The new world order

America is getting another geography lesson this week. The change of ownership of the management of major U.S. seaports to a company headquartered in Dubai, United Arab Emirates had many of us rushing to our world atlases. Pundits, semi-pundits, pundit wannabes, politicians, politician wannabes - all pretended to know where Dubai is, where the United Arab Emirates is, and the nature of the country’s culture and institutions. If you happen to not be one of these self-styled experts, a map of the Mideast can be seen here. I had to do a bit of Googling just to find out that Dubai is a city, and the United Arab Emirates is a country, and I suspect that these various experts are in no better level of expertise.

The fear that is being expressed and promoted is that the Dubai management company will pave the way for terrorists to enter the United States. This is a valid concern, in a very crude sense: Ugh! Dubai is Arab city. Arabs attack World Trade Center. Must stop Arabs. If your view of Arabs goes no farther than calling them "rag-heads," or "diaper-heads," then you are indeed threatened. Threatened by people who know how to protect themselves from the desert sun. That’s like being threatened by people who know when to go to the bathroom, and what to do when they get there. In other words, threatened by anyone else.

What this attitude presumes is several fictions. First, and most overarching, is that the United States of America is threatened by "terrorists." By definition, those who practice "terrorism" do it as a way of life, a profession in a way, an "ism" by which they derive their sense of self-worth and contribution to society. There is no content to the terrorists’ belief system other than to kill and scare people, create mayhem, and fulfill their "hatred of freedom." What Osama bin Laden has said repeatedly is that the "Infidels" - the Americans - should get out of Saudi Arabia, and stop sponsoring the oppression of the Palestinian people. Whether you agree with his demands or not, if you do not recognize that these are the issues on which the "terrorism" is perpetrated, then you have other agendas, and will only support incompetent and hypocritical "solutions."

Because the Bush crime family has promoted this fiction for almost five years, they are now experiencing the come-around of their go-around. They have boxed themselves in by characterizing the September 11, 2001 attacks so simplistically, and purely for propaganda purposes. The poor, poor Bush crime family. This is only the beginning of its reaping.

Just for a little reality check, the September 11 hijackers, if indeed what happened is what we have been told happened, were highly dedicated soldiers for a cause, however misguided. The cause itself, radical Sunni Islam, though deluded, has its real source in other grievances. The European powers have meddled in the Mideast for a long time, most acutely in the past 100 years or so. Kingdoms have been overthrown and created, dictatorships have been installed, royal families have been created, countries have been formed from thin air, it seems, and resources have been seized.

Because the dynamics of human interaction do not tend to obey the naïve predictions of the rich and powerful, the actions and attitudes of people often manifest in surprising and troubling ways. Most immediately, people in conquered "nations" then become subjects of the conqueror, and gradually travel to and become citizens of the conquering power. All the European powers, as well as the U.S., have large Arab, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, and numerous other ethnic populations. Most retain contact with their home "countries." If you don’t like all these "others," don’t mess with them - don’t set up dictatorships, don’t conquer them, don’t subvert their governments and way of life. Treat them as equal human beings.

In the case of the Bush crime family, their interactions around the world bear special care and scrutiny, because most people on the planet are not criminals, so the BCF's activities have an asymmetrical quality: criminals hustling and/or doing harm to non-criminals.

A perfect example will manifest in the coming days, as the involvement of the Carlyle Group in the Dubai deal will become clearer. Among the Carlyle group's members are former president George H.W. Bush, former British Prime Minister John Major, former Secretary of State James Baker, and former Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci. For bipartisan balance, Alice Albright, the daughter of former Secretary of State under Bill Clinton, Madeleine Albright, is also a member. Clinton's former Chief of Staff, Mack McLarty, is a member.

Another fiction, also promoted by the Bush crime family, is that the "United States" is an entity that exists as a holistic unit - that its land, citizenry, government, and business infrastructure are all woven together in a seamless web, part and whole interconnected to provide the maximum good for the maximum number of people.

Anyone who "believes" this silliness is either mentally challenged or complicit in the Bush crime family’s overall perfidy. In other words, the clueless and the corrupt. What "nationhood" amounts to in this day and age is a ruse to generate enough support to have a military capacity, much like the "muscle" of a criminal gang. The Iraq war is a good case in point. The brave soldiers who have fought and died there are beginning to realize that they have been played for suckers, conditioned to believe that they are fighting for "freedom," to stop "terrorism," to avenge the September 11 attacks, and to stop our former ally Saddam Hussein from using his imaginary weapons of mass destruction on us.

By cleverly manipulating public fears and anger, the Bush crime family has been able to invade two countries, enact a system of torture and unlawful imprisonment, violate the U.S. Constitution with a domestic spying capacity, and enrich its friends and supporters through crony profiteering contracts in Iraq, and domestically in the states bordered by the Gulf of Mexico.

The greatest fiction, interconnected with the fiction of nationhood, is that in the modern world of multinational capitalism, "companies," or "corporations," are entities of nations, with their loyalties identical to the interests of the nations in which they are based. As the Dubai purchase is showing, the real loyalty in today’s economic world is to money. For whatever reason, the British company that "owns" the operation of the U.S. seaports chose to sell their interest to the Dubai Ports World conglomerate.

The new Arab owners are not the dispossessed, discontented masses of the Arab world. They’re a bunch of rich guys. They are part of the ruling elite of the United Arab Emirates. Several of them are likely to be emirs. Royalty. Their interest is in having more money and status than they already have. It’s never enough for rich people. By owning the port operations, they are declaring their faith and support for the health of the American economy. As the economy of the United States thrives, they thrive.

So along with the geography lesson, "Americans" would do well to study the nature of the modern world economic juggernaut. You are right to have fears, but fear what is actually going on. On a worldwide scale, modern industrial capitalism is about the rich becoming richer, about 99-plus percent of the people on this planet being held hostage to the whims of the rich, about destruction of the planet’s ecosystem, and about the spread of military mayhem as both a diversion and a tool of real terrorism.

This is actually a time of great promise and opportunity. As the uproar over the Dubai purchase is showing, a criminal enterprise will reap what it sows in surprising and comical ways. Indeed, it’s all downhill from now on for the Bush crime family. Dick Cheney is now finished, thanks to his habits of lying, secrecy, arrogance, and contempt for the law. Bush, equally dishonest, secretive, arrogant, and contemptuous of the law, is pretty much on his own. His Rasputin, Karl Rove, is only capable of criminal schemes, and his pending schemes will only dig Bush in deeper.

The important thing to keep in mind is that the current world economic order has to be changed, and for the better. If we don’t start talking about the order we would like to have, our only option is a deepening of the chaos, planetary destruction, and maldistribution of resources that we now have.

A hunting story

I almost shot a man while hunting.

I was 14, and it was my first time hunting with a loaded shotgun. I had been on several hunts with my father before, but was not allowed to carry a gun.

My dad bought a part-ownership in a duck hunting club near Stuttgart, Arkansas, the "duck hunting capital of the world." The way they hunt ducks down there is to flood a woods in the fall, and walk out to an opening in the woods in hip boots or waders. The water is usually one-to-two feet deep. Each hunter finds a tree to stand next to, and someone skilled enough to call ducks does the calling. Nearly everyone in the Stuttgart area can call ducks, and they have a contest every year to determine who is the best. My dad was almost as good as the Arkansas callers, so he called along with them.

I was trained very strictly about gun safety by my father. Treat every gun as loaded, only point at what you intend to shoot, keep the safety on until you are ready to shoot, keep your finger off the trigger except when shooting, and don't load the gun until you are where you are going to shoot.

What my father didn't teach me about is the adrenaline boost you get when it's finally time to shoot. The hunting group gathered in a rough semicircle around the "shootin' hole," and waited for the ducks to start flying. The callers start calling at sunrise, and the ducks are pretty wary, having been shot at, probably several times by the time they have migrated south to Arkansas.

A good caller can see ducks from pretty far away, and starts "working" them immediately, using the "long call," the "feed call," the "mating call," and the "chuckle." In other words, "Plenty of food and sex down here! Come on down!" One thing I really enjoyed was how the callers would slosh one foot in the water to simulate a duck swimming. They were artists, timing everything, with more silence than calling.

That first hour a flock of about 30 ducks showed up. The calling took a long time, with the ducks circling around for what seemed like an eternity. I stood still, afraid to move, mostly because I didn't want to ruin it for everyone else, but got increasingly excited about shooting my first duck. Finally the ducks started to "light." The wings go up and the legs go down as they settle gracefully onto the water. Someone yelled not to shoot, to let the rest of them come in, and we'll shoot these ones on the way up. In those days the limits were high, around 12 ducks per shooter, and we all stood a chance of getting four or five from this one flock.

When the last of the ducks started lighting, all hell broke loose, shooting from every direction, it seemed. I shot one duck that was about 20 feet away, and then followed another through the trees, bearing down for a good shot.

The duck swerved down, and I followed, and shot, just above the head of one of the Arkansas hunters. In the confusion, I think he had no idea of how close I came to shooting him. I told him about it afterward, and he was not pleased, but only gave me a serious look. A serious look in Arkansas is plenty good enough.

This was my first great lesson in hunting, and has stayed with me ever since. I gave hunting up for good three decades ago, but I could go out today if I wanted to, and call my own ducks and shoot them just like I never left the sport. I still have my dad's "Ditto" duck call, or as they say in Arkansas, "Dit-toe."

I quit because I got tired of killing. The thrill was gone, as B.B. King would say, and it felt like animal cruelty, for me, at least. I also became a vegetarian that fall, so I had no plans for eating any more ducks. I miss it sometimes, and especially miss my dad's duck feasts. He was a great cook, and really had a way with ducks. He cooked with wine, and any restaurant would have a hard time doing better. I even miss picking out the bits of shot while eating, a constant part of the meal.

One of the ethical principles of hunting is that you eat everything you kill. What didn't get cooked and eaten in the "clubhouse" was either given to the Arkansas hunters or packed in dry ice and brought home. If I remember right, the limit per vehicle exiting the state was 20, enough to tide us over until the next hunting season. In those days our Arkansas friends depended on duck hunting to get through the winter, and they appreciated the extra food.

The reason I am bringing all this up, of course, is the shooting in Texas by the Vice President of the United States, Dick Cheney. By way of compare and contrast, I think I can shed a bit of light.

Dick Cheney is not 14. He is an "experienced" "hunter." Both "experienced" and "hunter" belong in quotes because it is questionable that his experience is meaningful, and it is also questionable whether he actually ever hunted.

Cheney goes on "canned" hunts, where the game is pen-raised, relatively tame, and planted or "stocked" in fields. He also is driven from stock position to stock position, where the "game" sits unknowing and confused. In normal hunting a group of hunters walks a line horizontal to the direction of the hunt, and typically uses trained bird dogs.

My dad raised champion German Shorthaired Pointers, and they would "work" the brush, covering the field ahead of the group in a back-and-forth progression. It adds greatly to the joy and quality of the hunt to skillfully command a good dog (Molly and Sport, that was for you. Their mother was Helga Glucklich Jaeger T, our dog; their father, the renowned Windy Hill Prince James [Helga beat him up, had to be sedated for mating.] Helga had 28 puppies in three litters, not a bad dog among them.).

When a "hunter" depends on canned hunts, is driven from stocking point to stocking point, and is not properly licensed, he has no respect for the sport, and is just out for the carnage. On one of Cheney's canned hunts, he shot 70 stocked pheasants.

Not having respect for the sport of hunting can be disastrous, and last week it was for Dick Cheney. Lack of respect tends to be comprehensive, so it is likely that Cheney violated all the laws of gun safety: He probably rode around with his gun loaded, kept the safety off, pointed it at other "hunters," and kept his finger on the trigger. Also, in the pictures shown on TV of Cheney shooting, he was wearing gloves. Thick gloves. What an idiot. Gloves cause two problems for the shooter. One is that they make your trigger finger take up more space within the trigger guard, making an unintended shot more likely. The other is that it takes away the shooter's direct contact with the trigger, so that you don't have as good a feeling for what your finger is doing.

With this level of carelessness about gun safety, it would be entirely consistent that drinking was involved. Especially with rich people, who believe that all laws apply to the lower classes, but not to them.

Then there is Cheney's visible evidence of sociopathic behavior: pathological secrecy, pathological lying, war-mongering, lack of compassion, corrupt relationships with the oil industry, Halliburton, and Jack Abramoff. Then there is his subornation of treason in the Valerie Plame case.

And of course, his arrogance. Much has been made of his "safe" interview with Brit Hume on Fox News. The criticism has focused around the "softball" questions Hume asked him, and on Cheney's lame story about what happened. I think there may be another reason Cheney submitted to the interview. In the days following the accident, the "witnesses" floated the excuse that Harry Whittington was to blame for the shooting because he "sneaked up on the vice president." Mr. Whittington had to be aware that he was being made to take the fall for Cheney, and I doubt that he liked it very much. The arrogant Cheney, caring not what anyone thinks of him, does care that Harry Whittington keeps quiet about what really happened last Saturday. Deadeye Dick could be sued, held criminally responsible, and removed from office quicker than you can say Patrick Fitzgerald (or Ronnie Earle).

I happen to think Cheney is through anyway. There are a lot of real hunters in this country, and a great many of them have been duped into supporting the Bush crime family. In the one instance where Cheney's behavior has intersected with their own experiences, he has revealed himself to be a coward and a sadist, and dangerous as well. I can just hear the cognitive dissonance churning now. The countdown to Cheneygate has begun. And it couldn't happen to a nicer guy, to coin a phrase.

Incidentally, the hunter I almost shot is now one of the wealthiest rice farmers in America, and exports rice to Japan, where he is something of a hero, recognized on the street. We were both lucky, and America should be proud of such a person, a true hunter, a Navy veteran of World War II (Pacific theater), a real Christian, and someone who worked for everything he got. He also hunts quail in Texas, with his own dogs.

Masculinity, real and imagined

There’s a great little article in "Counterpunch" about how "conservatives" in this country have gone crazy. I put the term "conservatives" in quotes because for decades I have known that the term is meaningless, except to describe a rough alignment of forces. This alignment of forces is "conservative" only in the sense of conserving their own wealth and power. They certainly don’t have any concern about conserving our natural resources of air, water, land, trees, wildlife, and even mountains. They have no concern about conserving our economy for future sustainability. And they have no concern about conserving the nation’s reputation and influence in world affairs. By the time the Iraq debacle is over, we will be lucky to have a seat on the U.N. Security Council.

The "Counterpunch" author, Paul Craig Roberts, focuses on the role of the information media in promoting the "conservative" agenda. This is not a new perspective. Many observers and researchers, most notably Robert McChesney, John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton, and of course Noam Chomsky, have been sounding the alarm for many years about the condition of the U.S. media.

What Roberts does is lend a fresh credibility to the argument. He was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration, making him a bona fide "conservative." He also possesses some insider knowledge of what is known as "the conservative movement." Of the Bush crime family’s grand scheme for the Middle East, he says "This is the program of lunatics. No conservative could possibly support it."

He is too kind. The Bush crime family may contain some lunatics, John Bolton coming to mind, but it is essentially a criminal operation. I can easily say this because of the way they came into office, the way they invited the September 11, 2001 attacks, the way they lied about the “threat” from Iraq, their contempt for and violation of international law, the way they have handed out war profiteering contracts to corporate donors like Halliburton and Bechtel, and the way they have "governed" the United States of America. As I have said before, their behavior is more like gold fever and power fever than raving lunacy.

More interesting, though, is the grip the Bush crime family has on nearly half the American people. The grip is weakening, as more and more people have to look at what is happening to their own lives, versus what they have been fooled into believing. As more areas of the country are being ravaged by hurricanes, floods, forest fires, and tornados, and the incompetence and negligence of the Bush crime family make the tragedies worse, idiotic belief systems crumble. As the war in Iraq descends further into chaos and the casualties mount, people are increasingly skeptical of the reasons for going to war. Bush the war hero is now Bush the vacationer. Bush the defender of the country is now Bush the clueless.

But there is an element in this country that will likely stay on the Bush bandwagon to the bitter end. It goes by several names: the angry white male, the Reagan democrat, the gun-totin' independent middle class, the beer drinking good old boy, the southern white racist, the threatened male, the emasculated male, the embittered male.

I still hear resentful men say they can't become firefighters, policemen, or get into the building trades because they aren't black or female. The fact that these occupations predominantly employ caucasian males matters not to these self-styled victims. Minorities are taking "their" jobs.

Of course, most of the angry white males are employed in their chosen occupations, but the resentment still festers. They feel that they are under constant threat from feminists, liberals, minorities, and immigrants. People who are infringing on their prerogatives, their rightful place and position.

The root of this bitterness lies in modern masculine American culture. "Manhood" is defined by appearance: good looks, height, muscle bulk, athletic ability, sexual prowess, wealth, status, and aggressiveness.

The standards of masculinity are hard for men to live up to, so most men settle for substitute or vicarious masculinity: identification with sports teams, ownership of fast, sporty, or large vehicles, and possession of trophies of various kinds. The trophy can be a large house, a beautiful girlfriend or wife, the aforementioned vehicle, or a hunting trophy - a mounted animal head that the owner presumably killed. As an example of both the absurdity and desperation of insecure males in this country, sports and "hate" radio stations are supported by advertising for such varied products as penis enlargement, sexual enhancers, skimpy underwear gifts for wives and girlfriends, body building products, hair restorer, dating services, and on and on and on. Then of course there is the unbelievably huge market for pornography of all kinds.

In the past several years here in Wisconsin there has been much concern and activity about the problem of "chronic wasting disease", a devastating form of spongiform encephalopathy similar to Mad Cow Disease. It has spread among the deer herds in much of the state, and the Department of Natural Resources has mandated the killing of thousands of deer in several counties. When meetings were held by the DNR to discuss eradication of diseased deer herds, there was much opposition. I watched the coverage of one of the meetings on the television news, and the attendees were almost all men, deer hunters from the area. It was pretty comical. They looked so much alike, wearing Green Bay Packers hats or hunting hats, many of them chewing gum with their mouths open, acting tough.

As it turned out, the hunters were angy because the DNR representatives told them one of the main causes of the spread of "CWD" was the practice of "baiting" deer - placing food for deer both to attract them to an area and to cause the males to grow larger "racks" of antlers. The practice of baiting was going to be banned, and the hunters were up in arms, so to speak.

Big antler trophies mean big men. When the Packers are winning, and the antlers are big, life is good for the threatened men of Wisconsin. Now the Packers aren't winning. They were one of the worst teams in the NFL this past season, last place in their division. The deer herds are tainted by chronic wasting disease, and the antlers are smaller.

Because of climate change, also known as global warming, the vehicles are going to get smaller. With gas prices going up and up, having a huge pickup truck or SUV is becoming a luxury that fewer will be able to afford.

With all this change taking place, what are the threatened males of this country to do? One of their main symbols of masculinity, the draft-dodging Vice President Dick Cheney, has shot a hunting companion while on a "canned" hunting excursion. At first, the spin was that the man he shot was to blame. Now Cheney is "taking responsibility," a meaningless gesture, since he considers himself above the law.

The ridiculous lengths that masculinity-threatened males in this country are willing to go to affirm their manhood can be seen in who they look to as symbols of manliness: George W. Bush, Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Arnold Swarzenegger, Toby Keith, Ted Nugent. A convention of the VFW gave a standing ovation to Dan Quayle during the 1988 presidential campaign. The National Guard Association presented Bush a bust in honor of his "service" last week.

I could belabor this point ad absurdum, but it should be clear that obsession with manhood lies at the core of what ails this country, what makes men such fair game for manipulation, and what keeps us from dealing with the difficult problems we face in a competent manner. We don't have a lot of time to continue with this stupidity, so it is critical that we, as part of our national dialogue, talk about it openly, find ways of treating it, and start living as true human beings. I don't need an SUV, antlers, a winning team, a penis enlargement, or a war. No one else does either. A far better desire is for a world of peace, a sustainable economy, and a thriving ecosystem. They would be their own trophies.

Will the circle be unbroken?

I watched a bit of the State of the Union speech the other night, mainly to see how long it took for Bush to mention the attacks of September, 2001. The Huffington Post had a "9/11 Beat the clock" guessing game, and I wanted to see how close to the expected 90 seconds Bush would be. I was not paying close attention, but by my stopwatch it took a little over three minutes. I watched something else until the speech ended.

What I did do was watch the prelude to the speech and the commentaries afterward, and they were much more revealing than the speech itself as to what ails this country. I was left with a clear understanding that the culture of Washington, D.C. - elected officials, the judiciary, the government bureaucracy, the news media and other hangers-on - constitute a faux elite, self-reinforcing, self-congratulating, and self-perpetuating. They are a reality unto themselves, and the realities of the world are merely fodder for their cultural self-reinforcement. It matters not what harm is done on the planet, the essence of life for Washington D.C. circle-jerkers is to keep a hand in the action.

Such is the nature of the human condition. At every level of society, people try to establish cliques, mafias, in-groups, castes, and hierarchies. It can be at the workplace, the church, the peace group, or even the tavern. A "we-uns" that is "better" than a "them-uns," or a "him-un" and a "her-un."

I have had much fun and pain in my life tweaking the proverbial noses of the various mafias that have tried their group-identity nastiness on me. Some people actually die just because someone stands up to them. It is more than they can fathom. I especially have had some of my greatest battles and successes where there is an entrenched group identity, with a seemingly all-powerful leader controlling reward, punishment, group acceptance, and conformity. The more entrenched, the more fun it is to upset the applecart. I don’t take pleasure that some of the fallen from power can't live without their power, but we are all responsible for our actions. Or, as an Army buddy of mine used to say, you play, you pay.

As far as anyone being exalted, superior, of "higher" birth or worth, we should keep in mind from whence we came, and to whence we are going. Every human being (except for the few who are conceived in a lab or other form of artificial conception) is the result of a male human being inserting the organ he uses to urinate in an opening in a female human being that is situated between the places where she urinates and defecates. Indeed, it is a critical skill in reproduction that the correct opening is entered.

The male typically thrusts his urination/reproductive organ repeatedly into the female’s reproductive opening until he reaches a peak of excitation, resulting in his genetic material being expelled. When this material combines with the genetic material of the female, a "zygote" is sometimes formed, and after a gestation period, a human birth takes place.

There is great beauty and wonder to this process, but it is not something that calls for anyone thinking they are exalted beings. Not only are we generated from acts concentrated in the regions where we expel waste, but we are literal factories of urine and excrement, phlegm, bile, mucous, histamine, ear wax, eye secretions, and foul-smelling sweat. As we get older and the body deteriorates, the functions and odors become harder to control, we become more susceptible to diseases, and eventually we die.

I mentioned in my previous posting that former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger once said that "Military men are just dumb stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy." This is probably one of the clearest examples of the exalted mindset, of the attitude of the overclass, or the "ruling class." One person, or a group or "class" of persons, thinking of himself or themselves as "better" than others, or groups of others. This sense of "betterness" qualifies and justifies the "superior" forms of human life to commit any crime, any atrocity, because the "lower" human beings' lives don’t "matter."

Just for a little more context, not much reproductive activity is the result of "divine union," or loving conjugal activity between pure souls united in spiritual oneness. Often it is the result of rape, drunken revelry, submission to the demands of a dominant partner, bargaining, and youthful rebellion or "experimentation." Then there is just plain routine. Keeping things peaceful.

Whatever the case in anyone’s conception, we all got our start from a male of our species finding the right opening to plant his urinary appendage, and thrusting away for merriment and/or power until his genetic material combined with that of our mothers, resulting in us.

Henry Kissinger’s father found the correct opening. George H. W. Bush found the correct opening in Barbara Pierce Bush, resulting in the man who now rules the "free" world, so we think. George W. Bush, animal abuser, "gentleman’s C" graduate of Yale University, ne'er do well, brain damaged cocaine and alcohol addict, military deserter, corporate criminal, gleeful executioner, serial election thief, war criminal, domestic terrorist, torturer, secret police fomenter, facilitator of treason, enabler of natural disasters, and by whose criminal negligence and/or worse paved the way for the worst attacks on American soil in the nation’s history, is the leader and personification of all those who think they are better than other people.

The rich, the powerful, the enablers of the rich and powerful, all look to him as their leader. He is their man. His incompetence, negligence, avarice and murderousness is their incompetence, negligence, avarice and murderousness. If ever their was a prelude to a downfall, that prelude is now. It is not just Bush and his criminal organization that is going to fall. It is the entire peer group, cohort cluster, class, clique, caste and extended mafia - the rich, the powerful, the endowed, the information media that enable them, the corporate sponsors, the political parties, those that sit in judgement in black robes, the bureaucracy, and the various other supplicants and flatterers that flail around, trying to get in or stay in the supposed elite. When the change comes, they all will reap the harvest, whether on the physical plane or on another plane that we don’t know much about.

There are a few lessons we all can learn from this nightmare. One, of course, is the time-honored lesson that we should be very careful who we get naked with, why, and how. Another is that we should be even more careful about thinking too much of ourselves, mortal biological creatures that we are. Still another is to be careful of our associations with others, and of our identities with those associations. If we find ourselves identifying with any group, organization, team, region, or country to the exclusion of others, we are fair game for falling down the slippery slope of criminality, both individual and mass.

We are here to rise to a higher level of being, not to be criminals. To live against our true purpose is the worst crime, and it may be a long time in low places and states of being before we get another chance. And it certainly will be a long time before we again have the luxury of thinking ourselves "better" than others, if ever. Oh ye of wealth and power, of exaltation real or imagined, impeach your leader and his gang now, while you still have the chance. Find the right opening in your lives for once, while the potency lasts. It could be a long series of cold showers before you get another opportunity. For all who pretend overseership, some words from Bob Dylan seem meant just for you: "But you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears, take the rag away from your face. Now ain't the time for your tears." There will be plenty of time for tears when comeuppance arrives.