Monday, February 21, 2011

Facebook to save the world!

To suggest that a social media site could have more impact on the world than the mightiest military force the world has ever known seems, I don’t know, ridiculous.

But facts are facts and the Middle East strong men are being toppled enmasse. People in the region are communicating freely with each other for the first time in their long history courtesy of cell phones and the social media sites facebook and twitter. And they are changing the regions politics overnight.

For the last 40 years the US policy was to prop up Middle East dictators and ignore civil rights issues to insure a steady flow of oil. We deserve credit for setting the bar on hypocrisy so high no other nation could possibly reach it. Instead of helping the poor people in the region we have contributed to their ignorance and subservience to “rulers” who rule their countries like mobsters
rule their mobs.

We need to pepper the middle east nations with cell phones, not bombs, and hope that when these countries turn the corner on democracy they don’t throw us out of the region with the rest of the trash (read former dictators).

Unfortunately our President prefers to wage war. The country continues to suffer with outrageous budget deficits due to a stone age mentality; people dedicated to blowing people up instead of bringing them into an era of peace and prosperity. Phones, not bombs, will do far more and cost far less.

Without the US military fanning fires around the globe the world would be a very peaceful place. The fact that a few disgruntled factions persist and do damage is no excuse for us to squander our nation’s resources trying to exterminate them. Phones and free speech will accomplish what our orgies of waste, death, and destruction have not, can not, and never will .

Our politicians need to face the facts and do the right thing by this country. Either they stop funding wars or they will face facebook, and it won’t be pretty. They will either modernize their thinking or they will face extinction like the dinosaurs they are. War mongers need to die off, and quickly, so the world can get on with the business of saving the planet, not blowing up its citizens.

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Here is where we go wrong with our children.

First of all, what was done to us as children we do to our own children. In my case it started with me as soon as I could speak, or more correctly hear, what was being said around me. In particular, what triggered my BS radar at an early, impressionable age was what I heard versus what I saw, or what I heard when I was not supposed to hear.

I caught on pretty quickly, at least by age 8, that my parents and other adults were pulling the old "do as I say, not as I do" double standard on me. As I grew older, more sophisticated, and a great deal more cynical I might even have said I was outright lied to by the adults in my life. Take smoking or drinking as examples. These products were supposed to be bad for me, and yet mysteriously good for them.

My parents were not saints. Few parents are. I don't criticize mine for their overindulgence in alcohol, for example, but I never forgave them their hypocrisy where the subject was concerned. Drugs would be another example. For some reason they were able to justify pharmaceutical drugs issued on the flimsiest of excuses but pot was considered a serious offense.

Our children aren't stupid. If anything they are far smarter than we were at their age. Their BS detectors are far more sophisticated than ours ever were. They just have a different kind of smarts.

When we try to fool our kids we are only kidding ourselves.