Bush, Values Modeled - Not Ours

There are now numerous psychological profiles of George W. Bush - the narcissistic psychopath - but I found this treasure that really will give Americans a good idea of how the country is seen from the outside.

The US media, like all countries with dictators, models whomever is in the presidency. I remember shortly after George W. Bush was placed in his current corporate position, seeing an ad on TV that said:

"It is ok to leave the toilet seat up again - it is ok, to be a man, again."

Really, so it is ok to be rude to women again ?

THAT more or less set the tone for the Bush administration, complete with the facile rhetroic about freeing women from the rape rooms of Iraq. (While opting out of the Geneva convention and setting up their own).

Not all of us feel the need to reflect this nausating misogyny however and so here is what is seen by most of the world:

"To be an egoist refers not only to my behavior but to my character. It means: that I want everything for myself, that possessing, not sharing, gives me pleasure; that I must become greedy because if my aim is having, I am more the more I have; that I must feel antagonistic toward all others: my customers whom I want to deceive, my competitors whom I want to destroy, my workers whom I want to exploit. I can never be satisfied, because there is no end to my wishes; I must be envious of those who have more and afraid of those who have less. But I have to repress all these feelings in order to represent myself (to others as well as to myself) as the smiling, rational, sincere, kind human being everybody pretends to be."

Erich Fromm. To Have Or To Be?

Yesterday, the Canadian Senate opened with a remembrance ceremony guided by First Nation Canadians. As the drum beat soared to the ceiling of the chamber, it opened the heart of each person there and every person across the land watching that tender, dear, moment of human being to human being, honoring, trusting, and loving. If only we could open every house of parliament every day with the drums of indigenous people, taking us to the arms of father sky and mother earth, connecting our collective human heart to the beat of the earth, reminding us why we are here in the first place. To love, to be all we can be, and to reach out to each other in love. That was certainly the message of Gandhi, of Jesus and of Mohammed.

Truth has a certain divinity. It is time to rise in one's personal integrity and connection to mother earth, and say - no more, not now, not ever. This is OUR world and we want peace.