Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Understanding One's Limits. By Eric Smith

Too many people have an exaggerated sense of the power of personal persuasion; particularly their own. There is this mistaken belief on the part of too many that every problem can be talked to a solution, and that every crisis can be rationally reasoned away. There is this sense that if we say something long enough and loud enough, that eventually everyone will come to see things our way and deal with them as we would deal with them and this is true of everything from the treatment of mental illness to questions of war & peace themselves.

Yet such is not the case. It has not and never will be for while times change and technology & knowledge advances, human nature at heart remains the same and by that I mean every human being has the capacity for both great love and depraved cruelty. Every human being has within them the capacity to be violent or nonviolent, and every human being has a physical & psychological breaking point; a point past which all rational thought & logic disappears and where our most primal and basic instincts takes full and complete control of our thoughts, words, and deeds.

This is true of everybody and as such it is invariably those who are most cognizant of their potential to lose control who are most capable of always maintaining it for they more than anyone else are most alert to those warning signs that personal control is in imminent danger of being lost. We must, as Senator Robert F. Kennedy said on the afternoon of April 5, 1968 learn to "abandon the vanity of our false distinctions." We must dis-enthrall ourselves of the false belief that the power of reasoned, logical thought is absolute and again come to terms with the reality that however advanced we humans may be in regards to all other living things, that we are at heart imperfect beings; forever struggling to survive and make some sense of an often irrational, violent, and depraved world.

Our time among the living is invariably short. We are all condemned to be consigned to memory far sooner than we think and in most cases even desire. So as each passing second brings us ever closer to that moment of our final departure it would seem to me that our dwindling time alive would be far better spent spending more of our remaining hours spending less time trying to make sense of the world and more time trying to make more sense of our own individual lives.

It is great and noble to try to improve the lives of others but it makes no sense to ignore ourselves in the process; to condemn ourselves to the twilight of perpetual anger and personal distress as we fret over the problems facing the world; most of which we have zero power to control or solve to our liking. Do what you feel you must do to help improve the lives of others in any way possible but remember always that it is not an exercise in selfishness to seek whatever joy & personal satisfaction for your own lives that you can; it is merely exercising basic common sense for what is the point of even being alive if one cannot find some pleasure in the very act of living?

In the final analysis we are all born alone and we will all die alone. No one else has ever experienced birth as we ourselves have experienced it and no one else ever has and ever will, experience dying as we are all destined to experience death. We are all ultimately defined not by our limitations but by what degree we have transcended them according to our natural abilities, motivations, and desires, and life ultimately being about the art of the personal, in the end it will be ourselves and ourselves alone who will make the final determination as to whether or not the life we have lived has been a success or a failure.

Friday, March 14, 2014

The Sin of Starvation. By Eric Smith

When people, for whatever rhyme or reason, are unable to acquire food to eat; when they become hungry & malnourished, their immune systems weaken, thus making them weaker and more susceptible to disease and as a result of this they inevitably become sick and they die; if not from starvation itself, then from the inevitable illnesses arising out of being malnourished. These are the facts; they are beyond dispute and not open for debate and therefore to willfully deprive people of their ability to eat as the Republican Party is doing now with its slashing of food assistance to the poor and the most needy; is not only committing a moral crime in the fact that the Republicans are actually killing people; they are also violating both our nation's Declaration of Independence and its Constitution which states that we are all "endowed with certain unalienable rights; among which are life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

When one is denied the ability to eat they are denied all three for there can be no "life, Liberty, and pursuit of happiness" when one is forced to go through life hungry. This country throws away more food in a day than many nations in the world produces to feed their citizens over the course of a year. To deny the hungry food to eat is no different than denying a person in an emergency room life saving care because of an inability to pay. If we ever started doing this; if children died because they were turned away from a hospital's ER because their parents or guardians couldn't pay the hospital bill on the spot, these same Republicans who are so gleefully denying food assistance to the most needy among us, would be among those who raised the loudest of protests over the cruelty of such a practice.

Yet what they are doing now in cutting food assistance to the most needy among us is no different and is in many ways it is far worse for to perish from hunger is to die a most slow and painful death; especially if one is a child. Now if America did not and/or was incapable of producing enough food to ensure several times over that every last one of its 300 million plus citizens could be properly nourished, then the policies they pursue in cutting food assistance while no less cruel, could conceivably be slightly justified as a cost saving measure.

Yet that is not the case. On farms all across the land unused grain is rotting, unsold livestock is being being butchered & sold to feed other livestock and hungry people in other nations. Restaurants make the rats & other vermin fat off the food they daily discard while in many of those very same back alleys where the rodents feast, men, women, and children, sleep and go hungry for lack of a roof over their heads and their inability to buy that very food which the nearby vermin feast on for free.

This is the Republican Reality; this is the Republican Party's version of an ideal America, and it is a sick, twisted version indeed; one that is totally undeserving of a nation of savages, let alone that of the greatest, most prosperous nation in the history of the world. A child can't learn if its hungry and a man and woman can't work to their full potential if they are malnourished; that is true of any living thing.

It is therefore in our vested national interests to ensure that every last one of our citizens is afforded the chance to eat; to take in proper nourishment regardless of economic status or race. This is what we must do or we must stop pretending being what we are not; a nation that cares, that believes in the sanctity of human life, for our acts of charity abroad mean absolutely nothing if we do not first act charitably on behalf of those who are most needy here at home. Feed Americans first Republicans for your fellow Americans are your first priority as they are the priority of us all.

Think less of Ukraine, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Timbuktu for a minute and more of your fellow Americans in need. Share some of your compassion with the poor, oppressed, and downtrodden in New York, Chicago, Baltimore, and Detroit to name but a few. Stop doing the right things for people abroad for all the wrong reasons and start doing the right thing for the right reasons for your fellow citizens here at home. A nation that is well nourished and well fed is a nation that is truly strong and so when people support policies that starve their fellow citizens; especially for partisan purposes; they are not being patriotic; they are acting as terrorists for deliberately starving someone is an act of terrorism against that person for to force that person to endure hunger is to force them to face terror, endure suffering, and face the terrible prospect of a long and painful death.

This is your reality Republicans. This is what you are now doing to your fellow citizens and yet you still have the gall to call yourselves patriotic Americans who are compassionate? Sorry, but your words are worthless at this point. If you think that denying food to the hungry is acceptable in any way shape or form then you are not patriotic, you are not truly American, and you are certainly not compassionate. That's just the way it is and that's just the way you are and there's not a damn thing you can say at this point that will change that.

Sunday, March 2, 2014

America's dilemma. By Eric Smith

For those now fretting over the apparent weakness of President Obama in the face of Russian aggression in Ukraine ask yourself this question. Is this particular conflict worth the very real risk of seeing a mushroom cloud rise over New York City for make no mistake any armed conflict with Russia (or China for that matter) will eventually lead to a nuclear exchange. That's just how it is and we need to keep this in mind; especially now.

Now there's a another thing we need to keep in mind here. Ukraine is on the Russian border whereas Iraq is nowhere near ours. Our moral standing in calling for nations to respect the sovereignty of other nations and refrain from unilateral military aggression ended permanently when President George W. Bush went against over two hundred years of American precedent and not only invaded the sovereign nation of Iraq but did so under false pretenses.

As horrible as the Russian military aggression is Ukraine is, it doesn't come close to rising to the level in terms of being a violation of international law that was America's 2003 invasion of Iraq. The Russians can make, however dubious, a claim that instability in Ukraine poses a clear and present danger to the security of Russia itself. Never in a million years could America make such a claim against Iraq.

Before invading that country America could at least take the moral high ground and claim that such acts of unilateral aggression against a sovereign nation was morally wrong and a blatant violation of international law. President Bush forever destroyed this country's moral standing to make such a claim in 2003 and in so doing forever handicapped & compromised future presidents ability to properly address the very kind of aggressive conduct now being practiced by Russia's President Putin without being willing to go to general war and wiping out the whole world in a nuclear Armageddon.

That is precisely where this country is now because of the jingoistic policies of the Bush Administration a decade ago. As is the case with individuals so too is it with nations; if one wants to be taken seriously then one must practice what they preach and not preach what they don't practice. For over two hundred years America refrained from the practice of unilaterally invading a sovereign nation. It was part of our national DNA not to partake in preemptive war and as such we were on firm moral footing to call out the very kind of aggressive conduct the Russians are engaging in Ukraine.

We do not have that footing, that moral standing, now and we do not have it because an American president by the name of George W. Bush launched a preemptive war against a sovereign nation not to protect American lives and interests but solely to satisfy a personal vendetta. So if you want to blame anyone for this current state of affairs blame Bush because it was his decision to invade Iraq in 2003 without cause or justification that forever ruined America's moral standing to call out other nations for unprovoked aggression that put President Obama and American prestige in the untenable position it is today.