Birds and the Human Condition

My wife, who is an inveterate worrier, remarked to me this morning how the life of birds is so simple. I think she may have been comparing her worries to that of the birds feasting at my bird feeders. Anyway, I responded that, yes, all they had to worry about was food and procreation. It seems like an ideal life but I remind you that if anyone you knew did the same you might not have flattering things to say about them. So, I took the opportunity to philosophize a bit and set off on a discourse on how we, humans, were once as the birds, seeking only food, shelter and procreation. Then as we began to find ways to feed ourselves more than abundantly our brains became free to engage in more far reaching concepts such as tool making which made our lives even easier freeing up more brain space for more esoteric endeavors such as art.

Now, I told her, we were at a critical juncture because we had a choice. Either keep life simple or move on into the brave new world. Sometimes I'm not sure we made the right decision and maybe should have taken the road the chimpanzees did but we didn't know then what we know now and so off to the adventure we went. What happened was that we found that by living in communities we could share the work load and live life large. What could go wrong? Right?

But now we had a small group of people with pretty basic needs but someone decides that it is way easier to allow someone else to do the work and just take his stuff away from him. He decides that about procreation also creating ill feelings among the people in the group who really didn't like that person taking their stuff and sneaking around when they were out hunting and foraging.

That is when a more advanced person came up with the idea that we should have a set of rules that told us what we could and could not do and if anyone broke the rules then the rest of the people would make him wish he hadn't. Pretty simple, right? What could go wrong?

Then they had to decide who would decide when the rules were broken and what was to be done about it. So, they had a choice to make. Now, remember, this is way before democracy so the strongest guy and some buddies decided they would be the right ones to do this. The rest of the people were kind of OK with that until some of the strongest guy's buddies decided they should get a larger share of the booty and, by the way, a larger share of the booty, also.

This is about where we find ourselves today. Oh, we've accumulated more stuff and ways to get stuff. We have lifted this ancient compulsion to a fine art. We've created more and more cultural groups etc. that have their own sets of rules and we are still searching for the one ring to rule them all. I mean, one set of rules that everyone can agree on so we'll stop trying to take away the other group's stuff.

So, I told my wife, here we are with our big brains and lots of rules that philosophers figured out by starting with the natural man (who was like the birds) who just took what he needed to survive and working their way up to our complex societies and all kinds of art, some of which most people even understood. Along the way the different philosophers thought about the different ways people could try to make rules and decide who is obeying and who is not. We now call this governing but I think that may be a charitable assessment.

Some of the philosophers called themselves libertarians since they thought that people should be free to gain whatever they could and not have to share it with others. This is probably the closest to pure humanism of any of the prevalent philosophies today.

Others called themselves socialists and thought that the very best of humanity could be only achieved by appealing to our higher calling and sharing all things equally. Well, sort of, because a lot of the time the strong guy and his buddies still thought they deserved more and the lazy people really couldn't see much point in working hard.

Some were capitalists who thought sort of like the libertarians but they could see how it didn't look good to have people begging for bread and dying in the streets so they felt like they could kick in a little to keep themselves from feeling too guilty.

So, then the rule makers (we can call them governors or some such thing) thought maybe we could take some ideas from one group and some from another and create something that didn't seem so stark and brutal. The philosophers thought long and hard on that one and came up with all sorts of ideas. Kingdoms, Religious Orders, Oligarchy and so on but for some the idea called democracy seemed like a good idea. This way the people could decide who would make the rules and who would enforce them and everyone would be happy.

I looked over and my wife's eyes had glazed over and she had this look on her face like WILL HE EVER SHUT UP? I agreed with her that the birds that we feed at our feeders do indeed have it made.

My Take is that sometimes you have to gauge your audience when choosing to pontificate.

You Have Got To Be Kidding Me

With the endorsement by Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, the third man in line to the presidency, of Donald Trump to be the nominee of the Republican Party for President of the United States the charade is complete. Just last week Senator Mitch McConnell, Senate Majority Leader, declared that Trump is deserving of the nomination since he has obviously gone out and got the most votes. He then said that he would support the Trump candidacy.

The startling acceptance of Donald Trump as the candidate of one of the two major political parties in the United States speaks loudly to the bankruptcy of ideas in the Republican Party. To think that in this tremendously complicated and interconnected world the irrational blurbs that come from this man can stand in for policy statements reveals the intention of the Republican Party to do whatever shameless thing it may take to win the White House. It is unworthy of the long history of the Grand Old Party.

Beginning with the Tea Party, which the GOP handlers allowed to speak on the big stage with more rational people, the groundwork was laid for those who prefer to grind democracy to a halt rather than seek ways forward with other elected officials. The acceptance of those heedless stone throwers then created a favorable climate for the neo-fascist element to crawl out of the woodwork and the combination of those forces have propelled Donald Trump to the nomination. It strains the imagination to think that there are that many people who think that he makes even a reasonable approximation of one who is suited for the position of “most powerful man in the world” which would not be out of place with the “most powerful ego in the world.”

From his promise to build a wall on the border and make Mexico pay for it to his profound ignorance in stating that it is good for the United States to be unpredictable there have been dozens of incendiary statements that surely have the rest of the world wondering what in the world is going on in the United States. I am reminded of a statement by Zbigniew Brzezinski replying to Joe Scarborough where he says “your ignorance of the subject is so profound it is embarrassing.” Yes, it is embarrassing for the United States to be portrayed as imbecilic but it is, in a more profound sense, frightening. To think that a man who has not uttered one coherent proposal on domestic policy or foreign policy other than to proclaim that he will be the greatest can seek, with some hope of success, to rise to the office of President of the United States reveals the lack of sophistication of those who seek to govern themselves.

The leaders of the Republican Party are not ignorant men and women. I believe that they are fully aware of the beast that lays before them but are incapable of surrendering power to deny that beast the victory that will effectively change forever what the GOP is. It is an unfortunate and demented tale of the lust for power and the hubris to think there is yet some hope of taming the beast.

Donald Trump has intimated that he would not be against the idea of the use of nuclear weapons in the battle against ISIL. I suspect there are quite a few of our fellow citizens who are also of this mind. What if the President orders the use of these weapons to wipe Raqaa off the map? Should the generals obey him or should they refuse to act on the orders of the Commander in Chief? Not only would this be a military crisis but it would be a Constitutional crisis because, effectively, it could lead to a coup. In the long and distinguished history of our Republic such a prospect has never been considered. The very thought of having Donald Trump commanding our armed forces is anathema to thoughtful people. On the economic front he has made statements that he would not be opposed to a trade war to make American goods more competitive in the world. The idea that we want to be competitive economically is not in dispute the the heavy handed way in which he deals is not the way that cooperative economies survive and prosper.

The Republican Party has long insisted that its platform consists of a fiscally prudent and constrained path but now seems quite accepting of this brandishing of power to subjugate economies that we have asked to look to the United States for an example of how to live in the world. It is time for the leaders of the GOP to risk their jobs and reclaim their party.

The goodwill of the world toward the United States of America has not come from our willingness to bludgeon others into complying with our will but, rather, by the largess we have been willing to show to those less fortunate. It is due to the protection offered by the United States to prevent other aggressive countries from encroaching on those unable to defend themselves. We have not always been perfect but we have been the best available. Would we abandon that and encourage our allies to seek other friends? This is the future we face.

My Take is that it is mind boggling that our country is facing such a contrived crisis at a time when we are, without a doubt, the most powerful country in the world. How could one of the two major political parties come to a point where the lust for power exceeds the welfare of the nation?