Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Patriotism

Patriotism is a word that has been much-bandied about in the last eight years, and the last six months or so in particular.

What does it mean to me?

To me, patriotism is the willingness to sacrifice yourself for something greater than yourself.

Patriotism is not wearing a flag pin in your lapel. That's just a way to say "Yeah, I'm patriotic," without actually doing anything.

Patriotism is not blindly following someone because he happens to be in charge. Patriotism requires keeping an eye on the big picture.

(An aside here... soldiers these days are trained to vet every order and if it's illegal or immoral it is their right, their duty, to not carry out that order. If a soldier carries out an illegal or immoral order, the soldier is held responsible for that act. I don't know, but are there consequences that carry back to the officer that issued that order? Doesn't he or she carry responsibility for the act as well? I really don't know... someone let me know.)

But guess what... there is no implicit morality in patriotism. Suicide bombers are about as patriotic as they come, but I think we can all agree that blowing yourself up, along with your innocent neighbors, is an immoral act.

No, we mustn't fall into the trap of thinking that to be patriotic is to love America. Lots of patriots out there hate our guts.

For an American, patriotism is not hating muslims. This country was founded on the principle that religion is a personal choice. Many terrorists are muslim but to hate muslims in general, because of that, is not logical. The nearest this country has ever come to suffering an attack from a WMD was not that long ago. A man in Belfast, Maine had the makings of a dirty bomb (uranium, thorium, highly toxic beryllium powder and various explosive components). These substances were only discovered by the FBI because the man was extremely abusive to his wife, who eventually shot and killed him last December.

Guess what? The guy was not a muslim... he was a neo-nazi. A white supremacist.

There are crazies everywhere, of every religion. America is not served by its citizens hating others based on their religion, race or whatever. It is only harmed.

Patriotism means sacrifice. Sacrifice is not very popular in America these days, but I think it's making a comeback. Greed and commercialism make this country look amoral to the rest of the world (not to mention many of its own citizens). We need to get back to the idea that our country can be greater than any one of us, greater even than the sum of all of us.

Saturday, February 7, 2009

What's The Matter With Kansas?

What indeed?



The Kansas legislature has passed a resolution stating that we don't want any of the prisoners from Guantanamo to be housed in Leavenworth or any other prison in the state.



These kryptonite-bearded, titanium-beturbaned super-villains are cleary too dangerous to be housed in the sunflower state. Pat Roberts and Sam Brownback, our distinguished senators, claim that housing the 200 or so prisoners from Gitmo in Leavenworth would:



A) Throw the guards in a tizzy, since the prison might not be prepared for such high-risk prisoners, and



B) Endanger the community, as the constant terror attacks that have been raining down on Gitmo would be transferred to the hapless citizens of Leavenworth.



Not only that, but officers that now attend the Army Command and General Staff College from our friends Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia might not be able to attend, because apparently we'd be, like, holding their cousins.



So, the prison, THE prison, designed to contain prisoners from our very own armed forces, the place where we contain people who not only have committed crimes but are trained to kill, that prison isn't ready to contain Ibn al whoever because someone in the Bush administration decided that they were uber-dangerous.



I just don't get it. Hell, I say bring 'em in and put 'em on display. Leavenworth already banks on prison-tourism (a new brochure has the catchy phrase "Doin' time in Leavenworth"). They could set up Kiddie Torture Land... the Waterboarding Adventure Ride, that kind of thing.



I got nothin' else. It's just friggin' idiocy.

Thursday, February 5, 2009

Spiritual Landscapes And My Monkey Mind

Is it possible to experience something mentally without first experiencing it physically?

I was reading this

http://druidjournal.net/2009/02/05/mapping-the-inner-landscape/

and really enjoying his descriptions of various places and beings. He speaks specifically of meeting the Horned God Cernunnos. It occurred to me: if the writer had never heard of Cernunnos, would the being he meets with still be Cernunnos?

If he is still Cernunnos, is this not proof of his existence?

Of course, there is no way to prove that the being that I might call, say, Fred, is actually the same being as the one the writer calls Cernunnos, so like Schroedinger’s cat this entity continues to exist (or not exist) in all his guises, proof be damned.

This is an affront to my scientific side, and is one of the reasons why I have never been successfully spiritual.

I feel like a dose of Buddhism is necessary to remove this need to rationalize and explain everything… but Buddhism would circumvent any access to these spiritual planes to which I desire access.

Yes, I noticed the word “desire” there too.

Is it wrong to want to travel these spiritual landscapes, exploring and discovering?

Well, to be brutally honest, I think these landscapes and beings are crutches, pale imitations of true spiritual concepts. They definitely have their uses, just as an actual crutch has a unique and wonderful purpose, but they are not destinations.

Knowing this, I guess my problem is that I don’t want to use the crutch to get where I need to be, but I don’t think I can get there without the crutch.

And I can’t find the damn crutch!

Perhaps, though, it’s my concept of the crutch that is really holding me back. What is a crutch anyway, but a tool to accomplish a task? In my mind, a crutch implies weakness, but that’s not really right. Or perhaps it is, but there’s nothing wrong with a little weakness now and then.

This is really where I am spiritually… I go around and around, looking in the shop window, trying to make sense of what’s in there, and the whole time trying to look like I’m really not interested.

Man oh man, how screwed up is that…