blueboy,

You’re welcome to call decentralization and individual empowerment sulking, but I for one rejoice in the thought of Vermont telling Rome-on-the-Potomac to take a hike.  It’s over, you see.  Or rather, anybody who’s eyes aren’t wide shut can see that our grand experiment in freedom democracy has ended in a welfare-warfare colossus that is wallowing in its excesses, both foreign and domestic, and will soon drown in them, precisely as its Soviet counterpart did.

Unlike the latter, however, the U.S.’s constituent states are fully capable of governing themselves democratically, and once one of them exits, they all will.  And the rest of the world will no doubt follow in their tracks, setting of a democratic revolution the likes of which the world has never known.

Either that, or the collectivists’ dream of a World State will be realized, and humanity will sink into the abyss of tyranny and self-destruction.

Ok, fine, Glaucus, so some Vermonters want to secede, even going so far as to experiment with “eating locally” in order to convince themselves they don’t need anybody else.  And, yes, the US, meaning “us,” flirts with neo/oleo-colonialism.  However, neither pre-imperial Rome nor Great Britain were actually democracies in the full sense of that term, as Mr Johnson wants to believe.  But let’s not quibble about historical precedents or homegrown independence movements, laudable as the intentions (if not the goal) of the latter may be.  We in what’s left of our democracy are at a critical juncture at this very moment.  Our voices can have an effect.  I don’t believe that Senator Feingold’s childish withholding from achieving a consensus rebuke to President Bush and his failed policies is helpful.  It’s a “baby with the bath water” tantrum.  He needs to get on board the Warner resolution and save his histrionics for his unlikely presidential campaign.  If we all call our senators and congressional representatives, urging them to come down off the fence, or in Sen. Feingold’s case, his high horse, we can help give Congress the spine to stand up to a “war time” president.  Naturally, there may be lots of other things we can participate in later.  In fact, I would hope that Sen. Feingold does introduce his limiting measure, just not now.  I hope that we aren’t going to give up on this “grand experiment” called the United States of America and go sulk in our Vermont sugar shacks until the second coming.  Let’s pick up the phone, people, and call our representatives, instead of whining about how powerless we are.

“but at least some action now might save a few American lives and get us out of the morass that one man, Mr. George W. Bush, got us into.”

I have to agree with Blueboy, hopelessness manifests itself by inaction; where there is LIFE there is hope, let’s at least go down fighting!

Blueboy1938 (#51155) is hardly alone in his reflexive shying-away from coming to grips with the immensity of the threat we all face here.  Stopping America’s messy nosebleed in Iraq seems a lot more immediately possible (and so more likewise gratifying) than taking on finally and bringing down once-and-for-all the ravenous mob that inflicted it, almost casually, on their merry way to raping and ruining an entire planet......and for whom “a few American lives” (or even a few hundred million of ‘em) is of absolutely no consequence whatsoever. 

George W. Bush continues to be the patsie many people love to hate, which suits just fine those who’ve hung him out there to draw fire.  Blueboy1938’s very oversimplistic sense of what finally ended the military phase of the criminal U.S. assault on Viet Nam has unfortunately led him to believe the even more complex conditions of the Iraq caper will yield to the same kinds of public “protest” that were, in the actual event, not nearly so large a factor as they’ve been made out to be since.

True, just “(d)oing something at this critical juncture....” might have more appeal to terrorized Americans than taking the time and making the effort to first be as sure as you can that what you do is commensurate with both the magnitude and the nature of the “problem.” But when your adversaries tell you in so many words they’ve already factored mass marches and pressure on Congress into their plans, and all the evidence to-date shows that to be more than just another of their idle boasts, it seems to this old Indian only plain good sense to at least reconsider the wisdom of relying too much on methods that have only their dubious record of efficacy 35-40 years ago to recommend them.

My people here on Turtle Island and our free wild relatives everywhere in the world have been under murderous attack by the “hidden forces” Blueboy1938 tries to make such simple-minded fun of, for five hundred generations.  He and his domesticated brothers and sisters were until recently “privileged” to provide the expendable shock (and awe-struck) troops in this total war on us and our Mother Earth.  Today these erstwhile “chosen peoples” have themselves become the primary targets of the intentionally shadowy opportunists systematically wrecking this world.

If these plain facts still seem murky to Blueboy1938 and others in his predicament, maybe he should get his own eyes checked instead of indulging in infantile attempts to make it appear the fault lies with those of us who speak, in plain words, only what we know by virtue of our own trying experiences with it.  Then, if he still wants to tackle this “global” conflagration by pissing on a few U.S. politicians who stupidly tried to blow-up a mere back-fire into an imperial pipedream, then he ought to just go on ahead and do it, and stay the hell out of the grown-ups’ way.

Us surviving primitive savages, once hunted relentlessly by the tormentors and their tame two-leggeds, are now the hunters again. We have much bigger game than petty criminals afoot, too, Sherlock. 

HokaHey!

Oh, please!  Yeah, let’s gas some more about the “hidden forces,” TAO Walker.  You’re in good company with Wesley Clark and his recent cabal-tinged comments.  Doing something at this critical juncture, when emails and telephone calls might just have an impact on real events, sure beats hell out of bloviating endlessly and to no avail.  Sure, it’s “oh, so 1960s” to actually do something instead of talking murkily and endlessly about it, and at that time it caused Congress to cut off funds for Viet Nam.  Naturally, if it were done now, that would just staunch the bloodletting in Iraq and not untangle the myriad conspiracies TAO Walker sees arrayed against us, the pitifully democracy-benighted, but at least some action now might save a few American lives and get us out of the morass that one man, Mr. George W. Bush, got us into.  Of course he had help from the other administration figures, and of course there are oil implications, and of course there are powerful people that have access through the Republican infrastructure, so you sit back and contemplate those navels for us while the rest try to actually do something.

blueboy,

It’s up to site administrators to make those decisions, but your very charitable comments aside, if its political activism you want, you can skip the demonstrations and get to the heart of the matter, which is that our grand experiment in federalism has proven to be an enormous failure, as our erstwhile replublic has been replaced by a welfare-warfare colossus that is on the verge of exhaustion:

http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0131-27.htm

What to do?  Support these fine—and true—Americans:

http://www.vtcommons.org

Conclusion to previous comment:

Yet there remains available to ordinary peoples everywhere everything necessary to overcoming this vicious assault on themselves, their future generations, and their own Mother Earth.  It is not to be found in their gadgetry, though, as seemingly sophisticated as it’s gotten here in these latter days.  It isn’t in their ideology or institutions, either.  All those things are in fact false hopes planted here among the domesticated nations, by the tormentors, to obscure from their slaves that it is in the captives’ own essential human nature, and in recovering the integrity of its function within the organic living arrangement here, where their true “salvation” is to be realized......and only there.

Blueboy1938 and others in his pitiful situation have been rigorously trained to reject and dismiss this vital information as mere “psuedo-philosophical drive,” at best, but he can examine the named philosophers ‘til hell freezes over without getting clued-in to the actual condition his condition is in like he could right here right now, in this in no way “esoteric” but rather really quite matter-of-fact posting.  It remains to be seen whether he and his fellow members of the human herds can still muster the wits to recognize themselves in it, the stomach to face their terminal plight, the courage to give-up their habitual exercises-in-futility, and the in-born wisdom to address it all honestly together to mutually beneficially effect.

Us native guides are ready, willing, and able to help, but the initial hard work of actually confronting and acknowledging the shocking and awful reality of their severely degraded estate must first be done by the dismally disconnected domesticated peoples within, and among, themselves.  Then they must accept unconditionally that that there are innumerable fates worse than death and every day is a good day to die.

HokaHey!

Spending some time looking into the set of assumptions, attitudes, and beliefs about themselves and the world that make Americans such suckers for the siren song of WAR may seem, to an activist like Blueboy1938 (#50769), too much beside-the-point in what he sees, accurately, as these extremely perilous times.  Getting after the “new” Congress, taking to the streets, and similar “old reality” approaches still offer him and many others hope of stopping the Bush/Cheney junta “before they kill again.”

This Indian has elsewhere said anyone who wants to should give all that their best shot, even while not sharing their enthusiasms.  What’s more, it looks from here on The Rez like it is their congenital unwillingness to examine the fatal flaws in their national character that have made of Americans, in effect, a nation of useful idiots for the clandestine operators who have always viewed the people, their republic, and its institutions as just more resources to be developed, exploited, and expended in pursuit of the global privateering criminal enterprise so frequently wrapped in the American flag.

That the unfolding mess in Iraq is a national disaster of epic proportions, one Americans “own” and ought to devote themselves unconditionally to correcting, seems too obvious to need saying.  That it is a “boone and a blessing” to their home-grown criminal class, however, and so will be drawn-out as long as the money rolls in, is also plain to see but not nearly as simple a thing as Congress to get ‘hold of.  That there are forces at work in this world much greater even than the legendary greed of the American plutoligarchy, but nonetheless selfish and venal, forces driving events toward a cataclysmic climax intended to shatter the human spirit once-and-for-all and lock any survivors forever into a condition no different than that of the unfortunate captive foodstuffs upon which the civilized peoples subsist today, is every bit as obvious to us surviving primitive savages, but something still in the carefully proscribed realm of “the unthinkable” to the vast majority of our captive brothers and sisters.

Blueboy1938 and others, unaware of the real magnitude of the forces arrayed against them, think to reagain control of their fate and fortunes by arresting a handful of the foolish fingerpuppets presently parading up and down in the crumbling corridors of American “power.” It is the shadowy manipulators behind them, though, whose names are mostly as unknown as their faces are unseen, and the even more cold-blooded figures back of the bankers, who pose the truly dire threat not just to Americans but to all living beings here.

Marching in the streets and goading reluctant legislators is, as the young people might say, “sooooo 1960s.” The means and methods of your tormentors have increased exponentially in four decades, while those available through the so-called “democratic process” have, like the real wealth of those limited-to (and by-) it’s mostly symbolic usages, have shrunk markedly in that time.

to be concluded:

What the devil has any of this pseudo-philisophical drivel to do with the topics raised in the article to which they are willy-nilly appended?  The article raises the specter of an escalation reminiscent of Viet Nam.  It seems to me that should be the focus, because we can, and should, do something about that.  There are protest demonstrations that need attending.  There are competing Congressional resolutions in opposition that need fostering by prodding fence-sitting members to get on board.  There’s even a move to cut off, or at least cap, funding and/or troop levels that needs support.  These are the realities that have been lost sight of in the plethora of inane postings attempting esoteric one-upsmanship.  Go quote Nietzsche and Schopenhauer and Adam Smith to one another somewhere else!

If Anchorite wants a good look at things truly “brutal and unhealthy” (#50398) s/he should visit any feedlot, factory-farm, or packing-house operation.  And then of course there is the thoroughly civilized and scientific system of institutionalized human-on-human slaughter known far-and-wide as WAR.  Us Indians will give a listen to his/her opinions about our own free wild natural living arrangements after he/she has actually experienced them......which is, quite obviously, not yet.

If setting science up to be the designated suppressor of “evil” doesn’t religiossify it, by definition, then rationalists throwing stones at others’ ideological glass-houses is just a peculiarly egregious form of psuedo-intellectual juvenile delinquency.  But such things seem inevitably to accompany any grandiose delusion that would have some small feature of the singular spirit informing the whole living universe, such as its mind/science element for example, lay-claim to the exercise of total authority over Life Herownself.  There are other more clinical terms (and plenty of pithily apt colloquialisms, as well) for these all-too-common, among the civilized races, disconnects from the organic functional integrity essential to healthy and mutually beneficial engagement in what is nothing, after all, except Life’s own Song-and-Dance.  If that leaves Terry Sloth’s (#50361) hard-wired xenocidal microbes out of the big picture, perhaps they are simply an “evil” being suppressed by better lights.

Nice verse, Anchorite.  Remember, though, the tao that can be spoken (or written) is not the TAO.  And anyway, if “science....in the broadest sense possible” is just knowledge honestly come-by, which we all of us have at least a little of, then maybe it’d be better not to blow the conceit all out of proportion to its usefully limited place in the greater scheme of things.  Other monstrous distortions like feedlots and “energy” wars are dead-certain to follow.

HokaHey!

Dear Tao,

Thank you for your reply.  “Termite people” is not nice.  If science claims spirit that won’t make it an ism.  I am sorry about the trees.  Free and wild is simply too brutal and unhealthy.  Evil must be suppressed.  But there has to be justification for suppression.  This has been provided by religion, historically.  Science has had 400 years to state a rational case for being nice and has largely stayed mum.  This is why Islam and Christianity have taken the stage.

Humans are both admirable and despicable.  Again, evil must be suppressed.  When I say science I mean it in the broadest sense possible.  I mean certified knowledge, as best can be determined.

Tao, I wrote a poem a while back on the subject of Lao Zi’s Tao.  Please let me know if you would like some more.

Glaucus, Tao is right, I think we are coming/going the same place.

THE TAO

Cross-eyed now
Is mind and matter
Tao’s two
Towers together

Split is heart
Yours and mine
Tao’s but
One divine

Pull the drapes
Take a pose
Consummate
As it goes

There is neither
Rate nor duty
Only light’s
Emergent beauty

~Anchorite

If all life on earth is merely bacterium, wired to react instinctively to threats of extinction, survival is imperative and the competitive instinct dominates, so under those circumstances, is it possible to live a communal existence where all have identical needs satisfied in parallel ways?

TAO Walker,

“Have at it, Kids.  This ol’ Indian can always catch you later.”

Indeed you can.  And you’ll be welcomed accordingly.

It’s maybe only a coincidence that “religious dogma” has been barking-up trees around these parts exactly as long as “civilization” with its applied science has been cutting them down by the billions.  (Some of our Humminbird Island relatives right-away nicknamed their uninvited European guests “the termite people.") Now we have the suedo-religion of scientism making its bid to displace the suedo-science of creationism as THE code of “the West.” Glaucus (#50202) seems to’ve found a fellow-(or gal)-believer in Anchorite (#50159).  The two of them could be very happy together endlessly rearranging the elementary atomic furniture in one of the Living Universe’s remoter outbuildings.

Meantime, there is not nor ever has been any “ism” attached to us free wild natural human beings.  Robert Pirsig maybe knew his way around a Harley “hog,” but if he’s dipped his bucket deeper into the wellsprings of “the East,” he knows our ancestors there early-on recognized the folly of fish worshipping the water.

“Conscious evolution” sounds like such a neat trick.  It’s a wonder no one else has come up with it in the whole “Brief History of Time.” It must’ve needed the self-referential genius of this little world’s artificially arrested, organically dysfunctional breeds of domesticated two-leggeds to make the final push to “singularity.” Let’s hope they can soon do the same for SEX.

Have at it, Kids.  This ol’ Indian can always catch you later.  Better look-out for those “Islamists,” though.  Their Arab brothers invented “nothing,” after all.....the one thing The Great Confabulator said you all ain’t seen yet.

HokaHey!

Anchorite,

“The salvation of the West lies in Science claiming the spirit for itself and away from religion.  I think we will fail.  But if we succeed, religious dogma will be exposed as the killer of human spirit.”

Science is motivated by hopeful uncertainty, while the certainty of religion is what dooms it to never-ending strife.  Thus, while it remains to be seen whether science will prevail in its effort to free mankind from its biological constraints, the sooner it puts its hope there, the better.

Dear Tao and Glaucus,

It is refereshing to watch you two climb the baseball bat of abstration!

The answer is in Pirsig, ie, understanding that proper human life lies in respect for uncertainty, anti-dogma.  This is the spirit of the West, of free creative action.  But science backed off after Galileo.  Now Islam is stepping up to quash our actual (incorrect) religion, which is Naturalism, with all its perversions.

The salvation of the West lies in Science claiming the spirit for itself and away from religion.  I think we will fail.  But if we succeed, religious dogma will be exposed as the killer of human spirit.  The reason we are likely to fail is that people find it hard to be motivated without a sense of certainty.

TAO Walker,

It’s really no more than to say that unconscious (Darwinian) evolution has now been overtaken by conscious (cultural) evolution and that the latter has only just begun:

http://www.technologyreview.com/Biotech/14236/

If the framer of that homocentric “ancient apothegm,” Glaucus (#49691), had been some more personally disinterested observer than the thoroughly civilized intellectual he was (even his wife or mother, say), it might be safe to give it a little bit of weight in our deliberations here.  As it stands, though, it is generally prudent to at least discount somewhat heavily the self-aggrandizing claims of the self-absorbed......like you probably do with G.W. Bush’s, say, and my people have always done with EuroAmericans’ in-general.

As for the human mind......well, we all know it can play tricks on you.  One of its biggest stunts in these parts was convincing some of your forebears it was, first, the best show in town, and then, as time went on, the only one worth watching.  Meanwhile intuition, which still dances circles around the plodding linear altogether self-referential (Here we are back to those pesky positive-feedback-loops again.) “forward progress” of mental calisthenics, became known as a “girl thing” much inferior, in its capacity to provide immediate gratification, to the suit-up-and-storm- the-gates-and-plunder-the-city methodology that still so enthralls civilized human males the world around.

You have taken us in sheer leaps and bounds, Glaucus, from the immanent miracle of “digitized gold” to the already vast suedo-reaches of the cyberworld and now all the way to the far ends of the time/space continuum itself.......if not laughing then at least buying-and-selling all the way.  Where could we possibly go from there/then?  Just remember, Kola, wherever you go, no matter how fast you travel, there YOU are.

Us surviving primitive savages have been all those places and done all that.  We’re just glad to be home free and wild.
We know some others from here and there around the universe who’ve long since surveyed and marked the rather surprisingly constricted limits of mind, and would give their eye teeth, if they still had any teeth at all, to be where we are today.  It’s likely you latecomers to the old mind game will one day get to that point-no-point, too.

In fact, there’s a Coyote story about just that.  Maybe we’ll get a chance to tell it to you sometime.  Meanwhile, don’t take any wooden Indians.

HokaHey!

TAO Walker,

“The civilized peoples have lost touch with their essential human nature.”

If so, then it is because of the welfare socialism that has engulfed the West and that is doomed to collapse under its own weight.  But as we see that nature piecing its way back together via the market democracy that is the World Wide Web, people such as myself can appreciate the fact that technology is not something foreign to our nature but part and parcel of it.

For what is technology but applied mind?  And to subscribe as I do to the ancient apothegm—“There is nothing greater in nature than man, and there is nothing greater in man than mind”—is to understand that we have only just begun to fulfill its awesome potential:

An analysis of the history of technology shows that technological change is exponential, contrary to the common-sense ‘intuitive linear’ view. So we won’t experience 100 years of progress in the 21st century—it will be more like 20,000 years of progress (at today’s rate). The ‘returns,’ such as chip speed and cost-effectiveness, also increase exponentially. There’s even exponential growth in the rate of exponential growth. Within a few decades, machine intelligence will surpass human intelligence, leading to the Singularity—technological change so rapid and profound it represents a rupture in the fabric of human history. The implications include the merger of biological and nonbiological intelligence, immortal software-based humans, and ultra-high levels of intelligence that expand outward in the universe at the speed of light.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Accelerating_Retur ns#Kurzweil_and_The_Law_of_Accelerating_Returns

This internet is indeed one heckuva gadget.  It’s simply that the fault, dear Glaucus (#49504), lies not in your technology (or in your money, either) but in yourselves.  It is their seriously (some among us surviving primitive savages think terminally) compromised organic functional integrity that leaves the civilized contingent of human-kind so susceptible to corruption by money and machinery and make-believe in all their myriad forms.

Thus this Indian’s honestly-come-by skepticism when presented with yet another conceptual or electro-mechanical “fix” for what even its most ardent adherents no longer try to deny ails the civilized world.  The WorldWideWeb is a great place to play, but you’ve no doubt noticed it is nearly all pretty much self-cancelling motion, and almost no actual movement......like any playground anywhere, really.  This seems to be its essential nature.  And that’s quite alright, until people start looking to it for something it cannot deliver.....like salvation from the deadly fallout of foolhardy schemes to rule the world.

In Hexagram 48, “The Well,” in the Book of Changes, we are reminded of not just the futility but of the very real danger that comes from a failure to “penetrate to the real roots” of human nature while remaining stuck in “convention.” Commerce, religion, statecraft, schooling, technology are all elements of the conventional realm.  They are expressions of fundamental human nature, in certain specific circumstances, that of course reveal something of its essence (to whoever knows what to look for) but should not be confused with the whole of that nature itself.

The civilized peoples have lost touch with their essential human nature.  So they invest themselves (with, in these latter days, growing desperation) in this, that, or another conventional system of ideology, socialization, or careerism, trying vainly to find a substitute for that indispensable and irrreplaceable link to the natural living arrangement which is uniquely human and without which, they seem to sense, they are doomed to extinction......maybe much sooner than later.

You are no doubt sincere in your hopes and enthusiasms, Glaucus, as are those who share them.  From here on The Rez, though, it looks like you all are trying to hang on to the things of your artificially prolonged childhood (which are for the most part only figments of your still co-opted imaginations anyhow) at a time and in circumstances which render those things not merely obstacles but lethal impediments to the recovery of your organic functional integrity, and your reaching the maturity necessary to your continuity in the natural living arrangement of Life Herownself.

Charging those of us who do not share your particular hopes and enthusiasms with “cynicism” might offer you some temporary relief from the “malaise” perpetually engulfing the civilized world.  Its faults, however, are mainly manifestations of your own arrested development.  So what’s the use of getting pissy with us Indians who declined to accompany you into the misery of your captivity?

HokaHey!

TAO Walker,

I’m hardly utopian and believe, on the contrary, that before there is any monetary revolution, we will have hell to pay for a corruption of money that has made us the largest debtor nation in the history of the world.

As for the powers that be, you may be assured that they already have their “golden parachutes in place.” But that said, you might want to temper your cynicism by giving full consideration to the medium we are using to exchange our views:

http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig/garris3.html

Is Glaucus (#49202) suggesting the 1% at the top of the present global pyramid scheme will quietly let some “digital gold” standard reduce them to a status no better than “the people themselves”?  If the actual metal could be compared to raw coca leaves, say, it seems certain its refinement into mere data entries will be the crack cocaine of money.....is, in fact, that already.

If “digital gold” is the wave of the future, it’s a sure bet the plutoligarchs are riding it full tilt right now, with the help of their armies of financial eunuchs, and mean to manage that market the same way they’ve done every other institutionalized exchange system in the history of civilization.  There’s nothing evident in Turk’s analyses, either, that would leave any alert person to think otherwise.

Glaucus’ utopian hope of an immanent withering away of the state apparatus, as a consequence of the emergence of “sound” money onto the world scene, doesn’t reflect the world we live in today.  Letting themselves be degraded to the condition of “consumers” has indeed been a disaster for your average Americans.  It puts them in a position no different essentially than cattle in a feedlot.  There are at-large in the world those privileged interests who intend to keep it this way.

Glaucus’ promises of a soon-to-begin digitized golden age do not persuade this Indian.  Any people wise and mature enough to come up with a form of money sufficiently denatured that they could all go on living with it, would certainly see they could do even better not bothering with the stuff at all.

Us surviving primitive savages are all from “misery” here.  Talk is not only cheap, it has become in these latter days more-and-more downright toxic.  Anyone who says they have THE answer to “America’s obsessive-compulsive consumption” is gonna have to SHOW us.

HokaHey!

“America’s obsessive-compulsive consumption” is driven by a fraudulent monetary system based not on savings-based production but on borrowing-based consumption.  It has made debt slaves out of most Americans and can only end in disaster, the only question being when.

However, with the arrival of “digital gold”—e.g. http://goldmoney.com—a revolution is at hand that stands to free the individual as never before, even as the state and its endless wars retreats to the vanishing point.

Frankly, my dear Glaucus (#48495), us Indians aren’t making any major bets on how “advanced” humanity really is right this minute.  Some very rich people with their fingers on the “nucular” trigger look set to give it a squeeze just any day now.  Jumping to any conclusions could be embarassingly premature. 

You continue to talk about “sound money,” without ever saying just exactly how you fill up the bank accounts of “the people themselves” with it....or even, really, exactly what it is.  Meanwhile, those whose vaults are filled to bursting with the perveted (and perverting) kind appear to have every intention, along with very considerable means, of keeping it....and getting as much more as time and circumstances and “the money power” itself might permit.

The great majority of humans never travel twenty miles from the place of their birth.  Most of them participate in the “cash economy” to the rousing tune of about two dollars a day.  What’s more, even the bloated billion or so in the self-proclaimed “first world” aren’t anywhere near as far removed from “Africanization” as they are so eager to believe.

Anyway, Glaucus, it is doubtful you can actually point to any substantial social arrangement, past or present, enjoying the kind of idealized relationship with money you seem to believe could re-order the world we actually live in to the benefit of “the people themselves.” Meantime, the actual effects on it of the money you have, however “perverse” or unsound, you leave essentially unquestioned.......except to hold up an impossible hard-money utopia that it isn’t in the nature of money itself to ever allow. 

It’s true the civilized peoples bought and thought and shot their way into the predicament they’re foundering in today.  What kind of fools would go on insisting those means will be somehow sufficient for finding a way out of it?  Us surviving primitive savage surely ain’t “in amongst ‘em.”

HokaHey!

TAO Walker, you obviously don’t know the difference between sound money and the perversion thereof.  Nor do you understand how little advanced humanity would be if it had had to rely on barter up to now.

And if it’s “organic human living” you want, it sure as hell isn’t going to happen by expecting 6.5 billion people to get along through barter.  For what you would get instead is the “Africanization” of the entire world.

No, the real route to organic human living is returning money to its rightful owners—the people themselves—which means taking it out of the hands of the government and ridding the world thereby of the “pyramid schemes” it has created.

If Glaucus (#48497) thinks civilization is “the human enterprise,” s/he must believe the sub-system of it that renders up Big Macs is really a bovine business plan.  “(G)oods, services, and ideas....” have been going back-and-forth between people since long before money ever came into the picture.  Today there are groups intentionally eliminating it from their exchanges, partly at least because they’ve recognized its corrupting effects on human relations. 

So the argument that money is “essential,” to an organic human living arrangement, simply doesn’t hold water.  It IS absolutely essential, however, to the establishment and propagation of all manner of contrived pyramid schemes.

Anyway, this Indian never said either money or the love of it is “evil”........rather that money is (in its actual observable effects on human social arrangements) toxic, corrosive, and addictive.  The love of it impresses us surviving primitive savages as a kind of madness not at all unlike any other fatal obsession......something our unfortunate domesticated sisters and brothers seem subject-to in near endless variety.

Most junkies are quick to fixate on the “benefits” of their drug-of-choice, as Glaucus tends to do.  Most are convinced at some point at least that life without it wouldn’t be worth living......maybe even impossible.  What they’re invariably right about is the fact that the life they “enjoy” under its influence couldn’t go on otherwise.  Someone looking on from outside their drug-induced virtuality might think it wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing, all-in-all, if they sobered-up.

From here on The Rez it is plain to see both humanity and bovinity (not to mention every other living thing here including our Mother Earth) will be a lot better off when all the money addicts get into a recovery program.  We’re ready, willing, and able (and we’d even be happy) to guide them in setting-up and running it, having had plenty of experience with such difficulties once ourselves.

Until then, observers like Chris Hedges and others on this site will have plenty to write about, as “the money power” thrashes around in its oily death-struggles.  At least a few of them won’t be in it just for the money, either.

HokaHey!

A history lesson. Guess who said the following:

“I would guess if we had gone in there, I would still have forces in Baghdad today. We’d be running the country. We would not have been able to get everybody out and bring everybody home.

“And the final point that I think needs to be made is this question of casualties. I don’t think you could have done all of that without significant additional U.S. casualties. And while everybody was tremendously impressed with the low cost of the (1991) conflict, for the 146 Americans who were killed in action and for their families, it wasn’t a cheap war.

“And the question in my mind is how many additional American casualties is Saddam (Hussein) worth? And the answer is not that damned many. So, I think we got it right, both when we decided to expel him from Kuwait, but also when the president made the decision that we’d achieved our objectives and we were not going to go get bogged down in the problems of trying to take over and govern Iraq.”

The words of our vice president—defending the decision to end Gulf War I without occupying Iraq—eerily foretell today’s morass. Dick Cheney said it in 1992.

To the Texan who wrote, “Maybe we should just lynch all of them and let God sort them out.”

I ponder, “Where’s Robespierre when you need him?”

This Indian’s actual experience as one of “only two people living in a cave” (Polly Ester #48437), does not support the wide-spread presumption that is repeated here.  If Polly Ester ever lived among “even the most primitive tribes” s/he would know instinctively that playing “power” games in such close quarters is utter (and probably suicidal) folly.

S/he ought to be wary of jumping to any conclusions at all, about how it really is with us primitive savages, from the quicksand of the civilo-centric propaganda seen on cable TV or in the pages of National Geographic.  “Power” is only an illusion anyway, that depends for its faux credibility on fostering false notions about who belongs where in the always artificial (and never organic) arrangement of some pyramid scheme or other.

People firmly together, with their feet on the ground, just aren’t that easily fooled.  Put ‘em on wheels, though, and you can jerk the Earth right out from under ‘em and they’ll never feel it going........until its gone.

**********************

Thanks for the invite, “Wasicu.” (#48361) We’ll see.

Meantime, a couple of “on-the-record” reminders might be a good idea here.  First, you’re looking at a strictly “sink-or-SWIM” situation.  Trying to cobble together some kind of artifactual “lifeboat” will be a waste of precious personal resources, since the foundering system is all-of-a-piece.

Also, “Don’t follow leaders.  Watch your parking meters.” We can show you The Way back home, but taking it is entirely your own responsibility.  Not that you won’t be altogether up to it, of course.  Your free wild nature has only been suppressed.  No amount of abuse and exploitation could ever really take it from you.  That’s Life.

So good luck when you take to The Water, Brothers and Sisters.  You’re gonna love it! 

HokaHey!

Tao,

As renowned historian Will Durant said, “Money is the root of all civilization,” by which he meant that money, properly speaking, is essential to the exchange of goods, services, and ideas that is the lifeblood of the human enterprise.

That’s why money is not the root of all evil, the love of it is.  Hence its theft via its corruption by the government and its henchmen—as Sir Alan well knew, at least back when he was a lowlly but principled commoner:

http://www.usagold.com/gildedopinion/Greenspan.html

I never agreed to this war.  I have been protesting it from before it started. I do not believe in an “eye for an eye” because,simply as Gandi stated, “It leaves everyone blind”.  I have suffered and experienced pain from death and violence, but to retaliate with violence is WRONG! To send more troops is WRONG!  Now what can we do instead of being violent. Well, I like all others have been paying my taxes but I don’t know if I can anymore. Our tax money supports the existing situation where innocent children, adults, and soldiers are being killed in Iraq due to this war.  It is wrong.  Can we, as a country connect and all protest this war with more than just words.  How do we get the ball rolling?  It must STOP NOW!  We need a Gandi, a Martin Luther King Jr. George W. Bush is the anti-Gandi, the anti-MLK.  We don’t need a another president. They obviously are powerless.  We need someone who can create a bipartisan group that motivates us, “WE THE PEOPLE”, to come together and puts life back into our constitutional rights so we can finally STOP THIS WAR.  I will gladly pay double my taxes to support a peace movement in Iraq instead of sending more troops to IRAQ. Anything to STOP THIS WAR!!!

Tao,
Something not as tangible as money, but more addictive is power—-ego a need for one person to dominate another is always present, even in the most primitive tribes—-someone will surface who has a “need to control,” even if there are only two people living in a cave.

Everybody talks about money (Glaucus #48190), but hardly anybody seems to really know a damned thing about it.  The true nature of money is as readily seen in the tracks it leaves, as it moves in our world, as that of anything else.  What do we see, if we have the nerve to look?

Money may be the most toxic, corrosive, and habit-forming substance known to man.  It poisons more peoples lives, with its absolute tyranny over them, than all the other man-made pollutants put together.  It has eaten away at what was once common human decency until the odd spontaneous occurrence of it these days makes “news,” and recently ubiquitous bumper-stickers were a kind of pitiful last-ditch effort to prevent its extinction altogether.

Money’s addictive properties are the stuff of legend.  First-world junkies today are busily at work getting their “less-developed” brethren and sistren hooked as hard and as fast as they can.  Misery do love company.

Money also exhibits a kind of autochthonous gravitational effect.  A critcal mass of it heaped-up somewhere will begin to attract more and more, until finally a sort of “black hole” forms, and whatever is pulled-in beyond its event horizon is never seen again on the world’s account books.

Just as the more refined a drug gets the more potent its effects, all the deleterious characteristics of money become more pronounced the more abstract it becomes.  Today by-far most of the money in the world isn’t even “fiat paper” anymore, much less precious metal coinage and hard currency redeemable for it.  One need only look around wherever one is to see immediately any number of deeds better left undone, and that undoubtedly would’ve been too, except that money was on offer in some way shape or form.

Mass murder for money masquerades these days as state-craft.  The life support system of an entire planet is being destroyed for profit.  A near absolute majority of the world’s self-proclaimed “civilized” peoples believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that life without money isn’t even possible, nevermind worth living.

Money’s apologists argue that it is merely a “tool,” essentially inert in its nature, that mankind chooses to use for good or for ill.....like a hammer, say.  This is a crude attempt to dodge the easily observable fact that money is not an object at all, but rather a substance......however ethereal it is becoming here in these latter days.  Those who try to insist money is nothing but an abstraction, a convenient figment of people’s febrile imaginations, must at least pretend not to see its actual physical presence here, no matter how attenuated that might be now.

And of course money is invested with all the attributes of any other god, among those who really do worship it.  Money is power.  Money is time.  Money is everywhere and goes on forever.  And just like an almighty god, money itself may never be held accountable for any atrocity committed under its auspices.......an enviable immunity from prosecution also enjoyed these days by applied science, the law, and the upper echelons of the George W. Bush administration.

So “but” this ol’ Indian no “buts” about the true nature and effects of money, unless and until you’ve devoted the lifetimes us surviving primitive savages have to following and reading its bloody tracks across the bosom and into the bones and very breath of our Mother Earth.

HokaHey!

In response to Comment #48118 by TAO Walker: 
TAO, It is not a new idea to us that the price of going on living, indeed that the planet may go on living, “will be the complete and unconditional surrender of all the precious possessions...”.  Also, the thought that indigenous peoples are the ones who must lead us back to our natural home is one that has come up repeatedly recently in things we have read.  We haven’t quite jumped ship yet, but we are lingering near the lifeboat and stocking it with the ideas and spirit we will need when it all comes to a neighborhood near us.  If you are interested in discussing this with us a little further outside the forum, please send us a quick note at phaedrus105 at yahoo dot com.

I disagreed with Mr. Hedges in respect to Palestine and Israel; my own experiences belied what he was saying.

But he is right on the button when it comes to Bush’s decision to “surge” in Iraq (where to they get these silly buzz words? Is there a special presidential committee for scam?)

Mr. Hedges understands war by insurgents, or war by indigenous peoples fighting for their own turf with guerilla hit and run tactics. The US didn’t learn this in Viet Nam and they are showing in Iraq that they probably never will. Language, religion, appearance are confusing to the US - perhaps they also don’t understand willingness to die for altar, home and country - these things will checkmate the US formal military actions as they did in Viet Nam.

I think, as do many, that the error was in the beginning, a questionable US motive for taking Iraq - either Saddam Hussein or oil or both. How much was the religious fundamentalism of the US leadership involved? Did they wish an Armageddon with Muslims?  Saddam Hussein was worth taking down but the US didn’t know where to go from there. Much of the world was deceived by Bush’s intelligence lies about WMD; the world didn’t believe an immediate connection between Iraq and the twin towers - while the Iraquis supported terrorists years ago, they were apparently not at the time of the invasion. Bush sold his own people a bill of goods and is doing it again. In other parlimentary systems he could be tossed out right away on a matter of non-confidence. In the US he is there to continue to do damage until he is elected out of office. 

The best thing is (despite being a political horror for the US) is to admit its error, accept defeat and get the hell out of there. The caldron that will ensue from that action will be not much different than the mess that continued occupation by the US.  It will probably mean a civil war, but that likely would have happened in the long run when Saddam was toppled by revolution, assassination or other means. Whatever, the disaster may be on Bush family’s head forever - and Field Marshal Rumsfeldt and the Vice President, who are the real villians in this piece, as I read. Bush is simply his Daddy’s son put into a job which requires more than he can give. 

Good piece, Mr. Hedges.

The problems we face as a nation are so great in numbers as to be almost impossible to wrap one’s mind around. Still there are feasible solutions.
We have to adopt an energy policy, using all of our remaining national intelligence and grit, which puts us in a position of power, not weakness in the coming decades of energy wars. We need a new “New Deal”, where our working poor and our intelligentsia come together to create an army with the single goal of making the United States the world’s leading producer of sustainable energy. Solar arrays across the sunny parts of our country. Wind farms across the windy parts of our country. Instead of coal burning, we need to be burning biomass, whether it be from hemp, or garbage (which incidentally will become a huge global problem over the next century). Simple ideas, but on a large enough scale could provide for all of our energy needs.
It would be a huge leap from our current system of overpayment to energy providers. This is a democratic country, but I bet 99% of our citizens would be happy to recieve a socialized, monthly allocation of electricity from America, created by Americans, and made without toxic byproducts. Of course the other 1% are the people who actually own shares in the energy companies who currently have us bent over a barrel (pun intentional). America is a pretty kick ass place, with pretty kick ass people, but man are we stupid sometimes. We probably could have built all which I have described with the money we have spent fiascoing our way around the middle east in the past 5 years. The funny thing is, it probably would have gone a lot further to quell the terrorists thirst for our blood than the course of action our beloved country undertook. In summation, can we please grow some balls and undertake some truly important work as a country, instead of killing to maintain the current status quo (which sucks)?

Amen to comment #48256 by J:  The escalation, better known as the “surge,” will provoke Iran into more overt support for the Shias that President Bush has clearly stated are the targets of the build-up.  Captures of Irani nationals in Iraq for such activities are already conditioning the American public to this scenario.  At some point, after the build-up of American forces has reached an optimal level, there will be an incident that will be blamed on Iran in much the same way as the sinking of the second-class battleship “Maine” in Havana harbor on February 15, 1898, triggered the Spanish-American War.  William Randolph Hearst famously cabled artist Frederick Remington, who had asked to be recalled from Cuba because, “There is no war,” “You furnish the pictures, I’ll furnish the war.”

The cost of modern war goes far beyond what any of us can imaging. If you could see the otherworldly birth defects, now common in Iraq, and were to give serious thought to the cause of Gulf War Illness (afflicting over 30% of Iraq Gulf War ‘91 soldiers)...you must consider:  Depleted Uranium holds the potential to poison the entire planet — poison all life into a mutant horror show. This potential was known before these weapons were developed. They are now banned by the United Nations. Their continued use is a Crime Against Humanity. This madness must end.

Must see video produced by US Military Veterans at
http://www.beyondtreason.com/

What you don’t know about your government could kill you…
Department of Defense documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act expose the horrific underworld of the disposable army mentality and the government funded experimentation upon US citizens conducted without their knowledge or consent.

UNMASKING SECRET MILITARY PROJECTS:
Chemical & Biological Exposures
Radioactive Poisoning
Mind Control Projects
Experimental Vaccines
Gulf War Illness
Depleted Uranium (DU)

Is the United States knowingly using a dangerous battlefield weapon banned by the United Nations because of its long-term effects on the local inhabitants and the environment?  Explore the illegal worldwide sale and use of one of the deadliest weapons ever invented.

Beyond the disclosure of black-ops projects spanning the past 6 decades, Beyond Treason also addresses the complex subject of Gulf War Illness.  It includes interviews with experts, both civilian and military, who say that the government is hiding the truth from the public and they can prove it.

Additional Bonus CD-Rom contains thousands of pages of corroborating documentation, which can be viewed from most any computer via an internet browser.

Bush will need More troops with which to advance on Iran.
Bush is preparing us, just like he did with Iraq.
A (DRAFT) is the only way he can keep his war machine fed......
Bush dose not care what we think.
How much more American blood must be spilled for this monster?

The root cause of our problems is not a love of stuff.  Libraries have stuff and most of us love the stuff that they have.

The root cause of most of our problems is the existence of rich crooks with lower middle class values.  Almost every totalitarian takeover comes from that swamp.  Our media, religion, education, and politics pander to the same swamp.  It is now our cultural reality.

The utter stupidity shown by Bush is evident to any educated adult American.  But there are those who seek the glory of war and killing.  There are those who seek the money to be made on everything from bullets to coffins.  The military industrial complex so eloquently addressed by the greatest president of the 20th century, Dwight Eisenhower has assumed control over the government of our country.  It is the few who profit materially.  It is the many who suffer now.  And in the near future, maybe next spring, the continued failures of a lack of any strategy to address the atmospheric warnings that the very earth is screaming out to all will further reduce the quality of life on the whole planet.  Will we, as a nation, decide to throw off this kill as the only solution to every problem ?  Will the decision to address this problem with kill everybody and everything that we at the second fear, hate or just don’t care not come in time ?

Sorry, Observer, but it is our nature strive to improve our lot in life, and that means “stuff,” the problem being that the money that we buy it with has been so corrupted by government—i.e., money, properly, no longer exists, having been replaced by paper currencies created “out of thin air”—that The Mother of All Bubbles has been created and is now on the verge of bursting.

And when it does, you’d better have real money in hand, as it will have become a “Nash equilibrium,” whereby “an ideal financial strategy for everyone on Earth [will be] to buy as much gold and silver as they can, as soon as possible”:

http://www.safehaven.com/article-5205.htm

Rick Yel asks what I am prepared to do about “it,” assuming I am correct in my assessment. It’s a valid question. My answer: In the context that he asks, I will do nothing. Simply because I believe there is nothing that CAN be done. The predicament in which we currently find ourselves is a product of our very culture. We are meddlers. We are finaglers. We isolate ourselves from real life, and, unsurprisingly, we do not anticipate the horrible consequences of our behavior. We refuse to recognize that all life is a continuum. I know this viewpoint will be criticized for being fatalistic. Mother Nature will correct our excesses. But probably not to our liking on the terms we have come to view as our right.

For us to survive as a species, we must abandon our love affair with “stuff.” This love affair is a fatal attraction and is the root cause of most, if not all, of our societal pathology.

Some of you call for direct action, an armed march on Washington to depose the Despot in Chief.  Good idea - just won’t happen!  The Jewish neocons who initiated the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and soon to be Iran, have brilliantly conceived what many people consider a debacle.  These wars are not debacles.  They are cleverly calculated events whose ultimate goal is world domination by Israel and the Jews.  Americans will not take to the streets because only a miniscule number of Americans are directly involved in this war.  Only one percent of American youth serve in the military.  That means that basically the other 99 percent have no vested interest in what happens in a part of the world that most Americans could not point to on a world map.  We are content to participate in the daily ratrace, watch the NFL on TV, drink our daily beer and argue with our mates.  The USA is doomed!  Our shores will not be invaded by foreign armies - it’s unnecessary.  China, Russia and the rest of the world will merely stand by and witness the impending implosion of the United States of America.  You want to see mass murder, unspeakable carnage, devastation and despair?  Turn off your TVs - it’s coming to the streets of America live and in person.  We Americans will soon witness the Ultimate Reality Show right here in the good old USA.  “SURRENDER NOW - AVOID THE RUSH!”

In response to Comment #48071 by James Robert Rodgers:

The Congress supported the war based on the multiple pieces of false intelligence that were presented to them as being absolutely solid: the aluminum tubes, the buying of uranium form Niger, mobile units, etc. If you want an excellent rundown by the people who were involved, go to Frontline.org and watch the episode titled, The Darkside. I have seen it three times and have got to go back and see it again, (and again and again if necessary--it very hard to take, it is like hearing that your Mom and Dad have been lying to you.) (According to historians, this kind of cooking is par for the course.)

Should congress have been more aggressive in ascertaining the legitimacy of the claims, you betcha. But at the end of the day, it is like brain surgery, and you have to depend on experts--and when they lie to you, you are just screwed.

Jon
Connecting the dots: From human behaviors to ecosystem collapse
http://StudentsForTheEarth.org

This ol’ Indian, who has long-since and the-hard-way learned the wisdom of “not doing,” wouldn’t presume to speak for Draco or Observer, who perhaps rely over-much on distinctions without differences in those they designate for opprobrium in their otherwise not-far-off-the-mark observations.  If Rick Yel (#47950) will look again at mine, though, he’ll see there at the end a possible answer, for himself and others in his predicament, to his question.

Among my Lakota relatives there is a term, “ikche wichasha” is about as close as it can be written in English, which translates roughly into “free wild natural human beings.” At least a thousand generations of paying our precious attention has taught us surviving primitive savages that there is really no room in the living arrangement here for any other kind of two-leggeds.  All the domesticated breeds depend for their fleeting counterfeit of viability on artifactual arrangements that are themselves unsustainable, because they invariably destroy the natural systems from which they’re derived and apart from which they cannot exist.

This is admittedly a most bitter pill for the civilized peoples to swallow.  Giving-up all the false comforts of their captivity may prove to be impossible for the great majority of them, when it comes right down to that.........and soon, to a neighborhood near you.  It will strike many as terribly unfair that the “price” of going on living will be the complete and unconditional surrender of all the precious possessions they are sure are all that makes life worth living anyway.  It may be no more than a few, if any, who’ll be able and willing to pay it.

Having to watch so many of our brothers and sisters go needlessly down with this titanic contraption will be hard for us to endure, even with all we’ve been through ourselves at their hands, on the orders of their tormentors.  We’ll gladly welcome any number of you back into your natural home, and help you remember how to live here.  Beyond that, we’ll be here to catch you when you come ‘round our way again in the Great Hoop of Life Herownself.

Meantime, those among you who see this catastrophe coming can always get together and jump ship before you’re caught in the worst of it.  Some of us are ready to help you make it safely ashore, if you do.  More than that is outside the area of our responsibility.

So the rest is really up to you now.

HokaHey!

America, we bought into this war. We were dumb and listened to this governement’ lies. We also voted Bush and Cheney back in 2004 knowing full well that WMD, links between 9/11 and Iraq were phoney. But now because things aren’t going well doesn’t mean we should put our tail between our legs and run away. We, the people of the US, are responsible for this mess and we have to find a way to make life normal again for the Iraqi’s. If that takes the military draft to come back and everyone go over there and fight for stability then that is what we have to do. This should teach us a lesson to not take the governements word as it is and not rush into wars. Our votes put Bush and his friends into power and we have to live it, next time we should vote responsibly.

With 13 Jewish Senators in the Senate and 43 Jewish House members how can we expect the congress to pass any legislation that would benifit American over that of the Israeli government. Therefore there will be a war with Iran because Israeli demands it. To preserve Israel’s superiority with her WMD uncontested by any middleast country. Oil is what makes the world go around, therefore the 104 acre Hussein type of Embassy Palace in Iraq 24/7 makes it doubly sure of occupation forever, body bags be damned. The President either needs a shrink or an impeachment.

After reading posts in this forum, I need help in getting things straight. Bush and Cheney are mad (crazy) because they say the war is necessary? Did I get it right, more or less?

Wellllll, okay. But only if we also condemn nearly all other congresspeople (except, of course, for the recently elected ones) for the same thing.

In the past, more than once, I’ve listened to the archived recorded voices of most leading U.S. reps and senators (including Democrats Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Ed Kennedy, and a host of others) urging war against Iraq and saying that Iraq certainly has WMDs.

They repeatedly said such things for a very long time after 9-11. Near unanimity for invading Iraq and warring against terrorists existed in both houses of Congress and crossed party lines. Remarkable!

If birds of a feather flock together, why aren’t all those war hawks still nesting with Bush and Cheney? Did the hawks turn into chickens? Did some powerful group warn them that being a live chicken is better than being a dead duck politically?

Why is it that you rope twirlers don’t want to lynch ALL denizens of congress, instead of just Bush-Cheney? Again, most of our brave, honest, disinterested, intelligent leaders urged us into the war and voted to fund it with our money, though they don’t mention that anymore.

Ladies and gentlemen, let’s approach this matter rationally. The main question before us is this: What to do with hundreds of mad reps and senators?

Wait! Maybe they’re NOT mad. Maybe they LIED to us when they said Iraq mortally endangered us. Or did they believe it then but are lying to us now?

Or they knew it was true then, but now they know it’s not. Or they never HAVE known what’s true but don’t know that they don’t know, and even if they did, it wouldn’t bother them.

Logically, it doesn’t seem likely that all those hawks were suffering a mass delusion. You’d think the truth would have been evident to a sizeable portion of them. Wouldn’t you? After all, even a blind hog can find SOME acorns.

Should we lynch the madmen, or only the liars, or only madmen who also lied? A hard decision, and very confusing! Hmmmm. Maybe we should just lynch all of them and let God sort them out.

But would that be right, punishing the innocent with the guilty I mean? Unless, or course, ALL are guilty, or innocent. Time’s up and polls closed.

Thanks, y’all, for disconfusing this old Texan.

“CUTOFF HIS CAJONES, NOT FUNDS FOR THE TROOPS”
Or, Congress Might Consider Declaring Peace to End an Undeclared War

Congress, and Congress alone, has the power to declare War.  The Executive Branch doesn’t.  It’s quite clearly specified in the US Constitution, not that many people in Washington seem to have read it.

Granted the President has a significant amount of operational control over certain, although not all, of the military issues.  BUT, suppose Congress chooses to formally declare Peace instead of War?  Suppose Congress rescind