A New American Revolution

The time has come for the emergence of a third party in this country, for no other reason than to save the Republic itself!

Surely there are enough people in this great land of ours who are not a party to the extremism on both sides of the aisle in Congress.  What we have now is a country paralyzed and divided artificially by the arch-conservatives on the right (Republicans and Tea Party imbeciles who are screaming for more and more budget cuts, repealing the health care law, not funding emergency agencies, pulling funding for middle and working class families, running from science and common sense and generally waving a political flag that has little basis in reality.) and some arch-progressives on the left (Democrats who won’t rest until we have the government doing everything but wiping our behinds, and who won’t bridge any chasm between a welfare state and what is really possible.)  Everyone else there is too concerned about their re-election and making sure they get a ‘recess’ every three weeks to focus on solving the staggering problems that need immediate and rational solutions.

There is stasis between these three groups who don’t represent the vast majority of sensible fair-minded Americans who understand that compromise must be found to solve the major problems that hinder our action and planning for a productive future in a changing world.  We are all out here scratching our heads and wondering where is the reality in our government.  Why are the emotional idiots in Congress who only think about their re-election posturing making decisions for all of us?  Watching the pronouncements by Republicans and Democrats about the nefarious motives of their adversaries is sickening.  None of them is thinking about the country---only themselves!

There is only one thing left to do…..we must elect all new congressmen and women who are rational; who don’t have vested interests and are not ‘bought and paid for’ by the various lobbyists and influence peddlers in Washington.  There needs to be a leader to spearhead this new movement—someone with some common sense who is not worried about a second term.  Someone who understands the founding principals of this democracy—that compromise, common sense and fair play are the best assets of a participatory democracy.  Let us reject the sniveling vitriolic, biased and basically stupid people who are power hungry and love to hear themselves speak.

We have a watershed year next year.  There is an election in November, which is the time we must do what many thought unthinkable and impossible.

  We must have an electoral revolution if we are to save ourselves from disaster. 

I urge all thinking people with at least one foot anchored in reality to start looking for people now who can carry the banner of a new party that wants to save America from the idiots.  Talk to your neighbors.  Talk to your friends.  Talk to anyone who will listen to reason and start formulating plans at a local level to seek out people who want to compromise, who understand that ALL citizens must participate and sacrifice.  We must cut wasteful expenses and find ways to increase our revenue by making everyone pay their fair share of the burden.

If you look at the field of potential people who currently hold the reins of power, or think they have the capacity to intelligently govern, there can only be despair in your  hearts. 

Rise up Real Americans!  Put on your thinking caps and actually think!

The Valley of the Shadow of Death

We have waited for this day with eagerness and trepidation, and now it is here.  We turn the car out of the Homewood Suites parking lot at 4:30am and head to the Duke University Hospital.  It is pitch black and there is not a car on the roads.  We want to be there before they take her to surgery at 5:15 to give her one last kiss before she goes into battle for her life.

On Friday my sister Paula was admitted to the hospital to 'embolize' her cancerous left kidney in preparation for its removal this morning.  The idea is to cut off the kidney's blood supply by blocking the renal artery so the tumor gets no blood.  After about 72 hours they will remove it and there will be much less blood loss we are told.  Unfortunately the tumor has grown into her main vein returning blood to the heart and they also must open her chest, put her on a heart lung bypass machine and remove all the tumor from her vena cava as well.  No small task, and we all are aware of the magnitude of the insult to her body that will happen today.

It doesn't seem possible that only 5 short weeks ago we got the phone call from Paula telling us she had this monster growing inside her.  Much has happened since then, with trips to Duke for consults and scheduling the surgery as well as trying to plan for Paula's recovery.

And now as we silently cover the few miles to the hospital in the darkness, I hear Cecily quietly asking for comfort and protection as we 'pass through the valley of the shadow of death'.  I always wondered about that phrase when I would hear the 23rd psalm as a child.  I couldn't imagine what that was like; I just heard the poetry of the words.  Today, I know.

Now we all are sitting in Paula's room at 5am.  She is dozing off and on.  The last several days have been difficult.  The embolization has caused her some real discomfort and pain since Friday.  The drugs have helped, but it was more than any of us expected. This is the quiet before the storm, and we are gathered around her watching her in the dark.  I step outside with Scott, her son, and we listen as the 6th floor slowly comes to life--people arriving and activity increasing as we stand there.   We look to the left and there is the orderly coming around the corner to take her down to the third floor.  We all stand in the hall while they disconnect her from the IV and monitors and wheel her out into the hall.  We follow behind the bed like some strange silent parade as we make our way to the elevator bank.  The silence is punctuated by the rhythmic sound of the unevenness of the wheels on the tile floors.  All five of us cram into the elevator with Paula and the orderly and we are smiling and trying to find the right words.  When we arrive on the third floor, the orderly tells us to sign in with the waiting room desk and we will be called into the Pre-op room when they have her situated and the preliminary IV is in.  At the desk, they give us one of those beepers with lights that you get at Carrabbas when you go out to eat and tell us that we will be buzzed when they are ready.  Looking to the right I see a waiting room that is over 100 yards long!  Easily the length of a football field!  Comfortable chairs are everywhere, and about a fourth of them are filled already with sleeping adults and children.  The surgical wing at Duke has 36 operating suites and 8 Cardiovascular suites!  The size of this operation is staggering!

Within 10 minutes our buzzer lights up and Ed, Jamie and Scott go in to see Paula.  Cecily and I stay in the waiting room.  We know our turn will come.  After about 15 minutes, Jamie and Scott emerge and Cecily and I go in.  In a bay about a third of the way down a wide hallway is my sister.  Her anesthesiologist introduces himself.  He is a very energetic young man named Jerricola who has already inserted an arterial monitoring line and is about to insert another IV for her anesthesia.  Paula looks so small in the bed.  In January she weighed close to 160 lbs and went on Weight Watchers.  Now she is 125 lbs.  The tumor has sucked so much of her life force from her already.  We can't wait for this thing to be out of her.

The time has come.....they are ready to take her in and one by one we all lean down and have a private moment with Paula.  I look into her eyes and see the fear that has consumed her for the last four weeks.  I smile, kiss her forehead and say, "Be brave, my sweet sister, God is with you--you will prevail!" (I will fear no  evil for thou art with me, thy rod and thy staff will comfort me).  It all makes sense.

So now we are in the waiting room and they are removing the evil from her body.  We are all walking through the valley, and we pray for divine guidance for the surgeon's hands.

We are all Egyptians

So, its a new day in Egypt.  It is at moments like this that we all stop and consider what it means to be free.  There is talk of democracy in the air--what it means, whether we really have it here in America, whether other countries with dictatorships will fall.  Imagine.....in  olden times, and I am talking 100 years ago and before,  news of a revolution would take time to reach us....sometimes weeks, depending where you were on the globe.  Details would be incomplete, it would take days, or even months to fully understand the nature of an event like a revolution and even more time to understand its impact.

But today, literally, the whole world watched in real time as a nation of people rose up, peacefully, and grabbed their own destiny from the hands of a small group of men bent on doing everything they could to keep the people from becoming self aware.  It was miraculous really.  We have often read in history books about movements that changed a society, but somehow I never felt like I was living through it like I did this week.

Our media environment has changed us.  We are now irreversibly a  global community.  All of humanity knew about this event at the same time.... in fact as it happened.  This was really the first time(maybe with the exception of the falling of the Berlin Wall) in the history of mankind that the entire planet bore witness to the emergence of the human spirit simultaneously, and it is an inspiring moment.  It makes one believe that we as a species still have the power to really guide our own destiny.

There are so many times when it seems that events just keep on coming at us and we don't really seem to have control of them.  Sometimes I feel like I am caught in the rapids of the river of time and going so fast that I am only concerned about my immediate surroundings.  But because of our ability to be joined together by the web and instant communication, the entire human race can reach out and keep perspective because we can suddenly see over the mountains in a way we couldn't before.

As a collective mind, we all see that freedom is the right of all human beings.  Universal human aspiration and morality become clear to all.  And we see how our own circumstances and condition relate to what appears to be a spontaneous eruption of the desire to live free.  We measure our condition against that yardstick, and if you live in a county like Syria, or Iran, or China, or Russia, or Saudi Arabia, or Columbia, or Cuba, you are asking yourself why you must suffer, why you can't have that freedom too.

It is a bad time to be a dictator.   I find myself looking at my society and wondering if we appreciate how much democracy we have lost.  The spoils of life seem to be in the hands of the rich and corporate elite and their political lackeys and lobbyists.  Huge numbers of Americans are struggling with everyday life because democracy has gotten off track in America.  Democracy is supposed to obtain from the bottom up, but it seems like our society is organized from the top down.  The needs of the great majority of Americans always seem to come last compared to the intricate web of largesse and economic and political oppression that has been created by those who are only concerned about their own well-being and wealth at the expense of all others.

I look at Egypt and I wonder when the great mass of Americans will become self aware like the great mass of Egyptians that finally leveled the playing field this week in Cairo and Alexandria.  There is a breaking point for all people who find themselves increasingly disenfranchised.  The Tea Party is the canary in the mine here in the United States.  If we don't find a way to make our society more equitable for all, what we saw in Egypt over the last three weeks will suddenly appear in centers of power all over the US.  Seeing the jubilation of a people finally freed is heady stuff.  It reduces patience and encourages activism.  What an incredible time to be alive.