what is different about now. Really. First if you were African American or native American the united states was not good for you. Slavery. Trail of Tears. And women couldn't vote. Now women can vote. Native Americans find themselves in little remnants ripped off left with their little bits of land and not many treaties kept. (Native Americans are to United States what Tibetans are to China, I think). In WWII Japanees Americans to internement camps, etc. Up till civil rights era real bad for African Americans, then a burst of hope. But with Reagan begins the long decline, the chipping away of hope of gains made with minority rights, women's rights, worker's rights, etc. Now the Bush nightmare: is it that a priveleged class is now threatened by bush? or that the expansion of the priveleged classes that occured with unions and so forth is being rolled back? African Americans, women, Native Americans, minorities of all stripes have had very little constitutional help that I can see for years and years with only a few bursts of hope. Were the bursts of hope real or a lie? What is different about now? Is it that even middle class americans have reason to fear now, like all these others had reason to fear all along? What good was the constitution if you were native american, african american, etc? I've talked to Native Americans who live on Pine Ridge reservation and they might as well be in a third world country: what do constitutional rollbacks mean to them? Was the constituion not only good for propertied landowners in the beginning? Are we just returning to our roots? Back to Freedom for the elite? And the elite class is shrinking and that bites? The deal about what the founding fathers wrote can have meaning I think because we can take them at their word about everyone being equal even when so clearly they meant only their equals were equal as it were: I remember doing that in the Army. I would be ordered to do something wrong and I would say I can't because I took an oath as an officer to uphold what is right. And what are they gonna tell you? Report you for upholding your oath? (Of course they find other ways to get you, but I always loved being honest as an Army officer: I thought of it a pulling a Forrest Gump, because when you are honest and follow the rules the higher ups invariably think you are mad or retarded). I will never forget the shock I felt as I really began to study history and found out how much I had been lied to. And I do love all the hopeful people here who try to believe in what the constitution can mean for everyone. But what is so different about now? Hasn't it always been this way for somebody? And now it comes down to us.

out on the moor in the storm with the fool who saw it all coming.

for standing up for what is right. Just: thank you.

You remind me today of the exquisite balance of the attempt to live with integrity and hope. For on the one hand, all that matters is to be able to face death without regret, to die with integrity and face what it has meant to be human. Or as Socrates would have put it, to live a life of tending to your soul. And yet part of being the type of person who has that perspective is to do all you can in the current moment on behalf of what is good and right, even when it seems hopeless: because the key point is how you individually live your life, so that all those moments add up to a life worth having lived when you die. So I have to stay informed, and vote, and try to make sense of all this, when I would much rather run and hide form it in mindless entertainment or even in a more elevated sense in what Chogyam Trungpa called spiritual materialism. So the exquisite tension of having to pay attention to all these mundane dirty things while at the same time knowing they are transient; to not give up even though you know you have already lost, because to keep on doing what is right even in the face of failure is what will give you your soul in the moments of death.

And the weather is here is crisp and cool today. There is a cat sitting on my computer box who likes the warmth of it. My morning oatmeal was tasty. Greetings, bebop-o, this eternal morning.

I was eating my morning oatmeal when I read your (apt) analogy. That is all I am saying. And that I don't even want to know about the chopstick bras mentioned in the comments. Not. Even. Curious.

Thanks again for what you write, Glen: it helps me think it through.

that the real goal of this column was to try to get mentioned in the blog of the Fake Steve Jobs.