We are in danger in America.  We need to give people some basic orientation and instruction about historical accuracy and objective journalism.  This would require a huge infusion of cash and nationwide honesty.  A national program of this scope would require immense amounts of capital. [Attention: Bill Gates and Warren Buffet].  If this does not happen, our democracy is in serious jeopardy.

If we do not get some sort of objective orientation of this sort, more and more Americans will draw their conclusions of great importance based on the extreme distortions of the likes of Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity, Murdoch, FOX, the Washington Times, etc.  The stories told by the extreme right-wingers are being taken as accurate information and historical fact.  In a democracy this is very dangerous.  Adherence to human rights and justice are dependent on the populous having reliable information.  In today's mass media, distortions and lies are receiving a bigger piece of the media pie because the owners of the media have their own selfish agenda (and it is not to have the populace be informed accurately about drugs, health care, the military, the budgets, etc.).  And dispensing national distortions is open to this sort of marketing as never before.  Shades of Goebbels and the Nazis.

All this distortion of news, history, and objectivity also garners huge audiences and ratings.

It is easy to discern why people are drawn to media stories that portray outrageous fears and exaggerated portrayals, and do it as fiction masquerading as truth.  One only has to recall what happened when Orson Welles and the Mercury Theatre broadcast "War of the Worlds" nationally.  This fictional "news" story of a Martian invasion of the U.S. caused panic and even some suicides.

More comic books and pulp fiction are sold each year than classical literature.  More vampire and UFO movies pack the cinema than historical documentaries.  The exaggerations of Rush, Beck and Murdoch are the result of refining the Orson Welles portrayal of the 1930s.  Hate and sensational media are presented interspersed with what today passes for responsible journalism.  FOX even uses promotional phrases about its news "objectivity."  Amazing.  But people buy it and believe it far too often.  Pornography outsells history.  No big surprise there.

This has been going on so long that today it is almost impossible to have an intelligent discussion on any subject of importance.  Knowing the facts is considered beside the point.  Showing how history proves otherwise than these anti-intellectual rants only brings them to say something like, "Oh, don't drag up the past!"  That statement is akin to "Don't confuse things with the facts!"  Ignoring or being critical of historical fact drives this graduate historian up the wall.  A democracy cannot exist very long if this is the "perspective" of the descendants of the KKK, Know-Nothing, John Birch, Joseph McCarthy, House UnAmerican Activities Committee, Father Coughlin's hate radio, Pat Robertson imploring the U.S. to covertly kill the elected leader of Venezuela, Lindbergh and American First, Ford's support of Hitler, DuPont scheming to overthrow the elected government in the U.S., FOX, Limbaugh, Beck,  ad infinitum.  Today's media, even mainstream media, has no idea what objective journalism is.  Today's TV news anchors know little of history.  And many of today's "news" people have a definite political bent that they think is salved or corrected by having one liberal and one conservative on the show.  Nonsense. Are there no objective journalists left?

We like to teach American history as though we have been a nation that prides itself on emancipation.  We like to preceive ourselves as liberators and freedom providers.  Let's pause and reflect on how the United States of America has been so reluctant in granting "others" emancipation and freedom.

From the time European explorers and settlers arrived in what would become the United States, our treatment of Native Americans [many prefer the term American Indians] has been atrocious.  Mistreatment of American Indians continues to this day, but we simply destroyed these cultures, killed off huge parts of their population, subjected them to disease, and imprisoned them on inhospitalbe reservations.  There has been almost no attempt to understand them or work with them to show respect for their cultures, habits, religions, way of living, etc.  It is a horrible chapter in our history.

From the beginning of colonial America there has always been a predisposition to give special favors and recognition to northern Europeans.  Scandinavians, Germans, English, etc. have not had to overcome some of the discrimination that has been faced by cultures from Spain, Italy, Greece, Portugal, Slavic people, etc.  The Irish came after English and German culture had secured itself in our basic thoughts, and thus those from Erin had to struggle upon reaching our shores.  Germans, for example, often arrived with no assets, but they were accepted openly in much of what would become the USA.  Irish had a tougher climb to acceptance.  Spanish-speaking people were not accepted, and we actually stole much of what we now call the United States from Mexico.

The Jews often arrived destitute from Europe.  They faced not only economic hardships, they faced anti-Semitism.  Jews still face overt and covert discrimination in the U.S.  Bigots are disgruntled by this because they like to simply categorize "other" people as lazy, on the dole, unclean, etc.  But Jews with very little were able to become successful.  From Napolean's time when Jews were given some freedom in Europe, these people succeeded against great odds.  They did so in Europe during the centuries of oppression as well.

African-Americans faced a special bigotry.  Not only did their skin become a mark that bigots used to practice horrible discrimination, the black peoples in the U.S. had the inhuman experience of actually being owned by whites.  To say there is still discrimination in the U.S. against blacks is to state the obvious.  The election of Barack Obama was an anomaly brought about by a huge infusion of young voters and independent voters outside the mainstream of prejudicial America.  Recent elections show what happens when the young and minorities do not turn out in such large percentages.  People who hold onto prejudice and have fundamental mythologies vote in large percentages, as do the "haves" in our society who want to hold on tightly to their materials and not share them with anybody.  This is in many ways the biggest example that breaks the myth of America the free, America the democracy, America for everybody.

Asian Americans have been mistreated in the U.S. throughout our history.  Chinese "coolies" built our railroads and lived in squalor.  Prejudice has been rampant for Asians.  Japanese-American internment camps were a blatant evidence of bigotry.  Today's Laotians, Hmong, and Vietnamese face daily bigotry.

Today we have become quite focused on Latin-Americans who are in our midst.  Not part of the northern, white European cultures, they are expected to jump through hoops never before required of other European cultures and their descendants.  Prejudice rears its ugly face when it comes to Latinos who reside here.  Suddenly we set up special barriers that most Americans' descendants never faced.  We have thought of building a wall along the Mexican-U.S. border, but if we build a ten foot fence, there are twelve foot ladders.  This drives many people bonkers.

Do I write this because I am anti-American?  I should not have to prove my American loyalty.  But to deny our discrimation and bigotry is a lie that we never fully confront.  Too many Americans have been given special favors because they are white, or they inherited estates from their parents, or did not have to be confronted with racial or ethnic bigotry, etc.  And these fortunate people want to deny this to others.  THAT to me is definitely un-American.  Equality is a part of the America of freedom.  Read the Declaration of Independence, the preamble to the U.S. Constitution, the Emancipation Proclamation, and other key documents in our nation's history.  If, after you read them, you still hold onto the same prejudicial mindset, then you have personal problems that transcend history. 

As we in America, western Europe, and most places outside of Germany make a big celebration about the dismantling of the infamous Berlin Wall in 1989, I reflect on my personal experiences in Berlin...

I visited West Berlin several times in the early 1960s.  I had lunch in the newspaper chain Springer building right on the wall.  Several stories above the ground I could see the East Germans with their sub-machine guns peering out from their guard huts and German Shepherd dogs roaming up and down "no-man's land" between East Berlin and the Wall.   I spoke at a university in West Berlin.  I had lunch at  a stop on the commuter train, in a station-hut called Oncle Tom's Cabin.  I met with Gunter Grass, Germany's most famous author of the 20th century.  I taped an interview with Klaus-Schutz, the mayor of West Berlin.  And I simply roamed the city.  I was the guest at the Deutsche Oper to see "Der Rosenkavalier."  However I had a dangerous and threatening meeting also...

One night, a friend of mine took me to a secret meeting with members of the Bader-Meinhoff Gang.  They had been terrorists in West Berlin, had blown up buildings, killed innocent citizens, and were feared as communist crazies.  Sitting in a living room in a building that I had no way of  knowing its location, I was originally greeted with respect and cordiality.  As the evening progressed and I defended democracy, social democracy, the U.S., etc., things turned quickly confrontational.  At this point I was not certain that I would ever leave that living room alive.  But I stuck to my guns about my political-social-economic beliefs.  I heaved a sigh of relief when I left that meeting and got into a cab late at night with my friend.

West Berlin at that time still showed evidence of the destruction from the end of World War II.  The intense bombing had destroyed 80% of Berlin.  Berlin was divided up after the War into four zones: Russian [East Berlin], French, British, and American.  On my visits I landed at Templehopf Airport in the American sector.  Looking across the Wall I could see a gray, dismal East Berlin, while West Berlin was starting to show very lively signs of exciting night life, bustling businesses, and people walking the streets openly in much better clothing than East Germans had.  The German government in Bonn subsidized flights for West Berliners so they could occasionally get away from the ever-present danger that the Russians and East Germans might come blitzkrieging into West Berlin and take it over.  So one could, for example, get a round trip flight from West Berlin to Hamburg for about twenty-eight dollars.  On one of my trips out of West Berlin I took the train to Kassel in West Germany where the man who was my college roommate in my freshman year lived.  So I had a good look at East Germany as we chugged along through the communist countryside.  It was bleak.

The number one reason the Berlin Wall came down in 1989 and not 1979 or 1999 was the man who came to power in the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorvachev.  He allowed the opening of East Germany, and the dismantling of the Wall.  He never expected things to move as quickly as they did, but he kept the USSR from intervening.  That was a tremendous change in Moscow.  And Gorbachev himself evolved as a social democrat.  No military might, no tanks, no bombing, not anything like that caused the Wall to come down.  It came down because Gorbachev allowed it to come down. 

Sitting alone in a rehab center is a military veteran.  It is not pertinent to know his/her political perspective.  Age, gender, color, ethnicity, religion have little bearing on how or why he/she needs you.

What kind of education or skill is required of you?  A warm hand and humane voice will do.

Visiting a veteran is a marvelous opportunity for you and the vet to learn what friendship is all about.  You may find you can learn to be a good conversation starter.  Or you may learn to be quiet and listen.

You are human, the veteran is human.  Bond as you will, you may truly help each other.

Find a veterans organization or program.  Volunteer.  Present  yourself.  America needs you.

With the decision on the strategy and objectives in Afghanistan to be presented by the Obama administration soon, there can be one thing for certain: he will be criticized no matter what decision he makes.  He inherited a mess in Afghanistan.  To complicate matters, he is receiving mixed signals from leaders who have some experience and understanding of the great importance of his decisions.

General Stanley McChrystal, in charge of the coalition forces in Afghanistan, says: we need 40,000 additional troops or we will lose.

General Karl Eikenberry, current ambassador in Afghanistan and former military leader there: do not send additional troops until President Karsai agrees to clean up the rampant corruption in his administration.

General Colin Powell, former leader of all U.S. troops says to Obama: "take your time" in making your decision [as others, with no military experience, clamor for Obama to make a hasty decision].

Who knows what is the right course of action in Afghanistan?  The Middle East has always been a cauldron.  The European colonialist historical actions in the area and myriad mistakes of the Bush administration have ramped up the hostility toward the U.S. 

The biggest danger by far is the military madness proposed in some circles.  To some, anything in which we exhibit our military might is good; not showing our military might is bad.  This is stupidity to the max.  Have we learned nothing from Vietnam?  As in Vietnam, we are supporting a corrupt regime.  As in Vietnam, everytime we hit a snag we increase our military.  All this does and did was increase the hostility of the Vietnam people who would have voted for Ho Chi Minh with an 80% majority [remember, we promised the Vietnamese a united Vietnam general election and then reneged on it and supported a horrible South Vietnam administration in Saigon].  

Space does not permit me here to offer suggestions regarding possible solutions to the quagmire in Afghanistan.  On our current course we will be tied down there for many years to come with unsatisfactory outcomes.  We have to figure out a way to make concrete, specific, positive things happen in the villages of Afghanistan.  And we have to sit down and discuss things with the tribal representatives in the various regions.  Building roads, providing health care facilities, building schools, giving the people and their leaders other options to make a living than raising opium, etc.   This will help.  But these are oversimplifications.  Lots of cultural, political, economic, and social grunt work needs to be done in the villages, among and for the people.

President Obama is faced with a no-win situation.  We have no business even being in this area of the world in the capacity we now present ourselves.  Our military presence has only made things more complicated, and has increased the possibility that we may have to stay for a long, long time with minimum results.  We had Osama bin Laden trapped in Torah Borah, but the Bush decisions diverted our attention away from that and has created this impossible situation.  The decisions that Obama will openly report will be greeted with heavy-heavy criticism, no matter what he decides.

Being a loyal American, I believe it is important for our democracy to have important issues receive a balanced consideration.  The U.S. media thrives on war photos and coverage.  It is presented as though there is no alternative to the "necessary" war we may be currently waging.  There is rarely a peace alternative offered.  Any hint of a peace alternative is greeted by cries of "traitor" by lots of non-combatants.  Picture, if you will, Rush Limbaugh marching, rifle over his shoulder, in an army uniform.  Please note in the quotes below those especially of U.S. Army generals.

"War, like any other racket, pays high dividends to the very few ... The cost of operations is always transferred to the peoople who do not profit." -General Smedley Butler [Medal of Honor, TWICE!]

"I think that people want peace so much that one of these days government had better get out of their way and let them have it." -President/General Dwight D. Eisenhower

"There never was a time when, in my opinion, some way could not be found to prevent the drawing of the sword." -President/General Ulysses S. Grant

"Today the real test of power is not capacity to make war but capacity to prevent it." -Anne O'Hare McCormick

"War is only a cowardly escape from the problems of peace." -Thomas Mann

"Instead of the government taking over industry when the war broke out, industry took over the government." -Claire Gillis

"Very little is known about the War of 1812 because the Americans lost it." -Eric Nicol

"In the future no one wins a war.  It is true, there are degrees of loss, but no one wins." -Brook Chisholm

"They told me it would disrupt my life less if I got killed sooner." -Joseph Heller

"If we justify war it is because all peoples always justify the traits of which they find themselves possessed." -Ruth Benedict

"WAR HATH NO FURY LIKE A NON-COMBATANT." -C.E. Montague

From the time we are born, we are rarely given an opportunity to search for who we are.  Through no fault of our parents and adult friends, we are herded into certain ways of thinking and acting.  In nations, cultures, and families where there is a deep religious adherence, this formulaic upbringing is most intense.  There are strict pathways to be led down.  There are rules and regulations that are taught as universal truths, even though they may not be.  We are not encouraged to ask who we are as individuals, as unique creations.  We are programmed and never stop to ask ourselves who we are, who is this who now senses this moment, sees that tree, hears that bird, feels that breeze...each of it in the way that only we, as a unique entity, can experience it.  Stop!  Take a look and feel at who we are...who you are.

"Each second we live in a new and unique moment of the Universe, a moment that never was before and will never be again.  And what do we teach our children in school?  We teach them that two and two make four, and that Paris is the capital of France.  When will we also teach them what they are?

"We should say to each of them: do you know what you are?  You are a marvel.  You are unique.  In all the world there is no other child exactly like you.  In the millions of years that have passed there has never been another child like you. 

"And look at your body -- what a wonder it is!  Your legs, your arms, your cunning fingers, the way you move!  You may become a Shakespeare, a Michelangelo, a Beethoven.  You have the capacity for anything.

"Yes, you are a marvel.  And when you grow up, can you then harm another who is, like you, a marvel?  You must cherish one another.  You must work -- we must all work -- to make this world worthy of its children."       -Pablo Casals, the greatest cellist of the 20th century

No matter how great sausage may taste, you don't want to watch it being made.  Some nasty looking "parts" are ground up in the making.  Imagine how horrible sausage would be if we were forced to watch it being made in front of us and its taste outcome was impossible to digest.  Voila!, health care reform.

Our elected members of Congress each consider themselves expert health care reform sausage makers, with expertise in using too much pork.  And some of the Congressional sausage makers have more sinister motives.  These law-makers have as their primary focus to prevent any sausage from being made, good or bad.

Did we elect these bumbling members of Congress to pass meaningful legislation or try to make a horrible tasting sausage that nobody can stomach?  After all, how many of them were professional sausage makers before being elected to Congress?  And how many think it is a good idea to be led by the nose by sausage-making corporate competition in the market?

...capitalists stole the farm.  It was recently reported that the corporations receiving the most national bailout money paid billions of dollars in bonuses just before the bottom fell out.  And some of these capitalists dumped their stock immediately before it crashed because they knew it would happen before the general public did.

Since Ronald Reagan became president there has been a concerted effort by capitalists and their lackies in Congress to de-regulate business and corporations.  What happened is that the U.S. financial corporations sold a national Ponzi scheme to Americans.  And we went on a drunken-sailor spending spree without saving much.  It was made to appear that things would only go up, up, up.  It was nirvana.

The result has been a shift for the U.S., from being a nation built on a strong middle class, to one that has a widening gap between the rich and the poor.  Middle class America, as we knew it, is disappearing.  If you won't work for slave wages, corporations will move overseas.  If you won't give us the tax breaks we demand, there are nations which will give us those breaks.  There is no longer anything that could be labeled "an American corporation."

In western Europe, where there is not the paranoia about socialism as in the U.S., nations have embraced social democracy.  National health insurance is a forgone conclusion, and corporations have been carefully regulated.  Result: private insurance companies are successful, and the economic structure is not in as much danger as in the U.S.  Western Europeans are far healthier than Americans and pay far, far less for health costs.  Europeans have much longer vacations and better retirement benefits.  Europeans are more equal, and studies show they are much happier people than Americans.

It used to be the other way around.  Since Reagan, things for the average American have gotten worse, and Americans are worried about the future.  We have been sold a bill of goods [greed capitalism].

It is silly to suggest the U.S. become a socialist nation.  It is just as silly to ignore the good things about social democracy.  We need therapy as a nation.  Our labeling every attempt to help Americans as socialism is doing us in.  We need to take a cold, hard look at what has happened since greed capitalism took over American practice and dialogue.  Americans deserve a better and more honest approach to serving the average Joe and Jane.  Our fear of the future need not be so accepted.

It appears President Obama will release his basic, long-term plan for Afghanistan in a couple days.  It will probably include the addition of 30,000 to 35,000 military personnel.  It will likely call for President Karzai to make quick and abundant moves to clean up his government.  And it will make some sort of pledges to do more to rebuild the nation, provide more direct help for individuals, and stay the course.

Will this work?  Probably not.  We are still focused on highlighting our military might.  We entered Afghanistan primarily with a military objective.  Big mistake.  And it was compounded by sending inadequate resources and military personnel to carry out  the wrong objectives.  Further compounding the problem was the failure to capture or kill Osama bin Laden when we had him trapped at Torah Borah.  As was his penchant and that of his administrative staffs, President Bush had us strutting around Iraq and Afghanistan like a godsend military power.  This alienated the majority of people.  President Obama was left with a mess, a real mess.

Every military invasion and/or occupation in Afghanistan in the past has failed miserably.   Even the Moslems of the Ottoman Empire failed in Afghanistan.  Even the mighty Soviet Union.  And those two powers were geographically adjacent to Afghanistan; we are half-a-world away.  The British failed, the French failed in the Middle East.  Because of his ignorace of history, George W. Bush went into Afghanistan recklessly and inadequately to even carry out his wrong mission.  Afghanistan was ours for the taking, if we had entered in a more enlightened way.  We could have been there and out with our military.  Instead we will be bogged down for years, and no positive outcome probable.

We need a basic change in our approach.  We need to provide alternatives to the farmers raising poppies for drugs.  We need to help build roads, safe water facilities, schools, jobs, health care, train a national police force and military, rebuild war-torn buildings, encourage the groups already fighting against the Taliban throughout the nation, secure the Pakistan-Afghani border, develop other natural resources, etc.  But the military patriots at home, who never have to make any sacrifices, will yell for more military firepower.  Perhaps Congressman David Obey has it right: if these non-combatant patriots want to hide back home and never face any sacrifice themselves, let them pay for it.  The military tax-and-spend conservatives should therefore support increased taxes to pay for their misguided war.

Bill Clinton: The Trailer Park Years

Dick Cheney: The Comedy Central Years

George W. Bush: The Mensa Years

Jimmy Carter: The Call-Girl Years

Billy Carter: The Emily Post Years

Newt Gingrich: 1990s, The Puberty Years

Donald Rumsfeld: The P.R. Years

Barack Obama: The Swaddling Clothes Years on the Nile

Michelle Obama: The Seamstress Years

Barbara Bush: The Shy Years

Hillary Clinton: The Estee Lauder Years

Ronald Reagan: The Pre-Astrology Years

John Ashcroft: The Naked Truth

Nancy Reagan: The Weight-Lifting Years

Sarah Palin: Looking Across the Bering Sea to Nova Scotia