The self-righteous WMD Nuclear Soul of  America

All the attention on al-Zaidi’s soles whizzing past Bush’s topknot has produced a lot of speculation about the condition of Bush’s soul as well;  or more often the assertion he hasn’t one.  Those speculations aside (uh, not one of you can really know so shut. up. already), it is what Bush is responsible for doing to the American soul that should concern us all.

The recent televised flailing of Frank Gaffney, neocon hawk and signatory of Project for the New American Century, on Hardball by Chris Matthews, brings our WMD hypocrisy front and center again.  Dodo birds like Gaffney can blather all they want about how “delighted” they are about the necessity of offering upwards of 600,00 deaths on the altar of American hegemony. But the ingrown hypocrisy of incubating a staggering 5,500 nuclear weapons we reserve the right to use preemptively on any buddy we choose, is morally and ethically bankrupt before all the nations of the world.

America’s soul has become infected with the inbred primal fears of the neocons and traditionalists.  Their utter lack of a moral and ethical vision for the world, one that recognizes the equality of all mankind while simultaneously providing for a strong national defense, has produced a potentially fatal soul sickness;  one that holds the seeds of our own destruction.

The putrid stench of immoral death will never leave our national nostrils until we resolve, as a nation and a people of laws and values, to find peaceful solutions to our global relationships with the other nations of mankind on our planet.

There is a way forward that is fair, just, and true, and it is so past the time we should have found it and fashioned it to serve not just the political aims of our nation— but the highest moral aims of all human beings.

There is a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we will.
— SHAKESPEARE, Hamlet
Ac V. Sc. 2

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The Sermon On The Mount (section) •• Carl Boch

When the crowds who came to hear Jesus teach began to include many of his bitter enemies, he explained his decision to teach in parables this way:  “I will present my teaching in a parable, so that you may each take for yourself that which finds a reception in your heart.” And the following excerpt from the UB explains in greater detail his attitude towards wealth:

Jesus worked, lived, and traded in the world as he found it. He was not an economic reformer, although he did frequently call attention  to the injustice of the unequal distribution of wealth. But he did not offer any suggestions by way of remedy. He made it plain to the three [apostles] that, while his apostles were not to hold property, he was not preaching against wealth and property,  merely its unequal and unfair distribution. He recognized the need for social justice and industrial fairness, but he offered no rules for their attainment.

He never taught his followers to avoid earthly possessions, only his twelve apostles. Luke, the physician, was a strong believer in social equality, and he did much to interpret Jesus’ sayings in harmony with his personal beliefs. Jesus never personally directed his followers to adopt a communal mode of life; he made no pronouncement of any sort regarding such matters.

Jesus frequently warned his listeners against covetousness, declaring that “a man’s happiness consists not in the abundance of his material possessions.” He reiterated, “What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?” He made no direct attack on the possession of property, but he did insist that it is eternally essential that spiritual values come first. In his later teachings he sought to correct many erroneous Urantia views of life by narrating numerous parables which he presented in the course of his public ministry.  Jesus never intended to formulate economic theories; he well knew that each age must evolve its own remedies for existing troubles. And if Jesus were on earth today, living his life in the flesh, he would be a great disappointment to the majority of good men and women for the simple reason that he would not take sides in present-day political, social, or economic disputes. He would remain grandly aloof while teaching you how to perfect your inner spiritual life so as to render you many fold more competent to attack the solution of your purely human problems.

Jesus would make all men Godlike and then stand by sympathetically while these sons of God solve their own political, social, and economic problems. It was not wealth that he denounced, but what wealth does to the majority of its devotees.

This parable, Dividing the Inheritance, is also known as “the parable of the foolish rich man.”

Let me tell you a story of a certain rich man whose ground brought forth plentifully; and when he had become very rich, he began to reason with himself, “What shall I do with all my riches? I now have so much that I have no place to store my wealth.” And when he had meditated on his problem, he said: “This I will do; I will pull down my barns and build greater ones, and thus will I have abundant room in which to store my fruits and my goods. Then can I say to my soul, soul, you have much wealth laid up for many years; take now your ease; eat, drink, and be merry, for you are rich and increased in goods.”

But this rich man was also foolish. In providing for the material requirements of his mind and body, he had failed to lay up treasures in heaven for the satisfaction of the spirit and for the salvation of the soul. And even then he was not to enjoy the pleasure of consuming his hoarded wealth, for that very night was his soul required of him. That night there came the brigands who broke into his house to kill him, and after they had plundered his barns, they burned that which remained. And for the property which escaped the robbers his heirs fell to fighting among themselves. This man laid up treasures for himself on earth, but he was not rich toward God.

When Jesus had finished his story, another man rose up and asked him: “Master, I know that your apostles have sold all their earthly possessions to follow you, and that they have all things in common as do the Essenes, but would you have all of us who are your disciples do likewise? Is it a sin to possess honest wealth?” And Jesus replied to this question: “My friend, it is not a sin to have honorable wealth; but it is a sin if you convert the wealth of material possessions into treasures which may absorb your interests and divert your affections from devotion to the spiritual pursuits of the kingdom. There is no sin in having honest possessions on earth provided your treasure is in heaven, for where your treasure is there will your heart be also. There is a great difference between wealth which leads to covetousness and selfishness and that which is held and dispensed in the spirit of stewardship by those who have an abundance of this world’s goods, and who so bountifully contribute to the support of those who devote all their energies to the work of the kingdom. Many of you who are here and without money are fed and lodged in yonder tented city because liberal men and women of means have given funds to your host, David Zebedee, for such purposes.

But never forget that, after all, wealth is unenduring. The love of riches all too often obscures and even destroys the spiritual vision. Fail not to recognize the danger of wealth’s becoming, not your servant, but your master.”

Bold, my emphasis

Although the death scenes in these two well-produced tubes were selected for their cinematic qualities,  they can still set the mood for a more serious contemplation of your own mortality. Check’m out.

I don’t need to tell you how large the idea of death looms in our collective consciousness, in our daily lives.  After all, people are dying left and right all around us all the time. The chart below represents an “average” frequency of death on our world, excluding unusual spikes for wars, bombings, natural disasters, etc., which actually happen all the time.

1.78	per second
107	per minute
6390	per hour
153 thousand	per day
56.0 million	per year
3.9 billion	per average lifetime (70 years)

Not everyone is interested in what actually happens at death;  they may go through their entire life without giving their own death a moment’s thought before the door is opened right in front of them. But having witnessed more than a few death scenes in real life, (as a crime scene technician) I can tell you I’m not one of them. And my interest in death wasn’t really slaked until I discovered the Urantia Papers and it’s revelations about what happens at death.

When life is put in the perspective of its unknowable end— and I mean not just when, but what— the stage is set for real consideration of just why our living conditions are so, well, temporary.  And such a consideration quickly opens the doors of many other important considerations relating to just who, and what, we fundamentally are: evolutionary organisms; sentient (minded) creatures; air breathers; conscious beings;  a self;  intellects; personalities; souls; spirits;  and on and on.

Most “Urantians” — people born and living on this world— usually only think about death in the physical sense.  But they are overlooking intellectual (mind) death, and spiritual (soul) death.  One of the more immediately intriguing papers in The Urantia Book is Paper 112, Personality Survival.

There’s quite a bit of new information in the Urantia Papers about (big “d”) Death, the apparent end of human existence on earth and the repersonalization of it on another world. No, it doesn’t take all the mystery out of death, but it does provide an expansive, even unprecedented context for a real and spiritually valuable understanding of death, for anyone ready to confront the inevitability of the potential end of their own mortal existence.

It really is just a matter of time before it becomes the most important thing on your plate.

Fear and anger weaken character, and destroy happiness.
Is that so hard to understand?  And just like hate, anger is a destructive influence on the human soul.

•

Aww;  what a sweetie!  Ignoring the “WSJ” is no big deal. But the perfunctorily nasty manner in how it was done is telling of McCain’s temperament.

It’s instructive that McCain points to Teddy Roosevelt as one of his heroes.  Roosevelt was a hypomaniac, too.  According to John Gartner, author of The Hypomanic Edge, “hypomaniacs” are “brimming with infectious energy, irrational confidence, and really big ideas.  They think, talk, move and make decisions quickly.  Anyone who slows them down with questions ‘just doesn’t get it.’”  What’s more, the hypomanic will act impulsively, with poor judgment, in ways that can have painful consequences.  Starting to sound familiar?

But before you drink this milkshake, don’t forget to pour in a brutal heaping portion of PTSD; then you can really see why Mark Benjamin found it so easy to find people who had been chest-poked by McTemper.

Robert Greenwald’s latest compilation on McCain is yet another chronicle of McCain’s temperament problem, a sever handicap that simply should never be a part of any president’s arsenal of personality attributes. Watch:

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Anger is a material manifestation which represents, in a general way,
the measure of the failure of the spiritual nature to gain control of
the combined intellectual and physical natures.
Anger indicates your lack of tolerant brotherly love
plus your lack of self-respect and self-control.
Anger depletes the health, debases the mind,
and handicaps the spirit teacher of man’s soul.

—Jesus, Speaking in The Urantia Papers

• • •

More galaxies than grains of sand on every beach of this world.
Taken with the Hubble Deep Field, January 15, 1996

Since it’s a lovely morning, why don’t we take stock of a few things that most of us take for granted. Let’s start with some practical aspects of “reality.”  Here we are— billions of us— whizzing through time and space, on a molten-core spheroid, which is spinning in circles about a thousand miles an hour. We are orbiting a pale yellow star at nearly 67,000 miles per hour. That star is traveling at roughly 559,232 miles per hour;  or 150 miles a second. That’s right;  150 miles per second.

We are buffered from all that velocity by a thin blanket of air.

We are living, sentient beings;  creatures that can think and reflect about our life, and wonder if it has a meaning.  We have learned we are made up of an amazing variety of discrete, infinitesimal “particles” that aggregate for a time in space, giving us each a temporary physical presence; we also know this state of affairs is largely illusion.  That is to say, comparatively speaking, that there is as much relative “space” between our corporeal “particles” as there is between the planets of our solar system.

Somewhere near the top of this collection of atoms we casually call our “selves,” is an even more unique and astounding collection of electrochemical particles that produce “thoughts,” and even attach a sense of “realness” as well as personal identity to them;  we think they’re “ours.” 

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The Middle Class First.

Not the Red State Middle Class. Not the Blue State Middle Class. Not the Republican middle Class. Not the Democrat Middle Class. Not the Conservative Middle Class. Not the Liberal Middle Class. Not the Right Wing Middle Class. Not the Left Wing Middle Class. Not the Christian middle Class. Not the Muslim Middle Class. Not the Buddhist Middle Class. Not the Jewish Middle Class. Not the Catholic Middle Class. Not the Presbyterian Middle Class. Not the Neo-Con Middle Class. Not the Wickan Middle Class. Not the Dirty Fucking Hippy Middle Class.

Just the Middle Class. First.

That’s Unity; not uniformity. That is the true strength of the American people, the backbone of our country. Because the majority of the middle class lack the political insight to see that the ruling class of this country is not them, but the wealthy corporate class, we find ourselves a nation losing a class war with the owners of her engines of wealth, whose aims and ends are not always those of highest benefit for Americans and America, or any nation of the world. Rather is their love and loyalty servile to “mammon.”

There’s a great difference between wealth which leads to greediness and selfishness and that which is held and dispensed in the spirit of stewardship by those who have an abundance of this world’s goods. But wealth is unenduring. The love of riches all too often obscures and even destroys the spiritual vision. The danger is one of wealth’s becoming, not your servant but your master.

Christians will note that Jesus never taught nor countenanced idleness or indifference to providing the physical necessities for one’s family. He taught that the material and temporal must be subordinated to the welfare of the soul and the progress of the spiritual nature.

The Middle Class of America must get itself united for change; change strong enough to change the balance of power back to the Middle man; change it controls and decides upon for the well-being of America, not the wealthy. For America; not the Red State Middle Class. Not the Blue State Middle Class. Not the Republican middle Class. Not the Democrat Middle Class. Not the Conservative Middle Class. Not the Liberal Middle Class. Not the Right Wing Middle Class. Not the Left Wing Middle Class. Not the Christian middle Class. Not the Muslim Middle Class. Not the Buddhist Middle Class. Not the Jewish Middle Class. Not the Catholic Middle Class. Not the Presbyterian Middle Class. Not the Neo-Con Middle Class. Not the Wickan Middle Class. Not the Dirty Fucking Hippy Middle Class.

The Middle Class. First. Last. Always.

That’s Barack Obama’s most powerful unifying meme, and it should be.

Andy: “. . .That’s the beauty of music; they can’t get that from you. Haven’t you ever felt that way about music?

Red: I played a mean harmonica as a younger man. Lost interest in it, though. Didn’t make much sense in here.

Andy: Here’s where it makes the most sense. You need it so you don’t forget.

Red: Forget?

Andy: Forget that. . . there. . . are places. . . in the world that aren’t made out of stone; that there’s somethin’ inside they can’t get to; they can’t touch. . . it’s yours.

Red: What’re you talkin’ about?

Andy: . . .Hope.

Red: Hope. Lemme tell you sumthin’ my friend. Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane. ‘Sgot no use on the inside. You better get used to that idea.

Andy: . . .Like Brooks did?

Hope is a risk. It does take audacity to hope— especially in the face of appalling danger and imminent failure. And we so easily forget our one “inner bastion” that is unassailable, the soul; that “somethin’ inside they can’t get to; they can’t touch. . . it’s yours” as Andy said.

Andy Dufrane hoped for redemption from injustice, redemption for his imprisoned soul. But unlike most men, Andy didn’t need the trauma of prison to get introduced to his soul; he had already discovered it through the beauty of music, and his love for his wife. He hoped of regaining his freedom in the world; he hope to regain a life he knew was real, and waiting. Red, however, needed to be coaxed and gently lured to rediscover the vital role of hope.

Dear Red,

If you’re reading this, you’ve gotten out. And if you’ve come this far, maybe you’re willing to come a little further. You remember the name of the town, don’t you? [Zijuatinejo] I could use a good man to help me get my project on wheels. I’ll keep an eye out for you, and the chess board ready.

Remember, Red. Hope is a good thing. Maybe the best of things. And no good thing ever dies.

I’ll be hoping that this letter finds you, and finds you well.

Your friend,
Andy

Hope, like faith, can grow until it becomes unshakable. But it must be regularly exercised, just like a muscle. And once you realize the genuine power of hope, you’ll be ready to use it in the most audacious way possible: the hope for never ending life. Audacious as that may sound, it is the divine promise from God to man, and is freely offered to anyone willing to accept the only struggle; the good fight of faith.

Let’s append Andy Dufrane’s maxim to reflect the real audacity of hope:

“Get busy livin’ forever, or get busy dyin’ forever.”

Dr. James Dobson exposing gay troubadour and inanimate object, Sponge Bob.

James Dobson cannot speak for me. Before God, as we all are, he may only speak for himself. If one thing could be clear about our relationship with God as a Father, it should be that he loves us as individuals, and he judges us as individuals. When Dr. James Dobson accuses Senator Obama of distorting “the traditional understanding of the Bible,” he is actually talking about his own personal “world view,” and his own “confused theology”— as a single creature before the Creator.

There may be many thousands of other individuals who identify themselves as “members of his flock,” individual Christians who are perfectly willing to compromise the sovereignty of their own personalities by accepting James Dobson’s personal religious experience as their’s, too.

Until the human race progresses to the level of a higher and more general recognition of the realities of spiritual experience, large numbers of men and women will continue to show a personal preference for those religions of authority which require only intellectual assent, in contrast to the religion of the spirit, which entails active participation of mind and soul in the faith adventure of grappling with the rigorous realities of progressive human experience.

The acceptance of the traditional religions of authority presents the easy way out for man’s urge to seek satisfaction for the longings of his spiritual nature. The settled, crystallized, and established religions of authority afford a ready refuge to which the distracted and distraught soul of man may flee when harassed by fear and tormented by uncertainty. Such a religion requires of its devotees, as the price to be paid for its satisfactions and assurances, only a passive and purely intellectual assent.

— The Urantia Book

Religionists like James Dobson rely on their personal interpretation of supposed inerrancy of scripture as the arbiter of God’s word of perfect, infallible, unchanging, truth. If he’s honest about it, he might also claim that he knows this is true in his soul. But as such, it is a personal experience that only he can verify. It is just such a personal and unique experience for which he now criticizes Barack Obama.

Regarding his own personal religious experience, Obama has written:

It came about as a choice, and not an epiphany. I didn’t fall out in church. The questions I had didn’t magically disappear. But kneeling beneath that cross on the South Side, I felt that I heard God’s spirit beckoning me. I submitted myself to His will, and dedicated myself to discovering His truth.

Every child of the Creator has such a relationship with God, whether or not they take advantage of it in this life in the flesh.

That’s why religionists who recognize that truth must be lived out, not merely traditionalized, dogmatized, and institutionalized, will always disagree with religionists like Dobson. True religion carries over from one age to another the worth-while culture and that wisdom which is born of the experience of knowing God and striving to be like him. It has never been proven that God’s desire is that those who believe in him should become dogmatized and standardized in their beliefs, or should submit their wills to the religious interpretations of even good men. Jesus repeatedly warned his apostles against the formulation of creeds and the establishment of traditions as a means of controlling believers. Christians like Dobson err when they devote their lives to doing just that.

Obama:

“. . .to say that men and women should not inject their ‘personal morality’ into public policy debates is a practical absurdity. Our law is by definition a codification of morality, much of it grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition.

Moreover, if we progressives shed some of these biases, we might recognize some overlapping values that both religious and secular people share when it comes to the moral and material direction of our country. We might recognize that the call to sacrifice on behalf of the next generation, the need to think in terms of “thou” and not just “I,” resonates in religious congregations all across the country. And we might realize that we have the ability to reach out to the evangelical community and engage millions of religious Americans in the larger project of American renewal.”

It is a fact that religion does not grow unless it is disciplined by constructive criticism, amplified by philosophy, purified by science, and nourished by loyal fellowship. —The Urantia Book

Yep, Chimpy stopped by our office today. The hardcore software geeks have their own communal cell near the center of the campus circles. I was almost finished painting a mural on the last wall of their cube farm, one of four twenty foot tall stucco constraints with no windows; at least the poor bastards would now have something beautiful to stare at while they longed to be anywhere else but work.

What was really strange about his visit, besides being totally unannounced, was the fact it was sans Secret Service goons; maybe they were in the cafeteria fucking off with the coffee cake. And he was wearing some goddamned silly-assed NASA flight suit getup, so he looked even more like an imbecile than he usually does.

Bush insisted on a group photo— “fur when history vindicates me.” Naturally, we obliged him.

I had a little forced one-to-one time with him. Since no one in the office even looked up when he walked in, he wandered over to the coffee station where I was gettin’ my joe on. It was awkward— one, because he had a fuggin’ toothpick in his mouth, which he kept tonguing from one side of his mouth to the other, and two, everyone in the office stopped and turned to watch what would happen when he got in my personal space.

Then, it was like someone flipped a forgotten switch in a long dark hallway, and his little weasel windows bore into me like I imagined the Great Satan’s might be able to.

“How’s teh java?” he said, avoiding eye contact. I took a long sip and said, “You’re not gonna like it.” He gave one of those classic Jon Stewart “Heh heh hehs,” and reached for a cup. Since he’d caught me with my flask out, I tilted it his way; both his eyebrows did a little simultaneous hop and he thrust his cup forward with an emphatic, “Helll yes.”

I poured a good jigger in, but he gestured for another. “Be my guest,” I muttered, and handed it over; he held it inverted over his cup until a drop formed that refused to fall. “How ’bout a little coffee with that,” I suggested, barely concealing my annoyance with his boorish flash of lushitude.

Another “Heh heh heh” followed another “Helll yes.”

He looked me up and down as he returned the empty flask, and said, “So whutur you, teh resident hippie?” Another chuckle got past his toothpick. Collecting myself with another draught of morning mud, I ventured, “You know, I’ve always wanted to ask you— “What do you think you’ll say with your last breath?”

He swallowed a good third more of his beverage, and turned to acknowledge the software geeks by raising his cup in a mock toast to them. They just stared, motionless. He turned back to me and remarked, “They don’t say too much, do they. I like that.”

Then, it was like someone flipped a forgotten switch in a long dark hallway, and his little weasel windows bore into me like I imagined the Great Satan’s might be able to.

“You probably b’lieve in good and evil, don’tcha hippie guy. Well I do too. But then, then ya got yur evil in yur good, and ya got yur good in yur evil; know wudda mean? There was no pause for me to answer. “But then ya got yur no bad good, and ya got yur no good bad; and there ain’t no good good, and no bad bad— see? He took another long suck on his boozalotte, and, his head cocked to one side, he continued.

“Now— teh good man thinks of teh Devil, and teh evil man thinks a lot about teh God. But if ya think yur thoughts right between teh two ya know— then ya know there’s a day teh be evil, and a day teh be good; so, when ya wake up in the mornin’, ya ask yurself, ‘Who’s day’s it gonna be tehday? Is it teh God’s day, or is it teh Devil’s day?”

His brow suddenly unfurled and he looked really pleased with himself, as if he had just successfully arm-wrestled some enormous cosmic truth down from a lofty heavenly rampart, and was revealing it on the white house lawn for the whole world to revel in. It was then I realized that was all he had to say.

I looked at him as it settled over me like a giant cloud of methane flatulence, that he was totally rat-shit fucking insane. And probably a little drunk, too.

Lots of things raced through my mind, like he never answered my question, like he never even heard it. Like, this man has the blood of many hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women, and children on his hands, and he talks about “teh God” and “teh Devil” as if he were talking about two ordinary shits like Hannity and Colmes. Like, he’s already soul destroyed and spiritually dead, only his body doesn’t know it yet. Like, I’on’t even know.

“Teh God and teh Devil”

I took another drink of coffee as a wave of compassion washed over me in the exact same way a wave of nausea would; Bush had whirled around and was headed over to the locked utility closet, no doubt thinking it was the exit.

I went back to work.

There’s a common misconception rampant in political and other discourse in the world today, and it leads to all kinds of injustice, terrorism, and other spiritual horrors. It’s the idea that love of what’s right is the same thing as hatred of what’s wrong. The two are like day and night. One heals, the other leads to endless conflict and destruction.

The world at this time of crisis on many levels needs to focus on strengthening what’s good, not just trying to destroy evil and enemies. We need to keep in mind the warning about the beam and the mote – what’s in your own head and heart when you’re condemning the faults of others – and remember that argumentative defense of any idea or agenda is missing the point not because the idea or agenda is wrong, but because the truth is not in our ideas but in the quality of our relationships with others, at all times, even especially in moments of disagreement.

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