Just when you think it can't get any weirder....

Just when you think things can't get any weirder some new idiot crawls out from under their Medieval rock and starts spouting crazy religious crap.  A government employee in Kentucky gets all holier-than-thou over gay marriage even though her own past history is littered with numerous white trailer-trash moments. A kid in Texas gets arrested for bringing a clock to school because he is Muslim. And now a kid is told he is one of the devil's minions because he writes with his left hand.



OKEMAH, Okla. -- A 4-year-old was allegedly forced by his teacher to write with his right hand, even though he’s left-handed.

The child was sent home with a letter about how left-handedness is often associated with evil and the devil.

Zayde is only 4 years old.

   

Flash Fiction Friday, Week 3: Final Convergence

 (Author's note: Doing Flash Fiction Fridays again, link over and read the other great stories.)

When he awoke and looked around, nothing in the room seemed familiar. Scott tried to remain calm and just waited for everything to come into focus. It had been years since the last transition and it always took time for his senses to adjust to how things had changed. Disappointment flooded through his mind as things became clearer. Scott had begun to hope the rift in space he had opened around himself in a foolish attempt to run away from his problems had finally healed letting him finally piece together a new life.

The new room was about the same size as the one he went to sleep in, that at least was a consistent pattern but the furnishings were radically different. The ornate Colonial American style dressing table, Chester drawers and night stands he had come to appreciate had been replaced with brightly colored, ultra modern looking equivalents that while functional seemed sterile and utilitarian. Even the bed he found himself was just a mattress laying on top of a box spring that was only slightly raised above a hardwood floor.

More importantly, Scott realized that from the looks of the disheveled bed sheets he, or more accurately, his counterpart had not slept alone the night before. Experience had long taught Scott that while he was alone he should try to figure out the type of person whose existence he had abruptly assumed.

After climbing out of bed, he quickly searched through the drawers of his nightstand, dresser, and open closet. In the process, he found a wallet with identification saying he was Scott Wilson Phillips of Los Angeles, California. That little bit of information was actually a huge relief, while patterns repeated across contrasting realities, occasionally he would drop into a completely different identity. Since he had the same name in this new existence there was a good chance he wouldn't have to relearn the basics of life and family history.

On a whim, he opened the curtains of the huge window that occupied one full wall of the bedroom and was greeted by bright sunlight and a gleaming city situated next the ocean. Wherever he was it didn't look like his Los Angeles or any of the others he had visited. The buildings he could see were mostly futuristic, organic-looking constructions made up of spheres and pyramidal structures all connected by an elevated mass transit system. On the ground, he could barely see the streets because of all the trees planted alongside. Where there were breaks in the foliage covering the roadway he saw small cars and people riding bikes.

“At least here they seemed to have beaten the problem with smog.” Scott said out loud to himself remembering the overwhelming level of pollution he had to deal with in the last reality.

A sound originating outside the bedroom pulled Scott's attention back to his immediate surroundings. Subconsciously feeling like a trespasser he quietly walked out of the bedroom careful not to make any noise. Just past the bedroom doorway was a small flight of stairs leading down to what looked like a living area with a couch and chairs. Again taking care not to announce his presence Scott slowly descended the stairs listening for any sounds that might give a hint of his current situation.

Reaching the bottom, he saw that the living room had the same utilitarian style as the bedroom above. The furniture was basic but comfortable and there was another huge window looking out at a different section of the city. The amazing view almost pulled Scott towards the window but another sound further off to his left reclaimed his complete attention. Hugging close to a small section of wall on his left he turned the corner and saw her.

“Amanda,” Scott gasped in bewilderment.

The beautiful blond woman, dressed in a loose t-shirt and yoga pants was standing at the kitchen counter buttering a piece of toast quickly turned around after hearing her name. “Hello sleepyhead,” she said rushing over to embrace Scott. “I was beginning to think you weren't going to ever wake up. You tossed and turned all night and there was one time I woke up and you seemed to have disappeared. I just assumed you went to the bathroom, so I turned over and went back to sleep. Just how did you make it to the bathroom without turning on the light?”

Scott just stood there looking into the face of his long dead wife. It was definitely Amanda he thought to himself, although graceful lines now played across her face signifying the fourteen years that had gone by in this reality. When Amanda had died in his reality she had been just twenty-five years old, and at her athletic prime.

“What's wrong Scott?” Amanda asked, “you look like you've seen a ghost.”

Scott longed to tell her the truth about everything but instead he pulled her close not wanting to ever let go. This Amanda's body was just as firm as he remembered his own wife's had been and it didn't take long for her to respond to his burning desire.

“Wait a minute baby,” she said pulling away, “I have hospital rounds this morning and you have some sort of presentation to give to your egghead physics buddies. As much as I would like to play hooky and make love all day we both have responsibilities.”

Scott just nodded sheepishly and let Amanda slip away to eat her breakfast. “You're right,” he said, “there are times I just can't seem to control myself around you.” He hesitated several seconds being careful to phrase his next question so his newly returned wife would not think he was going insane. “Amanda, I have forgotten most of the stuff I'm supposed to do today. Where did I put my schedule keeper?”

“Oh God,” she said in dismay, “you'd forget your own head if it wasn't attached to your neck. Your data planner is on the desk by the couch.

Feeling he had dodged a bullet, Scott walked back into the living room and found what looked to him to be a normal computer tablet laying on the desk. Before he could reach down to pick it up a face appeared on the screen. “Hello Dr. Phillips,” the voice attached to the pleasant but clearly computer-generated face said, “I am ready to assist you today.”

“Please show me my schedule,” Scott said hoping it would be easy to gain access to his counterpart's files.

“What is the password doctor.” The artificial face asked him back.

“Oh not again,” Amanda said from the kitchen, “just use the retina scan override, you'll be all day trying to guess your password.”

The retina scan procedure took only a few seconds and with his computer assistant now believing Scott was his counterpart he had total access to that man's data. A few minutes later Scott had reviewed his counterpart's schedule and was sure he could pass himself off as the other man.

“One word of warning Dr. Phillips,” the tablet said, “until you re-institute protection firewalls, anyone can access the data in my files or listen to incoming calls.”

“That's fine,” Scott said placing the device back on the desk, “I'll take care of that later.” He then ran back upstairs to shower and get ready for the day. Scott could not believe how fate had smiled on him and he decided right then to drop all his research and find a way to make sure he never left this reality.

Twenty minutes later Scott returns to the living room to see Amanda sitting on the couch holding his computer tablet with tears rolling down her eyes. “You lied to me, you bastard!” She screamed at him. “You said there was nothing between you two and I believed it!”

Without another word Amanda handed Scott the tablet after triggering it to play back a recorded video call he received just minutes before.

“Hello Scotty,” a brunette woman said from the screen, “I've made our reservations for the resort down in Acapulco for next month. It starts the day after your wife leaves for the conference in London and ends two days before she get back. I can't wait to see you for lunch today.”

Scott lowered the tablet and looked back at his wife. She now held a small pistol in her hand and was taking aim at the center of his chest. Before he could say anything Amanda pulled the trigger and he fell to the floor feeling the blood flowing out from the chest wound.

As Scott's life slipped away he had time to think of the cosmic joke associated with his existence. It had been his rage at the discovery that his own Amanda was having an affair with another man that caused him to murder her. Overwhelmed with guilt, he later rushed to his laboratory and climbed inside an experimental quantum phase inverter that was supposed to painlessly scramble all his atoms into nothingness, instead it deposited him in an alternate reality.

A few seconds before Scott died he realized this was a fitting but ultimately ironic end to all his journeys. 

Parrothead Book Review Time

 The Ruin of the Roman Empire by James J. O'Donnell

My first introduction to the study of history came from my high school world history teacher, Mr. Ron Edgerton. Before that the very concept of history was at best a hazy amalgamation of rumor, group assumptions, and bias opinions that were at times so flawed as to be almost comical. Mr. Edgerton introduced to me not only the organized study of history but the realization that you could always delve deeper into the details to understand the underlining causes to events that shaped the sad comedy of human civilization.

Conversely and veering slightly off on a tangent, I also learned from him that while I should appreciate the loser's viewpoint of history it would be dangerously misguided to build a worldview from such opinions. From there you can start believing such ludicrous ideas that the Confederacy, Nazi Germany, and Soviet Russia were honorable creations and begin making numerous excuses for their monstrous behaviors. In other words, history's losers more often than not have a huge axe to grind about their lost cause and will go to extreme measures to twist and even create facts out of whole cloth to muddy the already murky waters of history and justify present day actions.

Getting back on point, it was in Mr. Edgerton's class that I began to learn the ancient Rome Empire didn't fall in the year 476 AD. This greatly simplified statement runs counter even now to the many movies, books, and cheaply made documentaries that suggest all civilization ended with the reported death of the “last” Roman emperor, Romulus Augustus, in the year 476 AD.

But in Mr. Edgerton's class way hack in the early 1980's I learned that in an effort to stave off collapse and recover from a long period of civil war and barbarian invasions the Roman Empire had long since split itself into two separate parts. The Western Roman Empire centered not on Rome but the Italian city of Ravenna. And the Eastern Roman Empire which made the already ancient Greek colony city of Byzantium its capital changing the name to Constantinople after the death of that emperor in 337 AD.

It turns out that Romulus Augustus, nominally thought of as the last western emperor, was overthrown by a barbarian-soldier named Odoacer who represented himself as the client of a guy named Julius Nepo, who the Eastern Roman Emperor Leo 1 had appointed emperor of the west in 474. Turns out the young but unlucky Romulus Augustus was put on the western throne by his daddy, a guy named Orestes, which forced Julius Nepo to flee Italy. After the death of Nepo, Odoacer continued his rule of Italy under the authority of the eastern emperor using the title of patrician but is referred to as king in many official documents and was known to use the title himself several times.

With that history refresher out of the way I recently stumbled across a book on Amazon offering up the idea that what truly did in the western empire and later the eastern portion was not all the standard reasons all too briefly touched on in American schools but agents of the Roman Empire themselves.

Entitled The Ruin of the Roman Empire by James J. O'Donnell, the author makes the case that all those nasty illegal aliens...I'm sorry, I mean barbarians were in fact often times far more Roman than the cloistered and pompous men who never traveled beyond sight of their palaces in Constantinople.

To prove his point O”Donnell uses Theodoric the Great as his best example. Born in 454 AD, the son of a Germanic nobleman, Theodoric grew up as a hostage in Constantinople--this was done so his dad and people wouldn't do anything that might endanger the eastern empire—but while he was held Theodoric received a first rate education. It wasn't until his eighteenth birthday that Theodoric was returned home but his years living in Constantinople didn't stop him pillaging provinces of the eastern empire and even threatening the capital itself.

In an attempt to buy off the raiding barbarian the eastern emperor Zeno sent him west to Italy to kill Odoacer, the guy who may or may not have killed off Romulus Augustus. See, not only did Zeno want Theodoric out of his hair, Odoacer had supported one of Zeno's rivals for the eastern throne and this in effect killed two birds with one stone. On a little bit of a side note, never one to ask someone to do a job he wouldn't do, Theodoric actually killed Odoacer with his own sword after tricking the guy to come to a banquet to celebrate a treaty saying the two would rule Italy jointly. After that messy business was accomplished Theodoric settled his own people in Italy and founded an Ostrogothic kingdom based in Ravenna.

Unlike Odoacer though, Theodoric actually respected the agreement to act as Italian viceroy for Constantinople even though he avoided imperial supervision and treated the emperor as an equal. Nevertheless, under the reign of Theodoric, Italy had the longest period of peace and prosperity in centuries. He respected and upheld Roman law for the Roman population throughout his territory although he he did not allow intermarriage between Romans and Goths.

Like I mentioned earlier, while history normally says that the western empire fell in 476 AD, it was far less an actual collapse of civilization and more of it being broken up into mangled pieces. The numerous suicidal civil wars of the Third Century, initial barbarian invasions, and breakdown of internal trade generally shredded the structure of Roman life in western Europe to the point it was many centuries would pass before it even approached what it was before. Also, while the city of Rome had been sacked several times and was certainly dying, life did go on with surviving aristocratic families throughout the Italian peninsula still being appointed to fill senate and consuls positions. Although these appointments were strictly local, not imperial governments, that bird had long since flown and was now residing in Constantinople.

To his credit starting with Odoacer and even more so with Theodoric the various pieces of a badly damaged society started to come back together. Theodoric played the game of enforcing civil authority successfully by observing the old Roman traditions of religious tolerance, higher learning, and allowing the circus to continue. O'Donnell goes further to say that it wasn't just Theodoric's kingdom in Italy that was stitching a damaged civilization back together it was the Vandals in Africa and the Visigoths in Provence and Spain as well. The author makes the case that this barbarian-inspired recovery was well on its way to creating a kind of greater Roman “commonwealth” that could have possibly short-circuited a thousand years of darkness.

Personally, I found that aspect of O'Donnell's book a bit too optimistic. The Roman Humpty Dumpty was shattered mess and while I am only fifty, it seems human shortsightedness and even delusion wins out in most circumstances. It didn't really matter anyway, because the eastern emperor Justinian 1 was about to take the imperial stage and to grossly paraphrase a well known statement, he was going to burn the village down in order to save it.

*****

Another aspect of late Roman civilization that seem to escape modern Christians is that in 380 AD the Emperor Theodosius 1 made it the state religion. Not to cast my usual stones, I known people who believe the Roman Empire worshiped their borrowed Greek gods right up until the end. They assume this is one of the reasons the Roman Empire fell, along with their acceptance of homosexuality in daily life and other decadent behaviors that brought them down.

That being said the young Christian religion went through some complicated growing pains. Several factions arose debating various mundane ideas about the nature of Christ. All these factions like Chalcedonian, Nestorianism, Arian, Miaphysitism, and many others eventually started playing the political game, which as usual with religions got incredibly nasty. Nothing challenges the very idea of human intelligence greater that a group of fools debating whether or not god likes certain rituals and gets pissed off at others.

But when Justinian became emperor of the eastern empire in 527 AD he made it his personal goal to reunite all of the Roman world under his control whether the various peoples liked it or not. One of the ways he was going to reunite everyone was the imposition of his brand of Christianity on everyone.

By 527 AD the eastern empire had largely recovered, mainly through the efforts of the Emperor Anastasius 1 who reformed the tax system and placed the imperial coinage back on a firm footing. He was so successful that by the end of his reign the eastern empire was playing with substantial surplus. The Emperor Justin 1 came next but the main accomplishment during his reign appears that he kept the seat warm for his nephew without screwing up too much. Whether that was a good or bad thing depends on if you believe history might have taken a different path with his successor having to wait a little longer for his chance to throw the proverbial monkey wrench into the imperial geo-political situation.

Justinian comes in next with a “with us or against us” dream of recapturing the western portions of the Roman Empire and begins a long series of wars to do just that. In spite of it all Justinian is successful to a point reconquering most of north Africa, parts of Spain, and all of Italy. However the cost is so great he bankrupts the empire and O'Donnell quite frankly states that Justinian's insistence on religious unification, or synchronization (my word) so totally alienates the populations of the Middle East and North Africa that when the Arabs arrive several decades later they essentially don't really care who rules them.

Making the situation even more tragically funny, O'Donnell points out that all the western territory Justinian worked so hard to reclaim was to a great extent worthless. Far too much money and personnel were going to occupy lands that were either utterly destroyed from the wars of reconquest, in the case or Italy, or largely empty. Throwing more fuel on the unsustainable fire, the bumbling Justinian goes to war with the Sassanid Empire of Persia and has to deal with a new series of invasions on his Balkan frontier. Adding an extra helping of bitter icing on an already calamitous cake the eastern empire has to deal with a series of natural disasters from plagues, famines, and earthquakes from the 530's to early 550's.

O'Donnell rightly points out that Justinian should have just reinforced his frontiers, made nice with the Persian Emperor, left everyone to believe in god like they wanted, and all together just stayed in bed. It doesn't take long to figure out that the author despises Justinian and although his Highness did do a few thing right during his reign, it's hard to disagree with O'Donnell's basic attitude concerning the Bush-like emperor.

O'Donnell's closing point is that civilizations are fragile things that should be carefully nourished with both intelligence and tolerance. For any leader, rushing into situations like the proverbial bull in the china shop in an attempt to remake the world in their image has never proved a good idea in the long run. Countless empires sit atop history's dustbin because they refused to evolve with the times. The only problem with empires that refuse to adapt is that when they pass away like some elderly but vicious dinosaur they usually take a bunch of innocent victims with them.

The Ruin of the Roman Empire is not a perfect book for numerous reasons. I've read other reviews and many take issue with O'Donnell's basic thesis that the barbarians could have saved greater Roman civilization. Others, like me, found his sudden jumping around historical dates and places irritating. But I still very much enjoyed the book and highly recommend it for people who have a basic understanding of Roman history. And for that I still have to thank Mr. Ron Edgerton for everything his taught me.

Humanity Lost

So, it has come to this. Not that the death of an innocent child is anything new, it's been going on since one of our ancestors first felt the need to eliminate anyone that became inconvenient. But things are different now, right? Our respective monotheistic religions, supposedly advancements over primitive pagan beliefs, teach us to love and care for each other. The general idea, or rule, being that we should treat others like we would hope to be treated.

But the all to ugly reality is that all our religions are just clever facades that have far less to do with compassion and caring for our fellow human beings but are more of a way to disguise our fear of death and excuse our own moral failings. From numerous personal observations nothing brings on a "coming to Jesus moment" like a possible brush with death. The other favorite for many religious types is to use religion as a divinely inspired "get out of jail free cared." Get caught doing something sinful, like many politicians and reality television stars, just start hitting the social media circuit claiming that you have prayed to god asking for forgiveness and you're good to go. More than likely you're still have enough ignorant followers to retain at least a semi-lucrative career in politics or the media. Don't believe me, just look up the current history of the Appalachian Trail walking former governor of South Carolina and current United States congressman, Mark Sanford.   

Yes, there are truly decent and honest people of all faiths who work hard to make the world a better place. But honestly, they seem outnumbered by those who use religion to advance their own personal, ethnic, tribal, or national agendas.

More to the point, a little boy drowned and washed up on a beach because various geopolitical realities made his plight inconvenient. It all starts with a petty piss ant dictator who is so disparate to cling to power he and his cronies pursue a policy of slaughtering their own people. Then comes all the countries surrounding the one where that little boy was born with most of them overwhelmingly practicing the same religion as that dead child's family. What the hell are they doing to prove the validity of their faith?  What the hell are they doing to prove Islam is the religion of peace!?! I don't see any of them lifting a damn finger! Every one of these refugees are fleeing to not to the east but the infidel West.

Then comes the good people of Europe, with the shadow of centuries of monstrous behavior still looming over their countries, they bumble about squawking over what they can't do, pointing fingers at each other claiming their neighbors should do more. The dirty little secret that pervades this lack of organized relief is that many in the Western nations have a fear of being overwhelmed by dirty illegal aliens that will pollute their lily white gene pools.

I'm not leaving out the major powers for special condemnation, especially Russia who just can't seem to push their boy Assad to do the right thing and put a loaded pistol to his head and pull the trigger. Russia is far too busy nursing old national physiological wounds dealing with their asses being massively kicked in the Cold War. The Russians just can't accept that their national power play for global domination failed miserably, now they've got to invade every little country surrounding them to nurse their wounded egos.  They so want to remain a major power on the world scene playing the role of spoiler trying to get some sort of revenge on the United States any way possible. This unfortunately included the possibility of starting the Third World War.

But then again, since the United States rode into Iraq back in 2003 on a full fledged god-ordained crusade the entire Middle East has gone up in flames creating some truly horrific monsters. So in many ways they hold a huge chunk of the blame for that little boy washing up on a beach. Of course the truly sad fact in this is that a majority of Americans either don't comprehend what was done in their name in the Middle East or simply don't care. American freedoms these days revolve around our ability to stay completely self-absorbed watching our big screen televisions. The rest of the human race is some abstract concept that we can't be bothered with because we're "exceptional."

In the end what does the death of a few refugees matter, even small children? Give it a few months and our collective attention span, or lack of one, will have us back pursuing our own selfish agendas while believing god smiles down on all our actions. Because far too many of us believe we can be as big a douchebag as we want and all we have to do to wipe the heavenly slate clean is whisper a small prayer and then carry on as usual.

             
           

Part Three--Dispatches from the Twilight War

(Author's Note: Confused? Here is the link to Part One and this will take you to Part Two.)

Despite the bitter cold of the early Colorado morning, Jack Harper sat outside on the porch of the cabin he and Carol Briggs had taken refuge two days before after fleeing the roadside diner and the human-looking monsters that were pursuing them. Next him was a table where two legals pad lay containing all the information about Carol and her family that he had gathered after long drawn out hours of questioning the woman. Just a few inches after that was his pistol, fully loaded, with a round in the chamber and the safety off.

After arriving at the cabin Jack started interviewing Carol about her husband working on the theory that he was hiding something in his past that including human-looking creatures with incredible strength and stamina. But after hours of intense questioning Jack was dealing with the disturbing possibility that Michael Briggs was just the suburban living, copier technician, middle class guy she claimed. This prompted Jack to change tactics and start reviewing Carol's life for anomalies that might suggest she or someone in her family might have a hidden past.

There was one relatively minor inconsistency both Carol and her husband shared, neither had any close family members. Carol did have siblings but had not seen or talked to any of them since their parents had passed away in a car crash about ten years before. Supposedly there was some extreme bad blood concerning the disposition of her parents' estate resulting in Carol and her siblings all taking legal action against the others. As for her husband, Michael spent his childhood being raised by his maternal grandparents who had long since passed away. Neither instance was that out of the ordinary, Jack himself didn't have any close family. But in Carol and Michael's case, he couldn't help but feel it was all a little too convenient as far as past histories were concerned, hence the reason he was now keeping his pistol within easy reach. Carol Briggs continued to have that “deer caught in the headlights” look of someone barely dealing with the both the tragic and surreal aspects of recent events but Jack was now harboring a nagging suspicion about his middle class client.

Jack knew this particular case had long since passed the point were he should have punted it to a person in actual authority, something inside him couldn't quite yet allow him to take that course of action. While Jack had expended everything he could do while hiding in a cabin on the side of a heavily wooded mountain, he had contacts who could do more.

“Hey Jack,” Carol said after cracking open the front door, “you want some breakfast?”

Jack knew Carol was puttering around the small kitchen so he didn't react suddenly. “Yeah that would be great,” he said. Since coming to the cabin Carol had alternated between becoming totally distraught, fearful of what had become of her husband and son to being consumed in any activity she could find. Which usually meant cooking meals or cleaning the cabin.

The cabin itself was exactly as Jack expected, it was less a survivalist hideaway but more than a simple retreat for someone wanting to get away from the city. The actual owner lived in Denver and made his living as an investment banker who fancied himself as a bit of a master playboy. Jack knew the guy used the place mainly for seclusion for both professional and personal reasons. The former being the times he needed to review financial data and the later so he could entertain the latest in a series of married women he liked to seduce. The small sanctuary was isolated on the side of a heavily-wooded mountain and boasted a plentiful supply of canned goods, dried meats, and a private well. Despite the amenities favoring those inclined to leave civilization behind it was still attached to the local electrical grid which allowed the banker to access the internet.

Thirty-minutes later Jack is back inside and sitting on the couch gulping down a plate full of re-hydrated scrambled eggs watching the television. By this time the morning news is on and both Jack and Carol found it quite disturbing. Not for the news items they reported but for the things they barely or didn't mention at all. The restaurant Jack and Carol shot their way out of two days before had long since been forgotten. Given the number of people that were in the building it would have been impossible for the news services not to learn of it, but the official story reported on the news was that it was a gang-related shooting involving a bad drug deal.

The basic report was vague but hat details the news agencies did report strongly suggested that someone with influence was doing their best to cover everything up with a huge pile of disinformation. Even more disturbing was that Carol's disappearance, occurring after that of her husband and son had never been mentioned on the television news or newspapers. All this told Jack was that before he could turn Carol over to some authority he would have to find one that could be trusted.

“What are we going to do Jack?” Carol asked from the small kitchen where she was eating her breakfast.

“I've got some feelers out with people who can help us.” Jack said leaving out the part that these feelers was a computer hacker acquaintance that was delving far deeper into Carol and her husband's past than he could personally hope to accomplish. Jack watched Carol's carefully crafted brave face quickly begin to crumble to the point she excused herself and retreated to the cabin's small bedroom. Jack thought to himself that if she was willfully hiding something linking her to the creatures her despair was the best acting job he had ever seen.

With Carol in the bedroom Jack took a few moments to clean everything up and think. The thing that scared him most of all was the memory of the security cameras looking over the parking lot of the restaurant they had to flee. Any decent investigator could do much to find their quarry with that little bit of information. The fact that Jack and Carol were dealing with some sort of super-human only meant they would have to move that much sooner.

This raised the question as to what he would do if in fact Carol was somehow connected to the creatures that were certainly looking for him now just as much as his client. The creature going by the name Joaquin Weiss, he had shot twice in the stomach and once in the knee, didn't seem the type that would easily bury the hatchet. After Jack shot Joaquin and watched it fall to the floor of the restaurant it looked at him with a hate that was all consuming. It was only the severity of the bullet wounds that prevented Joaquin from standing up and killing Jack right there.

As Jack put the last dish away he heard a beeping noise coming from one of the pockets of leather jacket. He immediately knew it was his the special encrypted satellite cell phone he used for calls he wanted to make sure were heard only between him and the caller, in this case the computer hacker looking into Carol's family. He moved swiftly and quietly snatching up the jacket and going outside before answering the call.

“Yeah this is Jack Harper,” he said, “what have you got for me Roy?”

Roy Hernandez was a thirty-something computer geek who desperately wanted to go back in time and live like the hippies of the 1960's. The few times Jack had actually been face to face with Roy it was clear that while the man was certainly a computer genius he was also dealing with several severely loose screws in his head. Besides his long hair and unkempt beard the guy wore only raggedy tie-dye t-shirts and cut off blue jeans. Adding to the persona was the overwhelming smell of marijuana that hung over him like a cloud. These traits all added up to a guy who while possessing a master's degree from MIT was extremely paranoid of all authority figures. Roy's appearance, demeanor, and opinions about authority figures seemed so over the top that Jack actually considered the possibility that it was all an act meant to make him easy to disappear into the background static of the rest of humanity if the need to arose.

“Jack,” Roy said, “I'm not sure what you've gotten yourself into this time but this woman Carol Briggs is probably very bad news. I snooped around the usual sites like birth records, educational history, the IRS, and even the Colorado DMV and it all looked normal for both her and her husband. But then on a whim I backtracked and looked at the code surrounding those records. Jack up until eight years ago this Carol Briggs you're involved with nor her husband existed.”

“Wait a minute Roy,” Jack said wanting him to confirm what he thought Roy had just stated. “Tell me that again slowly so I fully understand.”

Roy signed heavily, “Jack old buddy, the records I found are fully authorized by the various agencies and they go back to the birth dates you gave me. But someone inserted them into the databases just over eight years ago, what I'm saying is prior to that Carol and Michael Briggs must have dropped out of the sky.”

“Are we talking witness relocation and new identities created by some federal agency?” Jack asked.

“Here's the real puzzle Jack, I can't honestly answer that. I've played around in all the federal databases that do that sort of thing so I know how the DEA, CIA, ATF, or even your FBI create new identities. Whoever did these used a completely different method, if fact I've got to skip town now because I believe they noticed me poking around.”

Roy stopped briefly to catch his breath. “Jack I'm not only skipping town, I'll being changing my own identity so don't try and contact me again. I'd advice you to disappear as well, this whole situation sticks like shit with a bad case of gangrene.” Immediately after that the line was cut leaving Jack's worst fears confirmed.

Little Nagging Inconsistencies

 (Author's note: This post will almost certainly not be received well. I have tried to tone it down and approached my questions concerning one of the worst days in American history at least somewhat rationally. The readers will of course have to be the judge as to whether I was successful.)

It shouldn't really surprise me but I can't get over the idea there is almost an universal belief that the world, people, and even events should somehow make sense. That everything should fit together like a complete and orderly puzzle providing clarity to our lives and how we view the world. The trouble with that belief is, of course, hardly anything in our existence makes sense and any attempt to force the various pieces to come together usually results in numerous false assumptions as well as a lot of self delusions.

Most people do the best that they can trying to figure things out and what they can't is usually left to our religious and political leaders as well as friends and family. This has never been a perfect solution, despite the tenets of all major religions saying love thy neighbor and peace coming before all else untold millions of people all through history have died at the hands of those claiming to personally know the mind of god. Politics, the runner up for the justification of mass murder pretty much does the same, except that god is replaced with some charismatic dictator out to guide his people to some greater glory. The absence of a dictator doesn't guarantee sanity. Nations, ethnic groups, and any number of other human constructed entities often make sense of the world by collectively believing they are in some way superior, allowing them to conquer and then dominate others.

On a more individual level conspiracy theories are the favorite venue for trying to fit together the odd pieces of the world we live. Although they generally suffer from a lack of real evidence and the individual's greatly affected by preconceived notions, delusions, ignorance and simple prejudices.

No, I'm not posturing myself as some exception to everything I have listed above. I have numerous prejudices, preconceived notions, and probably enough well-developed and elaborate delusions to make a me a candidate for an old fashioned straight jacket.

This finally brings me to my main point. A couple of days ago I was cruising the documentary offerings on Netlfix when I stumbled upon one claiming to know the “truth” about the attacks on September 11^th, 2001. I am not kidding when I write that ninety-nine percent of the time I totally ignore such drivel which includes the subjects of UFO's, Bigfoot, and supernatural occurrences. But since I was tired of all my usual documentary favorites I gave it a go, which lasted for about fifteen to twenty-minutes before all the swirling and interconnected conspiracies became too much forcing me to turn it off.

That being said, there are things that have always bothered me about the 9/11 attacks. Several inconsistencies in actions and behaviors that have never made sense to me. One of them being a bizarre segment of a certain talk radio show whose host will remain nameless that seemed to forecast something stupendous would catapult George W. Bush into the annals of history about two weeks before the attacks.

Before I go into the messy and possibly misguided details I have to admit to something that causes me great embarrassment even to this day. This might surprise a number of people but there was a short time I flirted with conservative Republican politics. Much to the chagrin of my family and several close friends, I have always had liberal tendencies but between the years of 1996 to 2003 I drifted over to the Dark Side having grown weary of all the Clinton's political machinations. I will say though that I was never a comfortable member of those conservative Sith Lords and neither was I ever fully accepted. I had a nasty habit of voicing an opposing opinion on many of the orthodox conservative tenets.

Like I said, I am embarrassed about ever entertaining those backward and oppressive views and this is probably the last time I will ever admit to such stupidity again.

However, this all begins on an extremely early August morning in 2001 with me driving to my National Guard unit for the mandatory weekend drill. The humidity that morning was bordering on utter torture and was made even worse because I was wearing the old army BDU's (Battle Dress Uniform). By this point in my military career I had long since burned out on all the gung-ho crap and was just trying to make it to the twenty-year mark so I could retire, which I would in February 2005.

I was already bored with the knowledge that things would only get worse until late that afternoon when the first sergeant released us until the next morning. To both keep me awake while driving and to relieve the boredom I turn on the local radio station dominated by the usual collection of republican blowhards.

That morning they were doing a rebroadcast of a particular person's radio shows from earlier that week. As you could expect this “person” was blathering about a whole host of issues that, as far as he believed, threatened the very fabric of the Republic while blaming the previous administration for causing them. In hindsight, every bit of this particular radio talk show host's daily offerings was political boilerplate drivel crafted to appeal to self-centered interests of individuals who carry a jagged chip on their shoulders made up of various prejudices. It only changed slightly from one program to next and quite honestly it was the hate-filled, day after day propagandic nature of the show that primed me for a return to my liberal nature.

The rebroadcast of the show on that humid August morning was slightly different though. As most now understand George W; Bush's election in 2000 was, to almost criminally understate things, highly problematic. Once the Supreme Court settled the matter allowing Second Bush to take office, talk almost immediately began that he would almost certainly follow his father in becoming a one-term president. While having been in office for less than a year W's poll numbers were sinking like a rock, to the point certain political pundits could be seen salivating at the probable disaster he would become for the Republicans during the 2004 election cycle. Another thing that didn't help W's political future was that he didn't look or sound presidential. The man could barely speak English and this helped reinforce the image of an incurious, bumbling fool whose chief advantage in life was not ability but having a well positioned and rich family.

That is why I believe the Unnamed Radio Talk Show Host entertained a question from a panicky caller asking whether or not W. would be reelected. Unnamed Host spent a minute of so calming the caller and then went into ten or so minute speech assuring the person that history would so make George W; Bush one of the greatest presidents ever. It was a speech like none other I have ever heard, Unnamed Host was completely self-assured and utterly overflowing with total adoration of George W. expressing with complete certainty that something would catapult him into the annals of history. In fact even though it has been years since that bizarre radio song of praise and glorification of George W. that I remember saying out loud to myself, “Just what the hell does that guy know?”

I didn't entertain the thought for long, I had a busy weekend ahead of me and of course the next month the attacks occurred and after that the greater portion of the country went insane. It wasn't until the conspiracy theorists started speculating a year or so after Iraq was invaded that with no WMD's being found and Dick Cheney's former employer getting the lion share of the contracts to “rebuild” the country that I remembered that bizarre Unnamed Radio Talk Show segment. On the face of it the very idea that a sitting president, even one illegitimately in office, would let this country be attacked so it would promote a certain agenda as well as his benefactors is insane.

Unnamed Talk Show host has always made his living as a dedicated propagandist and given to saying outrageous things both to secure his ratings and assure his less than intelligent listeners that they are the God's chosen ones. So I don't hold much stock in the idea that he had any foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks. But honestly, after seeing W's reaction, or the lack of one, to the news the United States was attacked on September 11^th sometimes I just don't know.

***

Given what the country went through during the attacks and after it's weird to me to think how normal September 11^th started. I was working day shift at a manufacturing plant in my area and I remember talking to one of the production guys about a science fiction book I liked when word of the attacks first filtered down to me. One of my maintenance co-workers had just returned to the plant after performing an off-site errand for our boss when he came up and told me that he had heard a news flash on the radio about a plane flying into one of the World Trade Center towers.

Years ago back in my hometown of Georgetown. South Carolina one of my best friends worked at the small county airport. It was a pretty laid back job for him so I got to hang around the airport a lot and get to know a bunch of pilots that used the facilities for various reasons. Before long I quickly came to understand many of them had no qualms about flying while heavily intoxicated. So my first thought that day was that some idiot pilot had crashed his Cessna into one of the towers. Of course, a few minutes later I learned that the plane was not some small single engine Cessna but a huge jumbo airliner filled with passengers. From there things just got much worse with a second airliner crashing into the other tower, another being flown into the Pentagon, and yet another where the passengers attempted to recapture the hijacked aircraft but failed with it ultimately crashing into a Pennsylvania field.

Later that day video made it to the news networks showing George W. Bush at an elementary school being told about the attacks. The video takes place after the first hijacked plane has been flown into the first tower with him entering an elementary school classroom to view a reading lesson. Supposedly he somehow saw video of the first plane crashing into the building even though it occurred at 8:45am EST. While others have claimed that in itself is an impossibility given the immediacy of television news coverage, especially in a major city I don't have a real problem with that assertion.

What has always bothered me from the moment I saw the video of George W. Bush sitting in that elementary classroom was that while the nation was under attack he was not grabbed by his staff and whisked away to a safe location. It's not just the fact a president's itinerary is published well in advance but arrangements for that visit had to be made with that school as well as the numerous other state and local entities. As the hours and days after the 9/11 events unfolded we were told countless times the government had no idea if anymore attacks were planned. To have the president of the United States sitting in an elementary school classroom, even one secured with numerous secret service agents seemed the height carelessness given the circumstances of that day.

Things were made even weirder after Bush was back on Air Force One when pictures were released showing several heavily armed F-15 fighters escorting his plane. So the president was perfectly safe on the ground in an American school while the country was under direct attack but somehow in danger aboard his plane flying thousands of feet in the air in the middle of North American airspace a couple of hours later?

***

Of course, the number one absurdity of everything associated with 9/11 doesn't come until the buildup to the Iraq War a couple of years later. While the attacks themselves were largely carried out by Saudi citizens and planned from terrorist bases in Afghanistan George, Dick, and the rest of their team of neoconservatives number one concern was always the “defeat” of Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein. In many ways Afghanistan could be viewed as an unfortunate opening act because that poor example of a country was promptly dropped and largely forgotten about as various cohorts in both the media and government began beating the drums that we had to take out Saddam are risk the chance of him giving the bomb to terrorists.

After the 9/11 attacks the Bush/Cheney administration immediately and strongly began linking al-Qaeda to Saddam Hussein in every way possible. We were told that Saddam still had a massive nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons program and was edging ever closer to giving these weapons of mass destruction to groups that would use them on innocent civilians. This propaganda blitz culminated with then Secretary of State Collin Powell giving a presentation at the United Nation detailing all the evidence that Saddam had WMD's including satellite photos of supposed mobile biological weapons factories where his minions were cooking up all sorts of nasty agents.

I'll be honest and say the reason the missing WMD's bugs the living shit out of me is that during my time in the active army back in the mid-1980's I got to listen to many unclassified intelligence briefings where some far too motivated second or first lieutenant gave us the lowdown on Soviet intentions. This lieutenant, the battalion assistant S2, would enthusiastically explain to us enlisted types the Soviet NBC threat we would face if the “balloon went up”, a term signifying the start of the Third World War. In short we were told the, nuclear, chemical, and biological threat NATO forces faced was a nightmarish array of possible weapons that would cause any sane person to question the idea that humans were intelligent creatures.

In the course of these briefings the lieutenant would usually explain that much of this information about Soviet NBC weapons were gathered through Earth orbiting spy satellites using the same technology that allowed NASA space probes to tell us what made up the other bodies in our solar system. Coupled with intelligence gathered by humans on the ground, intercepted communications, as well as simple but crystal clear photos taken from space commonsense suggests that there was little room to doubt Saddam remained dangerous to the world. So when none other than Secretary Powell went before the United Nations listing all the evidence I, and many other people listened closely to what he had to say. Given my admiration of Collin Powell's army career, I would like to think that he himself was misled by others in the Bush-Cheney administration because allegations that the intelligence used to justify the Iraq War was falsified will just not go away.

The absurd thing that puzzles me even now was that after years of being assured beyond all doubt that not only was Saddam sitting on a massive pile nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons but had ties to Al Qaeda terrorists that when both turned out to be completely and totally false no one held Bush accountable. There were no cries of impeachment from an irate congress angry that the country had been mislead, nor did any of those fine national legislators become unhinged and begin a never ending series of congressional investigations seeking the “truth” but never quite moving beyond boilerplate soundbites.

The American people overwhelmingly ignored all those strange inconsistencies and continued on with their daily lives as if the war in Iraq was some poorly rated reality show. The only exceptions being a perfunctory observance of the ongoing conflicts by applying a magnetic yellow ribbon to their family minivan signifying they supported the troops or tearing up whenever Lee Greenwood sang that little song of his.

Yes, we as a nation were outraged by the attacks on 9/11 but that reaction became quickly muted and we left the oversight of the resulting wars to people whose true intentions had less to do with what was best for the country as whole but how these conflicts could benefit them. The one conspiracy I'm sure that exists is where a nation of people are so caught up in their own narrow, narcissistic existence that they willingly ignore the ruination of untold innocent lives along with their own futures being mortgaged.

Like I wrote at the first of this piece, life is full of inconsistencies. Taken individually they generally mean nothing but when the pieces begin to add up the probability that something is amiss increases dramatically. Whether that means the existence of a vast conspiracy, general incompetence on the part of our government, or just a people who don't want to be bothered with the little things like being involved in something greater than themselves is the unanswered question.

Simple Dignity and Courage

"Dignity does not come from avenging insults, especially from violence that can never be justified. It comes from taking responsibility and advancing our common humanity."
Hillary Clinton

Blame it on my advancing years moving far too swiftly from early middle age to what comes after or a desire to eagerly embrace the attitude of a master curmudgeon I have come to despise the practice of institutional scapegoating. That being said I realize it is near impossible to name a group or person who has never looked for a convenient pasty to take the blame for some tragic mistake or accident. While scapegoating is distasteful and wrong it is an unfortunate part of human nature.

When taken to the extreme though scapegoating moves beyond our primitive, darker nature into the realm of evil. Needless to say anyone who works within the domain of politics probably has to possess a standard list of scapegoats within close reach for those times a disaster or defeat happens during their time in office. The very idea of a sitting politician going on television and looking into a camera and saying, “I screwed up and will take responsibility for my actions” is a surreal notion best left for fantasy movies and novels. However, I honestly don't know which is worse, the lying politician looking for a scapegoat or the unwashed and barely literate and aware masses that usually accept such explanations. Whatever the case, neither the conniving, self serving politician nor the general population that refuses to look deeply into complex issues says much for the future of democratic governments.

This allows me to bring up the presidency of James Earl Carter. From the moment the man left office in 1981 there has hardly been a Republican politician who has not blamed him for some intractable issue the country can't seem to solve whether or not he had direct involvement with the problem or not. Frankly, while I am incredibly bias on the subject, it is hard for my stomach not to turn when someone like that intellectual giant Ted Cruz or the New Jersey Fat Boy make statements that are backhanded insults aimed at President Carter. Was the Carter presidency perfect? No, but he didn't turn the country into a debtor nation or illegally sell weapons to Iran like Reagan, nor did he and his vice president lie the country into a war that cost untold innocent lives and trillions of dollars.

None of the presidents that have left office after him have done half of what Jimmy Carter has to advance basic human dignity and democracy around the globe. He has shown how peaceful diplomacy and cooperation can move mountains while others here in the United States can only beat the drums of war.

Now incredibly President Carter has another lesson to teach us, how to face gracefully face our mortality. I cannot relate how sad I was to hear that his cancer has spread all through his body and into his brain. While others would have given up or used their illness to stoke a media feeding frenzy President Carter has largely continued his usual practices and schedule. He appears to be the one man who actually lives his faith as far as any person can be expected. It is my sincerest hope that President Carter remains with us as long as possible. When my times comes I can only hope that I show a tenth of the courage and dignity he has shown to both this nation and world.