The Radiant Buddha said,
Regard this fleeting world like this:
Like stars fading and vanishing at dawn,
Like bubbles on a fast moving stream,
Like morning dewdrops evaporating on blades of grass,
Like a candle flickering in a strong wind,
Echoes, mirages, and phantoms, hallucinations,
and like a dream.
from the Prajna Paramita Sutras
Friday, January 4, 2008
Dharma Lessons for America - Step 1: Right View
Has America awoken from the nightmare of its own making?
The small state of Iowa has peeped loudly for change. Let's wait to hear if peeps have any echo.
Caucuses are not conclusive, but in the press-the-flesh politics of Iowa, two regular joes have emerged with popular support. Popular, as in people. Imagine a democracy that works like that.
Mike Huckabee seems to be restoring compassion to Christianity, or at least a Hallmark, 50's television, Dick and Jane version of compassion. He's the candidate of yesterday, and reflects much of what America's lost. Can compassion play anymore in the evangelicalistic hate-machine that is contemporary Republican politics? Or has the GOP strategy of defining who they are by defining those they oppose run its course?
Huckabee's win is short-lived. The significance isn't the support the front runner pulled, but the tepid turnout of the Iowa Republicans. Forced to choose between Romney's slick hucksterism or Huck's continuing the incompetent Bush legacy (don't you long for the days of an Arkansas governor who could keep his facts straight - has Huck really not seen a map of Pakistan? did he really think Leno had struck a deal with his writers before appearing on the show? does he really believe there's virtue in not airing a negative ad he then releases to the press?)
Huck campaigns like George W - all squeaky clean and dumb-blonde foolish. We've learned that lesson - incompentence and copping the blame off on Jesus does not a leader make. Let's give the savior a break.
The real story is Obama. The hate machine will have a hard time playing the race card on this guy. If Iowa is any example (is it?), he's got appeal to Dems, indys, and disenchanted Repubs all.
That's a message of hope in this fleeting moment of politics. After eight years of being force fed fear, hope is the antidote that can heal America, so we may shine once again from this dark corner of the world in which Bush and Cheney hide.
Iowa's is the peep that will be heard around the world.
Long may it echo.
The small state of Iowa has peeped loudly for change. Let's wait to hear if peeps have any echo.
Caucuses are not conclusive, but in the press-the-flesh politics of Iowa, two regular joes have emerged with popular support. Popular, as in people. Imagine a democracy that works like that.
Mike Huckabee seems to be restoring compassion to Christianity, or at least a Hallmark, 50's television, Dick and Jane version of compassion. He's the candidate of yesterday, and reflects much of what America's lost. Can compassion play anymore in the evangelicalistic hate-machine that is contemporary Republican politics? Or has the GOP strategy of defining who they are by defining those they oppose run its course?
Huckabee's win is short-lived. The significance isn't the support the front runner pulled, but the tepid turnout of the Iowa Republicans. Forced to choose between Romney's slick hucksterism or Huck's continuing the incompetent Bush legacy (don't you long for the days of an Arkansas governor who could keep his facts straight - has Huck really not seen a map of Pakistan? did he really think Leno had struck a deal with his writers before appearing on the show? does he really believe there's virtue in not airing a negative ad he then releases to the press?)
Huck campaigns like George W - all squeaky clean and dumb-blonde foolish. We've learned that lesson - incompentence and copping the blame off on Jesus does not a leader make. Let's give the savior a break.
The real story is Obama. The hate machine will have a hard time playing the race card on this guy. If Iowa is any example (is it?), he's got appeal to Dems, indys, and disenchanted Repubs all.
That's a message of hope in this fleeting moment of politics. After eight years of being force fed fear, hope is the antidote that can heal America, so we may shine once again from this dark corner of the world in which Bush and Cheney hide.
Iowa's is the peep that will be heard around the world.
Long may it echo.
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