Mountain Views News          Saturday, September 17, 2011

13

OPINION

 Mountain Views News Saturday, September 17, 2011 

STUART Tolchin..........On LIFE

HAIL Hamilton My Turn

Mountain 
Views

News

PUBLISHER/ EDITOR

Susan Henderson

CITY EDITOR

Dean Lee 

EAST VALLEY EDITOR

Joan Schmidt

SALES

Patricia Colonello

626-355-2737 

626-818-2698

PRODUCTION 

Richard Garcia

PHOTOGRAPHY

Lina Johnson

Ivonne Durant

WEBMASTER

John Aveny 

CONTRIBUTORS

Jeff Brown

Pat Birdsall

Chris Leclerc

Bob Eklund

Howard Hays

Paul Carpenter

Stuart Tolchin

Kim Clymer-Kelley

Christopher Nyerges

Peter Dills 

Hail Hamilton 

Rich Johnson

Chris Bertrand

Ron Carter

Rev. James Snyder

Bobby Eldridge

Mary Carney

La Quetta Shamblee

Katie Hopkins

Deanne Davis

Despina Arouzman

Greg Wellborn

Dr. John Talevich

Meaghan Allen

Sean Kayden


EVERY DAY IS A SURPRISE


This is an article I never thought I would write. 
In fact, it is the kind of article that I probably 
would never even begin to read, as I am so very 
fond of writing and proclaiming I am a life-long 
atheist—or almost life-long. The story that I like 
to tell people is that when I was three or four, 
somebody told me about God as being this force 
that controlled everything and one of the things 
this force did was to make sure that women could 
not get pregnant until God saw the wedding ring on their hand and 
knew that they we were married and then and, only then, God would 
let a baby grow inside the woman’s stomach.

As simplistic as that sounds, 
it’s a pretty accurate description 
of how I thought when I was 
six and how I still think sixty 
years later. When I saw a 
movie that contained homes 
for unwed mothers, I realized 
that I had been lied to and 
perhaps I learned not to believe 
everything that people told me. 
I now was convinced that there 
was no God and that all religious 
creation stories were just made-
up to keep kids ignorant. I still 
think that the positions people 
take on most issues are based, 
not on personal knowledge or 
from deep consideration of any 
question. Instead, positions and 
attitudes come from a variety of 
other needs - like the desire to conform and be part of a community 
or the need to honor and respect positions taken by parents or a desire 
to identify with people of one kind or another or from unexamined 
prejudices. To combat these often woefully ignorant positions, 
Human beings must have the time and will to contemplate. Alas, in 
the modern world there is no place to do it. What I call contemplation 
is probably very close to what has traditionally been called prayer and 
it is my present belief that many current problems stem from (I can’t 
believe I’m saying this) the fact that THERE IS NO TIME OR PLACE 
FOR PRAYER IN THE SCHOOLS or probably in the homes.

What am I saying? What I am not saying is that religion should be 
taught in the schools or even at home. Give me a chance to explain. 
This morning, probably because tennis was not yet on, I started 
watching the 9/11 stuff which was pretty fascinating. The memorial 
with its running water and survival tree and overall feeling of life 
going on and honoring the dead seemed pretty powerful. I began to 
listen to President Obama’s speech and for the first time in my life 
heard the line:

 BE STILL AND KNOW THAT I AM GOD

This simple line has stayed with me all day. It’s now after midnight 
and I’m still thinking about it. I have googled the line and learned 
that it is a part of Psalm 46.10. I have read many translations of the 
Psalm and kind of understand for the first time that religion is not 
just about spinning a bunch of fairy tales and giving people a bunch 
of rules to follow and making silly predictions about the after-life or 
just plain telling people how they should live. What religion should 
really be about, I now understand, is giving individual people the 
space to experience themselves; to try and express and make sense of 
their almost inexpressible feelings that haunt them and haunt their 
dreams.

People, all people, have these highly developed brains that reflect 
upon themselves. There is a common experience, a yearning, 
to know their own purpose, to know if there is a meaning behind 
the ongoing struggle to survive. I think this feeling, this yearning, 
predates language. In fact language probably gets in the way as our 
senses pull the perceptions of the outer world into our inner selves 
and leave us with the need to make sense of it all. The message in 
the President’s speech tells us to shut up, to be quiet, to stop resisting 
and to just listen to our inner selves. Connected to this silence 
and to the temporary willing loss of our usual mundane concerns 
is a pretty universal experience. What it is I really can’t describe, 
but calling it God is as close a description as anything else. The 
experience involves forgetting ourselves as individuals and feeling 
our connection to a world that exists beyond and around and before 
and after us.

I think there must be time and support given to every individual 
to experience this exploration of individuality and universal 
connection. If we are not given this space we are incomplete and lost 
and dissatisfied and continue to reach out and look for someone else 
or the achievement of meaningless goals to give our pointless lives 
meaning. (Did you happen to see the movie Up In The Air?) 

Fish gotta swim, Birds gotta fly, Man gotta ask, Why, why, why

----Kurt Vonnegut 

9/11 AND THE GLOBAL WAR ON TERROR

“Exaggerating, mani-
pulating and exploiting 
the Terrorist threat for 
profit and power has been 
the biggest scam of the 
decade; only Wall Street’s ability to make the 
Government prop it up and profit from the crisis 
it created at the expense of everyone else can 
compete for that title. Nothing has altered the 
mindset of the American citizenry more than a 
decade’s worth of fear-mongering So compelling 
is fear-based propaganda, so beholden are 
our government institutions to these private 
Security State factions, and so unaccountable 
is the power bestowed by these programs, that 
even a full decade after the only Terrorist attacks 
on U.S. soil, its growth continues more or less 
unabated.”

--Glenn Greenwald, Salon.com

Last Sunday was the 10th anniversary of 9/11, and 
it came and went without so much as a whisper 
of the many questions that remain unanswered 
about who, how and why the attacks happened. 
However, it made me think about the decade-
long Global War on Terror, and what appears 
to be our permanent reliance on military might 
rather than of diplomacy as the favored means of 
solving international disputes. 

It also made me think about the enormous 
growth of our national security apparatus and 
its impact on our traditional freedoms at home.

War is not a border-skirmish or a confrontation 
between drunken sailors. There is nothing 
heroic about war. War involves the killing and 
maiming of thousands or millions of people, 
including many innocent bystanders. War is not 
about heroes and glorious death. War is nothing 
but blood and gore. War shreds people into 
bloody little pieces, it tears them limb from limb, 
or it burns them alive. War is the ultimate horror 
that man inflicts upon man. 

Wars are armed conflicts between countries 
or states. Wars are not conflicts between the 
individual people of warring countries. Wars are 
conflicts between the governments of countries. 
All wars are instigated by power hungry 
megalomaniacs, the politicians; are managed by 
professional killers, the military; and are fought 
by the brainwashed members of their respective 
populations, the canon-fodder.

Politicians wearing top hats and striped pants 
no longer formally declare wars. Any big bully, 
who feels confident that he can win the war, can 
start a war at any time. Euphemistic expressions 
have replaced the word war. Politicians now 
euphemistically refer to wars as police actions, 
or border alignments, or expeditions, or air 
campaigns. 

The current euphemism is the reference to a 
regime change. This is the real justification 
for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is the 
reason we’re flying sorties over Libya. In other 
words, the United States determines to liberate 
a country from its leaders. If the euphemism 
doesn’t wash, our politicians simply declare 
that the war is morally just and necessary to 
straighten out morally inferior miscreants.

George W. Bush probably provided the least 
imaginative reason for starting a war when he 
did away with euphemistic niceties altogether. 
He could not think of a reasonable subterfuge 
and simply waged war for what he called 
preemptive reasons. Likewise, Barak Obama has 
been unable to provide a good reason for our 
continued deployment in Iraq or the war still 
being fought in Afghanistan. 

No matter what excuse politicians dream up for 
waging war, however, the underlying cause of all 
wars is economic in nature. Wars are good for the 
economy -- at least temporarily. They are good 
for arms makers and defense contractors. And 
if you’re the biggest bully on the block, they are 
good for getting your way or taking something 
that isn’t yours.

I’m not surprised to find that the wars are more 
costly than first predicted! I am shocked at the 
lack of outrage. When will the young people 
march on Washington to protest these wars? 
Don’t they know the wars are bankrupting our 
economy? The young people who supported 
Obama should now protest these wars, loud and 
clear. It is they who will pay for them, after all.

If Obama can’t make the decision to pull out of 
Afghanistan, he should at least set a cap on the 
expense. If that forces him to only protect the 
areas around Kabul so be it. 

Our elected officials are afraid to stop these 
wars. Too much is at stake. War is about making 
money. The bottom line isn’t about defending 
freedom and liberty--it’s about profits and 
power. It’s also about getting reelected. And that 
means contributions from war profiteers. 

One thing is certain about the post-9/11 decade 
and the Global War on Terror: Never have 
Americans paid so much for so little!


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OUT TO PASTOR A Weekly Religion Column


I’M NOT BROKE, I’M JUST 

FINANCIALLY CHALLENGED

As I was listening to 
the president give his 
speech on the country’s 
economy last week I 
was simultaneously 
trying to balance my 
checkbook. Math was never my strong suit. 
In fact, when it comes to math, I do not wear 
a suit at all. I would wear my birthday suit but 
it is too wrinkled and believe me, spandex is 
stretching it too much.

 Oddly enough, my checkbook balance 
is never the same as the balance on the 
statement from the bank. My bank’s haughty 
assumption is that they are right and I am 
wrong.

 The thing that gripes me is, as much 
money as I am paying my bank through all 
of the miscellaneous fees, I should not have 
to balance my checkbook. That should be 
a service gladly rendered by my financial 
institution.

 The last time I was in my bank, I coyly 
suggested this to the teller and she looked at 
me, laughed as though I was telling her a joke 
and then handed me a lollipop. Believe me; 
balancing my checkbook is no joking matter.

 As I was working over my checkbook, I 
was groaning, moaning and sighing rather 
deeply. Enough so, that it disturbed my 
residential companion. Finally, she said to me 
in that sarcastic tone of voice reserved just for 
me, “What’s got you so disturbed tonight?”

 At first, I did not want to tell her. After 
all, it is my responsibility to balance the 
checkbook. We have a wonderful give-and-
take relationship. My responsibility is to 
deposit money into the checkbook while her 
responsibility is to make sure the checks fly 
out of our checkbook as quickly and smoothly 
as possible. Then, somebody at our financial 
institution came up with the brilliant idea 
of the check card. Now the money flies out 
faster than it ever did before.

 Our money flies faster than the speed of 
sound, but occasionally my groans do catch-
up, and tonight was one such night.

 I looked at my wife, swallowed several 
times, and then blurted out, “I think we’re 
broke.”

 After I said that, I did feel a little bit 
relieved. However, it did not last long.

 “What do you mean ‘we’re broke?’”

 The way she emphasized the word “we’re” 
caused me a little bit of uneasiness.

 “I mean,” I tried to explain; “we have run 
out of money.”

 “Why should that get you all riled up,” she 
said with a little bit of chipper in her voice. 
Just a little more than I was comfortable 
with under our present circumstances. “The 
president’s on television right now telling 
us that the country’s broke. So I guess that 
means were all in the same boat.”

 Both of us were quiet as we listened to 
the president continue his speech on the 
economy. Actually, I was a wee bit more 
concerned about the economical condition of 
my checkbook then the country’s economy.

 I’m broke simply because I have more bills 
than I have money. 

 The country is broke because it spends 
money on things other than bills. And, when 
the government runs out of money all it has 
to do is to print more money. The thing that 
really aggravates me is that if I would treat 
my checkbook like the government treats 
its checkbook the government would have 
me arrested and thrown in jail for the rest 
of my life. Which, upon further thought, 
maybe a plan out of my desperate economic 
disposition. For in jail, the government would 
pay all my bills.

 In jail, I would not have a grocery bill. All 
of my medical needs would be taken care of 
by good ole Uncle Sam. I certainly would not 
have to save money for a rainy day.

 Further consideration brought me to the 
conclusion that I may not like some of the 
people in prison. After all, there may be 
former politicians who are locked up for 
some scandalous activity they were caught 
at. Who wants to spend their time with that 
crowd?

 Just as I was sinking deeper into the slough 
of despondency, my wife, as usual, came to 
my rescue. If I gave her a nickel for every 
bright idea she has come up with in our 
married life I would be broke. Which, by the 
way, maybe why I am broke now.

 Her amazing solution was simply this, 
“We’re not broke, we’re just financially 
challenged.”

 Why do I never come up with all of these 
brilliant ideas? Being broke is one thing but 
being financially challenged is something 
altogether different. I do not want to be broke. 
Now, thanks to my wife, I am no longer broke 
I am simply financially challenged.

 That sounds so much better. I worried 
my heart sick thinking I was broke when in 
reality I was merely financially challenged. I 
wonder if I could somehow get this message to 
our dear president. If I can get him a message 
I would simply say this, “Mr. President, our 
country is not broke as you are insinuating. 
We are simply financially challenged.”

 Everybody has his or her own solution 
to problems. Especially if it is a political 
problem. I like how the Bible puts it. “There 
is a way which seemeth right unto a man, 
but the end thereof are the ways of death” 
(Proverbs 14:12 KJV).

 Someone said it like this, “a rose by any 
other name is still a rose.”

 The Rev. James L. Snyder is pastor of the 
Family of God Fellowship, PO Box 831313, 
Ocala, FL 34483. He lives with his wife, 
Martha, in Silver Springs Shores. Call him 
at 352-687-4240 or e-mail jamessnyder2@
att.net. The church web site is www.
whatafellowship.com.

CURBING BAD BEHAVIOR 


THE RIGHT CHOICE

CONNECTING 

NORTH AND SOUTH

Even though there is resistance to 
California High Speed Rail (CHSR) project, 
my belief is we will witness the unfolding 
of this rail system sometime in the near 
future. Some naysayers of CHSR are very reluctant to change their 
behavior to consider a viable alternative to their “iconic” cars, so the 
debate continues. Since leaving Brooklyn, New York to live in Los 
Angeles, California, I never thought that riding a rail system had the 
potential of again becoming a necessity in my mobility. But, recently 
after a trip from Pasadena to West Lake Village took over two (2) 
hours, a mass transit system doesn’t seemed that bad. California has 
37 million plus residents and with all the chatter of the state being in 
depression, we are still the most populous state in America. Those 
of us who live in California love this state even with its current 
depressed economy.

CHSR and its potential to connect to local mass transit systems 
have been touted to bring communities all around the state together. 
It’s reported CHSR is an expensive project, but proponents remarked 
it’s one that is needed. If the Interstate Highway Act which reshaped 
the American landscape and way of life was delayed by President 
Dwight D. Eisenhower, in 1956, we would not have had 47,000 
miles of remarkably uniform roads that revitalized Americans and 
the country. Historians have said it was President Eisenhower’s 
greatest accomplishment of his two terms. We became connected 
city-to-city, town-to-town, family to family, as we had never been 
before. They argued the same can be true connecting Northern 
and Southern California. CHSR will open up commerce like never 
before, bringing new opportunities for small businesses. Farmers, 
who are mostly against CHSR, will be able to get their crops to 
market faster and cheaper due to the reduction in cars on the 
highways. Trucks will be able to move quicker through the accident 
prone California Grapevine (California residents are aware of this 
stretch of the US Highway 5). Businesses will spring up along the 
high-speed rail system route creating jobs for California residents. 
These are some of the positive platforms. On the contrary, farmers 
and the agricultural industry complained of losing farmlands to the 
high-speed rail tracks.

Launching high-speed rail in California will certainly change 
our attitudes, values and behavior. The question is how much 
the community, labor unions, environmental groups, businesses, 
media, the agricultural industry and politicians are willing to spend 
to create and build this massive and expensive transit systems? 

Ron Carter

Mountain Views News

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