MERRY CHRIZBAH

It is about four AM on Christmas morning. As appears to be a personal tradition, I am sitting at the computer hacking at some idea or vain thought.

Pausing to look out on the wet empty downtown streets, I watch a raggedy homeless guy going thru trash cans that I know he went thru about an hour ago. All to no avail it would appear. I am remembering more than one Christmas spent on the streets, many years ago.

I sit in my warm apartment with my very own computer and work space and my little family, asleep in the next room. I am reminded how lucky I've been. How well things are compared to how they could have turned out. I have no personal complaints worth airing. Would be damned ungrateful if I did.

But there are a litany of things to complain about and worry about, in the objective world.
Evil does not sleep on Christmas or any so-called Holy Day. Or any other day or night, for that matter.

Since I am not a religious person, my Christmas wishes are really my end of/beginning of the year wishes. A time to look forward and at same time, to reflect on the past.

I have hope for the future. I have no hope that the greedy and the power hungry will come to see the error of their ways. I have hope that many more Americans will start waking up, to the mess we are creating in the world and the price we are paying for it.

I have hope and even believe that Americans are going to awaken in numbers sufficient win back America for democracy and the constitution.

I have hope that a new kind of patriotism will overtake America. A patriotism that is born out of a love for the land and for its people, not the idea of thoughtless loyalty to a man or a party that is currently called patriotic.

George Bush does not speak for God and George Bush does not represent the aspirations of the American people. He is a wounded hungry little man, a politician, elevated far beyond his abilities.

Patriotism refers to the land and the people. Not a political demagogue. I hope and believe that Americans can and will come to make that distinction.

I have no faith in gods. I have only guarded hope for humans. I do have some faith in the power of necessity.

Merry ChrizBah to my fellow humbuggers and for the rest, dare I say,

A Happy Holliday Season to you