Slay the Buddha!

by Dennis Green

There is an old Zen saying, “If you meet the Buddha on the road, slay him!” Now, why would some Zen master in ancient times say such a thing?

I’ve been meditating on these Zen poems, prayers, koans, sayings and parables for most of my life. I have tattered and dog-eared old copies of paperback books, such as Zen Poems, Prayers & Anecdotes by Paul Reps, an old Santa Barbara writer and artist who also produced what he called “picture poems.” And I have a book of those too.

I’ve got a five-foot shelf in my library dedicated to books about Zen, including Zen & The Birds of Appetite, Zen in English Literature, Zen Catholicism, Zen Telegrams and many others. I first discovered this philosophy of life when I was a teenager, fleeing from the Catholic Church, and right away it appealed to me, took hold of me by the frontal lobes and by my heartstrings as well.

So when I heard recently that that the Council of Catholic Bishops of America had condemned the practice of Japanese “Reiki” among Catholics, as a heresy of the first rank, and then watched an interview with the bishop who heads up that Council, watching this overweight, overwrought cleric describing how awful this healing practice is, “…coming as it does between the believer and God…” I immediately knew it was something valuable that I would enjoy.

If anyone, or anything, comes between the believer and God, it’s the priesthood. They tell us that without the Holy Sacraments that only Roman Catholic priests are qualified to perform, we are doomed and damned — from Confession to Marriage to the Last Rites — and that women are unqualified to be anything more than handmaidens of a lower order.

“Reiki is a superstition, a pagan belief that is very dangerous,” the Bishop said on camera, “and if there’s a spirit at work, it certainly isn’t God!”

If you meet the Buddha on the road, slay him! In other words, if you think the Buddha is out there, instead of within you, in your original nature, you have created an illusion that will betray you. If you meet the Bishop on the road, slay him! Where’s my Samurai sword?

So on the same program, “Religion & Ethics Newsweekly,” I saw a nun who teaches Reiki and heals people using its techniques. “I feel the Spirit working through me,” she says. Another woman describes it as a “laying on of hands” that is proven to speed the healing of many illnesses and recovery from surgery.

So I look it up online, go beyond the Wikipedia entry and onto the worldwide site itself. I read about it, and realize that I have encountered it before in other forms — in Kundalini yoga and in classes that one of my teachers, a nurse educator, called “Therapeutic Touch,” which is practiced at many hospitals worldwide. And it works! It comforts patients and speeds the healing process.

So “Reiki” is a combination of two Japanese words, “Rei,” meaning “divine spirit” and “Ki,” meaning “energy life force.” Ki is the same concept as “Chi” in Chinese, as in T’ai Chi and “Qi” in “Qi Quong.” The aim of all these disciplines is to keep it moving, keep it clean, get the chakras spinning clockwise, get the Kundalini, Serpent Power, all the way up to your Crown Chakra and beyond.

So get your Chi, your Mojo, your Kundalini goin’ on today! And if you meet the Serpent on the road, slay him! Otherwise, He just might bite you on the ass.

©2010 Dennis Green

Words As An Element of Design

by Dennis Green

For at least 30 years, I have argued with graphic designers about the meaning and use of words in page layout. “They have to be legible!” I insist, “They have to be readable. They’re more important than the graphic design!” Even on web pages and blogs. So you can imagine my dismay when I realized the other day how wrong I’ve been, and actually admitted it to my dear friend, graphic designer Tania Fardella, owner of Indigo Design.

Of course, it helps that Tania is absolutely gorgeous — Sicilian and Greek and even more lovely than when we met, some 15 years ago. And perhaps it made my conversion easier that we weren’t discussing some mutual project and words, heads, text, copy, that I had a vested interest in protecting.

We were having lunch at Asena, the little Mediterranean café on Santa Clara Avenue in Alameda, sitting by the window. She pulled out of her bag a handful of “comps” for dessert — roughs of new designs for her business. And the first things she showed me were some samples of a new business card for Indigo Design

Now, I used to give marketing seminars for S.C.O.R.E. — the “Service Corps of Retired Executives” — long before I was retired from the ad game, and I always made the point early on that the first piece of marketing communications my students would likely use would be a business card for their new firms. And how important its design would be. “Chose your business name more carefully than you would the name of your first-born child.”

And as Tania leafed through her samples, I was immediately taken by one design — a squarish format with the name of her business running along the edges, chopped off in fact, the top of the letters in “Indigo” and the bottom of the letters in “Design” just missing. I loved it.

“What I like about this one,” I said, after dismissing all the other options, “is the contempt you demonstrate for the words, the letters…the

utter disregard you show for the words.” She was startled by my comment, but no more so than I was. For I saw how wrong I’d been all these years.

Later, as Tania and I had a drink down the street at the Lemon Tree Inn, sitting chatting madly at the bar, I told her about my old prejudice. “As a writer,” I confessed, “I’ve always been partial to the words, insisting that they be legible, readable…and you…you…artists!”

“Yes..?” she said coyly.

“You simply look at the words as another…another…” I couldn’t place it.

“As just another design element!” she said happily.

“Yes! Goddammit!” I nearly shouted loud enough to scare the whole bar filled with patrons… “That’s it! A design element. And do you have any idea how infuriating that is to a writer? Do you?” She looked at me with such compassion I thought she was going to pat me on the head.

“No,” she said sweetly.

And then she told me that her boyfriend, James, (who paints wonderful artwork, graffiti art similar to, but beyond that done by Basquiat), chose the same design I did as his favorite. “That’s understandable,” I said. “But use a different color. Use purple!”

“Purple?” she was surprised.

“Yes, purple, lavender, prunewhip…send me some samples, about six different shades of purple.” I said.

“Why purple?” she was mystified.

“Because it’s the color of your aura,” I said, looking at her sideways, and seeing that faint, yet rich purple hue around her head. “Royal purple. You were probably a Greek goddess or Sicilian princess in a previous life!”

So you can teach an old dawg new tricks, especially if you’re gorgeous and talented and take no prisoners. Tania tried out some sticky sweet phrases for the back of her card on me, and I shook my head, adamant. “Nope,” I said. “You’re much tougher than that. A woman with real balls…”

A little later, she was talking about an old boyfriend, and got this vicious look on her face. “That’s it!” I cried. “That’s the woman with balls the size of Texas. That’s the real Tania!”

“Oh, you think so?” she demurred.

“Poor James,” I laughed. “He never knew what hit him!”

©2010 Dennis Green

True Conservatives

by Dennis Green

A true conservative agrees with George Washington that America has no business entering into “foreign entanglements” like NATO and NAFTA, let alone keeping a “standing army” of our own. How would we ever pay all those men in uniform? A problem even in Washington’s time.

True conservatives agree with Dwight Eisenhower that we must guard against a military/industrial complex, including military contractors like the Hessians and BlackWater. Moreover, you can’t have a big military without big government, and a powerful central government always gets out of control.

Real conservatives agree with Barry Goldwater that government has no business “legislating morality,” whether it’s affirmative action or restrictions on abortion, or telling us what we can eat, drink, smoke, inject or insert in suppository form.

Genuine conservatives know that John Maynard Keynes was wrong regarding just about everything, and that runaway deficit spending will lead to a total collapse of the value of the dollar. They also know that bailouts are a temporary fix and that the Fed should not function as a National Bank setting interest rates. That we should return to a gold standard. In the same time that the value of the dollar has fallen 40%, gold has risen 400%!

They know that entitlement programs like Social Security and MediCare cannot survive without major reform, including lifting the cap on incomes and wealth taxed into the system and raising the age people can qualify by at least two years. They know that MediCare can be reformed by limiting “fee for service,” unnecessary tests and by establishing nationwide standards of care.

These true conservatives met recently as the Conservative Political Action Conference, (CPAC), and in a straw poll, approved Republican Texas Representative Ron Paul their favorite by an overwhelming plurality — 31% to 22% for the nearest contender, Mitt Romney. Ron Paul is not only conservative, but LIBERTARIAN, and ran for President on the Libertarian Party ticket in 2007-08. He has also introduced legislation to audit, even eliminate the Federal Reserve, an idea which has gone from fringe to mainstream.

These real conservatives have got the half-breeds running scared, for all the faux conservatives — from the Neo-Conservatives to the Religious Right to the Neo-Colonialists — depend on keeping Washington, D.C. a powerful center of political action, special interests, lobbying, earmarks, inefficiency and corruption. But American voters are independent, and they are pissed.

Their anger ranges from the Tea Party and town hall pickets whose anger is unfocused, to the more sophisticated distrust of government by people who have studied it, know American history, the many options and choices, and who have arrived at a conservative philosophy of the more classic, foundational libertarian sort. But they all have one thing in common: they will not support the status quo, with either their votes or their taxes.

If this is what it means to be a true conservative, sign me up!

©2010 Dennis Green

The Myth of Erectile Dysfunction

by Dennis Green

Way back in the 1950s, before feminist gains in the media, there was a lot of talk about the “frigid” woman. I kept expecting, as a teenager, to see Frigidaire do a kitchen commercial about her. “My silly husband just keeps wanting to have sex with me, the jerk!” she would say, while patting the side of the fridge affectionately, in a sisterly fashion.

By the 1970s, after the Pill and hormone replacement therapy and a whole new reassessment of psychological diagnoses, and “The Manual,” most of us began to realize that a woman’s sex drive might vary over the course of her lifetime, now more intense, now waning, depending on many factors. As more women joined the work force and put in longer hours in more stressful situations, the whole subject became, understandably, more complex.

Some women experience a “sleepy” libido during pregnancy and after childbirth, and some women do not. Others lose interest after several decades in one relationship, while others do not. Still other women experience a decline in sex drive during and after menopause, but some do not. There is no universal, “natural” situation or age for such a decline in interest.

“Frigid,” apparently, was just a myth.

But for men, the newspaper, magazine and television ads declare, it’s “Sex for Life!” and “time to have that talk with your doctor…” and “…it’s not a disability, just a matter of making the most of what you have!” Yeah, right. One size still fits all.

Whether it’s “Extenze,” or Viagra, Cialis or “suction therapy,” there remains no excuse for a man not to be Ready Freddy 24/7. You just haven’t come a long way, Baby! In fact, you’re still that caveman in the loincloth who clubs his lady and drags her back to his lair, anytime, night or day.

So maybe it’s time for a little male liberation. Freeing ourselves, since no one else is going to do it, from all the many myths that still swirl around our manhood, around what it means to be a man, or should, or can, or will be, no matter what! Just as women clearly deserve options — to pursue a career or work at home, for example, to marry or not, have children or not — so too do we men deserve options too. Such as being a Horn Dawg or not. Or being one only when we’re single, or under 50 or only when we’re drunk.

And I realize I’m oversimplifying — that some men can’t get it up when they really want to and deserve all the help they can get. But it’s also true that a weak or waning sex drive, or a simple disinterest in sex is NOT a disability, an illness, a crippling inability, or especially a crime.

Sometimes, you’re just not in the mood, or not in the mood for this or that particular woman. “If you have an erection lasting more than four hours, call your doctor…” Doctor, hell, I’m calling a press conference!

There is no incentive, however, for Big Pharma, or even your personal physician, to adopt such a point of view. And, ladies, watch out! If the old theories about the female orgasm ever return — the notion that a woman who has only a clitoral orgasm, not vaginal or even better, a G-Spot Spasm! is dysfunctional — you’re in real trouble too.

That lubricant that makes the special moment like Roman Candles going off, K-Y Gel Intense, just may be a harbinger of things to come! So to speak…

©2010 Dennis Green

Bomb Power

by Dennis Green

Garry Wills has a new book, Bomb Power, that describes how the invention of the atom bomb has subverted the U.S. Constitution and enhanced the war making powers of the Executive. Like most of Wills’ books — including What Jesus Meant — it is brilliant and valuable reading.

The bomb introduced into our concept of national defense the unthinkable, and the unthinkable always produces a paradigm shift.

Harry S. Truman inherited a Presidency, and a war that had already been officially declared by Congress, as the Constitution demands. And then, three days after he was sworn in, he was informed about the existence of a new, powerful weapon, the atom bomb. And suddenly, the Executive Branch of the U.S. government came into possession of something it had never had before: the ultimate prerogative.

Whether to use the bomb or not, how to use it, when, under what circumstances — all these choices and decisions lay at Truman’s fingertips. And Truman’s Missouri-bred politics were very different from FDR’s. He and advisors like Dean Acheson and Clement Atlee believed that the biggest threat to world peace was no longer Nazi Germany, which lay in ruins and was weeks from surrender, but Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Republic, with whom FDR had carved up Europe at Yalta.

And so, scholars like Wills say, Truman’s decision to use the atomic bombs against Nagasaki and Hiroshima Japan was driven largely by the fear in the West of the Soviets, and a desire to cow and intimidate them by the stark vision of what devastation those bombs could actually produce if used against cities and populations. Some even say that Japan tried to surrender all that summer of 1945, and that Truman simply ignored them.

At any rate, having the bomb changed the power of the American Presidency forever. No longer, in a world dominated by the Cold War and two Superpowers who both possessed the bomb, could any “Commander in Chief” depend on Congress for a declaration of war. And in fact World War Two was the last war pursued by the U.S. that was officially declared by Congress.

Neither the “Korean Police Action,” nor the Cuban Missile Crisis nor the War in Vietnam allowed time or opportunity for Congress to deliberate, debate and vote one way or the other. President Clinton invaded Somalia and Bosnia, bombed Belgrade and Al Queda training camps in Afghanistan with only the most cursory consultation from Congress, as George H. W. Bush invaded Iraq in the Gulf War, and his son invaded Afghanistan and Iraq following 9/11, with only a cursory assent from Congress.

President Ronald Reagan is credited with “winning the Cold War” by spending the Soviet Union into bankruptcy, not by invasion or dropping the Bomb. But he was also the first American President to insist he be saluted by troops upon his arrival at U.S. Bases, and even returning to the White House, a tradition that continues today. But our President is not a member of our Armed Forces, cannot be demoted or court marshaled or disciplined by the military in any way.

This is an enormous, significant shift in policy and power, one that most citizens don’t take into account when they go to the polls during the primaries or general election, either to elect a President or to elect those congress members who once had the power to keep that Executive in check. We just assume that Congress is still working the way it always has.

But it’s not. It has been de-fanged, de-nuded, stripped of the most important power it ever had — the power to declare war…or not — power it was given by the Founding Fathers in their wisdom, keeping the Executive Branch in check. Congressional impotence, gridlock and corruption may be the results, and if so, we have all lost something that was special about our nation, a separation of powers that kept us sane and free.

©2010 Dennis Green

Inherit the Wind

by Dennis Green

Dick Cheney has now pronounced Barrack Obama a “One-term President.” I doubt that he comprehends the implications of what he’s saying, anymore than the Birthers understand that their attempts to have Obama disqualified for the office because of his foreign birth would simply put Joe Biden in the White House and Nancy Pelosi one step closer.

The Republicans calculate that simply by blocking key legislation, they will cause Obama and his posse to fail, and that then they will be swept into office in the midterm elections. They also believe that Mitt Romney, or Sarah Palin, or someone like Ron Paul will defeat Obama in 2012.

Let’s assume they’re right, that merely by practicing obstructionism they can achieve their aim, which is recapturing all three branches of the federal government. By then, without serious reforms in our health care system, our deficit and debt, our economic growth and unemployment, unfunded entitlement programs and a wildly out of control defense budget, what, exactly, will they inherit?

Break wind, and you will get the answer.

Systems like the federal government do not cope well with paradigm shifts, but the challenges facing America constitute not just another cyclical change, or the bursting of yet another economic bubble. For all of these changes were unthinkable — that growth would drop from 3% to 2%, that unemployment, real unemployment, would increase to 17%, that debt would increase to 20% of GDP, that health care premiums would increase as much as 39% and total costs of the system to 17% of our GNP, twice that of any other industrialized nation. And without reform, it can only get worse.

The unthinkable always produces a paradigm shift. If our government has shifted from a representative democracy to a parliamentarian form of government, where, if the ruling coalition fails, it is dissolved, the Republicans will be as much at the mercy of that paradigm shift as the Democrats are today.

And if it now takes a 60-vote majority for the Dems to get anything passed, so will it take a parliamentary-style majority for the GOP to do squat as well. Everybody can play that game, and the only losers will be the people who are out of work, or who lose their small businesses, or their investments to a dwindling economy, or a corroded infrastructure, students in failing schools and the retired and disadvantaged without a safety net, as well as the victims of terrorists in an increasingly dangerous world.

Social Security and Medicare — without reforms — will go broke. Energy policy will remain captive of Chevron and BP. An estimated 400,000 Americans will perish every year because they don’t have health insurance coverage, and another 100,000 will be lost to hospital-acquired infections and medical errors. Natural selection or broken systems?

And in the meantime, every American president will be a one-term president, and Congress will simply switch parties, without any other real change, every two or four years. Our government will come to resemble the Italian parliament, where nothing ever gets done!

And maybe that’s not such a bad thing. An activist Neo-Conservative government under George W. Bush was just as wasteful and foolish as any liberal, out of control executive branch ever was. Even Jimmy Carter didn’t bomb Baghdad and then proclaim “Mission Accomplished” seven years before we had, as we do now, 100,000 U.S. troops still fighting and dying in that country. Better a government in gridlock.

So long, Baby! Or rather, Ciao Bambino!

©2010 Dennis Green

Post-Erotica

by Dennis Green

“It’s not the meat — it’s the EMOTION!” And I’m discovering a fascinating phenomenon in my later years, a surprising indifference, or rather, disinterest, in the opposite sex as sex objects. For a guy who’s been ruled more often than not by a lust for life, this is an interesting turn of events to say the least.

The flesh is still willing, but as I near 70, the lusty old spirit is not only weak, but absolutely missing in action, or inaction, as the case may be. And surprisingly, I’m finding many more advantages to this new, post-erotic state than disabilities. And while I still look forward to that swimsuit issue, I’ll be holding the magazine with both hands.

This is not just a change in mood, or chemistry, but a major change in attitude, and I wish more men could appreciate it. But with Big Pharma doing its best to make you feel inadequate if you aren’t Ready Freddy 24/7, I’m afraid lots of guys won’t ever appreciate such a lasting hiatus from the grind.

From a very early age, most of us males are at the mercy of our hormones, and those pheromones the ladies give off, or wear in their body lotion. Once we become sexually active, we may even come to define our worth in sexual terms — how many women we bed, how well we satisfy them, how many come back for more.

We don’t even stop to think that this might actually be a somewhat shallow measure of our value as a human being. And the sensual pleasure itself, which may be no more lasting than a bowl of ice crème or watching a great movie or concert, if it becomes compulsive or addictive, can really mess up our lives. Just ask Tiger.

And not that there’s anything WRONG with ice crème! A wonderful big sloppy bowl of Mocha Almond Fudge, Spumoni, or even Vanilla can make my day! I’ve enjoyed just about every flavor, in every conceivable location, from the diner to the drive-in to the park side picnic table, but now I’m intrigued by what happens when you lose your sweet tooth and your appetite for Hägen-Das.

To begin with, the whole dynamic with women changes, noticeably. You may have never noticed it before, how much undercurrent there is of a sexual nature in all of our cross-gender transactions. How women use it, almost unconsciously, and so do we men, that magnetism that exists between the sexes when it’s still there. And yet…without it?

Well, somehow the power dynamic changes, or maybe even just goes away. And I’m not at their mercy anymore, so I see the gals in a whole new light. (They’re even stranger than we thought!) I’m still exploring the perceptions and the new realities, and they are intriguing.

I may not be at all typical for an older male. I lost most of my hair in my twenties and have been immune to Hair Club for Men ads, so I may be the anomaly, not have much in common with the guys going blind and deaf on Viagra.

If sex and death have always been very entwined, a life without the one may just be immortal.

With most titillating TV having lost its charm, and a whole new kind of objectivity setting in, I’m enjoying what seems like a very natural stage of the whole human lifetime experience. Every now and then, I see some sexy lingerie ad, scan the babe and ask myself, “Now, remind me, what was THAT all about anyway?” Once it was life and life only. And, Boyz, this is in your future too. Ta-da!

©2010 Dennis Green

The Face of God

by Dennis Green

I wrote a poem recently about “Tribal Faces” and one of my pals wrote back something about the “face of G-d.” I responded with a quip about Mt. Rushmore and wrote, “and who says God has a face?” Which got me thinking…

The anthropomorphic rendition of the deity often shows him bearded, as he is on the Sistine Chapel ceiling, a magnificent work of art under which I once stood with 300 strangers and Diane, (who is a little strange, but someone I know.) And if God has a face, and a hand that can reach out and touch Adam and bring him to life, then he must also have a butt, right? And yet I don’t hear much talk from true believers about the Ass of God.

I can understand the desire to make God more human, but in literature that’s called the “pathetic fallacy,” even when the weather, or a mountain is personified. “That storm really wrecked havoc on the town!” Yep. Must have been really angry. That’s why they call her “Stormy.”

But “pathetic” in this instance doesn’t mean grotey, but has to do with sympathetic harmonies and our desire to imagine that the whole universe is in tune with our natures, our very existence. And the pathetic fallacy is also sometimes called a “trope,” an outrageous or “violent metaphor.” A stretch.

In some cultures and religions, it is heresy to imagine or speak of the divine as a person. Or even as a thing at all, as anything made of matter. In Islam, for example, the deity is by sharia law meant to be kept ineffable, the numinous and indescribable reality beyond ordinary existence.

I have no doubt that a “Non-Ordinary Reality,” as Castaneda calls it, exists. Nor that all matter and energy is infused with spirit. But the Disneyfication of God, and religion — right down to the contemporary predictions of the Last Days — turn belief into a kind of self-parody that is only too easy for non-believers to dismiss.

I know many believing Christians, and several ministers, men of the cloth, who get very nervous about the so-called “humanity of Jesus.” This is a doctrine, a dogma of most evangelical and even universalist churches, the notion that Jesus was both the Son of God, divine, and yet also fully human, so that he could fully sympathize with us. Relate to us and feel compassion.

But when I’ve pressed the issue with the anointed ones, they also claim that Jesus was utterly without sin, born of a Virgin, yada-yada-yada, so that when his cousin John the Baptist, (also born of a Virgin), baptized Jesus, he was just kidding. Going through the motions… Or something.

And if Jesus was fully human, he must have soiled his diapers, had sexual longings in adolescence, had a crush on girls, maybe even…touched himself…inappropriately, as they say. Otherwise, saying he was “fully human” is fully meaningless. And no doubt, he had not only a face, and hands, but also an ass that was also fully human. Boxers or briefs?

Now, conceiving of a God that walks among us as a fully human being is the most violent trope of all, a pathetic fallacy of the first order, speaking strictly of course in literary terms. Among scholars, however, there is a major dispute about whether Jesus ever claimed to be the Son of God at all, or whether Saul of Tarsus simply made that part up.

Among Judaic scholars, there is no dispute. None of the “conditions” prophesied regarding the coming of the Messiah, or following his arrival, have been satisfied — especially worldwide peace. And in Jewish theology, the Messiah is not YWH. Nor is God’s face smiling at my little jokes. So crucify me.

©2010

Representation Without Taxation

by Dennis Green

A curious new strategy has come to dominate Alameda politics — passing parcel taxes to get around Prop. 13 limits on property taxes. And a clever tactic within that strategy is exempting seniors from having to pay the tax, but allowing them to vote on the initiatives that put them in place and that everyone else will have to pay. That’s “representation without taxation,” and is just as onerous in a democracy as its flip side.

This ploy achieves several objectives at once. It gives the impression that the backers of the initiative are sensitive to the fact that it may place an undue burden on some homeowners. “See? We understand your situation. You’re retired. You’re living on a limited income. You’re exempt.”

Never mind all those low income folks under 65 who are also living on a limited income, who can’t afford a jump of $5,000/year in their property taxes. After all, that’s only $416/month. An easy nut to make, especially if it’s for a good cause, like our schools, our students, and excellence in education!

And then, just to make things tricky, you can always make the opt-out process difficult, force the senior homeowners to find an office at City Hall to sign a voucher, make the opt-out period very short and unannounced, unadvertised, just a small notice buried in the classifieds. See if they’re on their toes.

And the beauty part is that you give all those seniors a chance to be generous, to be good citizens, to support the building of a new library, or keep the inefficient hospital open, or the even more wasteful schools — with other people’s money! Genius.

If you think this sounds cynical, you’re right. It is. So cynical it’s been used now by AUSD several times, and is about to be used again.

Now, if you’re facing an uphill battle getting that 2/3 majority on the vote, why not simply exempt everyone over 60 — with that same unadvertised short window of escape — just to increase your margins?

Until now, renters were also made exempt from paying a direct parcel tax, but in June, they will be included in the new AUSD parcel tax initiative. That may be a serious mistake. Yes, it will increase revenues from the new parcel tax, if it passes, but lessen the odds that it will. Only 12% of all Alameda households have children in the public schools, and renters even less than that. So including them is risky.

You would think that “representation without taxation” would be a benefit to democracy, but it’s not. When there is “taxation without representation,” at least people know they’re being cynically used. But if they think they’re getting a free ride, they may not realize they are really being used as the mules — carrying a cargo no one else would bear.

Moreover, if seniors really are exempted from paying taxes, that means the tax burden is falling even more heavily on young people trying to pay off a mortgage, to put their kids through college, to save for their own retirement, many of them also struggling to pay off school loans and credit card debts more common to their age group than to the retired.

So that “free ride,” that “free vote” is costing somebody something, and if you’re the senior taking advantage of that perk, it’s as bad for your children, (and your karma), as all that deficit spending you encourage your government to do. There is, ultimately, no free ride, no free lunch, and no free vote. And the sooner we fess up to that, the more honest all of us will be.

©2010 Dennis Green

Don't Tread On Me!

by Dennis Green

Whether the Egyptian Cobra, (the goddess Wadjet, “the Green One”), the Water Moccasin, the Black Mamba or the Rattlesnake is the more lethal of the venomous vipers, there is some debate.

Federalist? Whig? States Rights? Independence? Libertarian? Who, me? Well, at heart I’m a Rebel, even at my best moments an Anarchist, although some of my rivals call me the AntiChrist. S’all good.

Along with much of the citizenry, I’m sharing a spirit of discontent with my government. It’s expensive, it doesn’t work, and it makes promises it can’t keep. Other than that, why would anyone dislike it?

The most primal instinct of all is the one that tells us we don’t want other people telling us what to do, pushing us around, taking advantage of us, abusing their power, or lording it over us. And those are not just populist sentiments of the working class, or a dislike of the ruling classes. It’s common sense.

So we begin with a native rebellious instinct. And then let’s see just how many incremental layers of imposition we can stand slathered onto our bare bone sense of ruthless independence. In my case, not much.

I grew up, like most of you, believing, being taught, that our leaders govern at the will and pleasure of we the people. And that’s neither a populist or an elitist notion, not class-based at all. Yes, the gap between the college-educated and the hoi polloi has widened since the Sixties, and so has the gap between the Middle Class and the Affluent. But our expectations of government have remained pretty much the same.

“Don’t Tread On Me!” Don’t interfere in my life. Keep your hand out of my back pocket. Keep your nose out of my bedroom and my bong. Provide the very few communal services that the private sector doesn’t do very well, like infrastructure and a general sort of safety net. But we don’t really need a “standing army” for rapid response to threats that haven’t existed in decades.

And it will be a matter of some debate just how much protection we need from big biz, from polluters and Big Pharma and Agribiz. And if the market is really free — free of regulation — then let it go into freefall if the Masters of the Universe screw it up. No bailouts. Let natural selection do its ruthless work.

But if one measure of our character is how easily we are offended, another measure is what and whom we admire. If the Tea Partiers really admire former Governor of Alaska Sarah Palin as much as they appear to, and former Colorado congressman Tom Tancredo, who called for a national literacy test, then perhaps these two characters reflect the character of the movement.

Palin, it turns out, resigned her position of Governor a year before her term ended because her polling experts told her she didn’t stand a chance of re-election, that her notoriety from the Vice Presidential campaign would work against her, and that her fifteen minutes of fame and book sales would quickly fade among a wider audience if she stayed in Alaska.

As for Tancredo, most of his legislative proposals failed, along with his 2007 campaign for the Republican Presidential nomination. Another loser. With this lack of focus, the Tea Party Movement may be a loser too. And if the Republican Party attempts simply to replace its former ruling contingent, the Neo-Cons, with Tea Baggers, it may just hasten its own demise too.

68% of voters surveyed say they would vote for a candidate who does not belong to either the Democratic or Republican Parties. I’m one of them.

©2010 Dennis Green