core dump on a Sunday morning

Step back a few magnitudes and let's look at the world. We have the Christians backing Israel in their many-dead-and-dying fight with Hezbollah (Hizbulla? Hepsibullu? Haphazmatmatmat? Pepsi-Cola? I don't know how to spell this anymore, it is like when everyone started coming up with their own way to spell Mallomar Kaddafy-duck's name...)

I respect Israel's attitude, and it is fair (tongue in cheek) to equate every displaced shepherd with a rock to throw with the German Nazi war machine of the 1930's. Paranoia is a political necessity in that country, born as they were on collective international guilt for allowing a genocide. But, morally and theologically, they live under the Old Covenant, which permits violence in the name of God. Christians live under the New Covenant, which does not. Never has. Never will, no matter how much television talking heads and ministers who drive Mercedes would have us believe to their own bank account benefit.

We are not supposed to accept, excuse or support violence. And out attitude towards that issue more clearly defines our relationship with God and our witness to others than all the church attendance and WWJD wristband buying you can achieve.

But we do, just as our new Crusade in Iraq continues to daily cost the lives of our sons and daughters, fathers and brothers and spouses. I am truly, truly, disappointed in our (lack-of-)leadership in Washington. We have, in the absence of a Cold War distraction, became the arrogant and not overly bright bully the whole world can agree to loathe. And, you know, just being a jerk doesn't make you right.

It just makes you a jerk.

I love this country, I love the principles it stands on and for. I love the fact that it evolves and changes and grows and adapts like no other nation in the history of the world. But when the evolution is driven, not by reality but by mentally ill people who don't even have a vague notion of the founding principles of the American Experiment, we become a people who run the risk of being vilified in the history books as proof that Democracy is a bad idea that brings out the pettiness, greed and anger in even the best of people.

On an unrelated note...Sigh. Family squabbles bore me. I don't like them, I think they are wastes of emotional energy, and I earnestly believe that most of them are just plain prideful tempests in a teacup. There's one right now going on about the invitations to my daughter's wedding. I am staying out of it, even though the whole issue is about my "billing" or rather, my "non-billing" on the invitations.

Does it bother me to be relegated to "non-entity" in the scheme of things? Yep.

Am I going to make an issue of it? Nope.

This event isn't about me, I wish those people on all sides who think they had a vested interest would just shut up. I'm the injured party, if there is one, and if I can keep my own counsel, the bystanders should just zip it. Every bit of spare money I can generate is going in on this, but not to buy a producer's credit. The relationship I have with my daughter and my ex-wife is a complicated and contentious one, with finger pointing still going on behind the scenes by everyone who doesn't know half of what they are talking about, but CO2 is a cheap fuel...so they talk.

Well, enough of that crap. Yes, E.J., I am, circumspectly "seeing someone". No, you can't talk about it. Shut up, and fire up your mixing console, we's making some music.