If he has his way, President Barack Obama will dramatically change the nuclear weapons policy of the U.S. – leaving behind Cold War doctrine and looking to a model of a minimal nuclear arsenal — just ominous enough to do the job of deterrence.

“This is not just a decision about the future of U.S. nuclear weapons, but about how the United States will address the challenges of … nuclear terrorism, nuclear proliferation and our entire 21st-century nuclear strategy,” Clark Murdock,

During the campaign, Obama pledged: “As president, I will set a new direction in nuclear weapons policy and show the world that America believes in its existing commitment under the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) to work to ultimately eliminate all nuclear weapons.”

President Obama has a tough row to hoe with this promise. It’s a brave new dangerous world out there.
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Obama will put this country in danger of an attack before his term is over.

The Socialization Process Blanket.

The day before yesterday, as I was finishing my blog, I realized that I would have to come back and add more in the way of explanation. Thus the title and subtitle of this present writing. Fair warning: there will probably be a few more same titled articles, so follow the numbers or risk some confusion.

A blanket, on a cold winter’s night is a good, even precious commodity. It can be a life-saving cocoon of warmth, a coziness that actually allows one to sleep with contentment and utter relaxation that might not be possible otherwise. However, a heavy woolen blanket is an absurdity on a hot and humid summer evening, causing a great deal of discomfort and maybe even a nightmare or two. Have you ever awakened, tangled inside of a blanket, struggling to untangle yourself to the point of actually breaking out in a sweat that you might never get loose, your breath coming in short pants of exertion? The solution seems very simple, get rid of the blanket, or, in the first example, if its that cold out, get one and wrap it around you.

The Socialization Process that we all experience as we grow and develop into full fledged adults, and continue to live inside of, is just such a blanket. One that is woven from diverse materials, with different naps, textures and colors. Depending on ones personal perspective and circumstances, it can be thick and densely knit, or as wafer thin as a sheet of paper, and anything in between those two. But whatever its makeup, it is there and necessary. The Socialization Process is often a silent entity that exists without actually being spoken of, or directly addressed. One doesn’t speak to ones blanket, one uses it or not as one sees fit. But it does exist, and one owns it, because it does have a distinct purpose and reason for said existence.

It exists because we need rules, boundaries which allow us to feel and be safe and secure, especially as children born into a world that is both dangerous and harmful to anyone lacking knowledge of those dangers. Our parents are the primary teachers of those boundaries, set to keep us safe, and they learned those boundaries from their parents, who learned them from their parents, and so on and so on. If we lack, through circumstances, parents to do that teaching, Society must take on that role through organizations and departments created to serve just that purpose. That sounds simple enough, but all things have an underbelly fraught with different and individual realities. Each parent, of the two we are in need of to come into existence, has been taught by and learned from separate entities which might or might not agree on the importance of any single boundary within the entire spectrum of boundaries our Society, as a whole, chooses to embrace at any given moment of time.

For example: one set of parents might agree that what is most important to becoming a full-fledged adult, therefore a good citizen of Society, is education, while another might firmly be entrenched in the idea that family, and only family, is of the utmost importance in maintaining a sense of security and safety and anyone or anything outside of family is dangerous to that ideal. It can be even more complicated if each parent holds one of those two examples to be the most important of boundaries to instill in their offspring. That offspring might end up in Northern Wisconsin with only a thin sheet of paper for warmth, while another could find himself in Florida dressed in fur mitts and cap, trudging around in an overcoat and galoshes. I did say this was complicated and complex.

The point, here, being that each of us is born and develops under the weight of that blanket in whatever form it takes in our individual circumstances. And all that means is that no two of us gets an equal share of the blanket. We may own similar parts and pieces of it, even quite parallel aspects, but they are not the same because each of us is in an individual container called our own skin. Yet, conversely, each time one of us makes a move, a choice or decision to move, everyone under that blanket is affected on some level. Some in major ways, others who don’t even feel it and whose sleep isn’t even disturbed. Now there is another major reason for that blanket to be in existence. It makes us aware of our responsibility and obligation to, our actual connection with, all those other containers. At least, it should.

This is where a habit of journal keeping might find its own unique value. Do you know which of those boundaries your parents, or teachers, felt obligated to pass on to you? What was stressed as particularly important to your own development? And how was that done? Silently, by example, and if so, how much or little did you absorb? Was it done with repeated key words and phrases? If so, how do you actually feel about those words and phrases now that you are grown or almost grown? Do you agree with them, or not. If you do or don’t, why or why not? Is any of this important for the individual you are, to even begin to sort out? Do you see any value or importance in doing so?

But there is also the flip side. What other teachers have you come in contact with? What was the importance or value of what they gave you in the arena of life? How did you personally interpret any or all of that? How has it shaped and formed the individual you have become? Where, exactly are you under that blanket? Are you cold or cozy? Do you find yourself wearing galoshes even when it isn’t raining, let alone snowing outside? Or have you always been barefoot and why? Do you shrug at the very idea of that blanket as sheer unadulterated nonsense? What are the boundaries you have created to keep yourself safe and secure in this dangerous world in which we live? Are they still working for you? Or have you become tangled, fighting for a freedom that makes you pant in exertion? Do you take your safety and security as one individual for granted, and feel no need to seek out answers to any one, or all of these questions? If not from yourself and your own experience, who would you go to, to get those answers?

Next time, we might discuss what happens when someone under that blanket decides to roll over.

You know, when saber tooth tigers were roaming around everywhere, I fully get the idea of putting work ahead of personal happiness. Whatever work it took to fend off those fearsome creatures!

I’ll describe the act of putting work ahead of personal happiness. Lets take eating a steak. Yum! It might not be a personal happiness for everyone, but it’s probably a pretty good general example. Okay, it’s yum, but it’s also full of calories. And it takes calories to do work. Its just a mechanically requisite to do work.

So, are you eating the steak to be happy, or are you eating the steak to do work? What is the act of eating it, for?

About here you’ll often find a ‘Have my cake(steak!) and eat it too’ perception. That you can enjoy the steak and then do the work with the calories it provides.

UNTIL you commit to that work, out of a sense of honour or duty or care or love or whatever the hell.

At that point, if you don’t happen to want steak right now, you still have to eat it in order to do the work. Is eating the steak an act of personal happiness now? No, it’s an act of work.

In fact I wouldn’t call it putting aside personal happiness to do work, I’d call it erasing personal happiness to do work. Acts of personal happiness are about being happy for the sake of being happy. They aren’t about being happy so as to achieve some other goal. That doesn’t even make sense to do – whatever the other goal is, you’d want it because it makes you happy – to give up happiness to achieve happiness?

But that’s what our parents told us, isn’t it? You have to sacrifice happiness now to get it latter. And this is where I get back to the saber tooth tigers. Your parents are damn right when it comes to natural disasters and various other things the world throws at us.

But you see, it’s not the world anymore. What surrounds you? Sabre tooth tigers, or people? People who are supposed to be on the same side as you. But people are still setting up a system where you sacrifice happyness now to get it latter. Or if you don’t want to, you are denied the infrastructures resources (IE, your denied money) and can live as a hobo. And that would be ‘your fault’ for slipping into such a lifestyle.

Were still setting up systems where you sacrifice happiness now for happiness latter, as if there are still sabre tooth tigers around. And you know, there are still dangers from the world – global warming, mutating diseases, etc. Also you get nearby countries (like, ahem, just above Australia) with rather…perhaps sabre tooth tendencies? Anyway, I fully grant there is conflict with the world and even with other countries of men who follow incompatible agendas.

But hell, it is not so bad that for food, warmth and shelter, you must bloody well sacrifice happiness now for the happiness of food, warmth and shelter latter.

There is no bloody war going on! Yet the structure keeps running like everyone has to sacrifice or were all doomed. Are we? There doesn’t seem to be anyone talking about us being on the verge of extinction as a country? You know, along with the talk of the latest reality TV, someone might slip in a word or two about you know, us being on the verge of annihilation.

Oh that’s right, they don’t because we aren’t. But we just keep bloody acting like we do, using a system where we all sacrifice happiness now for happiness latter, no matter how little sense that makes without any threat around. Our parents tell us to do it, and theirs before them, and so on a hundred thousand times, because for millions of years we were on the verge of extinction. From what I heard in terms of genetic tracing, the human race was down to two thousand people at one point. Think about that – that would mean all the ones who would work, would live. And be the seed of what we have left today.

Now all that’s left is the reflex to work to live. If you want to complain about your life, how things are monetarily, then you can blame this reflex in yourself and how you support this reflex in other people. The big corporate bastards aren’t screwing you down, you are. Your nurturing a reflex that is completely inapplicable, yet degrades your life. Those corporate bastards certainly work you dry, but without your ’survival’ reflex and how you congratulate others for working rather than being happy right now, they wouldn’t be able to.

Ask yourself what’s so dangerous that you have to work the next hour, rather than play? And if it isn’t so dangerous, why is it that to get food, warmth and shelter, you must put work first and behave as if extinction is around the corner?

Barack Obama continues to press his willingness to meet with leaders of other nations without preconditions.  Realistically, that is the only way to carry out real conversation.  If others must agree to our terms before we sit down to talk, all we create is enemies and hatred.  Don’t believe it?  Take a look at the Bush Administration’s precondition stance and then look at the world.  The only thing that remains in a Bush scenario is war, and that’s exactly what we got.

Obama notes the difference between “no preconditions” and “no preparation.”  The US can no longer swagger around the world carrying a big stick and demanding that all other countries fall in line.  First, they won’t do it, and second, some of their sticks are bigger than ours.  Bush never learned this, and it’s that lack of education that put us into the war in Iraq.

Unfortunately, McCain carries the same ill-advised concept of “negotiation” as Bush.  Bush and McCain don’t negotiate.  They threaten and demand.  Obama promises real talk–talk that allows each side to save face and negotiate.  It’s the only real way to conduct diplomacy.

Bush came out of business school–school that often teaches commerce in the wraps of war.  Obama comes from law school–school that teaches the value of words, the value of allowing others to save face, and the value of negotiation.  We need this now s much as ever.

Obama’s got it right.

John McCain is singing from a one song repertoire, and the song is as old as the hills.  He’s still playing the macho fighter pilot role that he thinks will bring about his election.  He wants to remain in a war that is both pointless and useless, and he sings the same song that GWB sings as he tries to scare Americans into voting for him.  Enough of this lunacy.  We must embrace the opportunities to sit down both with our friends and with our enemies and talk.  We may not solve all of the problems, but we don’t need to solve them all in order to reduce the potential violence in the world.

McCain is offering nothing more that “let’s keep fighting” until we fulfill some unknown agenda.  Our leaders provided us no way to know when we’re through!  As McCain once said, under the current plan as well as his, we might be in Iraq for 100 years!  We simply can’t afford this “no plan/no exit” direction any longer, so we can’t possibly send McCain to the White House if we ever expect a resolution in Iraq or in Afghanistan.

GWB played loose and fast with our nation.  He acted as if we all belong to him.  Well, we don’t, and he violated almost every responsibility that we gave him when he assumed the Presidency.  It’s now time to thankfully wave goodbye to him and to make sure that no one even remotely connected to his policies can serve one day as our leader.

We simply don’t need anymore cowboys.

Well, the word leaked out, much to the chagrin of the White House.  The leader of Iraq, the man who Bush thought he could browbeat and cajole into doing whatever he wanted, let the world know today that he supports Barak Obama’s proposal to withdraw American (and, thereby, coalition) troops within 16 months.  Hooray!  Sanity may peek through after all in this dangerous world that Bush created.

And, in an attempt to find some humor even in the seriousness of trying to restore sanity to the world, we must laugh about the White House forwarding news of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s praise of the Obama plan to the news media.  Don’t you know that the lunatic in the White House just hates it when that happens (and it’s happened numerous times)?!?!

Finally, someone (Obama) found the courage to stand up and shout, “Enough!” and move to withdraw the military from the Middle East before even more damage results.

This crazy idea of not leaving until we accomplish some undefined mission needed quashed ASAP.  Just as business people learn that you don’t throw good money after bad, finally Obama stands for not continually throwing good, young people into a poorly conceived, needless, and senseless war.  Those of us who remember Vietnam recall our ignorant leaders lying to us to keep us in the fray and telling us that we couldn’t leave until we accomplished some undefined result.  Bush picked up on that lunacy and thought that Americans would buy into it again.  Unfortunately, he proved correct for too long.

Now, if America will rally to elect Obama, we can look forward to ending this war, bringing our brave troops home, and rebuilding a flagging economy that threatens American way of life far more than anything that Bush says we’re fighting either in Iraq or in Afghanistan.

Let’s rally behind Obama, elect him as President, and demand that he move fast to stop this senseless war!

In the meantime, can you see the steam rising from the Whitehouse? That’s evidence of the blown gasket!