Life Like Water

I recalled those words this morning as I walked my daughter to school. I was too young to vote and didn’t really know what they meant at the time. I was in high school and hope was limited to easy exams and cute girls.

It is a beautiful autumn morning. The sun lit up the trees that were already burning with autumn leaves. I know that history will be made and I understand the hope and promise wrapped up in those words: morning in America. I understand what drove that previous landslide political victory and know I’ll see a similar one in a few hours.

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”
— Dwight David Eisenhower

I’ve tried to express this a number of times to people who have repeated the canard that “war is good for the economy”. Warfare is, in fact, a colossal waste of resources that could be spent building infrastructure and people. For example, Congress has just canceled the DDG 1000 destroyer program that had a cost per unit of about $5 billion dollars after two boats had been built.

Ten billion dollars for two battleships. For perspective, the money spent on this one program is almost twice the total funding for the National Science Foundation which provides grants and funding for a significant fraction of the scientific research in the US. It’s frustrating to listen to our President boast about his funding of scientific research when the entirety of NSF funding is dwarfed by a single military program.

As a people, we need to seriously reconsider our priorities.

I spend a fair amount of time reading and occasionally posting to the political threads on fark.com.  It isn’t a terribly worthwhile way to spend my time but I do occassionally learn something.  The trade off is that I see a lot of flame wars and hysterical posturing.  On the whole it’s pretty depressing that people refuse to come to an agreement solely so that they can have an excuse to argue.

There is one good thing that comes from it though.  After having read a particularly egregious flame war where the same people argue the same points, present the same evidence and are met with the same denials, I can look out my window into my back yard.  The fence could use some mending and there are leaves to rake and burn.  The bare flower beds will need attention come spring as will the complete absence of flower beds in front.  There’s a bit of an erosion issue over by the double gate that I’ll need to figure out but, apart from that, I’ve gotten most of the drainage problems sorted.

I can’t affect the budget deficit or the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan. There are people who hold their beliefs in the defiance of logic. evidence and basic reason whose minds I cannot change. I can’t shape the world or direct it down the paths I believe are ethical and good.

I can, however, bring order and beauty to a small part of the world. I can work ethically and contribute in a small way to the betterment of millions of lives. I can exercise, meditate and cultivate compassion. I can raise my daughter such that she has the opportunity to be strong, loving, gentle and wise. I think that’s probably enough work for anyone.

Remember remember
the fifth of November
Gunpowder, treason and plot.
I see no reason
why gunpowder, treason
Should ever be forgot…

Apropos for this election season. If we have the same questionable election results, the way we have in the last two presidential elections, it might not be totally out of the question for a few thousand Guy Fawkes masks to show up on the steps of Congress on Nov 5, 2008.