Dear Eric, Is It Black or White Out Today?
Dr. Gerry Lower, Keystone, South Dakota

July 3, 2003

RE: Your letter to Rudy
(Dear Rudy, Let's Get Those Damned Liberals," Counter Punch, June 14, 2003)

Dr. Lower,

Why all the Bush bashing? Weren't you around during the 1990s? We ought be rediscovering the values of our fathers and relighting the flames of Democracy instead of fighting with each other.

Eric

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July 3

Dear Eric,

Such a tiny question you ask. Why all the Bush bashing? It would require a book to answer. Americans have come to live in a dualistic world of conservative vs liberal, right vs left, capitalist vs socialist, legal vs illegal, etc. vs not etc. The truth is that with the adoption of greed-driven capitalism (as our "over your head" operational religion) by both political parties, the traditional liberal/conservative dialectic has been dead for decades, and the current liberal press doesn't even know it. What little remained of our father's middle human ground has been long gone. Having returned to religion-based ways of dumping all of life into two opposed camps, we do eliminate our chances of finding solutions. Here, I would recommend Bernard Weiner's, "Relighting the Torches of America's Soul" (LiberalSlant, July 3, 2003).

The values of nascent Christianity, Science and Democracy are neither liberal or conservative, simple as that. I really do not care to join sides in this debate, as I prefer talking about solutions. How can Americans, most of whom are notoriously bereft of historical knowledge and nortoriously invested in or coerced by capitalism, suddenly come to see themselves as more than peers to the likes of Jefferson and Franklin? Mind boggling, is it not? When I replied to Rudy's egregious letter, it was just for fun. People who see our fathers as despotic tyrants deserve a little kick in the butt.

As for the 1990s, wasn't that a joke? Clinton was quickly molded into a moderate Republican and he made an utter mockery of the Presidency with his sexual antics and lies. All in all, however, his primary crime was against his wife and daughter for the embarrassment he caused them. Wonderful "role model" for our youth he was not.

Unfortunately, lying and denying has become a way of life in the Oval Office. Our current president also lies in the name of corrupt crony capitalism and its imperial agenda. He will surely discredit everything for which he stands, already has in the eyes of the world and soon in the eyes of the American majority. I see this as an integral part of the larger cultural program in which we are enmeshed, blindly following ideas that are the antithesis of those set forth by our fathers, until we have no where to go but home.
Have a nice day. Thanks for your commentary. I agree that we ought be rediscovering the values of our fathers instead of fighting with each other inside a dualistic world that offers no solutions. Unfortunately, the Bush administration knows no other arena. Essentially, they want you to take their word for it, that they know precisely what our fathers had in mind, as if you, Eric, couldn't read.

Sincerely,

Dr. Gerry Lower

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July 4, 2003

Dr. Lower,

I appreciate your defense of the founding fathers.  Too many people want to focus on their short-comings without regard to the times in which they lived or the remarkable achievements they accomplished.  I disagree, however, that Clinton's biggest crime was his trist in the Oval Office. I believe he sold U.S. national security down the river in his illegal dealings with the Chinese, all for the sake of campaign dollars.  There may be underhanded deals being cut by the Bush Administration, but not on the same scale as during Clinton's slimy reign.  In any event I believe Bush does have the country's best interest at heart and I cannot say the same for Slick Willy.

Eric

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July 4th !!!!

Dear Eric,

Your reply is a nice example of what I was talking about in my initial response. I hope that you noticed that you did not bother to address the issues I brought up at all, but rather you chose to remain in your dualistic little world of Bush. I presume this is called "thinking inside the box." Western religion has always lived in a simplistic world of "things," divided into good and bad, black and white, righteous and wrongeous, blah and anti-blah, blah.

After Newton, we began looking at life as a process, and we became aware that things are involved in related sequences of events. We were able to deduce the motion of the planets and the causes of infectious disease. After Einstein, we began looking at life on the whole, globally if you will, and we became aware that processes are interrelated to yield integrated systems. We were able to reduce the electron to a matter of quantum dynamics and the neoplasic diseases to a matter of genomic mutations. My point is that one can look at current events in rigorously scientific ways embracing historical or evolutionary time frames or one can look at current events in the simplistic dualistic "here and now" ways of fundamentalist religion.

If you knew anything about our fathers, you would know that they, i.e., the Jefferson Revolutionaries, not the Hamiltonian Tories, actually derived a new theology, one based entirely in the values of nascent Christianity (sans all religion), Science and Democracy. These values are logically derived by dialectic synthesis from the values of western religious systems and eastern ethical systems, hence their human nature and global appeal. As I mentioned, these values are neither conservative or liberal, neither Republican or Democrat, they are human and they have made Democracy an easy item to promote in the educated world, be it in Europe or the Middle East.

As I tried to point out in my letter, one's view of our current situation depends entirely on how we are looking at the problem. What one sees is a function of how much time one embraces in one's thought. But you stick pretty much with the "here and now" view, the timeless dualistic view of western religion, where you can divide the world into black and white, go with one side or the other, and save yourself one hell of a lot of worrying and thinking. I recognize that you have plenty of company in taking this stance.

You have made Life simple in the assinine sense when, in fact, Life is simple in the elegant sense. Clinton Bad, Bush Good. I am not impressed. If you stirred these two men up together in a kettle, the former a moral idiot, the latter an intellectual idiot, you would still end up with only half a man, unfit to polish Washington's Deist boots.

By occupying such a tiny, dualistic world of thought, Eric, you are missing quite a lot of what is actually going on in the world. I recognize that you have plenty of company in this as well. Fortunately, the other western democracies are not seeing it the way you and Bush see it. Do you realize that the people behind America's dalliance with neo-fundamentalism and neo-imperialism constitute about 1/2 per cent of the world's population? The bulk of the educated western world, on the chance you may have missed it, no longer operates within religion's simplistic world of good and bad.

It really is egocentricity of monstrous proportions to think that the European Union ought or will, under any circumstances, buy into Bush's glaringly implicit notions of a pax Americana. It simply won't happen. One more profoundly immoral act on the global stage by the Bush administration and the game will likely be over. It will be America on her own, against a world of pissed off people.

Certainly, the educated western world has sufficient economic clout to deliver a bankrupting blow to any dreams of American hegemony. That is quite likely how American neo-fundamentalism and corrupt crony capitalism will go down, to be excluded from the global political arena forever. Despite his command of the world's most devastating military, certainly Bush knows that the bottom line in Bush world is money.

You and the rest of us will soon know for certain just how far these people will go and just what they are capable of doing in your good name and our good names. Once these people discredit themselves (as part of a their self-fulfilling religious prophecy), we will all be able to return to the values of our fathers, a subject which, unfortunately, neither Democrats or Republicans, with few exceptions, know a damned thing about anymore. We have, in fact, already fulfilled Franklin's prophecy, that by following a Constitution too far removed from the values of the Declaration, we would end up under despotic rule and the people would not even know the difference. Welcome to Bush world.

Sincerely yours,

Dr. Gerry Lower