Pocketbook influence

People want Pres. Trump to be tough on Saudi Arabia for killing that journalist. But he or any President won't. The Saudi royal family has a Svengali-like hold on world leaders because their perceived need for oil overrides any need for integrity. So it is up the world consumer. I'm 65,  and for the last six years I've ridden my bike 16 miles to work 4 days a week in any weather above 32°F and in afternoon I ride 4 miles to the bus and take that the rest of the way home. We have one car which we mostly use on weekends as my wife walks to work most days. Anyone who lives within 10 miles of work should ride a bicycle. Walk that 4 or 5 blocks to the corner store instead of driving. The only way we're going to reduce the influence of the Middle East is to cut back on using oil. Do your best.

Desperation

People bemoan Chinese business espionage and Russian election meddling. But it's actually a compliment to U.S. freedom and innovation. The Chinese keep such tight control of their people, that they don't have the freedom to innovate and the best they can do is copy our technology. Russia is a 3rd rate commodity based economy run by a mob that shuts down any independent ooperators. So they manufacture overseas adventures to keep people's minds off their incompetent government. These countries are like a Chihuahua nipping at our heels. When they stop doing it, that's when we are in trouble.

Centers

I'm not getting any younger. Right now when I think about dying, I think it's over, you're done. I'm okay with that. That's the way the Universe operates. Things are born, they live a useful life, they die. Galaxies, stars, people. I'm okay passing the torch to my sons and grandchildren.

But if there was an afterlife, I can't see it as it is usually pictured: God, as an all powerful force running everything. That's too much like the way things are run in this life. Seems like if we have to endure the powerful centers in this life, we ought to be able to endure a Mad Max, Han Solo existence in the afterlife.

Centers. If there is a dominant center, there's always the outliers that don't benefit. Like in my town of Albany, downtown is the city's elites baby. They spend millions sprucing up historic buildings and maybe the rest of us in other neighborhoods will get some trickle down effect. But it doesn't fool anyone. Average people cant afford to shop down there because all they have is expensive boutique stores. The mayor is all about upscale. My center is a Dairy Mart and Pizza Now, four blocks away. If I need clothes or food I bike or walk 20 minutes to Target or Grocery Outlet.

Then there's these political and economic capital cities where the political, corporate and religious elites suck the life out of the rest of the country. They say you can't have a country without borders. What they mean is they can't control the people close to the border without a tight border. Border walls aren't meant to keep people out. They are to keep us from interacting with our neighbors on the other side. Washington sucks taxes out of Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and California and sends next to nothing back to the poor towns along the border.

I nust read this story in the New York Times about how the Mexican League baseball team in Nuevo Laredo plays half their games in Laredo. Even in these tight border times, fans and players flow back and forth. Because down there, there aren't Mexicans and US citizens, they are friends and neighbors and business partners. They have everything in common with the people across the river and nothing with the hacks in Mexico City and Washington, D.C.

Some Native American tribes have creation stories of people coming up out of the ground to people their tribal grounds. This is the way I think it was with God coming into the Universe, bubbling in like spring spreading and sharing energy from the bottom up. The idea of an all powerful God, even if he's helping the oppressed, is a mirror creation of the rich and powerful, starting with the first shamans, to control people. Defused power at the fringes may be messy and chaotic, but at least it is among friends and neighbors and close enemies and not some corporate drones thousands of miles away.

Worth of all persons

Some denominations have a principle: all persons have worth. It doesn't say most people; it doesn't say 99%; it says all. But the same people that profess the worth of all persons, think it only applies to people of their political persuasion. They post pictures of Judge Kavanaugh's law clerk supposedly making a white supremacist sign. As conservative as Kavanaugh is, it still makes no sense that he would hire a white supremacist and from what I read, she is half Hispanic and her grandmother is a Polish Jew. But apparently conservatives have no worth, so they feel they can post disparaging photos without any basis of truth. If all people have worth, even Hitler had worth, at least to Eva  Braun.

That's why people keep God around. Because then they can say, that person has no worth, but in God's eyes, all people have worth. But if you can't say all people have worth, don't put words in God's mouth.

Authoritarian

I saw a post on Facebook by a bunch of church leaders that were pontificating about the right co-opting the name of Jesus and also about the authoritarian trending of the current administration. But I was thinking, they haven't got a leg to stand on, because they are leaders of an authoritarian church. And no matter how liberal their churches are, their theology is still top down.

If there's anything I've learned in my 65 years, from reading Tom Paine, Ethan Allen, and recent libertarian writings, is that things always work out better if they go from the bottom up. Things would go a lot better if the people on the bottom, right and left, would stick together and let all the leaders know in no uncertain terms which side their bread is buttered on.

People can say companies are top down. But the best companies, if an employee is doing their best to serve their internal and external customers, give their employees a lot of latitude. And even in the military, especially during war, if you are moving toward the objective with initiative and common sense, you can move the conversation past just following orders.

I don't consider myself a Christian. The older I get, I don't believe in the atonement, eternal life or an all-powerful God. I don't think Jesus meant to set up an authoritarian church. The church was fomented by St. Paul and the Emperor Constantine and we've been stuck with that structure ever since. I'm not really a Jesus follower either, as libertarians don't follow very well. I consider myself a Jesus Reader. He had some good things to say, and some are worth putting into practice. The basis for most of what he taught, I think, was Micah 6:8, be just, be kind, be humble; I fail miserably at all three, but I try.

Historically, if the people on the bottom are not listened to, things don't turn out well for those at the top. And if that sounds kind of irreverent towards God; I've ways thought that the God power in the universe was always bottom up. And leaders in politics, religion and business try to co-opt that power into top down at their peril.

Glass houses

People are criticizing Trump about meeting with Putin especially after the indictment of Russian operatives for hacking our election. But they seem to forget that Carter buddied up with the dictatorial Shah of Iran and all Presidents meet with the Prime Ministers of Israel, and they influence U.S. politics more than everyone else combined.

Clean-up

Let's see. Thw immigrants aren't taking people's jobs. The people losing manufacturing jobs in the Midwest aren't flocking to the West to pick produce, work in food processing or work as construction workers to build the houses that are desperately needed. And 99% of immigrants aren't on the dole, because it's easier to get a job than to stand in line for handouts. So the only people immigrants are bothering are the people who live along the border when the immigrants traipse across their land and leave trash. So you just take a few thousand immigrants and and give them a job picking up trash, fixing fences and sprucing up the border.