Death

It is Memorial Day, so it's not surprising that I'm thinking about DEATH. I'm thinking about the 800 U.S. soldiers who died in vain for Bush's Holy War. It grieves me deeply, more than you will ever know. Each morning I turn on National Public Radio to learn about how many more Americans have been wasted. I feel the pain of their families. I grieve, and I grieve, and I grieve. It is necessary and noble to fight and die in the defense of your country. But that's not what this war is about. It is a political war, based on oil, or maybe based on payback, or maybe based on a right-wing political principal. But nonetheless, Congress did not declare war, and the United Nations did not condone it. Thus, it is an illegal, dirty war. It is George W. Bush's war.

So, getting back to the subject of death. What amazes me most about death is the incredible wisdom and knowledge that one acquires is all gone at the point of dying. My father was a pilot and he had become a nationally known expert on restoring T-28 trainer aircraft. People from around the world would call to ask him questions. As he lay on his death bead, I commented on how it was such a waste to die with all that knowledge. He replied that "you can't take it with you."

The moral is that we must all do a better job of transferring the knowledge we gain to future generations. If we do not share our wisdom, it evaporates the moment our heart stops beating, and the things we learn are in vain. It is important to share what we have learned with our children and other young people. I love it when my mom tells me the "when I was a little girl" stories. I could listen to them forever. As for my dad, he died in 1994 from cancer, and I believe he had so much more to transfer that he never did.

TRANSFER — that is something we must all do, before it is to late. Talk to young people, keep a blog, and SHARE! Don't take your wisdom to the grave. Maybe humanity would do a better job of maturing if we did a better job of transferring — so that young people won't have to relearn the same hard knocks that we went through.

Talk to your kids, your nieces, and nephews. First, tell them you love them deeply, and then share your experiences. Download your wisdom to the next generation. This is the justification for your existence. Download, man, download!

Then once you've dumped the lessons and knowledge inside your head, you can die in total peace and happiness. Your mission and job on Mother Earth has been completed, and you can enjoy the calm peace that enters your heart.

Oh, and one last thing. A lot of times young people will ACT like they aren't listening, but they really are. If you get a "yeah, yeah, right" from your son or daughter, don't worry, just keep on talking.

God bless.

Candidates Aim To Pervert Your Mind

Moan ... today I received the first piece of campaign literature for the 2004 campaign season, no doubt paid for by Big Oil money.

Now, before we get into all the political ruckus, allow me to issue a word of warning: When politicians tell you they won't raise taxes, what they are really saying is that they are going to run our country deeper into debt. In effect, they are going to pass on the debt to your children, or it may hit you when you retire.

I'm sure there were hundreds of people who received the same mailing and said, "Golly, this Robert Lamutt guy ain't going to raise our taxes. That sounds like a good idea. I'm going to vote for him!"

Then, things got worse. This Lamutt brochure had big photos of Newt Gingrich, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush. Now WHY would Lamutt want his picture beside someone like Newt Gingrich?? Come on, did we forget about Mr. Divorce Your Sick Wife?

The sad truth is that these candidates are bankrolled by special interest groups, they put a veil of religion over them to gain more voters, and they scream "no taxes" because they know it resonates with the public. It is called the Republican Get-Me-Elected model, which preys on ignorance, and well, it works.

Interestingly, these same politicians also want a strong defense, so who is going to pay for all their bunker busters, cluster bombs, drones, stealth planes, and other horrid weapons? YOUR CHILDREN ARE of course. Or you may hit retirement and find Social Security broke, and the whole damn government broke. By then Lamutt will have served his Special Interest contributors and will be on a golf course while you're sleeping in a cardboard box.

Now, I am NOT advocating a tax increase, but I am a strong supporter of a Balanced Budget Amendment. That means we either have to cut spending or raise taxes. Amazingly, we currently have a President who cuts taxes and then drags us into debt by invading countries, messing them up, and then rebuilding them. This isn't tinker toys we're talking about — it's our future.

Hey, I told you I was cynical. In fact, I'm too much of a cynical wretch to be of much good in this world, so I will write a book, get rich, and hide away in a coastal village.

Passion

For us writers, everything in life is a drama - something to record on paper. And there's no better literary fodder than falling in love. It especially gets better when the love is one-way, in total vain, with no chance of winning. There is something beautiful and noble about that.

So there I was, a young junior in college, so totally obsessed with a girl I met in economics class. I was caught in her web, in total vain. From January 1981 to May 1982, it was up and down, on again off again, but mostly down. On May 26, 1982 it was WAY down. I was totally devastated — my heart had been ripped right out of my chest. I never recovered and never will, although I married someone else the next year. The pain never goes away, and maybe I don't want it to. Maybe I thrive on those emotions — not the love, but the noble idea of the suffering. I am the knight who would never get the damsel.

I thought of it like Erwin Rommel, the Desert Fox, trying to outmaneuver and outflank, and trying to win. I tried everything to make her mine. I played hard to get (that always works on TV), I dated others, I was coy, I was a friend, I was a brother, I was a martyr.

And she would torture me. Just when I thought I was over it and could move on, she would call me at work or at a friend's house. She would leave notes on my car. I would run into her. Yes, you guessed it, she was the cat and she played with my heart until it died.

I later learned that my friend Jamie and several other guys were victims, probably all at once. To escape the pain, I played video games like Space Invaders and Caligula for hours.

Then there was more mental trauma. I started going to her church where they spoke in tongues and used religion like cocaine. It was weird, but for her I would do it.

Dangling ever close, then so far away. It really can do permanent mental damage. All the traumas in life, the loss of loved ones, near-death experiences — those are nothing. It's the lost love that tears you apart.

It was May 26, 1982 and for hours, I stared at the phone waiting for her to call. This time I was not going to call her — I had to get over this madness. So, I waited for hours and the phone never rang. I waited the next day, and then the next, and I soon realized that she was never going to call. It was good in a way, but it was bad because it hurt. Five months earlier I was thinking of marriage, but the whole thing unraveled. No amount of meticulous planning could save it.

I had always believed that if you wanted something bad enough, you could get it. I was wrong. I believed if you prayed hard enough, you would get it (of course, it's not fair to ask God to make someone fall in love with you - that's Cupid's job).

It took me seven months to recover. One day in October 1982 I saw her car in traffic — I recognized the rainbow decal on her back window. That just sunk me into a deep depression. By December I was over it and began to move on with my life. What a learning experience! If we only had the same passion for our ideals that we have for our love affairs, I think things would be much better.







Ode to the Phone That Never Rang

The song that got me through it:
Someone Save My Life Tonight, Elton John
Album: Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy

It’s four o’clock in the morning,
Damn it listen to me good.
I’m sleeping with myself tonight
Saved in time, thank God my music’s still alive.

Afghanistan: The Vicious Circle of Violence

There I was, a sophomore in college. The Soviet Union had just invaded Afghanistan and President Jimmy Carter reinstituted the draft. I had the honor of joining the first wave of young men to sign up for the Selective Service. I showed up at the Post Office to sign up, and ran into a friend. As we filled out the paper, a leader from our church saw us and said, "You boys should be proud?"

"Proud?" I was about to hide in caves and shoot at Soviet helicopters. "PROUD?" Well, the U.S. did not send troops, but they did sent everything else.

As the war progressed, I became outraged at the brutal Soviet tactics and a major supporter of the Afghan Mujahadeen. I was especially sickened when I learned the Soviets were gassing the guerilla fighters. I was a newspaper reporter then, and wrote a stinging editorial in the newspaper. I was helping the resistance in my own little way (and the CIA was funneling them over $2 billion in arms and supplies).

The neat thing about being a newspaper reporter is that you can get into places where the public never could. One day I learned that representatives of the Mujahadeen were coming to town as part of their national tour to raise support for the resistance. I had this crazy idea that I would go to their event and give them words of encouragement. That's how I would do my part.

I used my newspaper credentials to get into the reception and I began chatting with them, telling them how much I admired what they were doing. They were only half listening to me and were more interested in finding important U.S. officials. Suddenly, Congressman Larry McDonald came into the room and they cut me off and gathered around him. They knew that Rep. McDonald was a tough, right-wing Commie-basher, and they wanted his support. I continued to hang out with them as they made their pitch to the Congressman. They probably wondered who the heck I was.

What an irony that just a few months later Rep. McDonald was killed by a Soviet missile in the infamous South Korean airline disaster.

But there were more ironies to come. After 10 years of brutal war and horrible devastation, the Red Army left Afghanistan in defeat. And all those CIA financed and trained freedom fighters were suddenly out of work. Today, they have found new work as terrorists. Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of 9/11, and Abu Musab al-Zarqaw, the brute who beheaded an American on videotape, were both Afghanistan jihad fighters.

The moral of this story is that violence begats violence. Once the downward spiral begins, there seems to be no end. In 1980, those atheist Soviets were rolling into Afghanistan, and Holy War was declared against them. It was the god-believing fighting the godless, with help from the United States. Now, 24 years later, the so-called god-believing are fighting those who supposedly believe in the wrong god. The religious element only serves to whip up the fervor, but the violence remains a constant.

That is why I, most regretfully, oppose the death penalty. The cycle of violence has to end somewhere. And when we scream out in horror against today's bloodthirsty terrorists, remember that it was Russian aggression that started it, and U.S. dollars that fueled it. Afghanistan became just another Cold War proxy battle, and today the world's only remaining superpower is reaping what it has sown.