The Choice We Are Making, Politically

Human beings are scatter-brained;
that is to say, do not think alike.
We are all over the place.

At the same time, we need each other.
We need each other for procreation,
for protection, to gather food,
to build our shelters, keep the wolves away,
and to trade skill for skill.

We don't drop our children to the ground,
and cannot drive down the road without rules.
If you are drunk, you cannot drive.
You need a license to practice medicine,
to drive a car, perform marriages, to fish,
or open a restaurant and sell food to people.

We hate having to conform,
but we don't want to die alone.
We are a compromise.

Libertarians are the lone wolves.
They, like Marlene Dietrich, "vant to be alone".
They begrudge and minimize requirements.
Their question is how little they have to conform.
They run in the pack only to breed,
or if it is necessary to run down food.
Else, they prowl the forest alone.

Others come together to form a village
and to share in feeding, protecting, and educating
their children, in building houses, trading food,
building bridges, and providing health care.

To hate govbernment is to hate cooperation
even when cooperation is necessary, like it or not.
It is the belief that we are best, unfettered.

Government haters have gathered as Republicans;
as Libertarians, Tea Partiers, Trickle-down economists,
low tax, smallest government, minimal regulation,
unlimited wealth advocates: Alpha Dogs.

The rest of us want to buld a bridge.
We are willing to share in the cost.
We think kids need protection, and that
everybody deserves health care and enough food.

You choose!
Quit it with the slogans!
Which way will help us all most?

We built the Grand Coulee Dam together.

Comments

Caliche Busters and Government Work

When I was young and both stronger and smarter than I am now, I put my might and brain to work doing nothing useful, unless it might be thought that hand/foot/eye coordination might come in handy. Those were skills to be learned and practiced. I found an iron bar our grandfather had shaped in his blacksmith shop. He took old car, truck, or wagon axles, and made tools from them for digging post holes. He sharpened one end to a tip, and the other to a blade. Washington State, like many places, had a hard layer of soil, probably created by water and limestone, or some such materials, that made digging holes a miserable chore. The bar chipped through the natural concrete so that a shovel could take it up. I found Grandpa's iron bar, and since I was young and dumb and strong--or so I thought--decided to punch a hole down to hardpan and ultimate truth. I knew how to do that. Raise the bar vertically with both hands, and then slam in straight down. On the second try, aimi

The Sea is Rising

Let us just step back: two hundred and fifty years ago, or so, the ships of England and Spain had drifted onto a whole new continent, as they saw it, from far north to a savagely cold south; pole to pole, as if there were such things. Millions of people already lived here, some of them still hunters and gatherers; some of them very wealthy, indeed! Gold and silver stolen from the southern Americas funded Spanish and English dreams. There was land, lots of land, under starry skies above, rich land, and oil and coal and iron ore. The whole western world learned how to build industries not on simple muscle power, but on steam and oil. We farmed, too, of course. All we needed was cheap labor--slave labor from Africa, mostly, so the ships came with slave labor. Chinese labor built railroad beds where there had been rock cliffs. Europeans, long used to killing each other for good, religious reasons, brought their religious savagery with them. Even when all they wanted to do w

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