The low cost ease of taking a life with a bullet serves to contrast the high cost and hard work of saving that same life in the ER.  The ease and cost of building an inexpensive, life stealing, destructive bombs is now being highlighted against the high cost of the defensive systems that prevent the loss of life to those inexpensive bombs. Our current administration seems intent on bringing that hard lesson down on our American heads.  No one appears to understand that magical thinking will not restore the American stockpiles of defensive systems depleted in the Middle East.  Fantasy foreign policy may bring both the ease of cheap bombs and cost of defense against those bombs into an awareness of immediate direct peril for this land; an experience we Americans are not familiar with on our home ground.

If this writer were to summarize the sum total of the  goals of our current administration it would be two more years of authoritarian power and a heroic legacy for one narcissistic man.  Everything else it seems is officially designated unnecessary detail.  Wealth and legacy appear to be the whole of his narrow, self directed, sense of good.  Saving lives, building defensive weapons to protect lives, and caring for the most vulnerable human beings on the planet apparently conflict with the personal profits of the America’s privateers.  We the People who live the normal productive lives that feed the system of warring authoritarians have to do something now and not wait for two years.

Modest Proposal for Good

Rebuild Congress in this next election.  For the liberals, rebuilding National Defense assets can be a common ground with thinking conservatives.  For conservatives who might value their Christian religion along with its teachings, a humble, reverent, generous nation could be common ground to build with willing secular liberals.  There are so many value gates that could put us back on the commonweal of democracy.   Perhaps a complete rehash of the valuing life could be the hub of this next movement toward the next America.  A life based agenda aiming more to unity than division could turn the corner for the next democracy.  War is a waste that will bleed us dry.  Modest re-investments in protecting human life and rights will  quickly reduce deficits, save lives already born, and that would be a very good start.