Not Yet Nirvana

We lost many celebrities in 2016. Many of us lost loved ones. I lost my mother and my aunt. My wife lost a friend and we both have friends who lost their loved ones all during some part of 2016. Most of us agree 2016 was a bad year. Now, as the year closes out and we look to renewing hope that the next year will somehow be better,  we are struck by the politically realities of a new president. Most of us are having difficulty clinging to the hope a New Year promises. The horrors of Aleppo, the rampant greed that is fast destroying our environment and causing wars, religious fighting, these things still exist, they are happening. But so are good things. And often, the quiet good things do not get the equal attention with the sensational and bloody stories. There is strife and sadness in the world and perhaps there always will be, but gains are being made, good things done by good people do happen. The thing of it is, taken in context, 2016 was not that bad of a year. There were

All this justification for guns and war, all of this justification for killing people, I wish it would stop. Why can't we spend more energy justifying peace? Violence begets violence. For the religious folk, isn't your premise that an eye for an eye was replaced for the love and peace and forgiveness in the New Testament? While I am not religious, I nevertheless, do not want people killed in my name. I wish the entire world could enjoy peace and love, for there is far too much killing and hatred. That might strike some as a naive position, reminiscent of the 60's hippies. And admittedly, I am a hippie. I am one of those far left, democratic socialists from way back when I lived in Canada and voted for the New Democratic Party, a party where Bernie Sanders would have been at home. But politics aside, and naive as my position may be, if we give up on even hoping for peace then surely we have already lost. And is it really a bad thing to want peace? Is it not a good id

I just watched, for the second time, a documentary called Best of Enemies , the debates in 1968 between William F. Buckley Jr . on the right and Gore Vidal on the left. The debates were part of a new truncated coverage of the 1968 primaries by ABC which did not have the budget to compete with the gavel to gavel coverage the other two major stations, CBS and NBC, could manage. The familiar lines were drawn, the right was the party of the greedy and heartless, and the left represented the lazy and the decadent. But this was the first time the coverage drew upon drama created between two iconic advocates from the respective sides. Buckley was the darling of the conservative movement; in fact, he founded it and the magazine, the National Review . Later, in coming out for Reagan, he was regarded as a kingmaker. Vidal was the popular author of many historical fictions beginning in 1948 but is most famously remembered for the novel Myra Breckinridge . Vidal’s social commentary was wrap