Skip to main content

What We Know


What do we know is happening all around us?

We know that burning as much coal, oil, and gas as we do is warming the planet.  Most of us can read a thermometer.

We know that we are a nation of immigrants, and always have been.  We know that it will not be long before we shall be a nation with a more-or-less brown-skinned majority.  After all, 60% of the world population is Asian, about 15% is Black, and 11% is White.  The world isn't all White.  It is more-or-less Brown.

We know that we actually live in a global economy.  Global trade is almost everybody's lifeblood.  Going back to traveling by wagon train isn't a pleasant idea.

We know that most of our evolutionary male ancestors were bigger and stronger than most of our female ancestors, and that, in our country, we only allowed women, even to vote, only in 1920, even though some women were smaller than some men.

We know those things.  They aren't opinions.  They are facts.

*   *   *

So the question is, how do we organize our life together so that it works well with what we know to be true?  Earth is heating up.  The human population is no longer isolated.  The other side of the globe is next door.  Male domination is a primitive notion with no defense except muscles and a lizard brain.

Did we really have a political debate that admitted those plain facts and sparred about how to adapt to those plain facts?  Of course not!  We debated whether to put Hillary Clinton in jail, or whether Donald Trump was civilized enough to be unleashed anywhere near a women's locker room.

*   *   *

We have to stop global warming.  We caused it.
We are a multi-racial species, and nation.
Trade is what we want:  as fair as possible.
We are long overdue for gender equity.

Period.

That is what we should vote for, and do.





Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Friends-- My step-father of 35 years died this morning. His name was Conrad Royksund. He was 86 years old. He was born into poverty on a farm near Puyallup, WA. He was the first member of his family to attend college and earned a PhD from the University of Chicago. He paid his way through all of that by fishing in Alaska. He spent his professional career as a college professor. I met him when I was just 3 years old and don't actually have any memories of my life befor e he was in it. He was intimidatingly smart, funny as hell, and worked his ass off. He taught me to meet people with kindness and decency until I was certain they could not be trusted. He taught me to meet ideas with carving knives until I was certain they could. I will remember him as one of the bravest, most curious, and funniest people I have ever met. He left this world with a satisfied mind. We are so grateful. Dan Hubbard

Nice to Run Into You Again

We do not see things in enormous time-frames.  We human beings are fairly new at figuring things out for ourselves.  For instance, some  people today still think of the earth as a newly created thing, perhaps ten thousand years old.  Earth is actually about four-and-a-half billion years old.   That is to say, the earth is 450,000 times older than the Adam and Eve story, and the universe is three times older than that! I recall first hearing that continents were slowly drifting around the earth, and that there quite likely had been several times when the continents were squeezed together.  But people could stand on the edge of their own continents, and not see Africa or Asia getting closer.  It took at least fifty years to figure things out. We called our continent something special. But sure enough, there have been numerous times during several-billion year history of the earth, when supercontinents formed, and eventually drifted off. ...

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. ...