Dan Pallotta

5.29.2004

Saturday, May 29, 2004

Thank God for Robert F. Kennedy:

"This world demands the qualities of youth: not a time of life but a state of mind, a temper of the will, a quality of imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the love of ease." Robert F. Kennedy, Day of Affirmation Address, University of Capetown, South Africa, June 6, 1966

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Friday, May 28, 2004

It is Memorial day weekend. The best way for us to honor the lives of all those brave men and women who gave their lives that this nation might live is to bring new life to this nation and to create the magnificent future for which they gave the last full measure of themselves. They did not die that we might fight more wars. They died that we might never have to fight again. If we act with wisdom and compassion for those around us ion the world, we won't. Then they will have really died for something noble.

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Thursday, May 27, 2004

What we need to do is articulate a new cause. If the United States were to divert 25% of its annual $400 billion in military spending to global issues of poverty and disease, we could solve these problems within a decade - some even faster. We could stop the AIDS death toll within just a few years, and we could halt hunger and hunger-related disease in ten, which would change the world as we know it. How do we articulate this cause? This is the question. There is reason for unprecedented optimism in our world. Never before have we been so close to the possibility of prosperity for everyone. The current administration has us believing the opposite - that never before have we had so much reason for pessimism. Imagine having $300 billion to spend on defense AND being able to save the world at the same time? What a magnificent world we could be living in ten years from now. Do we want to ?

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5.26.2004

Wednesday, May 26, 2004

The L.A. Times reports today that 360,000 people died of AIDS just in the nation of South Africa last year. Why then, is the fight against terrorism the world's top priority? How on earth will terrorists ever claim that many lives in a year? The global AIDS death toll is closer to 3 million - annually. What terrorist organization could ever kill that many people a year, year after year after year? An apocalypse is occurring before our very eyes. Terrorism, indeed. What will ever terrorize humanity the way AIDS is terrifying the poor? This idea that we want to rid the world of terrorism lacks any integrity. We have all the drugs we need to stop the AIDS death toll, yet when faced with that marvelous possibility, the world turns its head and does nothing.

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5.24.2004

Tuesday, May 25, 2004

Did you see the photographs of President Bush today - the ones showing the scar on his chin and on his nose, and several on his hand from the fall from his bike? Carl Jung wrote a great deal about how the unconscious manifests itself in the physical world. I for one always look for metaphors of my inner life in my physical world. I could not help but notice the metaphors in that picture today. The man fell flat on his face, and had blood on his hand.

In politics it has always been considered suicide to have psychotherapy in one's past. I think that it is suicide for the nation to have leaders who do not.

I could not help but feel today that George Bush's face was wearing his inner nightmare - that he has fallen on his face and does not know what to do about it. Does he knows what drives him? Is his confidence about his actions real clarity and certainty, or is it his only option in the face of an abject fear that he has made a colossal mistake? Does he choose belligerence because to face his uncertainty frightens him to death? Was he allowed to be uncertain as a child, or was an answer always expected, and was staying the course always the demand? I cannot help but feel some great sorrow for the man, as if he is driven by forces about which he has no understanding and that he is petrified to uncover.

I may be wrong. Perhaps his clarity is real and the man truly knows himself. But I cannot help but find it odd that my instincts tell me otherwise, and that yesterday he fell flat on his face.

Perhaps the metaphor does not belong only to our President. Perhaps he is carrying a metaphor for all of us. Perhaps America has fallen flat on her face. If so, we would be wise not get up and move on as if nothing happened.

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5.23.2004

Monday, May 24, 2004

At the time of the Revolutionary War, Thomas Paine said that, "We have it in our power to begin the world over again." Courageous, outrageous words.

The context of our movement for the betterment of humankind should be nothing less than that today, and nothing should be allowed to stand in its way. The world is in need of a radical renewal.

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Sunday, May 23, 2004

"These are times in which a genius would wish to live. It is not in the still calm of life, or in the repose of a pacific nation, that great characters are formed. ...Great necessities call out great virtues." - Abigail Adams, in a Letter to John Quincy Adams, January 19, 1780

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Saturday, May 22, 2004

Lincoln's second inaugural address is carved on the wall to his left in the Lincol Memorial. I have always loved it. It is one of the most enlightened pieces of political ideology ever written or spoken:

"Fellow countrymen: At this second appearing to take the oath of the presidential office, there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement, somewhat in detail, of a course to be pursued, seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself; and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.

On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago, all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it-- all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war-- seeking to dissolve the Union, and divide effects, by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war; but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive; and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came.

One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the Southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union, even by war; while the government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it.

Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes his aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces; but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered--that of neither has been answered fully.

The Almighty has his own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses! for it must needs be that offenses come; but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through his appointed time, he now wills to remove, and that he gives to both North and South this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to him? Fondly do we hope--fervently do we pray--that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn by the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, "The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan--to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations. "

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