Obama, all politicians have prairie-sized holes in their world views

The oil companies fight like ravening ogres for every inch of the earth they can destroy for oil. The government kowtows to ranchers who want to kill wolves, coyotes and other life on adjacent lands to their lands, which now exist as despot-ruled nations within our larger nation. "Environmentalists" and others who see the need for different goals, for a different world -- they are voices in the wilderness. In fact there is a new kind of wilderness made up of massed and growing intertwined channellings of moneys and other resources for the rich and powerful and decreasing life -- indeed decreasing chance for survival -- of those who do not belong to the rarefied and degraded world of the new emperors. Today another appeal to "personalize" the Arctic drilling protest letters to the president. I wrote the following precede. "An enormous empty space in the president's world view has to do with his lack of consciousness about the web of life and the necessity of guardianship rather than destruction of the earth, with all its participants, including those humans ignorantly label as "other ... wild ... unnecessary ... disposable ... inconvenient" and so on. When we were younger in evolution one of our primary goals was killing for protection and for food. THINGS HAVE CHANGED. The human population-- billions of us; the human technical ability -- mass destruction and killing made effortless; the earth's status -- a living entity under continual gargantuan assault. These factors illustrate the need for a new perspective, a new consciousness. Our thrashing around in the web of life is atavistic,out of date, redounding to the threatening of life itself for our descendants. The questions are: Who or what will awaken us? How can we move to the position of guardians rather than destroyers? The babies born now, the grandchildren now growing up -- they will no doubt be living when the waters rise. This matter is not far away, it is as close as anything has ever been. And oh, yes, that empty mental and moral space exists in the views of almost all politicians -- but we expected more from this unquestionably brilliant president. Though we do know the brilliant can be blind -- worse, they can be ruled by pragmatism that, when continually appeased, grows continually to narrow the boundaries of thought."

RANCHERS/CEOS RULE THEIR OWN NATIONS

The Department of the Interior is taking away federal protection of wolves on August 1 to allow wholesale massacre. Here is my letter, probably never to be read by the secretary but thank you for reading it. Dear Secretary Salazar and colleagues in the Department of the Interior: Why propitiate wealthy ranchers by signing on for the mass murder of wolves? These ranchers in the cattle business are analogous to the oil companies – their goals are profit and all other considerations be damned. Corporations heads and cattle “barons” have been allowed by us and by our government to set themselves up in the same mode as the sovereign kings and emperors of olden days – considering their lands as royal domains -- in fact private nations -- and themselves as entitled to live outside the law and all considerations of the greater good of life itself. The most absolute power of a king was to order death as he wished. It is time to take away the absolute power that these self-appointed rulers have abrogated to themselves. Though they have boundaries, unfathomable wealth, private armies, and thousands of dependent laboring “citizens" – it is causing immeasurable harm to continue to allow them to live as separate nations within our nation, the United States of America. It’s time now for Americans to stop treating the very wealthy as royalty – think back to the Magna Carta -- are we really going to be the society which has revoked the Magna Carta in cases of the very wealthy? These "rulers" must be subject to the same laws and considerations as those in the larger society. As the Center for Biological Diversity said: “We can't let these intelligent, majestic animals be slaughtered to satisfy the whims of ranchers and politicians. Yet despite tens of thousands of letters and phone calls to save the wolves, Secretary Salazar will strip away their federal protection on August 31. Wyoming's plan will allow wolves to be indiscriminately killed outside Yellowstone National Park and a few other safe havens: 80 percent of the state will become a wolf-killing zone.” There are ways to live alongside “wild” animals without killing them. American and other western representatives continuously work with "emerging" companies to stop them from killing "wild life," to teach them the larger viewpoints of ecological living and the irreplaceable value of the “wild” as part of the travel and tourist industry, one of the richest sources of income on earth. Is wholesale murder of animals labeled as "wild" really the example we want to give to our children and to other societies? Wealthy ranchers have NO RIGHT to demand to live on lands or to be on adjacent lands where all "wildlife" must be killed, no matter how much money they give to politicians or lobbyists. They do not own the planet and the few remaining "wild" places. The human attitude has to change, for ourselves, for our descendants, and for the life of the planet. Knee jerk killing of other beings is not a viable reaction to human-identified problems. We must become guardians, not killers, in the web of life -- for the sake of our own lives and for the living earth, the largest of such beings and our only home. If our co-inhabitants in life and on earth WITH us cannot live on this planet, then it will be true -- sooner than later -- that we cannot live here either. We thrash about in the web of life at our peril.