Paging Scott Rigell

About H.R. 1728....

             I recently received a “special report” from Scott Rigell, my Representative in Washington from the 2nd congressional district of Virginia. I’m on his email list, as I like to keep up with what politicians are deciding in my name. Or not.

U.S. Representative Scott Rigell

            Rigell is a Republican who has been congratulated in the Washington Post, among other newspapers, for his moderate, bipartisan profile. I’m not so sure I see that in the votes he’s cast—lining up behind obstructionist Republicans on every major policy bill, including sequestration, during his first term, 2010-12.

            But newspaper editorials still count for something, and for Rigell it’s meant a rising profile.

            Not so long ago I saw an online ranking of the wealthiest members of Congress—House and Senate. Rigell was 24th. So I guess he’s pretty rich. I also have seen reports that he receives campaign support from oil and gas interests, though, to his credit—or his political advisor’s—he returns something like 15 percent of his Congressional salary back to the government to help pay for the deficit. He is very worried, he says, about the deficit, and I suppose I would be, too, if I could understand it. I do understand that I don’t want my country to go down the drain in a great wash of debt.

            I have communicated with Rep. Rigell on many occasions, usually questioning or objecting to his position on most issues, from guns to butter. I have not heard back from him for almost two years. His staff probably figures he doesn’t need my vote, which to date has been true.

            But this recent “Special Rigell Report” concerns me very much. With clear excitement, he writes that he and his colleagues have found the answer to several of Virginia’s critical issues with one sweep of the legislative arm.

            That answer is in The Virginia Jobs and Energy Act (H.R. 1782), which Rigell has introduced in Congress. It has bipartisan support here in Virginia. Democratic Senators Mark Warner and Tim Kaine are onboard, as is Republican Governor Bob McDonnell, the Richmond Times Dispatch, and even Will Sessoms, the Mayor of Virginia Beach.

            For his part, Rigell calls the Act his “number one legislative priority.” In bold-face type, he writes: “We can create more than 18,000 jobs by leveraging traditional energy sources, and in the process, generate the revenue to improve our schools and fix our roads.”

            Traditional energy sources, of course, means oil and gas which means exploration and drilling off the coast of Virginia Beach and the Virginia Eastern Shore. Ordinary citizens needn’t worry. It will be far enough out to sea that we won’t ever notice. And of course the technology will be safe.

            (To be fair, in a separate paragraph Rigell includes wind as part of the job-creation plan. But that paragraph is not set in bold-face type.)

            What the Rigell bill really means to me is more business for the huge energy corporations which have served us fossil fuels since the industrial revolution. Yet the verdict is pretty much in. Burning those fossil fuels is seriously polluting Planet Earth, and if we don’t stop we’re going to be dealing with something worse than a world war.

            Politicians may be able to fool their constituents and even fool themselves, but, as the old saying goes, “You can’t fool Mother Nature.” She’s choking with evidence that will prove us guilty, and—face it—many of us won’t live through the experience.

            Meanwhile, politicians make their deals in the capitals, pretending to be oblivious to the obvious: jobs won’t mean a hill of beans if the environment isn’t preserved and protected. Is the disastrous Gulf oil spill so soon forgotten? BP has commercials on TV trying to lure people back to safe beaches, but fish and wildlife with strange mutations and defects have been reported over a wide radius surrounding the spill site. Like Fukishima (another disaster the politicians and tycoons try to ignore), the Gulf oil spill was further proof, if any was needed, that our complex technology is not really under our control, and there is a high price to be paid if it fails.

            I’ve written to Rep. Rigell several times on this issue. He has never responded to explain to me why drilling for oil and fracking for gas off the East Coast from Virginia Beach to Chincoteague Island is more important than preserving, protecting, and hopefully restoring a natural environment that supports all life forms, including humans. Wouldn’t such projects create jobs? Increase state revenues? Save the planet?

            Am I an extremist to wish that investing in the health of the planet would be Scott Rigell’s “number one legislative priority?”

            Throw the bums out!

______________________________ 

June 8, 2013—Update: Yesterday, June 7, I received a rare email response from Rep Rigell on the off-shore drilling issue. I doubt it was a response to the above blog post, as I’d emailed him a few weeks ago stating my feelings on the issue, but you never know who reads a blog. Perhaps it was discovered by the government’s universal internet mining and collection machine.

            In any case, here is what Rigell had to say in defense of his position:

 

“On January 31, 2011, the price of oil eclipsed $100 a barrel for the first time since 2008. Many leaders from the nations represented in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) expressed support for this price point and do not plan on taking any action to mitigate the rising costs. On top of these economic consequences, the increasing price of oil is also a risk to our national security. Americans are forced to continue to send billions of dollars to foreign governments that funnel money to extremist groups that pose a threat to our nation. For all of these reasons, I believe that it is in the best interest of America to explore all options for increasing our domestic energy production. Part of this effort will involve renewable energy solutions that are vital to our long-term economic prosperity. In the time being, however, as these technologies are further developed we must explore domestic energy solutions that are readily available.

 

 “Energy exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) or off of our coasts should be considered. Prudent regulations and restrictions can ensure that drilling in these locations is both economically feasible and environmentally sound; these goals are not mutually exclusive. While we must learn from the mistakes of the BP oil spill in the Gulf Coast, we cannot use this one situation to deter all offshore energy exploration in the future. I strongly disagree with the President's decision to put a moratorium on drilling off of Virginia's coast. “

 

             Note that Rigell minimizes the Gulf spill in favor of money interests and “prudent regulations and restrictions” of the industries which will get the contracts, not only in Virginia but in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. (“Prudent regulation,” in Republican-speak, means less regulation, and doesn’t he understand the meaning of the world “refuge”?) He also minimizes the damage done by the BP spill, excusing the accident with the promise of doing better in the future. On top of that he cites “national security,” the catch-all phrase for most questionable government decisions, as further justification for his position. These excuses have been used by politicians and corporations over and over to justify business as usual while paying the requisite lip service to the larger concern—our common Earthly environment. And while Rigell says he favors renewable energy sources in the long run, the promise is disingenuous. Industry spokespeople and politicians alike admit it will take several years to bring to fruition whatever resources lie offshore. Wouldn’t that time, with its fat subsidies, be better spent on developing renewable technologies?

            Rep. Rigell’s plan is an ill-disguised excuse to give more business to the existing structures that no longer serve the common welfare. I’m sorry, Rep. Rigell, your defense of the old ways of doing things just won’t cut the mustard with this Thinking Dog. I still say, “Throw the bums out.” 

In Memoriam

Athena

Nov. 10, 2001-May 25, 2013

The only Buddha I have ever personally known.

Religion and Politics

Bosom Buddies? Or a Deadly Mix?

             I recently read The First Muslim, a Norfolk Public Library book on the life of Mohammed. The author, Lesley Hazleton, is a mid-eastern religions scholar and a self-described agnostic Jew. As I read her book, though, I guessed wrongly that she must be Muslim. Her writing seems to glow warmly around the Prophet in his life-long struggles and accomplishments.

            Orphaned at a young age, he made his way as a camel boy, tending to the beasts of burden in caravans of merchants who traded in goods across the prosperous, seventh-century Mideast. He learned a lot about the ways of the world from that experience.

            Later, he had a life-altering encounter with God, and he became a prophet, soon gathering followers while also making enemies of those who feared or scorned his message. Yet despite the many insults, rebuffs, and persecutions that came his way, he practiced non-violence and expected his followers to do the same.

            As his reputation as a prophet grew, his followers became the majority in the area around the city of Medina, and Mohammed rose from among them as a political leader in a culture where religion and politics were not separate. As his influence grew, he abandoned his earlier non-violent philosophy and became the commander-in-chief of a tribal-like body which engaged in wars with neighboring tribal powers.

            I always thought it was uninformed hearsay that Mohammed’s Muslim armies killed their defeated enemies if they refused to convert. But apparently, with Mohammed’s blessing, it did happen on a few occasions.

            I’m not used to thinking of religious founders in that way. My own spiritual heroes—Jesus and Buddha but also Yogananda, Baba Ji, and others—teach pacifism in the highest sense of that word. They avoid getting involved in politics, despite the temptation to do so.

            This made me think about religion as a form of politics. It’s been that way, of course, for most of history, but it’s not supposed to be that way in the United States. With church and state separate, non-violence and other spiritual behaviors can become competing ideas in society. But if church and state are joined, there’s a danger that there will be no moral check on power, and with unchecked power comes oppression, at least according to the history I remember from school. Forcing another to confess belief in your religion or face ostracism, persecution, or even death is a definite form of oppression.

            I then began to wonder if it often happens that people lose their idealism, if not even their spiritual direction, when they gain or attempt to gain power of a political kind. The most renowned spiritual teachers tell us the world is just a dream. Why do so many, including spiritual leaders, tend to get lost in the politics of it?

            I think they yield to the siren song of power, which is linked to a number of human vanities but stands by itself as the most dangerous because it encompasses them all. In our world with its dominant paradigm of violence, knowing how to exert power with wisdom, justice, and mercy is a blessed attribute rarely found or taught.

            Perhaps we’re meant to discover it for ourselves.

 

 

Stuck in Traffic

A Serious Case of Over-Drive

             “Stuck in traffic” is so common here in Hampton Roads, VA, that no one is ever surprised if you’re late. Late is normal, especially for people who have to take one of the tunnels to get where they’re going. Tunnel traffic backs up almost every day. I don’t see how the thousands of people can stand it who have to go through the tunnels to get to work.

            Call me small town, I guess. Yesterday I had a poetry gig in Newport News. I live in Norfolk. That means I had to take the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel across the Chesapeake Bay to get to my destination. Traffic was heavy but not congested, which means that most people drive over 65 mph in a speed zone posted at 55. I’m not comfortable with that and neither is my ‘97 Chevy Cavalier. We’re trying to extend our time together, so I hold my speed at 60, give or take a few.

            Meanwhile, traffic whizzes by me like I’m standing still. Lanes I’m driving in suddenly disappear, forcing me to merge with the speeding cars coming up from behind. I don’t drive that much on the expressways, and frankly it’s a little like a scary acid trip until I get the hang of it.

            But it wasn’t the speed that stood out for me the most yesterday. It was the spectacle of no movement at all.

            Jala and I were coming back from my gig at about 4 p.m. We ran into only one patch of congestion where we had to creep and crawl for a few miles. I considered that really good luck and was thankful for it.

            As we reached the tunnel, however, I thought I caught sight of traffic standing still in the northbound lanes coming out of Norfolk. “Uh-oh,” I thought, and when we emerged on the other side of the tunnel I saw it was true. The west-bound lanes were standing still for miles. (To see what I mean, click here and view photos published in the Virginian Pilot.)

            “That looks like hell over there,” I said to Jala. “And people do this every day.”

            And we mentioned people we know who do.

            “It’s not sustainable,” I said, imagining even more cars in time to come as population continues to grow. Politicians vote to build more roads to accommodate the commerce, but more roads bring more cars, more greenhouse gases, more climate change. I don’t really see a way out of these spiraling conditions except to keep my business as close to home as I can.

           Face it, “stuck in traffic” has become part of the American way of life, of which Hampton Roads is a typical example. To me, it’s sort of a nightmare, but I don’t know what to do to wake up from it. I’m not an engineer or a scientist or a city planner, and I have to make a living and run my errands, too.

            But I feel for the people who are stuck in traffic day after day after day. I don’t imagine there are many who enjoy that. I do imagine that great numbers of restless people stuck in traffic can create a collective force field of impatience and anger, which in turn makes our roadways toxic, and not just from exhaust fumes.

            I hate to say it was better in the old days, but to me it was. I enjoyed driving. Now I feel vulnerable on the main roads and highways and exasperated at the frequent back-ups. Maybe it’s age, maybe it’s because I’m not used to driving on the expressways that much, maybe it’s that there are so many more cars on the road than there used to be. Whatever the reason, I think the so-called American Way of Life is over-developed and unsustainable. It’s got a serious case of over-drive, and we don’t seem able or willing to make the basic changes necessary to get healthy again unless a lot more people become content enough—or poor enough—to just stay at home.

            The cost to our society of our much-touted mobility has become too high.

Respect for Chickens Day

To Know Them
Is To Love Them

             Saturday, May 4, is International Respect for Chickens Day. United Poultry Concerns, an advocacy organization centered in Machipongo on Virginia’s Eastern Shore, originated the annual observance in 2005 and this year is calling for a demonstration at the White House from noon to 3 p.m. to petition the government for legislation authorizing the compassionate and respectful treatment of chickens.

            The organization also advocates a vegan diet, which excludes all meat and animal products, including dairy.

Proud and Free

            I grew up in Pennsylvania farm country. I’ve never killed a chicken but I saw a neighbor lay one’s head across a stump and whack it off with a hatchet. People laughed as the headless chicken ran to and fro about the yard until it fell dead. To me, about nine years old at the time, it was a distressing, sickening sight.

            Still, chicken is such a major part of the American protein diet there seems little hope people would willingly give it up. They consume it mindlessly, as I once did, never seriously considering that they’re eating the flesh of an individualized creature who lived and died in pain and terror, just to satisfy human appetite.

            (Though I gave up eating chicken long ago, I confess I eat eggs, hoping the “free-roaming, grain-fed” claim on the carton is the truth.)

             It was the conventional wisdom in my early environment that chickens are about as dumb as they come. Maybe even as dumb as turkeys. That justified raising them en masse in what we used to call hen houses. In the 1950s these were long, narrow, poorly ventilated barns, usually single story but sometimes two, in which ten or fifteen chickens lived together in 10-by-10 feet enclosures separated from each other by makeshift slats or chicken wire. They had straw covering the floor and someone shoveled out the shit every so often. Rarely if ever did they see the world outside the hen house until they were packed into crates and hauled to slaughter on open-air trucks.

            And those were humane conditions compared to the factory farms where chickens are raised today. 

Factory Farm Chickens Today

            My first real job, the summer I turned 17, was for a chicken service. It ended all childhood innocence. I had to adapt to a class of men who were not like my parents, relatives, or teachers. They had foul mouths and regarded chickens as insentient objects, as I was also expected to do or be dismissed as too soft for the job.

            And so I went with the program, quickly catching on and participating in the various tortures these birds are put through on their way to our plates. They scream like terrified human beings. I can still hear it in my head.

            Eventually—years later—I came to my right senses. The way that happened is told in the brief memoir that follows. I wrote this piece many years ago, but it was never published until now, here in The Thinking Dog’s Journal.

—————

 

 The Little Flock

            In the summer of 1973, a friend, thinking to help us out, brought us a mini-flock of five chickens—two roosters and three hens. We welcomed the additions. At that time we were an impoverished rural commune of hippies with no idea how we would get through the next winter. We accepted the chickens as future food.

            I set to work patching up the window and securing the door of the old shed we had out back. I built nesting boxes, spread around a bale of hay, and fenced in a section of yard for the newcomers. I enjoyed the work.

            The first morning after they came they flew over my fence. We tried to catch them, but they escaped into the trees. In the evening, though, they flew back over the fence and returned to their nesting boxes. That became their daily routine on our little two-acre homestead and surrounding woodlands. A sack of feed came with them, but when that was gone we fed them field corn we pinched from a neighboring agribusiness. For the rest, we let them forage.

            It might have been an ideal life, except that, from the beginning, we intended to eat the hens’ eggs and kill the roosters for meat. None of us had ever killed a chicken before, but one young brother, determined to try, found a library book with instructions, and so execution day arrived for the first rooster. I’ll spare the details, except to say the affair was like a lynching, and our brother, after several botched tries at cutting the poor bird’s throat, finally ended the ordeal by blowing his head off with a shotgun.

            Not long after, he moved out because of love problems. None of us left had the stomach for killing the second rooster, so our little flock, though shaken to the core—for they’d seen what we were capable of—went free from further harm.

            But the surviving rooster, especially, was a paranoid wreck, peering around wildly and ducking as he walked, a sharp eye always out for danger. The hens surrounded him like body guards, and the four—Nina, Shirley, Linda, and Jack—went everywhere together as a module.

            When they wanted fed, they’d come in a delegation to the house. Nina, the boldest, would hop up on the porch and peck on the kitchen door while Linda and Shirley waited down on the patio, covering Jack, who peeped out from behind them. I’d come out, sit with them, and shell them some corn. That’s how I got to know them—Nina first, then Shirley, Linda, and even Jack, a little bit.

            I discovered they were sweet-natured individuals whose company became precious to me. I mourned what we’d done on the day we’d botched the execution of that first rooster. Even now, thinking of it fills me with horror.

            Later in the fall, the commune was falling apart. Some nights I fled the discord, finding refuge curled up in my blankets in the hay of the chicken shed, where the sighing and cooing of my friends’ soft night song brought me peace. I’ll never forget that. Back in the house, where the humans lived, there was no peace.

            After the commune finally broke up, a friend adopted our flock on his farm, where they lived out their lives in freedom. No one deserved it more. Though I was temporarily homeless, it was a relief to me that at least they were okay. It was about the only thing that came out right back then.

—————

            For more information on International Respect for Chickens Day and United Poultry Concerns, go to www.upc-online.org.

The Labrador Pact

Not Just Another Dog Book

             I’ve just finished reading The Labrador Pact, a novel by Matt Haig, an English writer. I don’t know where the book came from. It turned up one day among loose books lying around our house, and, though published in 2008 in the U.S. (2004 in the UK) had the brand-new look of a book no one had read before.

            I thought it might be a perfect novel for me to read in bed at night, a few pages at a time until my head drops and the book starts to fall from my hands. I’ve worked my way through any number of public library novels that way, but there are some, like Dickens’ Little Dorrit, that draw me in so that I also read them during the day in place of more useful work.

            The Labrador Pact is one of those. I could hardly pull myself away to meet my other obligations. I read it cover to cover—341 pages—in less than three days instead of six or eight weeks.

            It’s a dog book. The narrator is a Labrador retriever. Novels featuring dog narrators have had a pretty good run in the past few years—Marley and Me being the most popular, though I’ve never read it or seen the movie. I have read The Art of Running in the Rain by Garth Stein and A Dog’s Journey by W. Bruce Cameron, books which draw us into a dog’s life experiences in depth and without sentimentality.

            But not even those two excellent speculations can top The Labrador Pact for its insight into the very probable gap between the reality of animal consciousness and the human perception of it. My wife and I have had a lot of dogs in our time and a good number of cats. To me, Matt Haig’s take on the relationship between humans and our household pets is startlingly real, an example of “what oft was thought but ne’er so well expressed.”

            The plot of the book is simple enough. Prince, a Lab, is a devotee of the Labrador Pact—a sworn duty to defend, protect, and preserve the Family in which s/he is placed. Only Labs uphold this solemn code of honor any more, though time was when all dogs were united in it.

           But the institution of the Family in modern times has all but self-destructed. (The book’s title in the original, UK edition was The Last Family in England.) And except for Labs all the other breeds now live for their own pleasure. In fact, things have deteriorated so badly that even some Labs have abandoned the Pact. The conventional wisdom among dogs today is that humans are beyond hope, not worth saving from their own destructive behavior.

            Prince, his own Family teetering toward disintegration, is struggling against this outlook, rising in the process to heroic deeds beyond even the self-sacrificial norms of his own noble breed. Aside from the fact that Haig draws the line too narrowly—in his scheme of things our 11-year-old boxer is definitely a Lab—there is just too much truth in his conceit to ignore.

            Dogs do talk to each other. I’ve witnessed that. They also talk to cats and probably squirrels, too, as Haig has written. And they try to talk to us. But human beings are most likely the only creatures in Nature left out of the common, ongoing conversation.

            This underlying but stark picture of us, shut off from what’s really going on all around us, hit me like an epiphany. If animals have all manner of communication skills we humans don’t recognize or understand, it turns our collective human world view upside-down.

            Ongoing scientific research, meanwhile, has confirmed that some animals may be able to communicate at more sophisticated levels than humans have generally assumed. They just don’t do it in spoken language but in a wide variety of sounds, signals, and sense impressions human beings have no awareness or knowledge of.

            Haig makes that proposition believable—that our pets and other small animals are pretty much aware of everything we do and frequently talk among themselves about our foibles and our blunders. In the process he captures a picture of our human-centered world that is none too flattering yet all too human. At the least, he clearly knows dogs and cats very well.

            I recommend taking it seriously. Observe your pets, notice the thoughts that come into your mind. Are they yours? Especially notice how often your dog seems to understand what you’re saying, beyond “Sit,” “Come here!” “Get down!” and “Shut up!”

            Also, become aware of what’s happening at those times when your pet turns its backs on you and walks away.

            I’m a Johnny-Come-Lately to Haig’s work, and I don’t know what elf or fairy brought this particular book to my home or what spirit now compels me to write about it. But sooner or later the vision will go global, as I understand Brad Pitt’s film company has bought the movie rights. Until then, if you have compassion for animals I think you’ll find the print version of The Labrador Pact entertaining, gripping, and—yes—sobering.

Guns and Bombs

Is America United Yet?

             Explosive devices —guns and terrorist bombs—seized the headlines last week, which to astrologers was no surprise but to the rest of us cause for a wide range of emotions. Guns particularly seem to fire people up on both sides, for and against more controls. But I have a funny feeling the Boston Marathon bombs may end up having the most far-flung and potentially damaging effects upon what’s left of our democratic culture.

            First, the astrology, for it reveals all.
            The bombings happened the same week as the U.S. Senate jettisoned even the most tepid rules for managing gun sales. That week the Sun and Mars, both ruled by Fire, conjoined at exactly the same degree in the hot-blooded sign of Aries. That explosive conjunction is the climax of a month of planets crowding the sign of the impetuous warrior, of which Mars is the ruling planet. Among those planets, Venus moved into Taurus on April 15, cooling down tempestuous relationship issues, while Sun and Mars, having done their damage, joined her in Taurus on April 19 and 20 respectively.
            But Mercury, planet of mental formations, remains in Aries, while Uranus, planet of sudden shocks, will be there for several more years. So from the astrological point of view the fireworks are most likely to continue for some time to come.
           But why? What’s behind the emotionalism of the gun issue? What kind of mind would plot to blow up a bomb in a crowd?

—————

            Begin with the understanding that America is now and always has been a violent nation. It’s part of the tradition passed onto us by our parents, our relatives, our society, and our history. In so many ways we’ve yet to catch up with the present. We’re no longer living on a resource-rich frontier where every man—and woman, too—packs a gun. Yet apparently today guns are one of the accessories of the American Dream. The more powerful the gun, the better chance of keeping what you have (or getting what you want).

            That’s discouraging to me. I support stronger gun control laws, not because they will necessarily prevent horrific events but because they define our national interest and intent to curb those events.
            So I wonder what the emotionalism is all about. It seems to go beyond Second Amendment rights. It’s more primal than any law.
            I remember my own fascination with guns when I was a kid in the 1940s and early ‘50s. My father didn’t own one and my mother was anti-gun, so, influenced by the old western movies on television then, I played with cap guns and practiced my fast draw in the mirror. Eventually, it seems, I outgrew that because guns didn’t touch me again until the early 1970s, when I found myself living in a commune with rural hippies who were also avid hunters.
            There I learned about rifles—twenty-twos for beginners, double-barrel shot guns for small game, and thirty-thirties for deer. That was the extent of the average country arsenal back in 1972. For my part I tried hunting a few times but never took to it. Never shot anything, either.
            But I tried to shoot a puppy once. She was having fits, like epilepsy, and my hunter brothers, rightly claiming more experience with country ways, convinced me she had to be shot. Since her mother was my dog, I felt the responsibility. It was during a blizzard. I took the shot gun outside to find the pup. She was nested under the porch. I crawled under on my belly and, not three feet from her, took aim and pulled the trigger.
            Somehow I missed. But that puppy screamed at me in shock and outrage such as I’ve never experienced in this world. And I realized I’d made a terrible mistake. I was no killer. Whatever made me think I could be?
            Someone else had to take over, and he efficiently dispatched the puppy. Later, we all realized, she probably didn’t need to be killed. It was a group freak-out.
            I don’t think I’ve fired a gun since. All I can think of when I think of guns is that little puppy, whose trust I had betrayed, screaming at me.

—————

           Firearms are for self-defense, primarily. Target practice is to develop an aim good enough that you won’t miss. In fact, using a gun is a somewhat specialized skill. To be good with a gun is of high value.
            But, as gun-control people keep saying, guns are, first and foremost, for wounding, maiming, and killing other creatures, including human beings. I’ve seen no convincing pro-gun argument which can refute that point.
            It seems, then, that people don’t want to give up their guns because having them makes them feel safe, or at least safer, than not having them. Guns are assurance against enemies, known and unknown.
            Will I one day wish I had a gun? Or regret that I didn’t? I can’t be sure. I have the capacity for violence in me, but I don’t want to cultivate it. Owning a gun would put an instrument of death in my hands. It would change my relationship with the world around me.
            Personally, I wish there were no guns on Earth. But I live in a democracy in which individuals are guaranteed the right to keep and bear arms. It’s like death and taxes. Fair enough.
            But must I abandon my soul’s vision of a prosperous world some day at peace? I can’t see that. What I can see is that withdrawal from the American addiction to guns can’t be legislated. It must be voluntary or peace will never come. There will always be war.

—————

             Meanwhile, the terrorist attack on the Boston Marathon, widely and appropriately lamented, seems an unrelated event, as if the Senate’s refusal to deal with gun violence has nothing to do with it. But to me they are both on the same side of things. Demanding the absolute right for private citizens to bear arms, including military-style weapons, shelters the same intent to kill as the terrorists who set off those Boston bombs. They just have different targets.
            As I write this, the story coming from Boston is that both brothers sought revenge for American deeds and misdeeds in the Muslim countries of Iraq and Afghanistan. There are a large number of people, at home and abroad and including myself, who think America broke its own rules when we went to war with the Muslim world. Now it’s leaking out that there are American special forces in half a dozen or more countries, a kind of world war being fought in secret. Meanwhile, drones fly overhead, spying on populations below and, with a push of a button back in the U.S., killing suspected terrorists and any civilians who happen to be in the neighborhood.
            Twelve years of this has radicalized many Muslims. As those years went by, does it surprise anyone that, sooner or later, something like the Boston Marathon bombings would happen?
            We are a world at war again, and true to a prediction of Hopi Indian elders many years ago, this one is coming to us. And, as it’s always been, the majority of us who don’t want war are going to pay the price. The last resort of population control—after plague, drought, and famine—is war.
            You can have war without guns. But you can’t have guns without war.

            Peace.