Frankenpot

Last night PBS NewsHour featured a story about the new cannabis derivatives. Mostly it focused on 99% pure THC and how dangerous it is. How it can be addictive. How it can be abused.

This is what we do, we humans. We take something that’s pretty much perfect the way Nature makes it then we fuck it up. Gild the lily.

I predicted this, actually. Not that I’m taking in satisfaction in seeing my prediction come true.

The push behind 99% pure THC isn’t from pot heads. It’s from pharmaceutical companies. It’s from doctors who want to prescribe an exact dose of some chemical that they think will provide x-result. It’s from legislators whose balls shrink when facing a question of whether to legalize cannabis for people to use as they see fit—because the culture war is still going on.

You know, that war where the bulk of an entire generation smoked weed and saw truth no one wanted them to see. That truth about how America talks out of both sides of its mouth—oh, we’re a Christian nation. Oh, let’s go to war. Let’s segregate blacks. Let’s be complete and utter jackasses to anyone not exactly like us.

Weed opened a generation’s eyes to chemicals poisoning our food, air, and water, to the worship of wealth, to our rights to our bodies and our lives, our innate morality. In the epiphany of getting high with friends, we saw love was the answer. Peace was the answer.

We said fuck off to the corporations and war machine and went back to the land.

They didn’t take it lying down. They waded into our pot parties with batons, guns, and arrest warrants. Some of us stuck it out. We grew weed in ditches and creek banks. They came with their helicopters and tracking dogs. We grew weed in spare bedrooms and closets. They came with their infrared cameras.

Then we started the real work—political work, outing ourselves as advocates for cannabis. The result is currently 26 states with laws allowing medical use and a growing tide of states allowing recreational use.

In response, the Establishment has said, oh, grow your own? Smoking weed? That can’t possibly be allowed. It’s not real medicine. Real medicine comes in pills and needles that doctors can prescribe in exact dosage because, as we all know, people don’t know shit about what they need. They can’t tell if one puff is enough. Or three.

This is how it works. You take a perfect God-given plant and make it dangerous. This arrogant strategy has worked with just about every magical plant our ancestors relied on. Only with our clever modern techniques of science, we have made them deadly. Opium – a natural anesthetic used as far back as history takes us. Useful, relatively safe. But let’s improve that, because doctors, science, politicians. Let’s make morphine.

Decades pass. Oh, wait, morphine is addictive. Let’s fix that—let’s make heroin.

Decades pass. Oh wait, heroin is addictive even worse than morphine. Let’s make opiate clones, you know, OxyContin and Oxycodone and all that.

Uh-huh. How’s that working out?

It happened to coca leaf. A simple leaf. Stuff a few in between your back teeth and your cheek and let it work while you hike up the Andes and hoe your potato crop. Then the geniuses got ahold of it. Cocaine! Wonderful—let’s put it in snake-oil tonics and feel-good drinks so we can make money.

Then, no, wait, people get hooked on this feel good stuff. Let’s make it more scientific. Voila! We have amphetamine, methamphetamine, and Adderall we hand out to our kids like candy. Gee, anyone have any idea how we got so many people addicted to meth?

Now we’re on the same road with cannabis. Not enough to take what we’ve been given. No, we’ve got to meddle, ‘improve,’ synthesize and concentrate. Satisfy the corporate agenda to create something they can profit from. Take away a person’s right to grow his own poppy, his own cannabis alongside the tomatoes and peppers. Separate him from his instincts toward health and well-being and put him in the hands of doctors and pills.

It’s always about the money.

And about taking personal responsibility away from individuals.

The cycle of harmful effects from this new Frankenpot is just beginning. But the harmful effect of this mindset should be familiar by now. It screams to us from our militarized police forces and our overcrowded prisons, from the violent underworld spawned by prohibition, from the desperate alleyways where homeless addicts hide.

What happens when you gild a lily?

“To gild refined gold, to paint the lily, to throw a perfume on the violet, to smooth the ice, or add another hue unto the rainbow, or with taper-light to seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish, is wasteful and ridiculous excess.” William Shakespeare‘s 1595 play King John, iv.2

The lily dies.

Food for the Holidays!

A holiday treat might include a big slab of delicious cake with that hot cup of tea. Here’s an easy recipe that’s become one of my family favorites!

Applesauce Cake

2 ½ cups flour
1 ¾ cups sugar, or 1 cup sugar and ¾ cup honey
1 ½ teaspoon soda
1 ½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon baking powder
¾ teaspoon cinnamon
½ teaspoon ground cloves
½ teaspoon allspice
1 ½ cups unsweetened applesauce
½ cup hot water (⅓ c if using honey)
½ cup shortening
2 eggs at room temperature
Optional: 1 cup raisins and ½ cup chopped English walnuts

Heat oven to 350°. Grease and flour baking pan, either 13x9x2 or 2 round layers 8 or 9 x1½ inches.
Measure wet ingredients into bowl and mix thoroughly. If eggs or water are cold, the shortening won’t blend well. Add dry ingredients and mix on low speed until well blended, then increase mixer speed and beat three minutes. Pour into pans.
Bake oblong 60-65 minutes, layers 50-55 minutes, until wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean.
When cake has cooled, frost with Penuche Icing.

Penuche Icing

½ cup butter
1 cup brown sugar, packed
¼ cup milk
2 cup confectioners’ sugar

Melt butter in medium saucepan. Stir in brown sugar. Heat to boiling, stirring constantly. Boil and stir over low heat 2 minutes. Stir in milk. Heat to boiling, then remove from heat and cool to lukewarm. Stir in confectioners’ sugar then beat with mixer until fully smooth and of spreading consistency. If frosting becomes too stiff, heat slightly while stirring.

For this and many more wonderful recipes, check out my cookbook “Recipes of Trailside Cafe and Tea Room”

Available at AMAZON and SMASHWORDS (all formats)

Make America Great Again – What Does It Mean?

Depends on who you ask.

If you ask a self-identified conservative, by definition that person will value the preservation of long-established traditions. The valuation of what was supersedes valuation of change, even in the face of problems that require change for resolution. Within this crowd, you’d likely find a few who don’t believe anyone has been to the moon.

The success of Trump in his presidential bid relied on his ability to push hot buttons on various conservative issues. His campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again,” claimed America was no longer great due to changes wrought against the wishes of conservatives. He alone could fix it.

Still waiting for the how.

Progressives, on the other hand, see the slogan and his subsequent win as a threat to hard won changes that have addressed many of the nation’s problems over the last fifty years. Included in the hard won changes has been the end of the Cold War, which if Trump’s ham-fisted approach fails to lighten, could easily reignite.

None of which worries a majority of conservatives who see the threat of Armageddon as fulfillment of God’s promise. Bring it, they whisper in their prayers.

Meanwhile, it’s the mundane stuff keeping the conservatives foaming at the mouth. Take, for example, the issue of welfare. Conservatives would prefer to eliminate aid for parents with dependent children, food stamps, and other support programs for the poor. Except for their Uncle Bob who only has one eye and is dying of Hepatitis C. Uncle Bob needs a government handout because without it, the Christian shame of a kinsman dying on the street means Bob would have to move into the back bedroom.

Bob’s not the only one who can’t take care of himself. Government provides food, shelter stipends, and medical care (until the Affordable Care Act gets blasted into last year) for handicapped, terminally ill, and mentally ill citizens as well as parents of minor children earning less than poverty wage. All those slackers need to get a job!

Progressives have tried to deal with the real problems faced by their fellow man. For example, before 1960, persons with mental illness lived in institutional settings. Patients with depression or autism lived alongside persons with various psychoses, truly a ‘snake pit’ environment. Aided by the advent of new psychoactive drugs and outpatient counseling, sanitariums were closed and most patients were released to the general population.

The mentally ill weren’t the only ones who triggered massive welfare efforts. The aged had gained Social Security decades earlier, but it was the late 1960s before Medicare came into existence. Then there were the rest who’d previously been left to die in unheated shanties.

The ‘needy’ had always been among us. But from the late 19^th century to World War II, the industrialization of agriculture caused more people to move from the countryside to cities. Previous support networks of families and neighbors and local churches were disconnected from those who needed their help. That along with a tremendous increase in population resulted in the present welfare system.

It’s not like progressives saw a vision of ever higher taxes to support an ever increasing horde of needy. Their solution has been to spend more money in addressing the roots of poverty and ignorance: better schools, one-on-one casework to determine needs, more job training programs, more and better preschool options, higher teacher salaries, and health care for every person.

It should go without saying that a person who is mentally or physically ill can’t work. But one of the fondest dreams of conservatives is to kill Obamacare, aka the Affordable Care Act.

There’s no apparent effort to connect the dots.

The conservative ‘great again’ solution is to cut programs. They envision a pastoral scene where neighbors care for neighbors and local churches hand out food baskets. They cling to their fantasy because it’s simple. It worked a hundred years ago, so it should work now. Of course they’re not eager to revert to outdoor toilets, kerosene lamps, and horse and buggy.

Nothing about the modern world and its problems is as simple as conservatives want to make it.

If you ask evangelical Christians, ‘great again’ means turning back the clock to a time when a woman could not terminate a pregnancy without risking her life. Evangelicals do not accept that women have the Constitutional and moral right to determine what happens inside their own bodies. For many conservatives, a woman’s use of any form of birth control is questionable. Women belong in the home, not in the workplace competing with men, coming home with perhaps a larger paycheck and the ability to pack up and leave if he doesn’t treat her right, and pregnancy helped keep her there.

In the conservative Christian view, granting women these rights did not solve problems but created them. The fact that over 5000 women died annually from illegal abortion doesn’t faze them—it’s the fetus that matters.

Progressives sought solutions to the outrage suffered by atheists, Jews, Muslims, and followers of other faiths forced to hear Christian prayers announced over the intercom as a resonant baritone voice intoned the supplication. Whether in government meetings or public buildings, Christian beliefs and imagery dominated. The solution seemed simple enough—allow no advocacy or public recognition of any specific religion in commonly shared venues. Nothing of this restrained an individual from praying silently or at home or places of worship.

This small step toward consideration for others infuriates those who want to force Christian beliefs upon the entire population and declare the United States a “Christian nation.” Never mind what it says in the Constitution. As Vice-President Elect Pence says, God comes before country.

Allahu Akbar, ya’ll!

For men and women who desire and love those of their own sex, progress means allowing them the same rights under the law as enjoyed by all American citizens. Legal challenges affirmed the right to privacy in matters involving with whom and how sexual relations might occur. They affirmed the legal rights of marriage, of employment and housing and commerce.

To the evangelical right, ‘great again’ means reclaiming a time when nobody talked about homosexuality and if they did, they whispered. To legitimize such perceived deviation by granting rights to homosexuals is a moral outrage. And now transgender? Bathrooms? For this segment of voters, blocking such ‘progress’ is a dictate from God Himself.

For many conservatives, making American great again means going back at least to the 1950s if not the 1850s when African Americans knew their place. And that place wasn’t at the lunch counter beside respectable whites. It wasn’t at school mixing with white children. It wasn’t in interracial marriages.

Make America Great Again! Go back to a time before we knew so much, before incomprehensible terms like ‘climate change’ didn’t haunt the daily news. This topic alone creates great unease among the segment of the nation’s voters who never understood—or in many cases never accepted—basic scientific principles.

Because government has been the vehicle by which social progress has been required of everyone, conservative hatred centers on government. Government, not the need to care for the poor, not the need for fair and equal education, not the rights to liberty and justice for all, is the reason they have to sit next to a Muslim on the airplane.

Enshrining ignorance as a value is yet another gift of the religious right. Blind faith in God working magic and sufficient prayer time means no personal responsibility to think or learn or take action. Just keep having babies and ignoring evidence that much of the world’s current ills derive from overpopulation.

Real life-threatening problems face the people of the world. Tearing up treaties and trade agreements doesn’t solve them. Ignoring science doesn’t solve them. Removing environmental regulations doesn’t solve them. But at no time in the campaign or now in his appointments has Trump described a single solution to a single problem. He has so little intellectual grasp of his newly-acquired responsibilities that he plans to spend weekends at his penthouse. Because in his world of delegating to underlings, being president is a 9-5, M-F occupation.

If that.

In this dark hour, progressives cling to a promise that has gained momentum since this nation was founded, that we as Americans value and strive for equal rights, welcome the downtrodden to our shores, and treat all humanity as our brothers and sisters.

It’s the Golden Rule conservatives have forgotten.

Progressive: making use of new ideas, findings, or opportunities. Liberal: given in a generous and openhanded way; broadminded, not bound by authoritarianism, embracing ideals of economic freedom, greater individual participation in government, and institutional, political and administrative reforms.

Progress is forward—unless the future remains in the hands of conservatives.

MEAN (and stupid)

There are six definitions of the word ‘mean’ as an adjective, according to the Merriam Webster Dictionary. Trump voters fit all of them. Stupid, too.

There may be a day when I can philosophize about the outcome of this election, but today is not one of them. I’m deeply angry that the progress we’ve made as a culture has been stopped with the stated objective of turning back the clock. I’m terrified that my sick and dying friends will lose health care. I’m heartbroken that friends who married same sex partners may now face complete loss of their legal rights. And so much more.

The election of white trash to the White House rode on the backs of evangelicals who were willing to ignore Trump’s adultery, profanity, sexual assault, lack of respect for women, intellectual poverty, and pathological narcissism in order to accomplish one of their long term goals: make abortion illegal. In doing so, they believed they could put the genie back in the bottle and return women to their rightful place in the home, barefoot and pregnant.

Meanness: penurious, stingy, characterized by petty selfishness or malice. Eager to judge women who face one of the most traumatic and difficult decisions of her lifetime. Willing to sacrifice her life in order to save a fetus.

Stupid: given to unintelligent decisions or acts. Assuming that a radical right appointment to the SCOTUS somehow guarantees that Roe v Wade will be overturned. Ignoring that a woman’s right to privacy in this matter has been upheld many times even by conservative justices.

Stupid: slow of mind. Not understanding that women have always aborted unwanted pregnancies and always will, whether or not the laws of the nation allow them access to legal medical care.

In a Pavlovian response to four decades of careful brainwashing, evangelical voters convinced themselves that God wanted Donald Trump elected, that Trump was blessed, taken to the bosom of God, forgiven his sins, and worthy of being elevated to the nation’s highest office. Preached illegally in the nation’s tax exempt churches, this sermon echoes off the lips of evangelicals.

After all, Trump must be blessed by God because he’s rich. Bow down to the rich man who was born with a silver white-supremacist spoon in his mouth.

Giddy in their hallucinations, evangelicals dismiss questions about Trump’s character. Believe he never really molested women, never incited violence. Because we all know that a seventy-year-old man rich guy who never took responsibility for anything in his life is going to suddenly become completely different. Because, well, God.

Stupid: slow witted or dazed state of mind

Mean: lacking distinction; a poor shabby inferior quality or status.

Meanness characterizes much of the Trump base. Arrogant in their narrow-minded thinking—I don’t care what anybody says, I’m right. Proud of their willful ignorance—Don’t bother me with facts, my mind’s made up. Enshrined in the character and mindset of now Vice President Pence who refutes the scientific theory of evolution and wants to force women to fund funerals for miscarried fetuses. Yes, the epitome of male privilege.

Stupid: thickheaded imperviousness to ideas

According to exit polls, Trump was pretty much elected by older, married, small town, white, conservative Christian males making $50,000 or more. These are the men who hate women having power and parity. They hate Hispanics and Blacks for thinking they’re somehow equal. They’ll do anything to try to recapture that Elysian field where they rode tall in the saddle and the world was theirs for the taking.

In the narrow primitive view of this group of men, every freedom won by the disabled, women, minorities, or gays directly threatens their righteous authority. Their God-given authority. Because for these spiritually impoverished men, without someone to look down on, how could they possibly stand above?

Because after all, granting women reproductive rights took control of women away from men.

Because after all, God Himself is a white male.

Stupid: lacking intelligence or reason.

Mean: worthy of little regard; contemptible.

The election of white trash to the White House sprang from a cesspool of hatred toward anyone not like them. Hate spawned by ignorance ignited by fear. Names hard to pronounce. Unusual appearances. Hatred of anyone not white, not Christian, not heterosexual or clearly gendered. Hatred of anything they don’t understand.

Anything that doesn’t look like them in the mirror.

There’s a tight correlation between the mindset of Trump voters and the fact that the states they represent rank near the bottom in per capita income, economic growth, and citizen rights and near the top in teen pregnancy, poor health, and persons with addiction and/or disabilities.

People who have little to no experience with the operations of government—at any level—are the ones who claim government is corrupt, the ones who believe that dismantling government will solve their problems, that electing a sleazy real estate developer on his third wife will somehow make all their dreams come true.

These are the same brilliant lights who never learned about the balance of powers, the history of political parties in the U.S., or the background of any nation past or present. They’re arrogant, ill-informed armchair quarterbacks looking for quick and easy targets for their discontent.

Stupid: resulting from unreasoned thinking.

Not making enough money? Must be the government’s fault. Couldn’t possibly be that your skill set simply doesn’t match up with jobs that pay a hundred grand a year. Couldn’t possibly mean that the world has moved forward and you need to retrain to fit the new job market.

No, better to stop the world and go back. How far back? Back to horse drawn wagons?

Not happy with social changes that disrupt your comfort zone? Those g**damn government bastards. Couldn’t possibly be that other humans have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness just like white guys—yeah, those minorities, women, and weirdos who freak you out.

Not happy that your religion doesn’t rule the nation? Couldn’t possibly be that the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution specifically to keep religion out of government.

Yet while foaming at the mouth about putting God back in ‘Merica, all these Christian folks can’t wait to terminate the Affordable Care Act. Go back to the good old days when insurance companies could deny coverage for pre-existing conditions, when sick people lost their homes and everything they owned because they couldn’t afford health care. When the poor simply died without medical treatment.

What are the poor anyway but failed humans obviously unloved by God. Who don’t try hard enough. Who have something wrong with them. They don’t deserve to be helped.

Let’s elect Trump because he promises to end the ACA his first day in office.

There’s nothing Christian in denying sick people legal access to health care. It’s simply mean to do so.

But let’s go back to a nation ruled by prejudice when women, blacks, gays, Mexicans and anyone else outside the white male norm could be beaten or murdered with impunity. Let’s get rid of the idea that each person possesses inherent rights. Let’s make America great again.

Mean: “Ignoble, abject, sordid mean being below the normal standards of human decency and dignity, suggests having such repellent characteristics as small-mindedness and ill temper, lack of some essential high quality of mind or spirit.”

The Futility of Standing Rock

american_progress — American Progress, an 1872 painting by John Gast, is an allegorical representation of the modernization of the new west. Here Columbia, a personification of the United States, leads civilization westward with American settlers. She then brings light from the East into the darkness of the West, stringing telegraph wire as she sweeps west; she holds a book that “represents learning and knowledge” as well. The different stages of economic activity of the pioneers are highlighted and, especially, the evolving forms of transportation.

Is Standing Rock the line in the sand where Americans demand a do-over? Does the heroic action of Natives suddenly provoke the nation to a change of heart?

I don’t think so.

Yes, there was a treaty with the Sioux in 1851. “The Treaty of Traverse des Sioux (10 Stat. 949) was a treaty signed on July 23, 1851, between the United States government and Sioux Indian bands in Minnesota Territory by which the Sioux ceded territory. The treaty was instigated by Alexander Ramsey, the first governor of Minnesota Territory, and Luke Lea, Commissioner of Indian Affairs in Washington, D.C. The United States wanted the treaty to gain control of agricultural lands for more settlers.”[1]

330px-sioux01 — Location of Sioux tribes prior to 1770 (dark green) and their current reservations (orange) in the US

But that wasn’t the end of forced Sioux treaties. “The Treaty of Fort Laramie (also called the Sioux Treaty of 1868) was an agreement between the United States and the Oglala, Miniconjou, and Brulé bands of Lakota people, Yanktonai Dakota, and Arapaho Nation signed on April 29, 1868 at Fort Laramie in the Wyoming Territory, guaranteeing the Lakota ownership of the Black Hills, and further land and hunting rights in South Dakota, Wyoming, and Montana. The Powder River Country was to be henceforth closed to all whites.

“Repeated violations of the otherwise exclusive rights to the land by gold prospectors led to the Black Hills War. Migrant workers seeking gold had crossed the reservation borders, in violation of the treaty. Indians had assaulted these gold prospectors, in violation of the treaty, and war ensued. The U.S. government seized the Black Hills land in 1877.

450px-siouxreservationmap — Map of the 1868 Great Sioux Reservation, and the subsequent changes in reservation borders

“More than a century later, the Sioux nation won a victory in court. On June 30, 1980, in United States v. Sioux Nation of Indians, the United States Supreme Court upheld an award of $15.5 million for the market value of the land in 1877, along with 103 years’ worth of interest at 5 percent, for an additional $105 million. The Lakota Sioux, however, refused to accept payment and instead demanded the return of their territory from the United States.

“In more recent proceedings the U.S. Courts have seen that some of the monies associated with the claim have been expended and, as such, claim that the agreement is valid. In fact, several thousand tribal members have filed for and are awaiting for a final decision by the Court to decide to issue the resources to tribal members.”[2]

“In the summer of 2016, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe began a protest against construction of the Dakota Access oil pipeline, also known as the Bakken pipeline, which, if completed, is designed to carry hydrofracked crude oil from the Bakken oil fields of North Dakota to the oil storage and transfer hub of Patoka, Illinois. The pipeline travels only half a mile north of the Standing Rock Sioux reservation and is designed to pass underneath the Missouri River and upstream of the reservation, causing many concerns over the tribe’s drinking water safety, environmental protection, and harmful impacts on culture. The pipeline company claims that the pipeline will provide jobs, reduce American dependence on foreign oil and reduce the price of gas.”[3]

In the tradition of all ancient native people, the Standing Rock protesters’ view is broader and longer term than the typical white view. For ancient people, monetary gain has no standing compared to the value of drinkable water. Someday the pipeline will leak. Maybe not in our lifetime or even in our children’s lifetimes, but someday the pipeline will leak.

What then? The oil won’t just wash away in the next rain. It penetrates the soil where it continues to pollute for decades. Or longer.

There is no argument against this. The Sioux protest at Standing Rock is legitimate in its concern over the long term future of the water.

And what the hell difference does that make? When have the white invaders of North America (and South America, Central America, the Pacific Islands, etc.) ever considered the long term impact of their actions? Our ‘manifest destiny’ was to expand across the continent to ‘redeem’ and remake the land in the white vision of farms and villages. While not embraced by all political leaders of the 19^th century, the concept of manifest destiny was widely held by whites and fit hand in glove with the view that we alone held special God-given virtues that granted us exclusive right to fulfill this destiny.[4]

It was our duty as whites to cleanse the lands of heathen beliefs and believers. It was our duty as whites to pursue progress even if it meant using slaves to do so. And so forth.

The reward for such noble efforts was to reap the bounty these lands had to offer. Gold and silver. Virgin timber. Animal skins and meat. Oil. The DAPL pipeline is more of the same. We found this oil and we need it.

A bigger issue looms behind this protest. If by some quirk the Sioux are the ultimate winners of this contest, think of what might happen next. If their treaties are to be honored, if their ancestral lands and holy places and burial grounds and natural resources are found to be theirs, what happens to all the white people who have bought those lands, built their houses, barns and fences, sent down roots for over four generations?

What happens with all the other Native tribes’ treaties that have similarly been ignored?

Are we ready to give up the majority of our homes, schools, cities, and workplaces in order to honor our treaties? Once we acknowledge the rights of the Sioux to determine the fate of the DAPL, we’re on a slippery slope toward that end. This is why you won’t see elected officials rushing to the side of the Standing Rock protesters. They’re sworn to uphold our laws. Our laws, not the long held beliefs of Natives.

We enforce our laws now just as always—by force. Our laws are part and parcel of manifest destiny. We made them to suit us, not the Natives. If we pick at one thread in our long history of occupation and oppression, the entire fabric of our way of life starts to unravel.

The law says protesters are occupying private land. The law says that Energy Transfer Partners, the Army Corps of Engineers, and others have met the legal (our law) requirements for building the pipeline. The law says that trespassers and obstructionists are subject to arrest for violating the law.

We want what we want. We want to drive our cars to the theater and grocery store. We want the internet, running water, and convenient heating and cooling. We’ve invented these things to further advance our well-being. To justify all that has come before including slavery and genocide, we can point to landing a man on the moon, modern medicine, and the microchip as a few examples of our superiority.

Our manifest destiny.

Even a win for the Standing Rock protest would not solve the bigger issue. Even if by some fiat the pipeline route is changed, or the oil piling up at the fracking sites is ultimately moved by truck or railcars, the bigger issue remains. We live on Native lands and harvest Native resources.

When the gold, silver, copper, rare earth, and every other microcosm of value have been mined, cut, harvested, and fished, then what? When the waters become too polluted to drink or feed our crops, then what? When the soil becomes too depleted and contaminated to grow our food, then what?

levcrpp1080012_1024_x_768 — Deforestation is one of the main causes of climate change. It is the second largest anthropogenic source of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, after fossil fuel combustion.

We’ve pretty much run out of new continents to exploit.

We already see the horizon. It is there in the wasteland of our industrial cities. It is there in the overflowing containment ponds leaking hazardous mining waste. It is there in the lost futures of whites who believed in their manifest destiny and now find themselves discarded as Destiny chooses robots instead of men to build cars.

Manifest destiny gave us this land. It gave us right to work laws that gutted the power of organized labor. It gave us multi-national corporations who have no allegiance except to money.

Manifest destiny still drives not only our national attitude about domestic affairs but our international policies as well. “The belief in an American mission to promote and defend democracy throughout the world, as expounded by Thomas Jefferson and his “Empire of Liberty” and Abraham Lincoln, was continued by Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. Under Harry Truman (and Douglas MacArthur) it was implemented in practice in the American rebuilding of Japan and Germany after World War II.

“George W. Bush in the 21st century applied it to the Middle East, in Afghanistan and Iraq. In proclaiming a mission to combat terror, Bush was continuing a long tradition of prophetic presidential action to be the beacon of freedom in the spirit of manifest destiny.”[5]

~~~

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Traverse_des_Sioux

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Fort_Laramie_(1868)

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sioux

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifest_destiny

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifest_destiny

Light Being Human

A vast plain stretched before me, fields of grasses amber in the dawn. The grasses bent with heavy heads, golden ripe, nodding in the gentle winds of daybreak. The man rose up out of the grasses. He rose up out of the grasses and looked at me. His eyes were tawny.

We stood at the gates of the city side by side. His hand held mine as we looked over the fields of grasses, bright yellow in the full light of midday. His hands held mine and melted into mine and we were one. We stood, looking out, one.

His thoughts hummed with familiar energy. I had always known him. His thoughts carried knowledge as old as my own, fit perfectly into the brain that lay within his skull, his skull of golden hair.

I knew his appetites, whether he had the sweetness of honey on his tongue, whether his belly was full with the meat of the field. He lay between my legs and filled my belly with the honey of his mouth and the meat of the field. His appetites were my appetites. We hungered together and satisfied each other. He was waiting for me even now, his eyes looking for me in the lands of the Earth.
~~~
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Smoke This!

When considering the pros and cons of medical cannabis, voters benefit from knowing as many facts as possible. Most people are not aware that the human body manufactures chemicals identical to those found in the cannabis plant. This stunning nugget of information was discovered as recently as 1990.

Wikipedia: “The endocannabinoid system (ECS) is a group of endogenous cannabinoid receptors located in the mammalian brain and throughout the central and peripheral nervous systems, consisting of neuromodulatory lipids and their receptors. Known as ‘the body’s own cannabinoid system,’ the ECS is involved in a variety of physiological processes including…regulation of appetite, immune system functions and pain management…and are found in the brain and nervous system, as well as in peripheral organs and tissues.”[1]

Native to central Asian and the Indian subcontinent, the cannabis plant found in ancient literature and prehistoric burials served as medicine for seizures, pain, and other human ailments. Over time, three differing species have developed–sativa, indica, and ruderalis— with the more psychoactive and medically useful plants diverging from a type containing less psychoactive agents—hemp–used for rope and textiles and farmed extensively through World War II.

At least 113 active cannabinoids have been identified in the plant, one of which—tetrahydrocannabinol (THC)—is the chemical cloned for medical use as the legal pharmaceutical drug Marinol. Many patients report better results from natural cannabis than with Marinol, perhaps due to the balancing effects of the plant’s other ingredients.

Another element of natural cannabis, cannabidiol (CBD), is highly effective in treating seizures and muscle spasms.[2] Families with children suffering seizures are pulling up stakes to move to states where their ailing child can access legal CBD oil. In natural proportions, all 113 active elements in cannabis balance each other in important ways that no synthetic isolated elements like Marinol could ever do.

Those advocating for more research and FDA approval before allowing medical use fail to acknowledge the fact that cannabis has been in the human pharmacopoeia for at least 5000 years. Compared to that, FDA approval means nothing. But aside from that, the fact is that drug companies are not going to invest the millions of dollars required to gain FDA approval of natural cannabis. They’d never recoup their investment on a plant that people can grow in their back yards. And they’ve started to understand that medical cannabis outshines many of their most profitable drugs both in effectiveness and in the absence of dangerous side effects. Drug companies are above all else profit-driven corporations.

It’s a little known fact that before the government will allow legal access to cannabis plant material for medical research, the researcher’s goal must be to find the harms that could be caused by the plant. If a researcher wants federal approval to research the potential medical benefits of natural cannabis, the request will be denied. These conditions are written into federal law.

Those in Arkansas voicing opposition to medical cannabis haven’t researched the issue with an open mind. They react based on old prejudices and discredited propaganda. There’s still the culture war specter haunting cannabis, that stinky weed that hippies used as part of their rebellion from the Establishment. It’s still a point of contention between parents and their teens in the ongoing generational battle over control.

Yet studies in states with legal medical cannabis have found reduced use of illegal drugs by teens and reduced rates of crime. A multi-year study published by the journal Lancet Psychiatry found: “…When researchers looked at marijuana use over time in the 21 states where medical marijuana was legal by 2014, they found no change in marijuana use after a medical marijuana law was passed, compared with before. About 16 percent of teens said they had used marijuana in the past month before a law was passed, compared with 15 percent who said the same after a law was passed.”[3]

The fact is, the long anticipated ‘end of civilization as we know it if marijuana is legalized’ has simply failed to materialize.

A 2014 Texas study states: “Results did not indicate a crime exacerbating effect of MML on any of the Part I offenses. Alternatively, state MML may be correlated with a reduction in homicide and assault rates, net of other covariates. These findings run counter to arguments suggesting the legalization of marijuana for medical purposes poses a danger to public health in terms of exposure to violent crime and property crimes.”[4]

Researchers at the Norwegian School of Economics used FBI statistics “to investigate the effect of the legalization on two types of crime: theft and violence. In the study, they looked at the 18 states that had introduced such laws before 2012…The researchers found a clear decline in both theft and violent crime in the states that legalized marijuana and share a border with Mexico.”[5]

Arkansas’ governor and others who voice alarm about opioid addiction should think again about their opposition to medical cannabis. One notable result of medical cannabis laws is the reduction of prescription drug use. “Fewer people are using opioids in states that have legalized medical marijuana, according to a study published September 15 in the American Journal of Public Health that bolsters advocates’ claims that marijuana can substitute for more deadly drugs.”[6]

An extensive study by the RAND Corporation (2015) concluded that legal medical cannabis reduces opioid use: “The fact that opioid harms decline in response to medical marijuana dispensaries raises some interesting questions as to whether marijuana liberalization may be beneficial for public health. Marijuana is a far less addictive substance than opioids and the potential for overdosing is nearly zero.”[7]

On November 8, citizens of Arkansas have an opportunity to cast a vote for compassion and common sense in the Natural State by bringing back the right to use this natural medicine. In the process, they also have the opportunity to nudge this state a baby step closer to the vision and advantages enjoyed by citizens in 25 other states of this nation.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endocannabinoid_system

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabidiol

[3] Quoted from http://www.ctvnews.ca/ctv-news-channel/medical-marijuana-laws-don-t-lead-to-increased-use-by-teens-large-u-s-study-1.2424012 ; Lancet study is at http://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lanpsy/PIIS2215-0366(15)00217-5.pdf

[4] http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0092816

[5] http://sciencenordic.com/legalization-medical-marijuana-reduces-crime

[6] http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-09-15/study-opioid-use-decreases-in-states-that-legalize-medical-marijuana

[7] https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/working_papers/WR1100/WR1130/RAND_WR1130.pdf

This Is For You, Donald

I am so sick of this election campaign. Specifically Donald Trump. Throughout last night’s debate, I kept wishing Hillary would just walk over to that lying chump and slap his filthy mouth. What a jerk.

He respects women. *slap* Because all those nasty lying bitches out there telling the truth about what he did to them, touching without permission, treated like a sex object there for his taking, that was all just lies. *slap*

Because mean ole Hillary and her sleazy campaign set all that up, went out in the night and rounded up a bunch of random women who just happened to have documented prior contact with Trump which made them the perfect candidates for this massive con. Because if he loses this election, it will only be because everyone is so mean to him and he never did anything wrong. (whine whine) *slap slap*

Because the problem is Bill Clinton, because all those nice women accusing Bill are telling the truth. Worse, Hillary said bad things to them at the time. *slap*

Because it takes government and laws to decide what women can do inside their own bodies. *slap slap slap*

Trump’s words originate in the animal part of his brain, that ancient area where fear and hunger control behavior. It’s as if his frontal lobes are missing, you know, that part where analysis and rational thought processes occur. He was unable to outline any specific policies he plans to implement—because he doesn’t have any. His entire shtick is to pump up the fear and hatred rampant in his fan base.

And then once elected, you can hear between the lines—in what for him passes as thinking—that he’ll let Pence and Giuliani and Christie and the rest of his pathetic sycophants run the government.

That an educated, intelligent woman like Hillary Clinton would have to stand there and be repeatedly insulted by this ape infuriates me. His job in this debate was to answer the f***ing questions. He was supposed to demonstrate that he understands national policy issues and present his proposals—how, for example, would he identify and remove eleven million illegal immigrants and their four million children who have been legally born in this country?

He has no idea. It’s a sound bite, pandering to people afraid of people who are different.

How would he improve the situation in the Middle East? Do a Ted Cruz and ‘carpet bomb’ the region until the sand melted? No idea.

Trump knew just enough to look stupid, no doubt the result of exhaustive efforts by those few advisors who continue to believe Trump is worth saving. Our alliances with foreign nations aren’t one-sided deals, no matter how he and his followers manage to obfuscate the issue. I wanted Hillary to rebut his stupid claims, talk about how much we get from all our allies not only in trade and national defense but in outright payment for our goods and services. We haven’t become the most powerful nation in the world by making idiot choices in our foreign policy. And our alliances and foreign policies did not begin and end with Obama or his secretary of state.

Donald, get real. The war in Iraq was entirely on the Bush administration including the withdrawal that, you ignorantly complain, was Obama and Hillary opening the door to ISIS. *slap* The first Gulf war was also a Bush administration move, even though you’ve tried to say that if it had been done ‘right,’ we wouldn’t have had to go over there again.

Then there’s that horrible nasty NAFTA trade deal that Donald kept laying at the feet of Bill Clinton. Another huge lie. *slap slap* That deal started in 1991 when, again, a Bush administration held the reins of our national government. All the details had been worked out before Bill Clinton ever took office. Yes, he signed it into law in 1994, but it was done deal by then.

But you wouldn’t know the realities of foreign policy or anything else requiring thoughtful consideration because you were busy with your snout up some woman’s skirt.

And what about all that job loss you keep ranting about? Well, fact is, Donald, you conveniently ignore the reality about America’s lost labor force. It has little to do with trade deals and a lot to do with technology. Cars aren’t built by union men with high paying jobs because they’re now built by robots.

This is why education should be at the top of the list for anyone who really expects to improve opportunities for working Americans. Standing at an iron furnace is no longer required—computer-operated machines do that. Aging workers who lost jobs to advancing technology can be retrained but only if we invest as a nation in that retraining. Young people can be employed—if they’re computer literate or offered opportunities in technical training—just like Hillary talked about in between having to stand there listening to your ignorant drivel.

What manufacturing jobs remain have moved to Third World countries because corporations have pushed through laws that allow maximum profits and no accountability to their citizenship. They’ve gained legal permission not to pay taxes. Their allegiance is to their stockholders and CEOs. But this isn’t new, not a result of a Democratic administration or the single four-year term of a secretary of state. And I’m sorry, but did I hear you complain about these policies for the last forty years that you’ve taken full advantage of them?

This is a result of slow shifts in how products are made, the incorporation of digital technologies that increase productivity even as they make many old labor intensive jobs obsolete. This shift has been underway for fifty years or longer. It’s been at least since the 1970s that Americans were warned that a new service-based economy was on the horizon.

But Hillary was right not to get tangled up in rebutting his litany of lies. His followers wouldn’t believe anything she said even if they understood it. And Trump is not capable of learning. Anything.

Somewhere deep inside, Trump knows he’s a f***ing loser. That’s why he has to sneak up and cop a feel on women who wouldn’t give him the time of day if he asked. That’s why he can’t formulate a single specific policy plan for any of the issues he likes to rant about. That’s why he has to whine about rigged elections.

Little rich kid Trump never learned to take responsibility for anything—not his actions, not his business failures, not the miserable campaign he’s managed to run on the backs of a terrified and easily manipulated segment of the population. He never did the things he said he did to women—and it’s their fault for bringing it up.

Wait, what?

That he would deny the validity of the election out of his craven need to excuse his monumental failure not only as a candidate but as a human being is not just inexcusable. It’s treason.

And yes, I still want to slap him. Fortunately, I think the majority of American voters are about to do it for me.

CHROMA Excerpt

Much of what I write is history. My blog posts are usually about current events or my publications about local history. This is different.

My new novel, Chroma, is history of an entirely different sort. Theoretical history firmly rooted in factual evidence of human evolution. It’s available in ebook format at half price now until November 15 release date.

They were aware of nothing. Not movement, even though they existed within a stream of photons traveling at the speed of light. Not thought, even though they contained among them all the knowledge that could be known.

They were One, Chroma.

A world of physical existence unfolded before them as they encountered a blue planet and its cycles of life, forms already ancient in their traditions of birth, life, and death. The Aspects of Chroma begin to question. How would it be to know embodiment? Could they learn the pleasure of food, of rest and procreation?

Among them, B4 Indigo—more precisely 493.883 Hertz in her spectral array between 420 and 450 nanometers of visible light—flourished into her own identity. Immediately resonating with her harmonic companion F369.994 Yellow and his fellow octaves of F sharp, B4 pursued a fateful agenda. What could be known? What could be changed?

Chroma: Light Being Human submerges readers in the intimate process of becoming human.

Excerpt:

Several entities manipulate dials and adjust various screens and mechanisms. The green glow of instrumentation reflects on their thin metallic arms and black sensory lens. Outside, visible through a wide expanse of glass that spreads above the console, the curve of the ship’s upper hull shines faintly silver as we pass a nearby sun, a reflection that repeats in luminous arcs along the huge outer ring as it revolves around the ship. Our vessel emits its own light, a faint glow of pink and yellow, pastel blue and green. The pale kaleidoscope of color changes as the ring rotates. A faint jingling sound emanates from the ring.

The crystal from which we flow stands in the midst of the upper deck, mounted at the heart of an elegant curving focular. The metal device reaches up to a clear dome in the ceiling, the portal through which our photons flow. At the heart of the focular, the tall crystal pulses with light. Each facet sparks with color, throwing my existence—the existence of us all—into the cabin.

You can’t imagine seeing all this at once. Without any understanding. I can’t imagine it either, not any more. It’s been too long. What’s left for me now, for any of us in Light, is the faint dying away of sound from a bell long after it’s been struck.

What lingers more clearly is the question ‘why’? I’ve come up with countless answers, but my cigarette has gone out. Its ashes and butt have already been incorporated into the cabin’s refuse bin. What can I say? I always want to smoke. It calms me.

~~~

We were so innocent then. None of us knew how long we’d been traveling or even that we were. I speak for us all because back then, we were One.

We’d been speeding through the soup of space-time. It could be said that we didn’t move at all, that we were in all places at once, and that would have been closer to the actual physics of the situation. We understood so little.

As if we understand now. Get that straight. I can look back now and say, oh, yeah, this and that. But we blew into this excruciating process without knowing anything. You’d think after all this time we’d have the answers. Everyone thinks we know everything. I’m telling this story because you need to understand—we don’t know.

At the time, we didn’t have human reference. Consider yourself lucky that I can use these terms. Otherwise, I’d have to present a symphony with flashing lights and you wouldn’t get it.

Please allow me to introduce us, the Aspects of Chroma. I’m of the electromagnetic range known as Indigo, and my frequency is of the musical tone B at the fourth octave of human perception, 493.883 Hertz. Call me B4. From me up the diatonic scale and across the visible spectrum are C Violet, D Red, E Orange, F Yellow, G Green, and A Blue, each like me with countless shades and sub-tones just as there are infinite fractions between the number one and the number two. These are my kinsmen and companions. Part of me, at least in the beginning.

Beginning? Again, that’s an amorphous concept. What we’ve learned so far is that our piercing column of white light, this stream of photons, originates somewhere past Sirius. The big star’s gravity bends our trajectory and slings us on a new path like a stone from a slingshot.

In the moment of our awakening, we existed as a refraction off the face of a doubly terminated clear quartz crystal, SiO₄ tetrahedra. We broke into brilliant shapes of every color: red lines and blue spheres, violet spirals and yellow-orange loops, green and turquoise, russet and tan, swirling and sparkling, our voice a mighty chorus throbbing with the vibration of our existence.

This is the armchair quarterback version. Like I said, we didn’t know any of this. We just were. Ambulatory entities moved around us in a physical existence unlike ours. They could travel from place to place as discrete beings. Do things. Move things. I envied them.

Looking back, I’m amazed at how easy it was to take the next step. I can’t tell you when. We’re talking infinities of time, at least in human terms. And that’s how I’m trying to keep this, in human terms.

At a random moment, I the fourth octave of Indigo separated my wave of sound and light from the others. I clung to one of these ambulatory forms as it passed near the crystal. I had been part of the full sound of Chroma, a band of its electromagnetic spectra. Suddenly I wasn’t.

I admit it was a thrilling moment. That first taste of discrete existence riveted my attention. This physiognomy went places, did things. I went with it. Interacted. I became able to think and speak of things not previously known, concepts not known to us in One.

That was how it started.

~~~

I rode the Phiz, these gray physiognomies with their gleaming black eyes and dexterous fingers, around our contained metal vessel. On its shoulders, I dove deep into the belly of the ship where sleek engines chewed through harvested dark matter and thrust us ever onward. I swept along corridors to technical rooms where Phiz performed maintenance on each other and the ship’s devices. With the Phiz, I found that my suggestions resulted in certain responses so that when I wanted to see beyond a particular door, whichever Phiz I rode opened it. When I wanted to alter the direction of the ship so that it turned more toward the nearby nebulae or a particular galaxy, the Phiz manipulated the controls accordingly.

What pleasure I found in these interactions! The heady exercise of power, autonomy, control, adventure! The gratification of cause and effect, initiation and conclusion, hunger and satiety—I couldn’t get enough. How could one ever forget such things, once tasted?

My fellow Aspects twirled and tumbled in a constantly changing wash of rainbow hues and choirs of sound. Calculations of mathematics, rhymes of words and phrases, patterns of triangles, squares, octagons, words merging into other words that grew from combinations of letters, new meanings and ideas forming from old meanings and old ideas, scenes of color shifting constantly into different color—all of it poured out in a continuing stream, all of it made audible by the rush of sound, each tone carrying its own frequency and pitch, each color merging upward or downward into the next hue, each pitch sliding upward or downward through infinite frequencies.

Indigo posed our fateful question to the thought stream pulsing within our One: Could we have form as do the Phiz?

Immediately the texture of light in the room changed. Shades of color diminished until only the primary hue of each band remained. The wild disarray of sound subsided as sub-tones, flats and sharps and semi-notes aligned with their dominant pitches. One next to each other, each of the Aspects formed their primary hue of colored light in a single prismatic emission from the crystal face.

“What would you have us do, B Indigo?” asked D293.665 Red, surging in a beam of crimson. “Will it be pleasurable?”

“What will form accomplish?” A440 Blue said, his cobalt column intense. “I admit to some interest in your idea, but I have no data that support this proposal.”

“No data,” said the sphere of E329.628 Orange.

F369.994 Yellow rippled over the room, casting everything in golden brilliance. “A challenging proposal, my dear B4,” he said. “I’ve seen you coming this. I’ve felt your excitement. Why would you change us?”

Even separated from them as I had become in my questioning, I could not overcome the pull of our vibrational unity. But among them all, none had greater fundamental frequency with me than the energy of F369.994 and his fellow octaves of F sharp. For a moment, I couldn’t control my visceral response, an emission of sound that rang out beside his pitch in perfect intervals of fourths and fifths.

Such joy! Tremors of luxurious warmth swept along my wavelength. I wanted him always with me.

“Don’t spoil this, Yellow.” I wrested away, shivering in the rush of our harmonic joining. “Think of what I ask.”

His tone settled on one note. “Do you know what you ask?”

“Surely we have other purpose than endless play,” I said, resisting the urge to acknowledge his doubt. “What do we know of our beginning? Where are we going? What is our purpose? Is this all there is?”

None of them replied. Only the faintest choir of sound emanated from us.

“What of this adjacent plane, these physical constructs that force us from One into many, that contain us and attend us?” I said, swirling toward the crystal and the Phiz then laying my purple ribbon of light along the glass that separated our enclosed space from the streaming vista ahead. I couldn’t express, then or now, the swelling up I felt, the urgency pushing me. “What are the natures of the bodies we pass, these suns and novas, the congregates?”

The room remained abnormally silent with faint spikes of color flickering on the lustrous high ceiling. I couldn’t blame them for their reaction. Part of me remained in sync with them, stunned at my rebellion.

“These are challenging observations, B4,” Blue intoned.

Green flourished in chartreuse, emerald, lime, as octaves of G echoed. “We could instruct the Phiz to such a task. I sense creative possibilities.”

“Yes, exactly,” I said, my Indigo family growing more intense. “How can we wait one more moment to explore?”

“Dearest B4, we have everything here,” Violet C murmured. “Existence in its purest form. We are One. Why would we want to disturb this with unknowns?”

“But we are no longer One…” I said.

“Theoretical questions, Violet,” F Yellow said. “Questioning within unity is not the same as chasing ideas on your own. What B4 proposes takes us outside anything we’ve known.”

“The risks of unknowns, statistically speaking…the odds are quite staggering that we would have any success in finding an equivalent amount of pleasure, if I respond to Red’s posed question,” Orange said. She calculated, sending up waves of mathematical images to the upper deck walls. “Drawing from Phiz data stores—they have no specific description of pleasure or any other subjective experience, but they do record a significant number of potentially damaging interactions between our containment here and various elements of the external environment. If we extrapolated that we, like the vessel around us, would also encounter a variety of similar interactions, we could assume that pleasure would not be the only feature of such a ‘physical’ experience.”

“A blind leap, it seems to me,” Blue said. “Why would we risk it? I believe Indigo’s ideas stem from disengagement from our union. We should be reminded—it’s been a long time since we acknowledged the primal energy of our source. A joining can’t be far off. Until the time when our One is reenergized, we should focus on discussion, perhaps expanding our theoretical analyses. We can generate ideas and experiences among us that are new and challenging—Orange alone has infinite sequences of formulae—without shifting the fundamental nature of our experience. We are, after all, physical in the sense that we exist in light and sound beyond the energy stream radiated at the grating. The possibilities…”

“And what of my offerings—spontaneous, organic…” Green said.

“Take my D,” Red said. “Tones seducing to the sharp, to the flat …”

The column of light swirled brighter. Choirs of sound pulsed the air and rose to the walls, to the high ceiling, until the shades of color painted the room in song. I saw their hesitation. I slipped away, allowing my bandwidth to drift into shadows. I don’t know what I expected. The old songs resonated through the conversation.

Whether my fellows agreed or not, whether Indigo might later suffer regret, I could not stop myself. I see now that my destiny would find outlet no matter what. Ironically, I understand it now in terms of the physical world. My fate advanced like a sudden rivulet of rainwater caught behind a clump of leaves and silt which pile up in a widening dam until, finding fresh course to its inevitable downhill destiny, the flood rushes around and through the obstacle.

~~~

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Oh, my brother!

There are people I love who are planning to vote for Trump. This hurts me in ways I can’t fully express. Both of my brothers, for example. These are men with master’s degrees, men who endeavor to do good in this world. How can they vote for Donald Trump?

They tell me it’s because they’re Republicans. Because they don’t embrace the ‘liberal’ agenda. They’ve fallen hook line and sinker for the hate-hillary propaganda that she’s a liar, that she’s committed countless crimes and has only escaped proper justice by pulling strings in the power structure she is part of.

They’re also fervent Christians. I say, surely you don’t think Trump is a Christian. They say they’re not voting for a pope.

They tell me Trump is just a flawed man like the rest of us and he cares about this country. They say he knows business and that’s what we need. Somebody who knows what it means to sign paychecks. As if running a nation is the same as running a business.

They say they’d never vote for Hillary because she’s pro-abortion. I say she’s not pro-abortion, she’s pro-choice. Meaning that in a free society that respects individual rights, government can never force women to carry pregnancies that might kill them, that might produce a severely impaired child, that will bring undue hardship to her or her already existing children.

They say homosexuality and transgender is an abomination of God’s will, that they’d never vote for the gay agenda that Hillary supports. I say, what is a gay agenda? That two people who love each other possess legal rights as next of kin, as property owners, as parents? That everyone deserves to be treated with respect?

I’ve tried to make them understand. They’re not listening.

They’ve latched onto the Benghazi rhetoric. They believe Clinton will flood the U. S. with unvetted refugees and bring a holocaust of terrorism to our front steps. They believe every single hateful lie that has been broadcast about her not just in the last year, but over the last three decades.

Yet they say Trump is just a flawed man who cares about this country. God will guide him. They believe in him. I say, so God won’t guide Hillary? She doesn’t care about this country?

I’ve asked them, what if Hillary was the one who’d been a serial adulterer? What if she’d been sued 3,500 times? What if her companies had filed bankruptcy multiple times?

What if Hillary had refused to release her taxes? Or her health records? Taken money from her charitable foundations for personal use? Not contributed to her charitable foundations with a dime of personal money for the last eight years?

Of course they’d be outraged.

I don’t even try to point out the inherent sexism in their lives that may undergird their instinctual rejection of Clinton. They both have subservient wives. They both enjoy the full measure of white male privilege. For them, God is unquestionably male and all else flows from that. They’re seeking a strong authoritative male as leader and can’t tell the difference between a patriarch like God and a bully like Trump.

It’s not that my brothers don’t have the capacity of reason to examine the facts about each candidate. It’s that their minds are already made up. Why should they ‘waste’ their time reading about Hillary or hearing criticism of Trump?

Which—in an otherwise normal election cycle—might be enough said. After all, we all have the right to be just as stupid and obstinate as the next guy. It’s a free country.

But this is not a normal election. Trump is not normal. Trump doesn’t have policies or plans. Trump has bluster, braggadocio, and unbridled ego. His base instincts feed on anger and fear. He incites and revels in violence, loves to see fury in the eyes of his audience.

Yes, he’s a flawed man, flawed in the worst possible ways for someone who would be granted unlimited access to our nation’s most important secrets, to hold the reins of our military, to direct the future course of our educational systems, to oversee the protection of our air, water, and wildlife. To become the leader of the free world. His flaws go beyond his stated positions on immigration or national defense, beyond his inability to grasp basic human rights or due process of law.

His flaws threaten everything we as Americans hold dear.

To believe, as my brothers do, that Trump can tend to the myriad duties and responsibilities of the presidency is simply to ignore what’s right in front of their faces. Trump is not a reasonable or educated or sane man. He’s ignorant of basic facts. He does not have the equanimity or the patience to negotiate with Congress. He does things by fiat because that’s what you do when you’re the tyrant at the top of a corporate empire.

But government is very much NOT a business. It’s a delicate balancing act of hearing all sides even if you don’t agree with them. It’s a patient practice of enforcing what the Founders set down in the Constitution whether it fits your personal agenda or not. Trump is not capable of reasoning the finer points of anything. It’s his way or the highway. It’s ‘You’re fired.’

What my brothers don’t understand – or refuse to see – is that electing Trump isn’t just a matter of whether he’s anti-abortion or has signed a paycheck. It’s not that he (theoretically) will carry forth the traditional Republican agenda of smaller government and traditional values. Electing Trump goes beyond issues.

Electing Trump is about putting a mentally ill man in the White House. About giving unfettered authority to a man without basic human decency. About expecting leadership from a man who can’t order his own thoughts.

It’s about the future of the world, about everything we’ve gained in thousands of years of human progress. It’s about what can happen in one raged-fueled moment with an undisciplined man who would become more powerful than he’d ever imagined and sees it as his right and his responsibility to punish whoever enraged him.

Martial law? Stop and frisk anyone who might be suspicious.

Mass deportation? The enemy is anyone without white skin.

Genocide? He’s said it—not only ISIS leaders but their families.

Nuclear? Sure. He’s already touted it as an option.

I’m sick with worry, not so much about Trump actually winning the presidency. I have too much faith in a majority of American voters to think he might actually win.

I’m sick with worry that I’m losing all respect for my brothers. Not just in their choice to vote for Trump, but what’s behind that choice—intellectual laziness, a narrow-minded focus on a few social issues, their choice of religion over country.

I’m losing respect over their refusal to evolve.