their “declining years”? The answer to that is obvious, ego. Toss in the attraction of power and you have a leadership team passed their prime.
Elders have their place in our lives, as advisors, thinkers, worriers, and clear-eyed realists. “My advice to you, Mr. Kiddo President, is spend less time on destructive rhetoric and more time on making decisions that improves the lives of everyone.” Good advice, granddad.
Are young leaders smarter, do they make better decisions, are they wiser? The answer, once again, is obvious, NO. Just because you are young does not mean you are a better leader. But there is no question that when you are forty, your interest in a better future has a different context than if you are eighty. Common sense says, younger politicians will have more invested in what might happen to their country, their world, than someone on their final lap.
Now what is stopping young (young in politics is middle age) politicians from achieving power? Old politicians who don’t know when it is time to hang up the old glove and become advisors/coaches.
In a democracy (which the US is not, but close enough) the only way to really make change is voting. Today deciding on who to vote for has become a challenge. We are being bombarded with deceptive advertising and out and out lies. While difficult, I do think there are good ways to decide who should represent you. Pick someone you trust. Don’t just listen to the noise, but read what the person has written. Examine what the person is saying, is it hateful, threatening or something that would get you in trouble with a teacher, stay away from that person. Vote for people for the right reason—you think they can do a good job being a politician. If you want a fighter, you are looking for someone who wants to destroy, that will not be good for our system. We need thinkers, we need people who can legislate and make our lives better, not scream at us about some imagined threat.
It’s possible no one in your party fits that bill. Vote for the other party. Your vote decides what the world will look like. If you hate and elect hateful people the world will soon become an ugly, dangerous place.
Here is my personal voting guide:
Never vote for someone who:
Yells all the time.
Is followed around by a team of lawyers.
Is followed around by a team of goons.
Says all your problems in life have nothing to do with your decisions but are the fault of _______.
Would appear to have an ego as big as a house.
Doesn’t own a dog.
Likes the military a little too much.
Would prefer not to shake your hand.
Will obviously do or say anything to win.
Really wants to be a TV star.
Admires no one and has no heroes.
You should vote for people who:
Don’t really seem to want the job.
Love dogs.
Listens all the time.
Wants you to have more control over your life, but not infringe on anyone else’s.
Loves history.
Thinks all people have value.
Thinks being wealthy does not make you smart.
Would rather be _____________, as opposed to being at this press conference.
Still talks to mom.
Would also add that the best leaders love to read and take walks (alone or with their dog).
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Book/Writing Update
In the process of producing audio dramas. The first is Chino & Tonto, which is a spin-off of the Pacheco and Chino mystery books. These are short audios, usually under seven minutes per episode, with different voices for the characters. These are not available to the public, yet. They will first be released to Patreon Members and then to Newsletter subscribers. Once they are more widely available, I will let you know.
I was reading an article about the Ukraine war, and it quoted a famous Russian “intellectual” saying that the goal of the west was to destroy Russia using homosexuals as an invading army. Now that is paraphrasing but close enough for government work. What is our problem with sex? Humans have been fighting, arguing, killing because of sex forever. Sex is good, sex is bad. Me having sex is great you having sex is evil. Our brains seem to have a problem dealing with one of our basic functions.
As we all know by visiting the monkey cage at the zoo, sex is demanding, normal, abnormal, on-going, unstoppable—but that will not keep us from declaring some sexual activities okay and others abhorrent.
Religion has always been obsessed with sex. Mostly old celibate white men making rules about sexual activity for everyone else would seem to represent a conflict of interest. Maybe those old guys should have spent more time worrying about hunger or housing for their flock and less about the flock’s other activities.
Built into this obsession is the apparently human need to tell other people how to live their lives. Now this gets into the subject of power, but really should someone else have that much power—WHO MADE HIM KING MONKEY?
Religious leaders declaring their power comes from God is one thing, politicians or Russian Big Shots declaring that same God speaks to them is another. The Russian Big Shot thinks killing innocent people in their homes by the thousands, or millions is okay, but homosexuality is a sin. Or maybe it’s okay to kill those people because some of them might be gay? Sounds like the Russian honcho has some serious sex issues he needs to think through before he reloads his gun.
Some of the dumbest conspiracy theories I have heard all contain some element dealing with sexual perversion. How do these nuts come up with all those strange, disgusting perversions? Almost all taking place in basements or tunnels. Seems like someone could use a hug.
At some level, I’m not opposed to everyone being the same. Nobody should be different, and everyone should act, believe, think, walk, talk just like me. Why not, I’m perfect! So, if you’re different you are a threat to me, and I hate you for questioning who I am.
Okay, that’s absurd. What a boring, dull, stupid world it would be if we were all the same. Why does your difference matter to me at all? Unless you invade my space in some way, I’m okay with you being you.
While we don’t live in a monkey cage, we do occupy common space. The people who want to control other people are afraid of something. They want to control themselves by controlling others. Limit your options to approved norms. Those norms are them. And they need strict boundaries to maintain their “normalness.”
Ever wonder what a different world we would live in if all our religious leaders had been women?
Pope Mary II would have had some different ideas about a lot of stuff!
“The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.”- Socrates
There is a path in life where we are as dumb as a baby, brilliant as a teenager and approaching dumb again as we age. The logical conclusion is that we were always dumb. By dumb I don’t mean book smarts, I mean wisdom. Knowing a bunch of facts is not the same as having wisdom.
Wisdom comes with experience and a humility in failure. Its possible great wisdom comes to those who have suffered the greatest of tragedies. Ignorance is bred in the success of luck. At this point in my life, I just assume I don’t know anything—it’s the wise thing to do.
I have been featuring quotes in my newsletter for some time. I find these short pearls of wisdom to be the most concise insights into humans. While perusing quotes, I find that there are particular people I’m always attracted to. Socrates for sure. Hard to believe we are still enjoying his wisdom some 2,600 years later—now that is some lasting fame.
My favorites are Mark Twain, Albert Einstein (there is some chance I like his quotes because his photos are so interesting), Benjamin Franklin, Abraham Lincoln, and C.S. Lewis. Now that is a list of people who knew a thing or two about not knowing anything. Life just tricks you into thinking you know something; they knew it was all nonsense. Just wait, and what you think you knew will become dumb.
I’m going to continue with my search for the best quotes. Have any favorites? Let me know.
When is a good time to open a business? Never? Well, that could be the answer. Uncertainty creates many problems in deciding to do much of anything. My experience has been that I opened a business when I had too, often because I could not find a job. Desperation can create a push to make that decision. The more correct answer is “when you are ready.” Now the problem is how do I know if I’m ready?
My two books give advice on when you are ready to start a business and how to run that business. The other book offers small business owners a path on how to sell their businesses themselves.
This is real world advice from someone who has been there and done that.
My parents were church going people, in a casual way. For many years I accompanied them to various church activities. I was never comfortable, but always felt welcomed. The fact that I could not connect never bothered me. These were good people doing mostly good things and living their lives in good ways. What could be wrong with that?
After my parents retired, they went from casual church goers to dedicated church members. Even that increased involvement seemed good and positive. It became their most important activity and benefited them enormously. During that time my father’s political views become more focused with an increased element of hate. I wasn’t sure if that was the TV news shows he chose to watch, or some other reasons. I even wondered about his increased involvement with church. Still, it wasn’t a “real” problem.
I was on the phone with a friend of mine when we heard what had to be a bomb. A very big bomb. It was 1995, he lived in Oklahoma City. I heard it in his voice, he was scared; something horrible had just happened very close to his house. I was in New Mexico at that time, and had heard the noise over the phone, but he was within a few blocks and felt the blast physically. Watching the news reports of that awful tragedy made me sick. Killing kids because your head is screwed up and you hate the government felt like something no human would do. Of course, that would be ignoring the long history of such mindless killing in the name of something, or nothing; based on hate.
Why do humans hate other humans so easily? The answer for me has always been politics and religion.
Politics, at least in the US, is the act of governing ourselves. Why would that become so destructive as to promote killing? The US political system has a lot of flaws. Those flaws are being magnified as our world changes, but they have always been there. Our basis for our self-governance is a declaration of independence and a constitution which were hammered out more than a couple of hundred years ago by men who were all white, mostly wealthy land and slave owners who had vested interests in breaking away from England, but at the same time retaining much of the political power for themselves. There was no universal agreement on how to achieve those goals so there was a lot of compromise, which is not a bad thing.
So did they have a vision on how things would be 250 years later and incorporate that into those documents—of course not! Most people can’t imagine what the world will be like ten years from now, much less 250.
What binds politics and religion is power and wealth. In the US we govern ourselves, but we choose people to lead us. Those leaders are given power which often turns into wealth. Religious leaders have power and have often turned that power into vast wealth.
That power and wealth creates the haves and the have nots. It is the hate of the have nots that drives people to violence. The status struggle dominates much of our existence and leads to strange outcomes. Why is it so important to be important, or powerful or rich?
Religion would seem to be the counterbalance to the human desire to be on top. Religion often says the poor man wins—but at the human level the poor man does not feel like a winner. Even religious leaders don’t seem to believe their own preaching.
I know that government and religion are not evil. It is that some people in those institutions become greedy for power and wealth.
It could be large groups of people cannot agree on how to self-govern. There does seem to be a pattern where the people full of the most hatred want to be led by the loudest person in the room, rather than the best. The strongest rather than the brightest. We still pick our leaders based on the best defender of the herd, rather than the best thinker. Might make sense to stop that.
My father hated more at the end of his life than he had during his life. Could be that is an aging process and the inevitable result of facing death. Or was it religion or politics. I don’t know. I do know that it was not pleasant to watch. He seemed to think the bombing in Oklahoma City, where he lived, was due to evil forces in the government who wanted to take away our religious freedoms. He also thought the country was being ruined by minorities and immigrants. It was the first time I heard those type of comments. The father who I thought cared about and loved everyone, now hated at a level that seemed unreal and sad.
Ted Clifton's Grain of Salt Commentary 