THE TRUTH SHALL MAKE YOU FREE!

Yesterday, August 17th I woke up in a Rest Area outside Trinidad, California to the hope that my Social Security Benefit would have been direct deposited to my bank account and I would once again have the means to support my nomadic existence; and, continue my exploration of the beautiful vistas that fill the eyes with aesthetic pleasure along the West Coast of the USA.

It was not to be, I had in error believed that this deposit was made on the that date, I was later to discover that the deposit was made on the third Wednesday of each month so I will have access to the means to purchase the gasoline to speed me on my way on August 19th.

When the bank indicated the state of my funds I called the 800 number for SSI and got a customer service representative who would not correct my mistake with regards to the date when the deposit is made because I could not give him the PO Box number which was the address he had listed his screen.

I advised him of my predicament that I was almost out of gasoline but he indicated that he was bound by statutory requirements, and his supervisor when I requested to speak to her was of no help either.

I was directed to the SSI office in Eureka, California the nearest location and in my panic because I knew I had not the means to get there I told the supervisor that it was my intent because of the anger I felt at not being provided the information for an invalid reason given the emergency situation I was in; that I intended to petition the Supreme Court to have the Social Security Fund separated from the Government Revenue Account and further, have the Congress indicate just how much had been borrowed from this account and used to fund Government spending and develop a schedule of repayments of this amount back into the fund.

This was an extremely intemperate and completely out of proportion response to bureaucratic rules and regulations that I should be habituated to dealing with and should be inured to by now.

I got Twenty Dollars by overdrawing another account which I am sure will cause me to have to absorb an exorbitant fee sometime in the near future; and, so was able to pay for the gasoline that got me to the SSI office in Eureka where I chanced upon a quote from an article in a AARP magazine from an article entitled “The Mystery of Miracles” by Bill Newcott that made it all worthwhile:

Harry Rubenstein is cradling the small, red, leather-bound book in his hands as if it were a baby bird. He lets it fall open, and the backroom at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History is suddenly filled with wafting aroma of old yellow pages.

What he holds is Thomas Jefferson’s 1820 Bible, though a closer look reveals this to be no ordinary Bible. The author of the Declaration of Independence had used a razor to meticulously excise favored passages from a pair of King James Bibles and pasted them onto blank, bound pages. Left behind: every miracle, every hint of the divinity of Jesus. So Jefferson’s New Testament has no loaves and fishes, no walking on water, no water into wine, no Resurrection. Jefferson dismissed such passages as superstition. What he wanted was something more straightforward, as reflected in the title he gave the work: The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth.

“This project was purely of the Enlightenment: rewrite the Bible,” says Rubenstein, head of the museum’s division of politics and reform. Jefferson’s experiment ran squarely against the grain of American culture, adds Barbara Clark, a Smithsonian expert in 18th – century America. “He was attacked, “she says. “People wrote he was an infidel.”

No one but me, who recently had coined an article which asked the question, “Am I losing my mind” could ever appreciate the value of the knowledge that another human being, especially one of the stature of Thomas Jefferson whom, if he was not the father of this nation, was one of the founding fathers of this nation; could hold the same opinion held by myself, that Jesus was a human being, that shed of all the superstitions, the miracles, the fulfillment of the religious prophesies, the supernatural events surrounding his birth and death, he was a man who told the truth until it made him free.

In fact, these supernatural events, which many human beings have been conditioned to accept, have distracted individuals from the real, momentous, critical import of his message; the first schism that occurred between the teachings of Jesus and the Christian dog was the conversion of what Jesus described as the Spirit of Truth into the supernatural Holy Ghost, into possession by the Holy Ghost, which has not been the civilizing influence that simply telling the truth has been for me.

For the past thirty five years I have dedicated my life to reducing the incidents of man’s inhumanity to man, to changing the world so that these become the exception rather than the rule; for at least three decades I have had the answer to this momentous issue that has caused existence to inevitably be tragedy for the at least the majority of human beings at any and every given moment since the beginning of time; the answer that I have discovered is both ancient, two thousand years old, it is also to me as recent and modern as the World Wide Web – if you tell the truth relentlessly and remorselessly as I have done you will develop the mental acuity and objectivity required for the solution of social and political problems.

What I have been doing on this trip is what I have been doing for at least the past thirteen years in the USA, trying to convince human beings of the inestimable value of simply telling the truth; I have been sowing the seeds of self awareness.

I told Barbara in Gold Beach, Oregon and Dave in Central City, California that the problem in education was that when the schools began to be integrated in the Seventies that white parents who did not wish their children to be punished by black teachers agitated that corporal punishment be extracted from the Public School system removing the means for maintaining the order required for imparting knowledge so that the teachers had to find means to appear to be doing what they were paid to do and instead of educating their students they began to corrupt their students producing the FORTY THREE MILLION illiterate or semi illiterate individuals, some of whom are high school graduates, which currently causes this nation to be accurately described as the ‘dropout nation’ of the world.

I told them of the woman who passed Business Law I even though she could not read at the Davie Campus of Broward Community College because her Instructor read the answers to the multiple choice examinations immediately before giving the quiz.

I told them of the Speech Course in which I participated in which it became clear that more than half the class were indifferent readers; and, that it was the those above forty who were competent readers while the younger members of the class clearly demonstrated an incapacity in that area.

Barbara said, “They did not know that what they were doing would have that consequence;” and, I agreed with her stating that these parents were only acting out the prejudice reinforced doing the protracted struggle to keep African Americans subordinated and without rights in the Southern States using the tools of segregation and discrimination.

Dave indicated that he had three siblings who were teachers, one of whom a brother was blind, and promised to check if the amazing charges I had made were accurate.

With Mike in Eureka, California I went even further, I exposed him to the hypothesis I had developed regarding the endemic dysfunction, the near chaos, and the rootlessness that was being experienced in American society.

I told him that this was due to low levels of motivation, that human beings had been driven by coercion up the steep incline towards civilization; and, that the net effect of the spread of democratic ideals and the strengthening of democratic institutions had been to reduce the intensity and degree of coercion, in any form overt or covert, that could be applied to citizens without creating an alternative form of motivating individuals to the attitudes and patterns of behavior required for societal functioning and progress.

He demonstrated such a great appreciation and comprehension of my comments that I was moved to go into great detail about the success of the one project over which I had undisputed authority and responsibility in which Jamaican stevedores came closest to achieving the standards of productivity achieved by American stevedores loading the same cargo on the same motor vessel, one group working on what was then the Esso Dry Cargo Dock in Kingston, Jamaica; the other in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

I made it clear that what had prompted this unprecedented, momentous development was an open ended system of rewards developed by Esso managers which converted the hourly rate into a rate per ton; the implication being that when paid an hourly rate the longer the motor vessel took to be loaded the more take home pay the stevedores realized; when the tonnage rate was introduced it no longer mattered how long the motor vessel took to be loaded the take home pay would be the same.

In addition the management of that Company volunteered the information, a disclosure unprecedented in my collective bargaining experience; that the Motor Vessel “Caribe” was leased for $1200/hr and indicated that any demurrage savings which resulted from the stevedoring gang attaining a higher loading rate would be shared equally among the individuals whose effort resulted in that saving.

Earlier that morning I had worshipped, it was Sunday morning, with a group two members of whom referred to the President as “Osama,” to which I responded by saying I was not a supporter of President Obama either but my reservations were for technical reasons.

They failed to decipher the criticism implied in my comment, what I was saying is that they were saying that the President was a terrorist or had terrorist connections – even though there was no evidence whatsoever of this condition, they believed it because of their prejudice, because of their manifest prejudice.

My criticism or President Obama and my failure to support his fiscal policies do not run counter to my appreciation of the fact that he is likely the only hope of the wretched of the earth.

When the term in office of our next President begins it is likely that the economic decline will have gained such momentum that it might be irreversible; or, the next President like the majority of the American people will not ‘know’ of the danger posed to African Americans by Caucasian policemen.

So it is critically important what President Obama ‘knows,’ that the beam be removed from his eyes, that he is seized with an appreciation of why the statement made by the man called Jesus, ”Father forgive them they ‘know’ not what they do,” is so important, why I perennially refer to the adage, “Beliefs are opportune, they conceal interests.”

I often refer to the fact that every single refinery technician who worked on shift during the period 1963 – 1973 stole gasoline; I can state this because after two years I stopped engaging in this practice. If I had continued stealing product I could never make this statement without implicating myself; neither would I be capable of the connecting the dots and concluding that since the supervisors and operators who initiated this practice in the Jamaican refinery had been recruited from refineries in the USA and Canada it is very likely that pilfering of gasoline was widespread, an accepted practice in both these countries.

Suppose like other Jamaican politicians have been rumored to do, I had opened my car trunk and distributed automatic weapons to ghetto youths with the objective of shooting my way to power; if I had engaged in this practice I would not be able to state that until the current Jamaican Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition no longer represent garrison constituencies and have to come to accommodations with powerful posses to be elected, peace on that island in the sun is dream that will never come true.

If in any of the jobs I have been employed in after migrating to the United States I had engaged in any of the corrupt practices I have encountered would I be able to predict the course of future events with the accuracy I have displayed time and time again?

I think not, indeed, on many occasions I have wondered how many lies, how many deceits could I engage in before I lost the mental acuity the practice of the discipline of truth had produced for me? I never was able to come to any conclusion about this so all I have done is told the truth as much as I could in the hope that it would be enough and thus far it has been.

There are other conclusions that one may draw based on the known facts, for example, the experience of Frank Serpico the detective who was shot in the face in the city of New York while trying to expose corruption may lead us to the conclusion that every detective in every major metropolitan area is on the ‘sheet,’ and, that is the reason for the failure in the war on drugs which annually become a bigger problem despite the billions of dollars that are spend to control this evil.

When we consider the numerous examples of Roman Catholic priest worldwide who are involved in incidents of sexual abuse of minor male children; when taken together with the wealth exhibited by various religious denominations an objective observer might conclude that religious leaders are as venal and as prone to engaging in ‘sinful activities’ as are the rest of us.

Close examination of every field of endeavor or employment the same immorality and veniality is demonstrated; and, what I am suggesting is that the fact that a detective is on the ‘sheet,’ that a priest is abusing those he is supposed to pastor, that a teacher is corrupting those he is paid to teach, that a refinery technician is stealing from the Company who employees him; all these circumstances constitute a ‘beam in the eye’ of these individuals blinding them and making them incapable of limiting the abuses of power of politicians derelictions of duty that affect all members of the polity adversely.

But the reverse is also true, the corruption of politicians also create a ‘beam in the eye’ for them which makes it impossible for them to do their jobs.

I am also suggesting that telling the truth overcomes all the obstacles to function.

I spoke to Mike in Eureka of the predicament of investors who would wish to spend the ‘long haul’ producing to make a living and contributing to his society.

That investor can predict the cost of the fixed assets he will need, he will be able to commute the labor costs even when these are increased by union activity and the cost of BENEFITS; but what will be his taxes in a nation with a Five Trillion Dollar debt which burdens a government with the statutory powers to levy taxes?

The investor know that one day, soon or late, those debts must be paid; and, he has to consider will the taxes levied on his company be more than the 5 – 20 per cent return on his investment and drive him into bankruptcy.

It is not enough to for a politician to promise that deficit financing of the national budget will cease, that the nation will never be in this position again; to bring the jobs back the Constitution must be amended to reflect the requirement that the government will never be allowed to contract debt that will overburden the economy and began an obstacle to investment and production.

This is why I believe that the bale out of companies with Six Hundred Billion Dollars of taxpayer funds combined with Six Hundred Billion Dollars spent on the war that should never have been fought in Iraq constitutes ‘high crimes and misdemeanors,’ impeachable offences.

That is why I referred to the Eight Hundred Billion Dollars of the Stimulus Package fiscal insanity, especially when it is taken into consideration that large amounts of these funds will end up in the ‘pork barrel’ and perpetuate the gargantuan governmental bureaucracy which could be cut be two thirds in my estimate and still retain its efficiency.

The question is what was the beam in the eye of President Bush that prevented him from perceiving what he was doing, the massive damage that he was inflicting on the economy?

And what is the beam in the eye of President Obama that prevents him from perceiving the massive folly that the Stimulus Package is?

Recently he spoke of honoring ‘change agents.’ First of all, in my definition of what is a ‘change agent’ I may be unique in all the USA in accurately being described as a ‘change agent.’

In my definition, a change agent is one who has achieved cultural change, an individual who has not only rejected and renounced being an agent of coercion determined culture but has become so powerfully habituated to his new culture that he has become capable of transmitting this to others; he, or she, has become a ‘crazy man’ of the Israeli Kibbutzim experience.

Further, in my definition, there are only two categories of culture, the first that relies on coercion to motivate the other; the second that relies on positive reinforcements to motivate the other. I would really like to be informed of which individual, besides myself, has achieved this epiphany IN PRECEPT.

If I were to offered a medal in a ceremony to reward my achieving this civilized state I would with amusement refuse this as unnecessary and superfluous.

Thirty five years ago I embraced the principled position that children, that even one child should not die meaninglessly and needlessly to further the corrupt objectives and machinations of politicians, I have dedicated my life to creating the only fitting and appropriate memorial to those senseless deaths – a world in which such incidents of man’s inhumanity to man were the exception rather than the rule they are today.

The knowledge that I have remained true to that commitment, that I have honored that obligation to dead children who were unaware and could not recognize or reward the sacrifices involved in this pilgrimage is honor enough.

The only way a man or woman may honor me is by following in my footsteps, by doing what I have done, which is telling the truth and doing the right thing as much as is humanly possible.

It is a course I strongly recommend to President Obama, democracy will likely perish in this nation unless a true change agent emerges.