Time to start treating people like more than just machine parts

I don't know if Americans -- particularly of the working class variety -- are the dumbest people in any of the industrialized nations.

I do think we're the most gullible and almost certainly the most worshipful of people with money. For at least the last 30-35 years, the American version of the Golden Rule has been that he who has the gold makes the rules.

It is truly amazing how many relatively crummy jobs demand workers essentially be on call 24/7. Walmart is the largest employer in the United States, and in most instances when hiring someone for a part-time minimum wage job, there is no guarantee of specific schedules to work around school or other jobs.

Oh, and if it's your day off? If they call and need you to come in because someone else is sick, you had better not turn them down too often.

Over-reliance on computers could result in some very tough times

"It's not for man to interfere in the ways of God."

Most of you have never seen that 1957 kitsch classic, "I Was a Teenage Werewolf," one in a long series of mad scientist films from the Atomic Era.

It's a movie that would have all but vanished from view if not for its star. Michael Landon played the hapless juvenile delinquent who came under the influence of the mad doctor.

The decade from 1950-60 may have been the peak period of American hubris. It was the period when our ability to do things outstripped our understanding of the consequences.

Indeed, in the 1957 film "The Story of Mankind," man is put on trial in Heaven for discovering the Super H-Bomb 50 years earlier than expected.

Actually, the last 60-70 years have given us a long list of things we have learned to do but probably shouldn't. Chemical and biological warfare, cloning, test-tube babies, genetic manipulation of the food supply ...

And many more.

Some of the more frightening advances have nothing to do with food or health. Take voting machines, for instance. More and more states are using computers instead of paper ballots, which means the results are tabulated more quickly but there's no proof that the totals are accurate.

The 2004 presidential election in Ohio was a classic example. Just as the election had come down to Florida in 2000, it came down to Ohio four years later.

Exit polls had John Kerry winning the state by 4 percent, while the official totals later had George W.
Bush winning Ohio by 2.5 percent.

Twelve years later, it's hardly worth arguing for the result. But if you look at the statistical anomalies, the chances Kerry's percentage of the vote would differ as much as it did were about one in 1,000.

There have been numerous examples of tests on voting machines in which votes for one candidate added to the total of his opponent. There really isn't any better way to destroy people's faith in elections than making them worry about whether their vote was recorded accurately.

Of course it's a lot more than just politics. Most of our medical records are on computers now, as are just about all our financial records. Of course you've heard the old expression, "Garbage in, garbage out," which tells us that a computer is no better than its programming, but how many times in your life have you had someone tell you they can't get the information you need because the computer is down?

That's just an inconvenience, but what happens when there aren't really any paper files anymore? What happens when everything is somewhere in what we now know as "the cloud?" Then we have to rely on the security of the cloud. We have to believe the folks can't penetrate the cloud and wipe out our retirement accounts.

What happens when the guy trying to trick you into giving him your personal information in return for the millions he's got trapped in Nigeria no longer needs to contact you?

What happens when he just raids your accounts and the next time you hit the ATM to finance an evening of drinking, there's no money there?

And let's say you try to opt out completely. Your cash goes into your mattress, and extra money goes to buying gold and silver. The system crashes, trillions of dollars of wealth disappear into the ether and you're just fine.

Not so fast. You may have money, but what will you buy with it?

Most businesses, whether they're locally owned or Walmart, don't have a large amount of inventory these days. The idea these days is that having a large warehouse full of things you don't need right away is a huge waste of money.

In a perfect system, an item a customer came to the store to purchase would have arrived the previous day, been put on the shelf that night and sold the next day.

Just in time inventory. Highly efficient and totally dependent on computers.

So what happens if the computers crash? Shelves empty rapidly and before too much time passes, we're living in a modified law of the jungle. Especially in cities where supermarkets and restaurants are getting deliveries every day, hunger hits sooner rather than later.

No matter where you live, though, the shelves will be bare within a few days.

It isn't just computers. When you look at the number of people there are, we're living on the verge of a Malthusian nightmare. A country that less than 100 years ago had just 106 million residents now has three times that many.

In 1920, fewer than a million people lived in Florida and just 3.4 million lived in California. More than half of the population lived in small towns and rural areas. It may not have been exciting, but a lot of those people had pantries and cellars filled with foods they canned and preserved. If the grocery stores vanished, those folks would be just fine for quite some time.

Not anymore.

I don't feel like painting the picture of the post-computer world. I think the best thing is just to say that not all progress makes sense.

Just because we can do something doesn't mean we should do it.

We need fewer cities and more communities.

People may need help, but in the end we need to do for ourselves

"Put not your trust in princes ..."
 -- PSALM 146:3

 I'm pretty certain there was a time in American history when people didn't expect -- or want -- the government to have a visible effect on their lives.

As recently as the Great Depression, when people were starving, there were actually significant numbers of people in Congress against any sort of help for them because they believed "handouts" would destroy their initiative.

Being an American, specifically being a good Protestant American, meant succeeding or failing on your own effort, with only the help of family and friends.

That was nice if your family was named Rockefeller and your friends were named Morgan, but it was still a decent ideal to strive toward.

In the Depression, Harry Hopkins had the classic line when a conservative senator spoke against New Deal relief efforts and what damage they would do to America in the long run.

"People don't eat in the long run, Senator."

None of FDR's relief efforts were designed to be permanent. In fact, it wasn't until that crazy liberal Richard Nixon that welfare programs were made permanent, and that's one of the factors some folks say helped destroy the African-American family unit.

What matters in religion really boils down to how we treat other people

What significance does religion have in our lives these days?

We talk a very good game, and many of us believe very strongly that we know the right way to get to heaven.

We not only know the way, we also know our friends and acquaintances are on the wrong track and we're quick to tell them.

We have changed a lot in the last 50 years. We're considerably more self-righteous and we purely love to share our opinions.

Sometimes those opinions are useful. "Don't kill. Don't steal."

Other times they're just goofy. "Don't dance. Don't drink wine."

Muslims are practically phobic when it comes to genus Sus, but most Southern Baptists would consider it a tremendous sacrifice to have to live without barbecued pork.

Of course this is just the small stuff. The differences between some religions are massive, and it's at least arguably true that more wars have been fought over religion than any other single cause.

The only mention of religion in the original text of the U.S. Constitution is that no religious test be used to determine eligibility for an office.

And as President Reagan said in 1984, "We mandate no belief, nor will we ever."

Thirty-two years have passed since Reagan said those words, and the party that claims him as their demigod has moved far away from them.

Conservatives argue that this is a Christian nation, and presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump has been saying he doesn't want to let any Muslims into the United States.

Religion -- or the conflict between religions -- is one of the biggest negative forces in the world today. Much of it is coming from the Muslim side, with the radical fringe trying to convert the world and seeing any pushback as a modern-day crusade by Christians and Jews.

The shame of it is that we don't seem to understand that if you look at all the religions of the world, they have the same thing at their heart.

Call it the Golden Rule, call it the Law of Reciprocity, but all the religions of the world but one have some variation of this at their core:

"Love your neighbor as yourself."

The one that doesn't is Satanism.

As for where it originates, the Law of Reciprocity was around 500 years before the birth of Christ.

Confucius said it.

"Never impose on others what you would not choose for yourself."

If people followed that rule, there really wouldn't be much need for religion.

Keeping God out of everything isn't doing our society any favors

On June 6, 1944, when Allied troops were landing on the beaches of Normandy in western France, President Roosevelt addressed the nation on the radio.

He didn't make a speech.

He led a prayer.

It wasn't a Christian prayer, or a Jewish prayer or one aimed at any sort of religion. It was entirely non-sectarian and it would have been difficult to imagine anyone who believed in God being offended by it.

We're electing a president this year, but the media will call it a game

It's happening already.

Up until it became apparent that Donald Trump would be the Republican nominee in the 2016 presidential election, all we heard from the media was what a disaster it would be for the GOP to nominate him.

That may or may not have been true, but the media hasn't covered an election honestly in more than 40 years.

In fact, they don't cover elections at all anymore.

They cover horse races.

"It's Trump moving up on the rail ..."

We have reached a point in this country where almost everything has been dumbed down and turned into some form of entertainment.

It isn't always a horse race. Sometimes it's a football or baseball game, others a boxing match. But it's always some sort of game, and when it comes to the media, a close game is always better.

If you've ever watched a televised football game in which one team was totally dominant in the first half, it isn't at all surprising to hear the announcer say the game isn't over yet because the losing team is capable of making a comeback.

It isn't about truth and it isn't even about reality. Surveys show two-thirds of voters have a negative opinion of Trump, and the only two living Republican presidents have said they won't do anything to help him get elected.

There is as much chance of an epically lopsided election as a close one, but through September and October, we'll hear far more about how Trump is gaining in the polls or catching on with voters than about any of his positions on issues.

False equivalence

But something else the media do is far worse. Creating false equivalencies, using he-said-she-said and refusing to call a lie a lie. Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman explains:

"A more important vice in political coverage, which we’ve seen all too often in previous elections — but will be far more damaging if it happens this time — is false equivalence. 

"You might think that this would be impossible on substantive policy issues, where the asymmetry between the candidates is almost ridiculously obvious.

"To take the most striking comparison, Mr. Trump has proposed huge tax cuts and no plausible offsetting spending cuts, yet has also promised to pay down U.S. debt; meanwhile, Mrs. Clinton has proposed modest spending increases paid for by specific tax hikes.

"That is, one candidate is engaged in wildly irresponsible fantasy while the other is being quite careful with her numbers. But beware of news analyses that, in the name of 'balance,' downplay this contrast."

Wait and see.

No matter who the candidates are this fall, the media will concentrate on two things. We'll hear that it's the most exciting election ever and that it doesn't really matter who wins.

That's not liberal media.

It's lobotomized media.

Forty-six years ago, something very important died in this country

"Four dead in Ohio ..."
-- NEIL YOUNG

It was a Monday -- May 4th, 1970 -- and college students all over the country were protesting the fact that President Nixon had illegally expanded the Vietnam War into Cambodia.

Nixon and his vice president, Spiro T. Agnew, were pretty much waging war on anyone presumptuous enough to oppose their policies in Southeast Asia.

Just three days earlier, in a speech at the Pentagon, Nixon raised the ante by calling protesters "bums."

"You know, you see these bums, you know, blowing up the campuses," he said. "Listen, the boys on the college campuses today are the luckiest people in the world -- going to the greatest universities -- and here they are burning up the books."

Kent State wasn't the only protest in Ohio, but Gov. James Rhodes sent the National Guard in and the situation grew tense over the weekend.

I was 20 that spring and not in school, but I was spending as much time as possible at George Washington University with my girlfriend. We were together in the early afternoon when the news came in from Ohio that four students were dead at Kent State.

That was the day I learned it was possible to be shocked and completely unsurprised at the same time. Shocked that the constitutional right to protest meant so little, but not surprised at all that things had come to this in Nixon's America.

It was the second major example of the power structure striking out at those who wanted to protest it.

And if we view Kent State as the true end of what we know as the Sixties, a decade that went from Dallas to Philadelphia, Miss., to Memphis to Los Angeles to Chicago to Altamont to Kent, Ohio, it was a decade in which American youth lost its innocence.

There's a tremendous irony in all this. Millions of people who later realized what a disaster our involvement in Vietnam was still blamed those who had been opposed. And when chickenhawks like Ronald Reagan started saying the only thing wrong with our involvement in Vietnam was that we didn't win, the divisions grew deeper and deeper.

We had Reagan, who sold war bonds instead of facing enemy fire. We had Gee Dubya, who skipped out on his last year of National Guard service, and Cheney, who said he had "other priorities" when it came to Vietnam.

And then there was Trump. The presumptive Republican nominee, who would certainly be in the running for World's Greatest Egomaniac, actually claimed that his experience in military school taught him more about the military than being in the Army would have done.

Have we really become that stupid?

Have we gone so far down the rabbit hole since Kent State that we view Donald Trump as someone fit to lead our country?

Say what you like about Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, but at least much of their lives have been in public service. That's also true for many of the also-rans on the Republican side.

Not Trump.

He has never done one thing that wasn't about himself.

And that's where we are 46 years after the killing of four students in Kent, Ohio.

In a very sad place.