“What the hell are you thinking?”

Okay, so I’ll admit that I don’t always see things the way that most people see them.In fact, I think it’s fair to say that I often don’t see things the way that most people see them.It might even be suggested that I have a way of seeing things that lies just on the other side of “What the hell is he thinking?” from just about everyone that I know.And yet, I have a high enough rate of successfully nailing the truth behind complicated issues and convoluted scenarios to allow me to feel safe in my indulgence of this fairly unconventional angle of perspective, and to even have a certain amount of confidence in sharing it with others.Even really weird notions that most people would likely keep to themselves.In the interest of allowing you to get a better idea of who I am and what I bring to the table of public discourse, I’ve decided to list out some of my more significant departures from the mainstream of American perspective.  Not as grand display of singular insight, or even as a public confession of remorse for the sin of being a spokesman for anyone other than the celebrated common man.-yeah, remorse.  Good one.No, this is just to serve notice that not only do I see things differently than most people see them, it’s also to make sure that y’all understand completely that I make no apologies for how I see things.  Also, to make absolutely certain that it’s clear that I’m not afraid to stand right next to my opinions, and won’t be ashamed of them.  Even if they prove to be dead wrong – which has happened from time to time, although generally to my great relief when they are proven wrong.So, with no further caveat, here are some of my “greatest hits” and misses from the last 10 years or so.

The impeachment of Bill Clinton will be the worst mistake the GOP has ever made in recent history.  It will blow up in their faces, and all the players will take it right in the tailpipe as a direct result of the public’s revulsion of it as an obvious political assassination attempt.

Actually, this wasn’t very far off the mark.  Gingrich did go down in flames.  The GOP Rep who stood in line to replace him as Speaker went down soon after due to his own infidelity scandal, and I’m sure that Larry Craig wishes there wasn’t yards of video tape with him calling Bill “a naughty, naughty boy”.What I didn’t count on was that we’d all be taking it in the ass years later as a DNC controlled House and Senate stands paralyzed with fear of public backlash over bringing legitimate impeachment charges against the Bush/Cheney criminal conspiracy, due to the fact that the public really did react in revulsion over the obviousness of it as a GOP political hit job.So, I guess I underestimated the body count in all of it.  We’re all getting it in the end.

The anthrax attacks are somehow related to the 9/11 attacks, and likely as a not-so-subtle warning to the media and the DNC to shut down the investigation into the particulars surrounding the 9/11 attacks.

I felt this way immediately, and still see the value of those “unsolved” attacks as a constant threat against our elected government.  The facts are – without going into great detail – that as the media and the DNC-controlled Senate began to come out of the shock we all felt over the 9/11 attacks, and stories began to surface about the bizarre anomalies surrounding those attacks, the anthrax mailing began.Four mailings were made.  Two to the media – a relatively small Florida paper (a “hello, we’re here” mailing?) and one to Tom Brokaw’s office at NBC – and two mailed to the offices of the Senate’s DNC leadership (Pat Leahy of Vermont and Tom Daschle of South Dakota).  The rest of what transpired was the cross contamination impact as those letters infected mailrooms and sorting machines all over the east coast, making it clear that if only four letters could cripple our entire postal system for weeks, imagine what one hundred letters could do.Do I think this involved George Bush and Dick Cheney mailing these things from some secret-handshake clubhouse on the grounds of Camp David?  Hardly.  However, if you ask me if I think Osama bin Laden was involved, then I’d have to repeat that answer.  Hardly.  I believe that the perpetrators of 9/11 were the same perpetrators of the anthrax attacks.  I also believe that our government knows it too, and that this is why the investigation into the anthrax attacks went nowhere and has been virtually shut down, and why there is such a widespread official resistance to a full investigation of the attacks of 9/11.  Not a malevolent conspiracy in our government to cover up the truth, but possibly a protective conspiracy to prevent a real disaster as the true villains of 9/11 reap their benefits at the rate of tens of billions of dollars per month.

The Iraq invasion was based on lies, and would become regarded as our nation’s most costly and intractable failure in collective judgement.

Nothing much to add here, except that I took a hell of a lot of heat from everyone I know and people I didn’t know that made a point of letting me know what kind of traitor I was for blogging about this heretical notion, and that this has been he one correct call that I really wish I’d been a little wrong about.  It may seem like a no-brainer now, but at the time, the idea that a crippled nation, sitting on some of the world’s largest reserves of oil, would become a staggering drain on our economy and our military if we dared to invade and kick out one guy and his immediate family from their string of palaces, was just plain stupid.  Do a search on Iraq Invasion+2003, and see where the all the money was sitting on that bet.

There is no such thing as “spirit”.  Whatever exists, exists as physical including ideas, reactions and information.

Like I said, some of my views sit just beyond the WTF horizon, but I’m sticking to them.  I have a 31,000 word thesis that explores this notion in excruciating detail, but to boil it down to a bumper sticker: at the base of all that exists, there lies a form of physicalness that is required to be common to whatever rises from that base.  If there is no base, then there can’t logically be anything, since all that exists must rest on a base of some sort.  That said, the only way that any two forms of existence can interact or react with one another, is to share existence at some level.  That shared existence must have a base for there to be any sharing of any kind.  That established, if one form of existence is determined to be physical in nature, then whatever it is that shares a base with it must also be physical in nature, since both share a common base.  Therefore, if one accepts the notion of the “physical” sharing existence with the “spiritual” then one must accept the notion that both share a common existential base.  This common base requires that both emerge from the same primordial genesis, and are, therefore, similar in fundamental structure.  Structure implies a physical nature.It’s all actually very simple. Even if it causes some folks to have to reach deep into their view of reality and readjust a few things.  That’s okay, though.  I had to do it, and even though it’s not easy to do, it’s not impossible.

There’s no real “Evil” or “Good”.

There is only competition and compassion.  Evil is the proper execution of what it takes to survive and thrive in an environment that demands that kind of activity.  Compassion is the exact opposite and is actually anathema to the requirements of this environment that we have all been introduced into. Compassion stands as the one dissident move that you can make in this world – in this physical realm.  It is the only true revolution that anyone can launch.Evil can be as benign as making a living so that your genetic issue can grow and further continue your specific DNA contribution to the planet of your birth.  It can also be as horrific as the stuff of your most malignant impulse to dominate and destroy all that exists in a frenzy to prove your innate superiority to yourself and all who survive the holocaust of your ascension.Compassion, on the other hand, has only one expression.  It surrenders the self for the good of another, or for the benefit of an ideal that is held to be of higher value than the self.  Not as a vain martyrdom, feeding a twisted need for glorious self-importance, but as a quiet acknowledgement of the reality of one’s true location in the hierarchy of need within that which exists at all levels, and the happiness to be one with that location, that contribution.  In voluntary coordination with the essence of what existence is designed to serve, and free to enjoy the truth of one’s unique contribution within that existential whole.Basically, there’s no devil and there aren’t any angels.  No vampires either.  No werewolves, although I wish there were.  I just love the idea of werewolves.

UFOs are likely time travelers from our own human future.

As if this thought hasn’t crossed everyone’s mind at some time or other.  Still, it’s pretty foreign to some folks who still hold out for the idea of a planet, millions of lightyears away, finding us and falling in love with us to the point of being at all respectful of us as a species or even as a planet.Nope.  I don’t buy the distant galaxy visitor theory.  The way I know that there aren’t advanced humanoid races that have the power to race across insane expanses of empty universe to visit us with these relatively tiny crafts, is that we’re not serving these things with virgins and whatever else they might want from us at this every minute.  Come on.  Like anything that exists is beyond taking what it can from whatever it finds that’s vulnerable to it.  Sure, maybe a scientist or two within a society might see the value in being responsible with a new discovery, but scientists don’t rise to ultimate power within any society unless they have that twist in their psyche that lies within the damaged personalities of all power players.No, if there are superior races that have full knowledge of our existence, then we’d be working for them right now.  I’m not saying that these UFOs don’t exist, or that the little gray men are a complete hoax.  What I’m saying is that the deference and respect they seem to display for us indicates that they have some serious concerns about screwing with us, and the only concern I can imagine is that special kind of concern that directly impacts their own survival.In essence, I’d be as afraid of one of them as I’d be of my own great, great, great, great (x120) granddaughter.  In fact, exactly as afraid.So, this is just a sample of how my mind works when confronted with what we all have dealt with in the last 10 years or so.  I don’t know if my view is more accurate or not, but I do know that it’s a point of view that’s worth having out there, if only for entertainment value.After the emails I got for that column yesterday about the DNC’s master plan to insulate Barack Obama’s fall general election campaign by running the poor guy through the Clinton mud machine, I thought it best to clear the air about what kind of mind you’re dealing with here.  I felt it also good to be straight about the fact that even if it seems like I’ve gotten snookered by someone or something, it’s likely that I didn’t, but that I just might be catching it all from a very different angle than many of you.Reminds me of the story of the 5 blind men and the elephant.  That’s the one where each blind guy touches the elephant in different places, and describes the beast as he “sees” it from his limited perspective.  We’re all somewhat blind as we feel around the world that presents itself to us, and we each do the best we can as we struggle to make sense of all that surrounds us from day to day.  I never resent a man for telling me that the wall I feel is actually the snake that he feels.  In fact, I tend to remember what he said about it being a snake as I stretch my reach out a bit to see where it might be that the wall becomes a snake.  I mean, no one can possibly mistake a wall for a snake.  That just means to me that I haven’t reached out far enough to get a real handle on what it is that I’m touching.  In fact, I see it as a good thing to allow others to extend my own reach through their unique perspectives.Of course, there’s a limit to how far I’ll allow someone else’s reach to take me.  Like that Scientology crap.  I mean, what the hell are those people thinking?