One Utah

I’ve been following and sometimes writing about issues of war and peace, human rights, our economy, the environment, and nuclear weapons and our inability to deal safely with nuclear material for about half a century. Never have I seen the interconnection of these issues reach the danger point that we now face. We are in a lapse of leadership on top of this, or perhaps more realistically, buried under all this.

Since the 1980’s, without hyperbole, we have had enough nuclear weapons to end all life on the planet.. With morons and oxymorons in the White House and upon senators’ staffs denying global warming while it is breathing down our neck; and our trying to surround the former Soviet Union with new NATO nations or wanna-be’s (as if we’d go to war with Russia for whatever happens in Georgia) simply inviting the Russians to invade these states which have spun off the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1990; and the collapse of mortgage and banking institutions, huge corporations, not small fry; and our economy threatening a melt-down from debt from financing two major wars, wars of choice; we find our real enemy is us.

The hubris we reveal as we seek global hegemony economically and militarily has been observed from the beginning of the West. Aristotle to Shakespeare (King Lear) to Reinhoid Niebuhr to Sir Isaiah Berlin. It’s time to think locally and act locally. A garden, a source of water, avoid debt like the plague. Help your neighbor. The challenges we now face are so stupendous that the mighty promises of our presidential candidates are ridiculous. If they understand what is going on about them (and I think Obama, at least, has a clue), they would simply say to us that they can promise nothing except hard times.. and express the faith that somehow, together, we may just get through.

Ed Firmage

This entry was posted Monday, August 18th, 2008 at 6:39 am and is filed under Utah Politics, Utah Pollution. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.