One Man’s Power

My horoscope today said to stop focusing on what I don’t like about how others approach life, to expand my ability to be with others and learn from them. Whoa.  Very true.

So I want to approach this blog post from this point of view.  A non judgmental, learning point of view.

Let’s look at two points of view that have decided to continue to make their voices heard.  Dick Cheney and what looks like an inability on his part to understand that he single handedly created an international nightmare.  The Middle East, I can almost guarantee, saw him coming way before we knew his name.  So, Dick Cheney adds George W. Bush and they allow Karl Rove to run non-stop interference so that the three of them get to dance in the White House and crack backhanded jokes like nine-year olds, as if it were their birthright.  But, this is a learning moment.

So now, Cheney and Rove are back in the media explaining to the American people the validity of  their ‘AGENDA’ during the last eight years.

I’d love for someone to go back through the footage from the 2000 election and count the times Mr.Bush said the word agenda.  I still remember it and it scared me.   Then count the number of times the media asked him to detail his AGENDA.  I waited and waited and waited for that moment.  NO ONE ASKED.

Dick Cheney, now appears on television still committed to this AGENDA and we as a nation STILL aren’t certain what it is.   What is it that Dick Cheney wants?  I want to know and I mean that, because the man is not dead, and he is clearly still committed to it.

I wish I understood how to get to the bottom of this agenda once and for all.   Someone’s gotta have access here.

I don’t think Mr. Cheney gets that most of us see him for what he is.  I don’t think that Mr. Cheney truly gets that he created this entire war.  That it did not have to go this way.  That we went to was because he said we were going to war.  I also don’t think Mr. Cheney gets that he could create something else with all of his determination, focus and energy.  My question then is, why is he so committed to killing people?  We could have ended all disease by now with that teams commitment.  They weren’t committed to that though.

I want to remember the name Col. Lawrence Wilkerson.  Good man.  Here is an interesting statement on what happens when you allow fearmongers to take leadership roles in Republican (meaning Democratic) States.  So ironic that I would come across both of these videos at the same time.  Just for grins, listen all the way to the end.  It’s short.  But it deals with the statement “You are either for us, or against us.”

And then this guy who believes it’s business as usual and that he had no effect on people.  I pray he gets to understand his own nature before his dies.  I doubt it with him.  George Wallace found his conscience.  I doubt Karl Rove can. Karl Rove would be comical if he wasn’t so serious about position in life.

This is my favorite moral positioning statement from Karl.

There is no grace around these guys.  There is no fading into the sunset.  They didn’t finish what they started, so they are stranded in political limbo.  They need us to get what it is they were after as much as we need to understand it.
Here is my learning moment.  In writing this article I clearly see that I as a citizen am as scared and feel as powerless in the face of people like Cheney as Cheney must feel in the face of having to negotiate terms with people he can not understand.

I also see that what has me stay in my fear and face life from a place of less leverage is that my alternative is to act like Karl Rove, to run around behaving however I want exactly as it pleases me, because I’m deluded enough to think that no one notices.

Imagine if Cheney has picked a different agenda and an influencer with the capacity to see things from other people’s points of view.  Might have been spectacular.

Evan Osnos – Wow.

Guy to watch.  Chinese reporter currently for The New Yorker.