Thursday, April 15, 2004

This is an interesting time for me, both near and far. I strongly believe in rule by law, rather than rule by edict. I think that law allows for debate and review, but edicts just go out and make demands on the people. Tyrants rule by edict. When the President issues an executive order, he is being a tyrant. When he says it's okay for Israel to invade and occupy and annex, he is rewarding imperialists. Sharon said he is putting children before tanks by allowing the settlements to grow and continue and become part of Uber-Israel. This way if people try to take back what was stolen they will face children and by killing children they become terrorists. Oddly enough, when Israel kills children by firing missiles into crowds at street corners, only the Muslims call them terrorists. When Americans kill children by machine gunning them down in a dark corner of the world, nobody calls us terrorists because we cover up the act. Korea knows what we did to it's children, but they need our bombs, so they wait before condemning us.

They say Jon can't communicate for one reason or another. His brain has atrophied, his neurons are sheared, the connections are gone. These are the same reasons the CIA didn't stop 9-11 from happening. They couldn't communicate with the FBI, their staff had been reduced, their power was reduced, the field agents didn't follow thru. So like a brain injured man our country continues to kill babies and women and support murderers of crippled old men in wheelchairs. Oddly enough the hijackers of the cruise ship did the same thing and people around the world were outraged. Brain injured people have impulse control. They do things that are unsafe and then can't agree why they did it.

They may move Jon to a nursing home. We are looking for one nearby that will take people with traches and who are mostly unresponsive. Last time I checked there weren't any but now my sweetie-pie has found one nearby, within bicycle distance and we are checking it out. They don't have coma stim but they do apparently take care of total care people. Does a father have any say as to where his son goes? We'll find out. Jon is an adult, but he has no power of attorney assigned, nor was he living here when he got hit. So the law decides that he's just a guy and I am just a guy. The country that won't legally recognize love between the same sex, also does not recognize that a father of an adult might still be a father. We recognize occupying invading armies as legitimate, but not a father's love and concern.

A brain injured man when they emerge, sometimes cannot fit facts together properly. They may think they are God, or think that they have no wife or husband, or children. They may scream if their radio batteries are dead, scream and tear up a room, throwing things around. Once they get their batteries, they settle down happily.

A President who got there by manipulating the laws, by fixing an election to keep his family in charge of the greatest military force in the world may go slightly insane with power. He may invade a defenseless country. He may throw out the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. He may rule by "gut feelings", by insights and religious visions. He may start quoting from the Bible and saying that God is on our side. Hitler did the exact same things. So did Saddam, so did Sharon. None of them practiced religion except for the press and for photo shoots. They all want the world to see them as strong and powerful and deadly. They are none of the above. Sharon is fat, lazy and obsessed. Saddam was a psychotic. George was a perpetual loser/bully/drunk. Now he can punish those who laughed at him. Now he can remake the world. He is in charge of the world, in fact, he can order countries to follow our laws, his edicts, or face our wrath.

He tears down the towel rack, screaming that his batteries are dead. He wants his radio. He lays in a bed, staring at the holes in the ceiling, looking at the TV, glancing at his father. Asked to squeeze a hand, he thinks he does, he feels the hand squeeze, but now the holes call to him and he resumes counting. He stands in front of the camera and says that we will stay the course, that to do otherwise would be unthinkable. He says we will kill everyone who stands in our way, in his way. He says we will do all this because God has spoken to him and He says we can do this. He says that God has told him to cut the head off his oldest son. He has the knife, the boy is quiet, he listens for the Voice. A young boy is hit in the head by the wheel of a chair which was blown apart by an American missile fired by an Israeli soldier at a crippled old man who said that people should kill people who kill people.

So what I'm seeing is a society that is brain injured. If we use the analogy of the body politic, we can see that the brain is injured, it doesn't work anymore, not the way it was designed, not the way it would be safe for the people who create it.

If they allow us to suggest a place to send my son and I can see him every day as a result, he may wake up and rehab and become a man who screams at the TV, who tears towel racks off the wall and threatens to kill if his batteries are not returned. He may hear voices, he may want to hurt people. He could be exactly like the Presidents of the world, except without the military to arm him.

When Jon was first injured, I went and watched the sun rise and meditated. I suddenly was blessed with a phrase:"I remember why the Buddha laughed". Mom says you sometimes have to laugh because you can't cry all the time. Buddha decided that fasting and denying life was not the Way and he turned to Life with a gusto, eating, drinking and laughing. He was strongly condemned by the other Buddhas as being too flip, but in an infinite universe, there has to be room for the silly, the stern and the insane.

If the universe is self aware, as it must be, is it like a brain and can it be injured? Not likely, because the universe is All, and so there can be no accidents because everything is known. But if there are no accidents, then the universe is not infinite because it excludes accidents. So there have to be accidents, but accidents are by definition outside the scope of expectations. The only true consistency is inconsistency, and the only true inconsistency is inconsistent inconsistency. An infinite universe allows my boy to be somewhere and nowhere, aware and not aware, alive and not alive. He is my father, my brother, myself. He is the windshield and the brain, the Alpha and the Omega and the Omega-3 acids that help me avoid heart attacks and ending up like my father: a crippled old man, blind and in a wheelchair. Just like the man the Israelis thought needed a missile in the gut more than a trial and a defense.

Knowledge of Right and Wrong, partaking of the tree of Knowledge, is not knowledge of When or How. It just is that when you do it, you know if it is right or wrong. Not always you, but the man watching the missile approach him through his clouded vision, hearing the motor and the screams, knew something was wrong. Stroking the hair of a man in a wheelchair, my son, my father, a stranger in the hallway, I know I am right.

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