You Didn't Build That

I didn't catch the whole speech, but I knew what Obama meant when he said, "You didn't build that." I heard different parts of his speech at other times, mostly not in a favorable way. It was Obama after all. But I knew what he meant from the first minute I heard the words. I wasn't going to comment on it, negatively or positively. There was no need. The Left and the Right were already commenting, oftentimes in a nasty manner. The Obama Choir was in full voice shouting down the Tea Party clamor. They didn't need my two cents. After all, what did it matter anyway? I'm one person and very little I say matters even when I want what I say to matter. I am forgettable and indistinguishable from the background noise. My one voice will make no difference. Since I avoid pointless battles, I felt secure in my decision to keep my words and my thoughts to myself.

I was wrong. I was ignorant.

Whether I said the words out loud or not, the very thought and my reluctance to join the clamor did matter. They still matter and not just because I'm writing them down to send out into the cyber void. They always mattered because my thoughts, like my unspoken words, are real. They have weight. They make a difference.

They make ripples.

And here come the shouts and name-calling from the opposition. There is always opposition, except in story books where good triumphs over bad. Those stories where good triumphs also cause ripples when the author thinks about the story, puts the words together, types them onto paper or creates them on a screen and sends them into the virtual world, and every single time someone reads the story and laughs or cries or stops to wonder what it all means. Those first ripples create more ripples and each ripple creates ripples and the ripples keep spreading out and out -- and in and in -- forever.

Nothing goes on forever you say. You probably believe in forever after and eternity and the vastness of God or Allah or whatever name you give to the Infinite All the created everything. That created you and even me. Everything goes on forever.

That is what Obama was saying . . . badly . . . but he did say it. Nothing you create is yours alone. It is the result of everyone who helped you make your vision a reality, from your parents to your teachers to your friends and community to your banker, the workers, and the men and women who helped make your creation a reality. It doesn't stop there. The ripples keep going to the people who advertise your work by talking about it, by putting together a marketing campaign, and by continuing to raise awareness of your work by keeping the words flowing. Every person who buys or appreciates your work, long after you are dead and gone, create ripples that create ripples that keep creating ripples. Then, long after you are gone someone will find your work dusty and covered with cobwebs or see an newspaper write-up or read about it in a book, hear about it from someone who knew you when you were putting it all together, and so on and so on and so on forever. Whether in memory or in use, that initial thought you believed was yours was a single ripple in an infinite pond, something you built in your dreams others helped you make tangible reality, helped you build that.

Okay, so I used a whole lot more words than Obama, but the message is the same. You had help to build whatever. You did not build that alone.

Nothing we do, even when we think we do nothing, is ever done alone. No, I'm not talking about the people that believe that God (or Allah or Mohamet or Baal or Lucifer or whoever/whatever) is the author of all. He/She/It is not the all. Nor are you or me or some nameless someone down the road out of sight.

A little too religious, holy . . . forgettable for you? You don't go for all that self-righteous, mumbo-jumbo, airy-fairy, New Age crap. Does it make you nervous? Anxious? Frightened? What if . . . ?

What if.

Obama wasn't the first to create "You didn't build that." Millions of people did that long before Obama's time came up with the same idea. Obama built on someone else's words, someone else's thoughts, someone else's ideas. He did not build that. He had help -- a lot of help standing on the shoulders of others. The words might have been a political slogan, a lesson to a child, an explanation of so much more than just the words, the teachings of a priest, a leader, a father, a mother, or a friend. All that is happening has happened before, many times before. I'll bet you've heard or read that as well. It's true and here is where it gets uncomfortable for some of you.

We are all connected. We are ripples in the stream of time and consciousness forming, colliding, ricocheting off each other to create more ripples creating more ripples -- forever. Everything we do affects everything else. Describe it in scientific terms, refine it until it can be expressed in an equation as simple as E=mc2. No matter which way it come out every thought, every word, every action, every inaction, everything affects everything else.

From the beautiful and sublime to the frightening and ugly, it's all connected. It's not just you and it's not just me or her or him or them. We are all connected.

In simplest and graphic terms, what ripples you make affect everything and everyone around you. You pick up a dropped spoon or pencil and put it on the table or give it back to the person who dropped it. Ripples. Someone finds the spoon on the table or the pencil dropper smiles and thanks you. Ripples. The spoon dropper in a moment of irritation throws the spoon against the wall or the floor or through an open door and hits the boss when she walks past while the pencil dropper notices the pencil is broken and screams at you for breaking their pencil that they can no longer use because they don't have a sharpener. "It's your fault!" they scream at you, spit spraying your face. Ripples. What you do next will either make things worse or make them better. Ripples.

The ripple effect is the same as the butterfly effect. The only difference is the way the effect is illustrated.

Whether or not I added my voice to the clamor when Obama spoke those words, "You didn't build that!" I created ripples. I affected someone or something even though I kept my words to myself. The thoughts I kept to myself had as much effect as those unspoken words and how much of a ripple I caused is determined by my emotions. I dismissed Obama's words out of hand. It didn't matter. He didn't matter because people would still see and feel the same way because Obama said the words. I didn't care. No matter. I still created ripples. I still had an effect whether I knew it or not. Ignorance is no excuse.

And here is where it gets scary.

All those unspoken thoughts, all those hidden dreams and fantasies, all those secrets you swore to keep to yourself, every random angry thought, all those times you wished someone harm or worse, all those thoughts floating out there in the void you were sure were locked in some hidden corner of your mind are ripples.

Every fish, insect, and species living under the water, no matter how deep, create ripples. You may not see them on the surface, but the ripples are there all the same. So are all those thoughts, secrets, fantasies, and emotions hidden beneath your surface. Think of the ripples created by all that life below the surface of the pond. It doesn't matter how big the pond is, even if the pond is as vast as the seven seas or the world's oceans, there are ripples from all the sea life from the deepest depths to the sea life close to the surface where their movements are not visible to the eye, your eye. Ripples.

Yes, that butterfly in Brazil can create a tornado in Texas -- and here's the kicker -- as long as the butterfly in Kathmandu doesn't get in the way.

No matter what Obama intended when he spoke those words, "You didn't build it!" that is not sound byte remains. What remains is Obama taking away the pride someone feels when their dream becomes a reality. Obama trampled on their dreams, turned an accomplishment to nothing more than trash that will end up in a landfill. My silence, my unwillingness to speak, my ignorance changed the effect those words could have had. My choice to refuse to add my words and my voice to the clamor made a difference. My ignorance is no excuse. I knew what Obama meant and said nothing.

This butterfly in Colorado contributed to the forced that made something meant to be positive, to be inclusive, into a weapon and a joke.

Ripples.

That is all. Disperse.

One Voice

I don't usually write about politics here, or anywhere, although I have at times become so angry with what is going on that I let myself go and put it out there . . . in writing. That's what writers do -- write.

As I watch the Democrats and Republicans scrapping over the country's votes and Obama gearing up for yet another campaign, as if he ever got off the campaign trail since he started umpteen years ago, I am appalled by what I see and what the elected representatives of the people call working in our best interests, that is the interests of the common man, the people who elected him, and those who did not but must look to him or her as their voice. The only voices those politicians hear are their own and those of the people who lobby for their attention with money, favors, and power. It's called bribes or baksheesh anywhere else in the world.

Had these politicians been paying attention the people would not be rising now, first with the Tea Party movement, which was co-opted by the Republicans and twisted to their own ends, and now with Occupy Wall Street, and the politicians are getting nervous, as well they should. It is just such anger and resentment coupled with the need to know what is being done about fixing this broken ship of state that led to the creation of the United States of America and the colonists' break from England. I'm sure King George was just as appalled by what he considered disrespectful behavior no in accordance with the terms of agreement between colonist and king. The colonists should have been thankful to be British citizens and to provide the mother country with goods and money that it needed to continue looking after them -- and they were definitely not thankful. Why should they be when they were asked to carry a burden of taxes for people who didn't work the land or undergo the privations and conditions of this new world, or allow them representation in Parliament?

To some modern day scholars, it was the rich that flung the fortunes of all at the King of England and his Redcoats just so they could pay fewer taxes, and yet it was the common man killed in the streets of Boston during the massacre and the average colonist who bravely withstood the Redcoats until this country was free of foreign rule.

Once again, we have the rich on the spit for our problems and the rich are the wo/men elected to do our bidding, to be the voice of the common man, but the common man doesn't have the sense to know how to wheel and deal in the halls of power, intrigue, and bartering for favors that passes for legislation. They no longer have any connection to the majority of Americans who are marching, assembling, and angry about what is being done to them and to their country. How could they when they no longer live and work among us, intent only on the acquisition of power and wealth?

America's government is not a democracy but a republic, which is defined as:

a (1) : a government having a chief of state who is not a monarch and who in modern times is usually a president (2) : a political unit (as a nation) having such a form of government

b (1) : a government in which supreme power resides in a body of citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by elected officers and representatives responsible to them and governing according to law (2) : a political unit (as a nation) having such a form of government.

When asked what kind of government the first constitutional convention Ben Franklin said, "A republic, if you can keep it."

There is no form of government or power that cannot be twisted and turned into something other than what it was designed for. There have been benevolent and thoughtful rulers among the despots and good presidents who have had what is best for the whole country at heart. By and large the rulers, and a president does rule in a sense, as one friend puts it, as the face of the franchise, have been drunk on power and their own importance and the common man suffers. The excrement always rolls down hill due to gravity and its own weight and now the excrement has hit the oscillating blades and the power brokers are shaking in their shoes.

It is about time, too.

Okay, so why should anyone pay any attention to me -- or to anyone with an opinion (and there are a lot of people with a lot of opinions out here)? To get a different perspective, to hear and pay attention to the growing roar of the angry and disenfranchised Americans who have been cheated, lied to, and treated like dirt. (I think there's a song in there somewhere.)

I am the canary in the coal mine telling you the air could be dangerous. You should worry when I no longer sing because then you're dead and it's too late to get out, to clear the air, to breathe.

The Democrats are determined to put the world right by any means necessary and save us from ourselves, rescue our world and the people in it from extinction -- or worse. They are the ones who slowly made cigarette smoking nearly a crime and want us all to drive hybrid or electric cars or gas up at the alternative fuel station and to pay for the privilege on both ends.

The Republicans meanwhile are busily engaged in the usual sleight-of-hand while they substitute politics for sticking their noses into everyone else's private business and bedrooms and calling it Right.

Both parties are out of step and out of line. They are supposed to be the voice of the people not to dictate morality and who can or cannot marry, serve in the military, or dine out in public while they hide their barely post pubescent mistresses, receipts for prostitutes and toy boys, and various schemes for keeping power and money in their hands while wrecking the world around them. They are the Neros who continue to fiddle while Rome burns and looking for someone to take the blame while they're still sending out troops to set the fires.

America no longer produces much of anything except contempt and a growing unemployed mass of people who can no longer keep up with the Joneses -- or the Muhammads and Krishnamurtys -- any more. It isn't just the rich getting richer, but a small fraction of rich who got their wealth by taking it from the very people necessary to create the wealth they covet and beg, borrow, and steal to maintain. Who actually needs or can spend in ten lifetimes $200 billion dollars, or even $50 million dollars? Okay, anyone who wants a gold toilet seat encrusted with precious gems and wired for WiFi and iPhones, but there aren't that many people out there who ever feel comfortable sitting on a toilet seat that would feed, clothe, and house a family of five for ten years. Those that do are called masochists -- and looters with very poor taste.

The bottom line is that America is slowly slipping into a top-heavy pyramid of excess that is poised on its head and ready to crash and destroy everything around it. There's a reason the pyramids were built with their broad bases resting solidly on the ground and not on their pointed tops. It's time to clean house and get rid of every Democrat and Republican and president and politician who is out for themselves and replace them with Daniel Boones and Rosie the Riveters who know what the people and this country need.

I've said it before and I will say it again and again. It's time to throw the looters out and get back to what America did better than any other country -- produce. It's time to stop worrying about whether or not same sex couples want to marry and have children and whether or not gays want to serve in the armed forces. Anyone in this country willing to wear the uniform and do the job should be able to do so -- and the pay should be commensurate with the risk and the danger. If someone wants to make serving the people a career, let him work for the fire department, police and sheriff's departments, and in other service jobs, but not in the legislature.

It's time to focus on fixing this broken republic and put it back on course. The current slate of candidates will not do the job, as we have amply seen in the past three years under the leadership of Obama and his ilk, who have subverted the Constitution and the will of the people under the guise of hope and change. Well, we hoped Obama would change the policies, and he did, but only to make further inroads into the destruction of this country and for personal gain. He has no clear objective, other than destruction, and no clear policies. It's time for a real change and so far I'm not liking what's out there.

It's time to take back our country and put it on a paying -- not borrowing -- basis. People will make their own choices and that is as it should be. It isn't the rich we have to fear, but the greedy. If we want change, it has to come from the people and from the wo/men with vision willing and able to produce a product or service that will bring change, not from legislation and back door deals.

It's time for the sheep to become proactive and extend the reach and power of movements like Occupy Wall Street. The time for asking questions is over. It's time to roll up our sleeves and clean house.