The Righteous Path Of The Righteous Party Of The Righteous Human Beings

 

I hold my friends to higher standards than I do others. That’s why I choose to be around certain people more than others, because I deem them to be more interested in doing the right thing. That’s why I might tell a friend he has had enough to drink and be less likely to tell a stranger at a bar the same thing. If I see a friend making bad choices, I want better for him and will weigh in on what he is doing. I also like to think he will appreciate my input even if he doesn’t agree with it. But even if he doesn’t immediately appreciate my advice, I still feel it is my obligation as a friend to give him my opinion.

I’ve always considered myself a Democrat. I cast my very first vote for Jesse Jackson in the primaries in 1984. I voted for Mondale in the general election that same year. I voted for Michael Dukakis in 1988 and Bill Clinton in 1992. In fact, I have NEVER voted for a Republican candidate for any office even once in my life.

So please take all of that to heart when I offer opinions that are directed at Democratic voters. I want what’s best for you. You and I mostly have the same goals, though we seem to be choosing increasingly different paths in how we pursue them. When I offer an opinion or ask you to explain your behavior, know that it is YOUR values I wish to defend. When I criticize your tactics, it is because they are failing to produce the results both you and I wish to achieve. And if we disagree as to how to achieve those results, well, that is a subject for conversation and not repudiation.

First, I would like to point out that you are currently supporting a candidate who has quite openly announced her intention to continue to support genocide in Gaza. I am going to presume that you and I find this less than ideal and would, in a perfect world, like to stop the indiscriminate killing of children, or at least lessen it. I think that there ARE things the Democratic Party could do to lessen the killing of children. Furthermore, I don’t think the uncritical support of what could legitimately argued to be a genocide is a choice the Democratic Party has to make in order to win the election. In fact, I would argue that the party’s support of genocide is going to cost them more votes than it is going to gain them.

I assume you are a supporter of the Democratic Party because you feel that they are the morally superior party. I also assume you feel yourself to be of a higher moral standard than others because you call yourself a Democrat. If both of my assumptions are true, then I would suggest that a moral party would do whatever it could to put a halt to genocide. That if said political party was not doing all in its power to stop a genocide, it wasn’t really all that moral of a party at all. Furthermore, if the preferred party of a morally righteous human being was not doing all it could to prevent young children from losing their limbs and lives due to an unrestrained bombing campaign, it is incumbent upon any morally righteous person to call them out on it.

I don’t hear people who plan to vote blue calling out the Harris campaign. Voters have the power to make her pay attention. I would go so far as to say you have not merely the power but the responsibility to use it. I would even go so far as to say that the blood of children is on your hands should you choose not to use the power you have to influence your chosen candidate to alter her stance on the ongoing slaughter of innocents. Again, this shouldn’t cost her the election, it would merely move her toward a more morally justifiable position on the Gaza problem and more in line with the general public. There is no downside to this, pragmatically or morally. We need not call those who disagree with you nonpragmatic purists.

You say Donald Trump would be even worse. That may be true, but that is hardly an argument against insisting your preferred candidate take a moral position that would not hurt her politically. Would it not be the pragmatic thing to do to push your candidate toward a position with which the majority of Americans agree? A Gallop poll from March of this year shows that 55% of Americans disagree with “the military action Israel has taken in Gaza.” Surely support for Israel has fallen further given all the atrocities we have witnessed since then, the murdered journalists, the incursion into Lebanon, the increased chances of a war with Iran. Furthermore, 75% of Democrats disagree with what Israel is doing. And yet they are planning on voting for a candidate that has shown no signs that she cares what Democratic voters think.

Or are they going to vote for her? Assuredly some of them are going to regard genocide as a red line. Some will choose not to vote for a Democratic candidate for President for the first time in their lives. How then, is it an effective strategy for Kamala Harris to support Israel without reservation?

It is the stated strategy of Democrats to get their candidate elected and then worry about getting that candidate to embrace the more progressive aspects of the left. This has been the strategy of Democrats for the past 30 years. It has been a spectacular failure. They have asked for nothing from those who claim they want to represent them, and have received exactly that. They have demanded nothing and gotten even worse than the bare minimum they expected. Of all the failed strategies that have ever been concocted, I can think of none that have been less unsuccessful. And yet Democratic voters persist, more avidly supportive of the strategy than ever before.

I am one of those whom establishment Democrat types often call a purist or an absolutist. And yet I cannot conceive of anyone more purist than one who adheres so utterly to such a failed strategy. Nor can I imagine anyone being more an absolutist than one who insists everyone else support a candidate who has never had popular support, and who is now neck deep in the blood of children whose only crime is inhabiting land which the Zionists want to possess for themselves. I cannot imagine a world in which someone who demands an end to such a situation is labelled a purist.

These are harsh words, I guess. Still, they are written by one who does not see you as an enemy but as a friend who has taken the wrong path. They are harsh words but they are spoken not in hatred but with concern. I get it, there are other issues to consider, but none that you will mention rise to the level of what is happening in Gaza right now. And I do not see it as realistic that a political party that is on the wrong side of genocide is going to be very interested in doing the right thing on the issues you’re most concerned about. Consider their fight to raise the minimum wage as but one example of their desire to fight for you.

Again, however harsh it may appear, my intent is communication, not condemnation. You need us as much as we need you. To consider us as your enemy rather than a concerned friend with whom you need to have a heart to heart chat would be, I feel, a mistake.

The Deeper Beauty Of My Lunch

 

The beauty of my lunch goes deep. Deep enough that I wanted to take a picture of it, to memorialize its ephemeral beauty. So that I may study and savor its richness long after it is gone.

I have had two compliments on it today, by coworkers expressing a desire for such a salad. I’m sure it looks quite unlike anything they are going to see all day. Excepting the wrapper of the Skittles package, it is way more colorful than anything to be found in the vending machine, which my coworkers jokingly refer to as the Wheel Of Death.

If I were to bring this salad to the art department of my local college I wouldn’t be surprised if some painter did not draw inspiration from it and ask if he might capture it on canvas for posterity’s sake . Perhaps I shall blow up the image, put it in a frame, and hang it upon my wall. I know just the spot.

They say that beauty is only skin deep but this goes deeper. It is a wonder for the eyes, but it is also an experience for the taste buds. Each bite a different texture of crunch. Each taste a subtle shift of flavor that blends with the rest. And when I have finished, I shall arise from the table not full, not sluggish, but energized and ready to return to work. The enjoyment of eating it is but a precursor to the joy of having it inside of me. It does not sit like a rock in my stomach but is already making its way through me, causing my body — not merely my tastebuds — to be awake and alert.

But it goes deeper. For it is a variety of natural foods, each packed with one or more of the vitamins and minerals which are essential for this soft machine which I inhabit. I have not filled myself with harmful food, like I once did in my childhood. I did not choose option C3 from the Wheel Of Death. All that I have ingested is of nature. All that which is consumed by me is what my body has evolved to find nourishment in. There is no falsity in it, no artificial coloring required. This, my friends, is lunch as it was intended by God, the Tao, the Mother Goddess, whatever spiritual reference resonates with you.

But it goes deeper. The food I eat was grown as a labor of love. Each vegetable was raised by those who choose to farm, who have a great love for it. It was not grown on some massive farm, not picked by exploited immigrants who do not have the same quality of life I do or the same career choices. It was grown by people very much like myself.

But it goes deeper. At the farmers market, these wonderful growers of food offer their wares for sale and I am able to meet and express my appreciation for their efforts. We talk, and in communicating we create the bonds with which our local community is knit. There is no automated checkout at the farmers market.

But it goes deeper. This salad’s importance has an impact upon the planet. Or rather, it doesn’t. Because there is nothing in it that has been shipped further than 30 miles. Most of it has not had to travel more than five. Some of it required no additional travel at all. While the grocery stores in town are filled with foods that have traveled across the country and from other continents, this food I eat has only a tiny footprint upon our tired and weary Mother. In eating this salad I am asking of Her as little as possible, and her gratitude for this is the gift of the freshest and most flavorful vegetables one can find. Bill Gates wishes he could eat produce as fresh as this.

But it goes deeper. This produce was not raised in a cage. The tomato never had its offspring torn from it at the moment of its birth. There was no animal suffering involved in the meal. No milk taken from a suckling’s lips to be given instead to an adult human. This salad did not require the repetitive motions of manual laborers performing on living creatures some of the most inhumane actions imaginable with a sharpened blade. Neither man nor beast was traumatized in the picking of these radishes.

But it goes deeper. This food was grown in accord with nature. It did not require unnatural chemicals or fertilizers. It is sustainable. Its creation does not unduly tax the ecosystem. It does not create massive manure ponds. The streams that acquire the runoff from the area where these vegetables were farmed do not carry algae to nearby rivers and lakes, killing off the fish and other creatures.

But it goes deeper. This salad may feed me, but it does little to feed the corporations that control so much of our food supply. That control so much of our economy. That influence our government, buy our elected officials, create commercials that induce our children to eat unnatural and unhealthy diets. That feed our children such unhealthy foods that they are unable to perform at school. That feed them such unnatural foods that our children require medications simply to function as normal children should.

That’s pretty deep. Way deeper than a Happy Meal. Way deeper than a Kit Kat commercial. Even deeper than the bottomless salad bowl at Olive Garden. Plus — and this is the best part — it makes my coworkers envious. Taste The Revolution.