Philosophical Meanderings on Death

 

Many philosophers and deep thinkers, including those from the medical fields who work most closely with death, have written great volumes on the subject of death from numerous and diverse directions. They use technical jargon, some Latin, words with more syllables than appear necessary and even try discerning from experiments exactly what death is. Theologians talk of death as a passage but once they try and explain passage the, what or where they get all confusing and they go into their diffusion through use of sublimely defined terminology and references to writings by other theologians who were equally vague or tripping on some strong hallucinogenic drugs. This will be none of these as this is just as much my recounting of experiences and putting feelings as well as descriptions as best as I am able of three separate, though two are related and the other describes the differences from the others, times I have had a brush with death. This will not be as much a definition than a description of events as best I can recall, and these are, if I may borrow a description from soon to be ex-Secretary of State Kerry from his descriptions of his battles which resulted in his three Purple Hearts from Viet Nam, “etched firmly into the crevasses (he likely was saying ‘crevices’ but with his overly-pronounced Bostonian accent it sounded more like crevasses) of my mind,” or something equally and grandly pathetic. Anyway, let’s proceed on to the actual subject.

 

My first brush with death was the one I almost forgot, and had my life never come close again I would have completely forgotten, tucking all away deep in the back of my mind, which is that part of your mind that gives nightmares and is only freed up by future traumas. It was Christmas vacation, that means long enough back in time that Christmas was a word used in people’s lives and had yet to be replaced by ‘Winter’ when describing school vacations, public events and the reason there is a big pine tree in the town circle but is no longer adorned with festive lights after Thanksgiving and on into the new year, now it sits there blankly and blandly staring as if to ask, “Now what am I to do?” My family had gone to warmer climes for the holiday and I had just finished swimming in the pool but had not made it to the edge. I sank, threw a hand up out of the water waving it frantically, or so it felt. This was the deep end of the pool and I was not able to stand or reach the bottom so I waved, then slower, then I began to feel warm and then I jerked upright sitting on a stretcher throwing off a sheet from my face. I heard a thump and turned to see the attendant at the rear of the stretcher fall back to the ground, he apparently had bounced after feinting. I was in the hotel lobby, not the pool, but I was also confused enough not to question this. They checked me out after I finished spitting out water from seemingly everywhere within including coughing it from lungs and spewing it from wherever. That was what I remembered for years about my drowning experience. That was approximately fifty or so years back from this writing. Not much insight except the mind really prefers to tuck these remembrances away, far, far away where you will hopefully never find them. You all know the place; it is that place you put things to be safe and then can never find them again, that kind of put somewhere safe. Safe from even yourself.

 

Moving along around twenty years and we are parking the car and going into the Auxiliary Administrative and Out Patient Building of a major hospital in the City of Brotherly Love. It is a late Friday afternoon before a three day Memorial Day weekend and I was to be the last patient. We were fifteen minutes early but apparently some patients had cancelled and likely headed to the beach rather than that doctor’s office. The staff was in a hurry to get my brain scan done and probably head to the beach and join the rest of Philadelphia’s population. These were those primitive, pre CAT scan days of medicine where they pumped copious amounts of radioactive iodine into your bloodstream and then took passive radiation X-rays where there is no beam of electrons, it just reads the isotopes shooting out their particles within your circulatory system, and thus lighting up everything. Well, they were really in a hurry so they hooked up the IV, increased the flow rate asking all the while, “Are you feeling dizzy?” I was not so I told them so and they had the stopcock almost all the way open position and they went off to prepare the exam room. I did start to feel dizzy and inhaled to say something but never made it that far. I felt warm and odd, a very weird but not uncomfortable odd which is indescribable. Then I realized that what I was looking at was me sitting there with my wife sitting next to me likely daydreaming as she had nothing she was supposed to be doing except driving when we left. I looked down and floated around doing a 360o turn thinking that this was rather strange. Just as I thought that I transitioned to a new place and all new scene and realized that I had not had a body during this entire series of events. It was dark with a faint thin line of light and I was moving towards it but there was no real sense of motion like wind rushing by, simply I was approaching the line of light and as I got closer I started to hear voices and then joined conversations. The closer I came the more conversations we were sharing all at once, each separate, different but all equally understood at the time. The voices then slowed and became one very piercing, loud, booming, deep voice which stated with urgency for me to, “Step forward and stay or turn now.” For reasons I cannot explain now and could not then, I turned and woke in my body just as the defibrillator screeched to full charge. I gave a yelp type sound like a scared puppy. They internally discharged the paddles into the unit. They had stopped the IV and they returned to the room leaving a nurse to watch me, probably should have done that originally.

 

My Argument with Death

 

While I waited the three or four minutes for their preparations to be completed I looked at the strip they had printed out likely for the required report when you kill a patient. After later working in a hospital I now know that allowing or having a patient die are two different actions that a hospital defines. While allowing patients to die can depend on such little items such as end of life family decisions leading to a ‘Do Not Resuscitate’ (DNR) notation on the door, to homeless people whose Medicare has run out, these people are allowed the ‘dignity’ of death. On the other hand, having a patient die is something to be avoided at all costs and everything possible is done to revive patients who forgot to keep breathing. This is because the legal department does not like working, especially responding to wrongful death suits as these cost hospitals million and even tens of millions of dollars. Back to looking at my strip which contained heart wave (EKG) and four channels of Electroencephalogram (EEG) and realized I had done something impressive. There was no heart-rate with close to almost five minutes and just under three minutes of no brainwaves.

 

That evening after having something to eat I sat back in my recliner rehashing through my memories of that day’s events. Everything was still quite clear to me and the something that did not fit entered my thoughts. The events were not exactly the same but that loud voice was the same. My drowning returned to be relived in memory. I had gone quickly from thrashing to warm to somewhere else where I was moving forward to a distant point of light which grew ever so slightly wider when something blocked my continuing and that voice ordered me, “GO BACK!” There was no debate, no choice, just this overwhelming and undeniable movement of turning and going back, but back where? Then I sat up and realized where. The rest is above with the poor attendant getting the shock for the week in a job which probably sees it share of the unusual. The similarities of these two events struck me and have stayed with me. The confusion was that the second time I was granted to choose. The drowning was not meant to be and that was rectified, I was not permitted passage beyond, period. This second time was what was intriguing more so than troubling. The concept that one can choose whether or not to die makes for interesting debate, even if the debate was all in my head. This choosing whether or not you pass that point of no return, and that point in apparently somewhere during the transition where you are already accommodating and acclimating oneself for the next phase of our continuing existence.

 

This inner debate may have been critical in my last episode, my last brush with death thusfar. This time there was no out of body experience though I did not realize that I was actually having my fight in the hospital, I thought it was more metaphysical, thoughts of actions rather than actual actions. I was to find out differently. This story does require some back information, my friends, please put up with one last telling or jump to the next paragraph. This starts off on one evening living in Green Country, Oklahoma where there are no tumbleweeds, no cacti, no barren rocks and sand but rather trees, bushes, grass and real cattle country. I was about to turn in while wiffy was still playing away on the computer. I lied down and just felt wrong, so I took an accounting of what I was feeling. I had no chest pain but tingling in the insides of both arms, legs felt heavy, vision was clouded at the periphery, a general sense of weakness and ill of ease. As I listed these and more I realized that I had just listed every secondary symptom of a heart attack. I interrupted wiffy and told her we needed to go to the hospital. She informed our son that Dad was having a heart attack and she was taking me to the hospital to which he showed minimal interest, with some side-eyed disbelief, as I recall. Despite there being an Emergency Squad stationed less than a full block away at the Firehouse, we chose to drive to the hospital. Advice, if you think you are having a heart attack, get an ambulance otherwise they tend not to believe you. Wiffy (who shall remain nameless) let me off at the entrance, as you really do not want to make your spouse who may be having a heart attack walk too far, and I walked ten feet to the desk. The lady receptionist asked if she could assist me and I told her I was having a heart attack plainly, calmly, as if telling her she was raising nice looking tulips. She asked if I had chest pain and I responded that I was not. She then questioned why I thought I was having a heart attack. I told her I was exhibiting nearly every secondary symptom and listed five or six. She inquired why I thought these were signs of a heart attack so I told her I was a bio med-tech and had worked for a dozen years in a thousand bed heart centered hospital in Washington D.C. and was familiar with many diagnoses including heart attack. She had me sign a form and asked me to fill it out when Wiffy arrived and I handed her the form and my insurance card. The receptionist had an orderly politely show me to the back area in a corner to a bench filled with more people all of whom looked rather less than joyful. Arlo Guthrie described this in Alice’s Restaurant as the ‘Group W Bench’ which is where they send people they do not quite believe are having a problem and are likely trying to obtain drugs for a night’s entertainment, self-entertainment that is. Fortunately for all involved, they did take blood and sent it off to the lab, possibly but not necessarily with a STAT order. Anyone who has been in a five hundred bed or better hospital with a major Emergency Department knows that blood work sent to the lab takes from thirty minutes to forever to be returned. Mine came back in under ten minutes and all of a sudden there are eight nurses making me as comfortable as I desire in my own room and three doctors examining me and a tech hooking me up to an EKG monitor. I assumed they had found a particular protein in my blood sample.

 

I was given a room fairly soon thereafter in a ward where I was the only patient who was conscious. Their treatment while hooking me up to this, that and the other was not particularly taking my comfort into account treating me more like a cadaver in Nurse College than a conscious, feeling patient. This soon upset me as one particular insertion was attempted with minimal if any lubricant and I went off! We finally struck a compromise where I would inform them of any need to take that measurement and we would go from there. Wiffy left later that night as I apparently was resting peaceably so she missed the fun. Sometime after midnight, my recollection is around 2:30ish in the morning I felt a familiar presence. My old friend had come for me once more and was insistent that this time was the time. We proceeded to argue and a fight broke out with my insisting that I was not leaving this mortal plane and my old friend insisting somebody was leaving with her and my name was at the top of her list, or some other silly insistence.

 

From what I was informed by overhearing nurses talking as if everybody was in a coma, they really were not used to conscious patients in this ward, there had been a death soon after our scuffle had ended. Apparently I was fighting anybody who came anywhere near me and had caused a commotion resulting in people trying to contain me. The number of people was consistently around ten to twelve people who had formed a ring around me to contain me. That seemed correct as that was the number there when I apparently returned consciously to this world from fighting apparently still in my body physically but my mind operating in a netherworld between places. I must have been aware of my surroundings to some extent because when I realized where I was I found myself on the floor in the middle of the ward open area surrounded by nurses and four or five large either male nurses or orderlies. They inquired why I had ceased trying to get up and I told them the truth. I stated, “The bald guy keeps throwing me on the ground, so why get up?” This appeared to baffle and please them and they assisted me back to my room, hooked me again to the monitors and intravenous pump leaving the bald guy to watch me, probably as intimidation. Apparently, during my argument I was also talking in the real world and, as I did serve some time as a United States Army infantryman, had chosen some colorful declarative terminology during our scuffle. The doctor the next morning was not upset about the physical altercation as he was about my choice language as this was a Catholic Hospital and I would be refused care if such continued. I assured him that there would be no more problems.

 

That was me near-death and apparently in-body experience and as I was told by my cardiologist, the hospital had initially written me off not expecting me to survive the night. I had under 10% heart function and was told I would definitely require having an internal defibrillator as part of my treatment once I was strong enough. They had been able, after a week of treatment, to place two stents (Israeli stents) into arteries on my heart and cleared apparent blockages. Much if not most of my left ventricle was black in color, not deep red, black. The cardiologist who performed my catheterization and follow-up has given us a detailed description when giving us the good news of my one year heart function tests. I had cleared 50% heart function tests (a measure of heart efficiency and output where over 50% is low end norms for a man in his 60’s and sufficient to not require any internal medical equipment, no defibrillator, no pacemaker, no nothing. My cardiologist all but danced a jig whenever we met as he had doubted I could clear 33%, let alone match what had been a boast of clearing 50%, I actually hit 51%, which was remarkable and to have only a small scar on the heart muscle which was one-third black is my personal miracle, Baruch Hashem. But our subject is not completely about survival but the challenge called death.

 

What I have come to find is that death comes in more than one form. The most pleasant is the form where you are permitted, with limitations, to neaten up and do whatever last items you might need such as saying good-bye to everyone, apologizing to an old friend for some stupid act, whatever it is and then when you are ready you agree you go quietly and peaceably to the next part of our journey. This might even include after you have been struck by a bus and are in two pieces ten feet apart and death will ask if you are ready implying you should use great haste if there is anything left to do. If one were to refuse to go quietly, allowing them to see their present state would be sufficient for them to agree to leave. Medical science cannot treat such injuries. Then there is the more insistent messenger of death, angel of death if you prefer, who comes bearing an order with your name on it, not at the top of a list of candidates, just one name and you are it. No choices, no moment to say good-bye, just that split instant where your face turns blank and then you are gone off to the next stop. We all go to the same next place and we make our way there as best we can. That was the gist of what I was told that one time I was graced with conversing.

 

There is no want in the next realm as we have no bodies to feed or care about upkeep, we are simply thoughts bundled in a sheath of energy. We can talk but in concepts and a kind of enveloping understanding. The interesting part is you can take time; apparently, to be alone with your own thoughts or you can have one-on-one or small group discussions or have as many separate conversations with groups, individuals or any combination thereof. Your identity remains whole and intact and you have the same feelings you had when on the Earthly plane but without the actual body. Whether that wanes over time or what happens after you have spent time in the next realm, that I do not yet know and likely one cannot know that and return here to your former physical self. Can one return, I honestly do not know but from my one experience my question is why would anyone wish to return? Is the next realm our final place or is there something beyond that where we would later transgress into? I cannot answer that any more than a zygote can fathom the life ahead of them and eventual death. The closest I ever found myself was as a potential seed about to be planted to grow in the next realm. By planted I do not in any way imply anchored as tour spirit, your next self, is free to do as it pleases within whatever physical realities exist in a place where energy is the means of communication and existence. There is nothing but a small ball of energy which is the essence of all you ever were, a crystallized energy with no absolute form or restriction of location as you can obviously exist in near endless and innumerable conversations and interaction simultaneously, so there is really little if any restriction known as location to our physical selves. Imagine conversing with every person who ever lived and all having knowledge base which becomes a sense of singularity of all but one still remains with a knowledge of self. Everything is mixed into a larger entity with every part interacting with the others and still you can feel like you move about though the mode of travel is thought energy, you move as per your thoughts much as the physicists describe quantum theory. Perhaps the best of descriptions of the interactions in the next realm, it would be described as similar to quantum entanglement except one can entangle with multiple others and the spin is up to you or as Einstein put it, “spooky action at a distance.”

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Election of the Millennium

 

The coming election in the United States may be as breaking important to the survival of the Judeo-Christian ethos and society as any since the British elected Winston Churchill to face the Nazi menace. The problem is the choices with which the American people have provided themselves. The Democrat Party has caved to the pressure from the Clintons and the idea that they needed to place another first onto the ballot, the first woman to be President, or at least to be the choice to top the ballot of a major party. The Republican Party did not do anything really different when they nominated a person who in appearance was closer to class clown than class president. The real problem is that in politics, as in life, you have to play the cards you are dealt.

 

So we have a political hack who has never accomplished much of anything noteworthy but has still managed to have collected legal baggage unseen in any candidate running for their first term and not reelection, though we doubt there have even been many seeking reelection with such a set of baggage with the possible exception of Richard Nixon. The fact that it would be Richard Nixon who when seeking reelection may have had almost as much legal difficulties with Watergate bring us full circle as Hillary Clinton, then still Hillary Rodham, in her first “big” job after graduating was to be a researcher on the House Impeachment committee looking into charging President Nixon with impeachment. You cannot make this stuff up and making matters worse, there are some who claim, though verification of this presumed fact has been unsuccessful by us and others, that Hillary Rodham (Clinton) was removed from her position under suspicions that she was attempting and had consulted with members of Senator Ted Kennedy’s chief political strategist in violation of House rules. The originating source, as far as we have determined was the Jerry Zeifman book published in 2006, “Hillary’s Pursuit of Power.” In the book our research turned up references to Hillary having “engaged in a variety of self-serving unethical practices in violation of House rules.” Zeifman wrote on his now-shuttered website, “Hillary Clinton is ethically unfit to be either a senator or president” and further stated that, “if she were to become president, the last vestiges of the traditional moral authority of the party of Roosevelt, Truman and Johnson will be destroyed.” Then again, these charges and innuendo may simply have been Zeifman’s contribution of more grist for the mill.

 

Impeached but Untried
Resigned in Disgrace
President Richard Nixon

 

On the opposing side we have what some have referred to as a huckster, showman, real estate magnate, television reality show producer and even a fraud. At first look one would be led to believe that the two parties are in a race to the bottom, and that may very well be true. The one thing that the media has been very guilty of thus far in covering Donald Trump is their sensationalism over news content. True, Donald Trump was all bombast and insult to the intelligence during the primaries. The media could have derailed Trump early on simply by noting that he had run for the nomination for President on the Reform Party ticket in 2000 and considered to run for President as a Republican way back in 1988 as well as in 2004, and 2012. George H. W. Bush had also considered Donald Trump as his running mate amongst others before selecting Dan Quayle. These former forays into politics have largely been brushed aside as Trump’s not being a serious candidate and only running for further name recognition and the free publicity thus furthering the Trump “brand” making his television reality show more popular and other promotional contents. Had his campaign been treated as such this time, he likely would have seen his campaign collapse as it had in the past and he would have gone on his merry way. The media for reasons of their own chose instead to promote Trump’s campaign as serious despite his running basically on the same bombast as his previous excursions into the field of Presidential politics. Now Donald Trump, some have posited, is in the position of the dog who chased the car and having now caught it by the back tire trying to decide what to do before being pummeled. The problem now is that he may possibly not be pummeled but could conceivably win the Presidency. That is making the theory that the media pressed his campaign in order to have the Republican Party run an incompetent nincompoop allowing for Hillary Clinton to complete her dream run achieving her destiny, as seen by the leftist mainstream media, the Soros foundation, leftist loonies, the BDS anti-Israel fanatics and a coalition of other far left causes, of becoming the first woman President of the United States as their idea of fate should have things. Something went terribly wrong and Donald Trump may not only have caught the car but the entire car carrier on its way to the White House.

 

So we have the potentially first woman President running against somebody inflated by circumstance and a pliable media attempting to nominate an idiot, fool, class clown and totally unelectable candidate for the Republican Party such that that candidate could be a simple and easy punching bag which Hillary could knock the stuffing out of on her way to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington D.C. Now the only way Hillary might be able to see the inside of the White House could be as a tourist or possibly by invite from a gracious Donald Trump giving her a personally guided tour of his remake of America’s House. Well, that would get pictures even on the front pages of the New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, Los Angeles Post, Philadelphia Inquirer and be the lead story on FOX News and Glen Beck’s cable network. What more could Donald Trump desire as the coverage of his first month in office climax press release/conference, and yes, he would definitely invite the entire Washington, New York and Los Angeles press corps. Should Donald Trump win the election and become President it will prove to be one of the biggest coups ever pulled on the mainstream media as they were played like Nero’s fiddle as the conventional rules for campaigning were thrown out the window. Donald Trump saw what they desired, a patsy to fill the other side of the ballot assuring a Hillary Clinton victory and he played the part perfectly. He rode the wave of being the most aggrandized idiot and a fool but if he wins the race it will posit the question of exactly who is the fool in this real life drama.

 

Choosing Between Crook and Clown,
With Which One are You Down

 

The media is playing another role in this campaign, one of advocate for one side or the other. The talk circuit is probably the most balanced as just as many hate Donald Trump equally if not more than Hillary Clinton and others fall slightly on the other side. Print media and the mainstream television media are completely lined up behind Hillary Clinton to the bitter end. There is one problem which the media need answer for, they chose Donald Trump to be Hillary’s chew toy and it appears Hillary may not have enough bite to destroy her gifted chew toy. With the e-mail scandal, private server problems, inadequacies as Secretary of State, complete lack of positive credentials and most of all, Benghazi; the media have their work cut out for them as they attempt to cover these stories which just continue to plague them and still try to make their candidate look better than Donald Trump. The big question is can the media out-show the showman himself? Thus far they are getting a failing grade. The media will continue to refuse to pass any questions to Hillary Clinton about the myriad of problems and potential criminal charges seeming to chase her wherever she goes as they value their jobs and their lives. Instead there will be the obligatory questions as to how she managed to be the star Secretary of State while raising a perfect child and still finding time to bake cookies. This after she disavowed baking cookies claiming such would be a waste of her valuable time. Of course this was during her stint as the main lead in drafting new healthcare legislation during her husband’s first term, a piece of legislation so ponderous and unthinkable that even the Democrats turned it down flat out. This should be another qualifying study in what a President Hillary would entail. But this too has been forgotten as the only thing anyone seems to remember is how accomplished Hillary Clinton has been in her illustrious career. Why was that again? Oh yea, she is married to Willian Jefferson “Bill” Clinton who gave us four marvelous, prosperous and entertaining, always entertaining, years as President and this makes Hillary qualified, exactly. This will be her campaign story, how qualified she is by comparison. We wish the media luck selling this product.

 

On the other side of the campaign stretch the media has an equally difficult row to hoe as they must sell that Trump is unelectable due to his incompetence without drawing any attention to whether Hillary is any more competent. Thus far the media is doing an excellent job in making sure nobody inspects anything Donald Trump is actually saying at his speaking and campaign stops. The media is still pounding away at his irreverent actions during the primaries before he realized that he might actually win. Since the point Donald Trump realized he was very likely going to not only gather sufficient delegates to win on the first ballot, but that there would be no changing the rules of the game in order to place anybody else on the ballot, he had changed the entirety of his election team twice. Simply put, the Republican Party went with the potentially disastrously defective candidate the people voted for in the Primaries against the hand-picked candidate the Democrat Party placed on their ballot the voters be damned as it is her turn, promised turn. These changes in his team proved one simple fact, Donald Trump has taken this election seriously and was going to continue to change team members until he found a team to stay on his message and run a credible campaign.

 

Donald Trump has been putting forth campaign points which he intends to work towards and had been on message and serious for going on a little over a month. The media won’t report this because Donald Trump is supposed to be the foil for placing Hillary Clinton in the Presidency. Instead of covering the Donald Trump who exists currently and who is talking seriously about issues he and many American care about, the future of the United States, immigrations, both overhauling the current system so legal immigrants can actually come to the United States if they have qualities and skills needed by the United States and not just anyone who can walk over the border and register as a Democrat or work under the table for less. Donald Trump is talking about jobs, real jobs for working class people and bringing back industries from overseas. Trump has proposed a flat tax on business of fifteen percent with minimal if any deductions making America business friendly again. He has gone from bombast and claiming to fire every General in military service to discussing with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Pentagon commanders how to best engage and destroy the Islamic State. He also claims to demand a plan to rebuild the militaries which have been gutted over the past eight years. Tax reform has been one of Trump’s lesser mentioned subjects, but it is on his radar. The media may not cover this but every Trump rally and speech is viewable on YouTube as well as his campaign site for those voters who actually desire to see what the media refuses to cover.

 

This will be the Presidential election cycle which will go down in history as the campaign the media refused to cover even resembling honestly. There will be critiques of the lack of coverage of any detracting facts or lack of principles by Hillary Clinton while the exact opposite where even if Trump were to get a boil behind his left ear the media would run a week or two coverage inquiring if this was a mark of the beast and pressing the possibility that Donald Trump practices demonic covens to decide his positions on the issues. Well, they have become almost that much of a joke. The blessing is that the people no longer need the media to inform them as they can go find the information straight from the sources with the alternative media. Yes, we know that both candidates have their negatives, all we can add is that they both have positives which would be hard pressed to know from watching MSNBC for one and FOX for the other.

 

Our message is look before you leap and definitely before you vote as the choice the United States makes this fall for Congress as well as President will have profound meaning for the entirety of the free world going forward. The one item we would suggest you find the answer to is what is the term for surrender, because surrender might just be behind one of the doors in the race for President of the Free World. That position has been vacant for the past eight years and the Free World needs it filled and nobody in Europe appears desiring stepping up. In Israel they are holding their own against a rising tide and their fight is transforming from their sole lonely fight to one that much of the world has coming to knock on or knock down their doors. The future is very scary and that truth should guide everybody to take check of themselves, their life styles and their life choices as those are what got us to this point. Any culture which stops raising children is a dead culture and that is the plague that will very probably have murdered the Europe we all thought we knew. Behind the front of glitz and lights with the night life has been a hollow void of childless marriages and relationships with declining and aging populations with nobody home to take the baton forward as the next generation. Another two or three relatively childless generations, another fifty years and there will be no Europe, no Russia and a very different America and Canada. That too is something that needs to be inspected and choices investigated and their ramifications altered or simply admit that the Western World, freedom and Democracy, the Magna Carta, the American Declaration of Independence, the United States Constitution and its Bill of Rights, the Bible and Western philosophy will die for the lack of any following and that will be the end of a long legacy.

 

This legacy started with Abraham followed by the Ten Commandments with Moses and the rules limiting the powers of Kings in Deuteronomy and an entire codified set of rules for society; soon adding to by the Greek and Roman Democracy and Republic which almost died but were defended at Thermopylae; the English Common Law, spelled rights in the Magna Carta once again limiting the King, the Reformation, Renaissance, Industrial Revolution and Information Age; and the freedoms to choose ones’ own future and passing that on to children to preserve which are all wobbling at the edge of extinction. Ronald Reagan stated it best when he said, “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.” Ronald Reagan almost nailed it because it will not be only the United States but all of mankind and that is why everything is so seriously wrong and in need of greatness and we get to choose between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump? Are you kidding me?

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

If Only Americans Would Remember

 

It is a sad fact that the public schools and too many private schools place little if any importance on teaching history, both American and World Histories. The students do not learn about the start of democracy in Athens, one of the numerous Grecian city states before their unification by Alexander the Great. Plato lived amongst the denizens of the Athenian democracy and he saw the tyranny of the majority which he equated with mob rule and thus placed democracy just above tyranny as the worst forms of governance. The deficiencies he saw in the Athenian democratic government led to probably his greatest work on governance, “The Republic” where he devised representative government which would safeguard the minorities protecting their interests from being trampled by the majority while still empowering the majority to hold their proper place of importance in governing. It was partly this work from Plato written before the birth of Jesus that was part and parcel of the governing bodies the United States was fashioned by. There were other political philosophers who were mostly English and some French and the minds of some of the best educated persons in the United States in their day and even then they initially got the balance slightly skewed towards the states in a excessively loose federation and the Constitution was their second attempt and the solution which was decided though imperfect, as anything fashioned by man will be, they felt it was as close as they could get and the amendment process would provide the needful, and only the needful, adjustments to their work.

 

The impetus for the American Revolution is another point which would be very poignant and prescient for students entering the age for voting as the colonists demanded no taxation without representation and were revolting over a tax on tea of 3%, yes, 3% and only on tea. This would seem crazy with the total tax on the average American household reaching from a low end average of 12% to an upper end average of 35%, both many multiples of a 3% tax on one product, even if it was the one product every household purchased as they were still British. That tea tax was the straw that broke the camel’s back and brought on a revolutionary war and the shot heard round the world. It really was as soon after came the French Revolution and other British colonies protesting their taxes but they did so without leaving the realm, at least not at this period of time. Still, free people in elected governments everywhere owe a great deal of thanks to the British aristocracy as they started the entire idea that people had rights. Of course their claim was barons and land owners had rights which they would wrest from the crown with the drafting and signing by the king, after a hard fought war in which he realized he could not prevail as much of his army belonged to the nobles suing for rights, of the Magna Carta. From that document was derived that a King’s power was not absolute but dependent on the advisories and consents of the principled landowners which with the centuries became citizens in good standing and are resting on a precipice teetering towards the consent of all who can claim to be affected by said governance, as an example is the position of certain universalist leftists that everyone on planet earth (for starters we can only guess) be permitted a vote in elections held in the United States as all are affected by American hegemony from which they believe evil begins and a world influence would perfect the nation and its governance. The truth be told, the barons and landowners of 1215 England were prompted by the Bible, in particular the Old Testament limitations placed on kings should the nation of the Israelites ever decide to be as other nations and choose a monarch which they eventually did. These limitations were first set in Torah, the laws given at Mount Sinai in the book of Deuteronomy 17:14-17 which placed the very first laws limiting the powers and impositions of Kings where it read:

 

14When you have come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you, and have taken possession of it and settled in it, and you say, “I will set a king over me, like all the nations that are around me,”
15you may indeed set over you a king whom the Lord your God will choose. One of your own community you may set as king over you; you are not permitted to put a foreigner over you, who is not of your own community.
16Even so, he must not acquire many horses for himself, or return the people to Egypt in order to acquire more horses, since the Lord has said to you, “You must never return that way again.”
17And he must not acquire many wives for himself, or else his heart will turn away; also silver and gold he must not acquire in great quantity for himself.

 

The Prophets went further throughout the Old Testament adding other limitations and requirements for Kings with probably the most humbling and for providing lessons in humility, not that it always had that effect, each King was required to write his own Torah in his own hand and then read the applicable verses for each day at his morning prayers. Of course enforcing this was somewhat problematic as the Prophets power was in his wisdom and the desire of a King to receive wise council but should a King be all full of themselves then they would brook no advice or limitations and would inevitably stray from Torah and the people would suffer under their rule. Should you read the Magna Carta you will see much of it places moral as well as power limitations and demands of the King in exchange for the support of the barons and landowners who also provided the knights for defense of the realm.

 

What is most interesting in the limitations of the Magna Carta was that it was not very much different than the Brexit vote in Britain and the anti-establishment movements in both of the major parties, Republican and Democrat, in the United States. Donald Trump first is not a true right wing conservative which is often the presumed candidate despite their choices since Ronald Reagan have been centrists with the occasional right wing leanings, while the Democrat race was fixed from the start as the party establishment controls close to 40% of the electors so Hillary only needed to garner ten to twelve percent of the remaining electors to win which left Bernie Sanders out of contention almost from the start needing to garner 100% of the remaining electors going into the initial super primary day of March 1, 2016. Truth was nobody was going to disturb the coronation of Hillary Clinton as this was arranged after the 2008 loss to Barack Obama in order to pacify the Clintons and not have them pull their followers and big money donors from backing President Obama in both elections. Still, Bernie made a mess of the centrist game Hillary had hoped to run on and now she is stuck so far into the left wing bleachers that it is doubtful she can find center field by election day and even if she should she will find one Donald Trump already there and not out of breath from the long run from the bleachers.

 

Donald Trump & Hillary Clinton

 

With taxes at record levels since the Carter Administration it is little wonder that the people are seething against the party elites. They have watched their taxes rise to support programs they did not desire and with record numbers of illegal immigrants and the back alley importation of tens if not hundreds of thousands of Middle Eastern “refugees” being hidden in small communities so as to attempt to secretly skirt the main cities and thus not upset the ignorant masses as they would never figure this out with the internet and all the other means for news to reach the people, even the most insulated voters. Their secreting the “refugees” into small communities and largely in states which vote traditionally Republican and that Hillary would not need in order to win in the Electoral College, they hope that nobody will know their little dirty secret until it is too late. Remember that Hillary is promising that the United States has not done enough and she plans on increasing the importation of “Syria refugees” by one-hundred-fold. That would mean she plans on bringing tens of millions of these so-called refugees and believe me she means to do exactly that. The Democrats want to make America failed through and through with no possibility of ever making a recovery. That is not to claim that The Donald would be any form of savior, but we are sure there are many who after researching the third party candidates who are seriously voting Donald Duck or Porky Pig, but may we suggest for amusement sake we all write in Daffy Duck as long as some of us are choosing a duck and avoiding a Donald?

 

Kidding aside, the coming elections for President of the United States and for the makeup of the Congress have never been as serious as they are this election. After eight years of “leading from behind,” the time is ripe for a resurgent America to return roaring onto the scene. Allowing Europe and the United Nations to lead the way on the world stage is tantamount to treason for endangerment of the nation and, with that, the world. Never has a nation left as large a vacuum at the top with the closest comparison being the fall of the Roman Empire which is what allowed the first Islamic Expansion and another is obviously imminent with Europe ripe for the taking if their collective trees can be shaken at their core. Eastern Europe is still emerging as they recover from their Communist Dark Ages while Western Europe teeters on the edge of liberal poised suicide as they stand frozen with fear as their nations prove as vulnerable as their flags pictured below. Their churches deserted and Mosques sprouting in every town, village and neighborhood and where the call to prayer five times each day have replaced the tolling of the church bells echoing in the countryside. Still, there is time for Europe to pull themselves together and defeat this rising hatred seething within their bellies and extinguish the fires currently spreading across Old Europe and soon to threaten New Europe.

 

 

If ever there was an election making the “None of the Above” vote we have previously suggested be adopted by Constitutional Amendment, this election is it. The way the system would work is to win the election or electors a candidate would be required to surpass 50% to gain those votes or gain office. People would have all the candidates listed plus a slot in each elected office for “None of the Above” which would count in the total to find the 50% figure. If “None of the Above” got 20% of the vote then a candidate would be required to garner at least 72% of the remaining votes to surpass the 50% threshold. Should “None of the Above” receive one-third of the vote then the needed would be a full 75% of the remaining votes. Obviously this would force the parties to come up with candidates the people truly would want to vote for as they would have an out should neither party and third party candidates really appeal and this would also make third party candidates more likely to get a second look if the main parties gave the public choices such as they have in the mind of many Americans with the Presidential race.

 

So, voter discontent ran overboard in both of the main parties. The party which valued the choice of their public ended up with a novice real estate developer and investment underwriter who often goes off the rails when unscripted and has an ego larger than Alaska and is an anathema to many of the elite in the party itself while the other party had absolutely no confidence in their public so they ensconced a near majority of their delegates under the tight-fisted control of the party elite requiring whomever the elite chose to get such a small number of delegates that Daffy Duck could have won with such support. Still, even with the elite support, their candidate came out bruised and damaged heading into their convention while the other party had few well known names support them and speak at the convention as they were likely still trying to figure out where they ran off the tracks. So we have two third party candidates either of which would be a comfortable fit with one or the other of the Democrat Party contestants for their spot on the ticket, one with Hillary and the other Bernie in our humble opinion, a Democrat who was promised her turn to try and be the first woman President, also her strongest running point, and the Republican a left of center ego whose id is probably just as attractive as that ego and perhaps if he promises to listen to his subconscious, he would appear a safer bet. That’s your choice America, have at it.

 

Beyond the Cusp