Watching the Republican candidates submit themselves to the withering and excruciating debate process seems an exercise in self-flagellation. Indeed, it is easy to offer an unkind assessment of these people willing to take the plunge and expose themselves to this process, but then, nobody is twisting their arm and they should know what to expect.

Considering all the details of the process, the fund raising, the debates and press conferences, the travel, the debilitating effect on their energy and health, the requirement of absorbing information on foreign and domestic policy where the slightest slipup of memory becomes instant evidence of incompetence or worse, the candidates are easy targets for ridicule and satire, some deserved, some mean-minded.

Worse, the life history of the candidates, the real skinny on their peccadilloes, their mistakes, their family backgrounds, their sexual conduct, their youthful improprieties, their school marks, their lifetime psychological profiles and most of their inner secrets are all subjected to public scrutiny. Nothing can be hidden in our contemporary technologically drenched culture. Any blemish is sure to be revealed.

It is as if someone who wants to run for President must make up his or her mind at the very dawn of his or her ambition and live a life that can withstand the transparency and revelations of intensive investigative zeal, not only by opponents but by an increasingly sadistic media and anyone else with a computer at hand.

Before the Internet, we knew only the obvious and background checks were limited to what could be known through a determined media investigation or perhaps through the all-knowing eye of J. Edgar Hoover’s intelligence machine, the details of which were often deliberately withheld.  Considering Hoover’s vast power, one can speculate that he knew everything about everybody who participated in the political system during his reign. One wonders if such a situation continues to exist under the present leadership.

Of course, no one can escape from the revelations of “tell all” published memoirs of various eyewitness participants that reveal all the juicy details of the sexual improprieties and other questionable activities of our lawmakers and power elite. Often, they occur long after the death of the principal but sometimes they arrive in the midst of an active career and can be devastating to that hapless person’s ambitions.

Ironically, in the past, certain aspects of behavior in the personal history of politicians were off limits for public revelation by a kind of gentlemen’s agreement with the press. Sexual activity in all its forms, straight, gay, adulterous, or whatever was considered a private matter unless, as Wilbur Mills, the former head of the House Ways and Means Committee found out, it became blatant and unavoidably an issue for public consumption.

Everyone in the know knew of these sexual peccadilloes of the political class. Nothing was really secret in the political and media community, and it was rare that such a bond of silence was broken. John Kennedy, for example, a serial adulterer, managed his affairs via a network of secret keepers. He was, of course, not the only President with an overactive libido who stepped over that line, but then I suppose such information is under perpetual seal by the Secret Service.

Only Bill Clinton, who had apparently frequently exercised the venery out of wedlock during his time as Governor of Arkansas, did not get the message of the break in the old custom, fell victim to his propensity, and was ultimately impeached, although he has now been resurrected and forgiven by an adoring public and his wife and daughter.

Sex was not the only thing that was kept hidden by gentlemen’s agreement. Alcohol abuse was overlooked and certain members of congress often reeled onto the floor to vote. Health and disablement, too, was an issue very carefully manipulated.

Having lived through all three terms of FDR and part of his fourth, I can honestly admit that I was unaware of the extent of his disability and how many of us knew that President Kennedy suffered from Addison’s disease.  Historians have recorded the fact that Mrs. Woodrow Wilson ran the White House while her husband was incapacitated by a stroke.

As for money matters, except for egregious crimes, the use of money for campaign purposes was also swept under the rug. The Watergate scandals were supposed to put that one to rest but the old adage “money talks” continues to haunt and corrupt the political process. Everyone knows that large contributions, a euphemism for a form of bribery, offer substantial political rewards, as any lobbyist knows and expects. There is no free lunch in Washington. Most get what they pay for.

Oddly, the use of debates to weed out the unworthy in primary campaigns is now the operative norm for exposing candidates and their views to wide audiences.  Unfortunately, it does become an opportunity for self-aggrandizement and public exposure for people clearly unqualified for the job. That comes with the territory.

Inevitably, it will sort itself out and party choices will emerge to expose themselves to one-on-one debates where participants will verbally duke it out.

We experience political campaigns as entertainment and debates have become something of a reality show. Unfortunately, the stakes are high since the person who wins the grand prize of the presidency wields great power over our lives. It is certainly true that few have the guts and courage to enter the fray, which has become little more than a kind of shooting gallery for a massive contingent of well-armed public snipers.

Nevertheless, I marvel at the mad courage of these self-appointed candidates. They perpetuate the embedded myth that any American born in this country who meets the age qualifications can become President of the United States. History, recent and past, tells us that as a people, we have not always been wise in our choices but we have blundered along and some of those who seemed the least qualified by background and education turned out to have been our greatest leaders, while those who had the best resumes and the most talent for making speeches turned out to be duds.

Their anger undoubtedly reflects a general frustration with inequities, real and perceived, the uncertainty of our economic future, the absence of talented political leadership, and a sense of being overwhelmed by man-made and natural impediments.

Some are angry because they are unemployed and can’t get jobs. Some are angry because people who have jobs are making too much money and others aren’t making enough. Others are angry over the high cost of tuition and the fact that they must borrow money to get an education and be strapped to pay it back just when they’re starting their careers.

Still, others are angry because they can’t pay their mortgages and have to go into foreclosure or personal bankruptcy. Many are angry over what they observe as a trashing of our environment or racial inequity or capital punishment. Many are against war, hunger, profit, conglomerates and corruption in general. They want the rich to pay more taxes, which they call “their fair share.”

Note that I am not challenging the things they are angry about. I am angry about some of them myself. But I do think it’s time for a bit of reflection, time perhaps, to get off the soapbox and reflect about all the possibilities that might in some way temper their anger with a bit of wisdom.

Most of what they are angry about is the result of good intentions gone awry or were distorted by what is best described as unintended consequences. Those who are, for example, angry about school loans should understand that Congress in 1965, out of a desire to give everyone a chance to go to college, passed a student loan law whereby students could borrow money to pay tuition and pay it back when they began to earn their own money.

What they did not foresee was all that money going into private colleges encouraged some of them to expand into giant enterprises that required more and more tuition money to feed the maws of their ambition. After all, the burden of payback was on the student not on the educational institutions and the banks got the interest.

And what of the mortgage debacle? It has always been cited as the American dream to own your own home and all politicians encouraged programs to make it easy for Americans to buy homes. They set up Fannie and Freddie to help Americans do just that. After all, it was an act of faith that real estate would continue to go up, up and up.

In fact, they made it so easy to get a mortgage that people following the good intentions of the political class rushed to buy homes. They couldn’t build them fast enough and many bought homes they could not afford.

What they did not understand was that the real estate market, like all markets, has financial bumps. But the good intentions of the politicians opened the doors to mortgages that were so easy to obtain that everybody who could took advantage of the programs and, as was inevitable, there was a comeuppance. Can one blame the politicians for their good intentions? And who was the greedier, the buyers or the lenders?

The irony is that people who are paying their mortgages with their homes worth less than the mortgages, are seeking relief because their homes are “under water.” What they should understand is that once the market stabilizes and the laws of supply and demand kick in, the chances are that their homes will eventually rise and be worth considerably more than they are today.

Then there is health care, which politicians told us, with good intentions, that everyone is “entitled” to health care from the cradle to the grave. Did they realize that the cost of exotic diagnosis machines and the effect on the income of doctors, the cost of medical malpractice insurance, the temptation to defraud, the cost of regulating and policing and the demand for more and more services in a rising population would make it impossible to fund forever? Good intentions certainly, but where were their adding machines?

I do think the protesters should think twice about their definition of corporate greed. I believe they mean profit which, when all is said and done, is the ultimate objective of a private corporation and determines how much their shares are worth. Wall Street is merely a marketplace for these shares and a mechanism to fund corporations to create and expand businesses.

When the brave kids of “Occupy” pound their computer keyboards or text their messages, they should understand that these devices were created and funded by Wall Street firms. I wonder how far Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, and hundreds of others with ideas to create products useful to all of us would fare if they did not have the mechanism of Wall Street.

Indeed, it is ironic that the Occupiers call to arms has been carried out on the backs of Wall Street funded corporations, their alleged enemy.

I could go on and on. Yes, some people have not played by the rules, both in the private and public sector. Nor is it a secret that government programs are often wasteful, too bureaucratic and often temptations for corruption and overspending.

Democracy, after all, has its blind spots and the desire of politicians to help as many of their constituents as possible is essential to the process. But blanket generosity often gets the recipient used to dependency, hence the misnomer “entitlements,” which eventually morphs into either “giveaway” or “broken promises.”

Yes there are unnatural inequities, government programs that need to be tweaked and corrected, politicians who overpromise and can’t envision things beyond their own need to be re-elected.

No, we do not live in the best of all possible worlds and greed is only one of our numerous deadly flaws. Nevertheless, we Americans, do exist in a world of possibilities created by a governmental experiment that has managed to survive for more than a couple hundred years and has opened up channels of opportunities that have resulted in the realization of hopes and dreams for millions. As they say, we can’t throw out the baby with the bath water.

The worst thing that could happen is for us to lose the sense of optimism which has sustained us since our founding. We are, indeed, like all humans, imperfect and vastly flawed. We are also remarkably self-corrective and resilient.

Let’s call the Wall Street protests a wake up call, a point well taken and an expression of anger worth our ardent and immediate attention. It is time, too, to heed the danger signals spawned by the gathering clouds of violence and aimless disruption.

Contact made. Message delivered. It’s time for those on the protest line to go on home, get on with productive lives and take their anger to the ballot box.

On the surface, the imbalance seems preposterous, its maddening inequality and disproportion makes the Israeli position seem alarmingly weak and counter productive, while the Hamas position appears strong, powerful and victorious. It appears to reward the strategy of hostage taking and opens the door to repetitive attempts at kidnapping tactics by Hamas as a key to freeing further Palestinian prisoners.

Beneath the surface is the agony of parents, siblings, friends and relatives of those innocent civilians who were murdered by the deliberate acts of many of the prisoners, who indiscriminately exploded or helped explode bombs to extinguish the lives of people who had the bad luck or timing to be eating in restaurants, traveling in buses or simply walking the streets.

It must be awful to see the killers of their children go free, whatever the political rationalization. To them, such an exchange must appear as a knife opening old wounds.

The Hamas side reveres these killers as martyrs and trains its army of suicide bombers by brainwashing them to believe that welcoming death by murdering enemies offers martyrdom and greater rewards in their religiously imagined heaven.

Why some mothers and fathers on the Arab side extol and praise these deaths by their children is beyond my comprehension, both as a parent and a human being. Yes, I do understand the psychology of passionate religious devotion and the politics of nationalism, tribalism, and affinity, although, to be fair, I admit my ignorance of Islamic imperatives.

But looking beneath the surface for motives, one discovers that such a simple analysis is far from clean cut. For example, looking at it from the point of view of a father of sons, nothing, but nothing would ever deter me from moving heaven and earth to spare my children’s pain and suffering. Gilad’s parents spent the past five years of their son’s captivity in a 24/7 campaign to get the Israeli government to find a way to affect the release their beloved child.

One assumes that the Israel Defense Forces spent days trying to figure out a way to release Gilad by military action that would not result in the young man’s death. Apparently, every plan they conceived had too many risks, and it is clear that Gilad’s captives had cunningly created an impregnable prison for the young man.

The Israelis also had to wrestle with secular and religious interpretations. On the secular side, the Israeli’s have a largely conscript Army that vows to leave no soldier, dead or alive, on foreign soil. This is Israel’s solemn pledge to its military and has been proven again and again in numerous ways.

The Palestinian side, knowing of this promise and what was interpreted by them as vulnerability, have cleverly exploited this in the past, extracting other prisoner exchanges even for dead soldiers and citizens resulting in the return of thousands of Palestinian prisoners, many of whom resumed their bloody terrorist attacks against Israelis.

On the religious side, a powerful force in Israeli political and cultural life, there are admonitions in Talmudic biblical interpretations that state that redeeming captives takes precedence over sustaining the poor and clothing them, and there is no commandment more important than redeeming captives.

Indeed, in the Torah, the sacred Jewish text reputed to be the five books of Moses, it tells of Abraham’s early life when he raised an Army to release his nephew Lot who was taken captive in Sodom by enemy invaders. There are other passages as well in holy texts that favor release of captives through barter.

But in the end, after much inner debate about the rights and wrongs of such a decision, I come out with a persistent thought that after all the political, military, strategic, moral, religious, ethical and practical considerations are dispensed with, Hamas unwittingly has given worldwide credence that on the scale of human value, the life of one average Israeli soldier is worth the lives of a thousand Arabs.

Since my parents were broke, we were living with my grandparents in a tiny three bedroom house with one bathroom. There were eleven of us. Since quarters were tight, I slept with my kid brother and my parents slept in the dining room and an uncle in the kitchen.

I worked my butt off trying to find a job. Who the heck wanted to hire an English major? My choice. My own damned fault.

It was not fun running around New York City, sitting in employment agency offices, suffering rejection after rejection.

The odd jobs I had cadged working during the war to pay my tuition had dried up. I packed candy at Abraham and Straus, delivered telegrams by telephone for Western Union, sold shoes at Macy’s, did surveys for corporations, worked as a busboy, anything to make a buck. Thankfully, I lived at home where everybody chipped in to put food on the table and clothes on our backs.

I was really angry and depressed. Everything seemed beyond formidable. In Manhattan, people went about their business as usual. People had cars, lived in fancy apartments, saw shows, and ate in fine restaurants. How dare them, I thought, when I was trying so damned hard to get a foothold on a career, whatever that meant to an English major.

I’d start my day with a nickel ride into Manhattan, visiting crowded employment agencies, walking the streets, sitting in Central Park when the weather was good, getting a cream cheese sandwich on nut bread for fifteen cents at Chock full o’Nuts. It was downright discouraging and, believe me, I was angry as hell. I thought, I’m a college graduate, I deserve a job.

I admit it. I blamed all the politicians, the fat cats, the banks, the stock markets, the bejeweled attendees at opening nights at the theater, the country club types, the socialites, the bosses, the people who owned cars, traveled, bought great clothes, ate in fabulous restaurants, anyone that had more than me, which was pretty much everybody.

I considered myself a victim of other people’s greed, of injustice, unfairness, prejudice. You name it. My blame list was as long as Broadway.

Sure I had empathy, but it was mostly for me and my Dad, who could not find a job, but was too proud to apply for welfare. It was called relief in those days. I agreed with him. We had our family. It would have been unthinkable for us to take an unearned handout.  As they say, we got by the skin of our teeth.

I felt crushed by circumstances, massively pissed off at everything and everybody. The dreams and ambitions that had fueled my childhood and college days were in the trash can.

Now, in the light of decades of struggle and experience, I ask myself would I have joined the protesters on Wall Street? Maybe. They, as I was then, are pissed off. Many are close to my age at the time of my personal great depression.

So here is my advice to those people who apparently have the time and energy to protest their plight by blaming everybody in sight. Forgive me if I sound somewhat harsh. And yes, I know, then was then and now is now. But having lived through depressions, recessions, poverty, disappointment, ecstasy, love, military service, numerous wars, fatherhood, failure, rejection and what passes for success, here it is folks. Hate it or love it.

We live in America, land of opportunity, fierce competition, innovation, imagination, ambition, risk taking and resourcefulness, big dreams, big ideas and big chances. Not everyone becomes a movie star or a billionaire and, as they say, wishing won’t make it so. The price of this free-for-all environment spawns both good guys and bad guys, saints and charlatans, successes and failures. As old Ben Franklin said, “diligence is the mother of good luck” and Winston Churchill’s “Never Surrender” is as good a mantra as ever devised.

Like them I’ve learned that the real joy is in the aspiring, reaching for the moon, coping with the rough patches, dreaming big, never surrendering to despair or jealousy or worst of all blaming others. That’s what freedom is all about.  Hell, millions of people in America can tell a story similar to mine.  Just ask Zuckerberg or Gates or Jobs or Buffet. Go for it and stop whining.

Would I have joined the protesters? Maybe. But it would have been a waste of precious time and, when you add it all up, all we have is time. So stop all this “woe is me” baloney and get on with it. The “getting there” is three quarters of the fun in the game of life and America is just about the best playpen you’ll find on the planet.

And if you want to protest, then protest the fact that no matter what, the game ends for all of us. That, too, will get you nowhere. Oh yes, I have done all the things other people were doing that pissed me off years ago. Big deal. I’d settle now for that cream cheese sandwich on nut bread from Chock Full o’Nuts.

Shakespeare was right.

“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.”

Her family most probably lives from paycheck to paycheck, and are ardent followers of the traditional verities of the American way, family, country, God, the stuff of the Pledge of Allegiance, the national anthem, God Bless America. You know the drill, when the flag goes by you put your hand over your heart and often, like me, shed a tear or two of pride and gratitude.
The pretty little girl is feisty, competitive, athletic, gregarious, outspoken, religious. She is murder on the basketball court, passionate and curious. Her dad moves the family around, winds up in Alaska, a small town. He teaches high school English, a noble pursuit. The little girl gets prettier, falls in love, marries, has kids. Her energy is boundless. She has opinions and finds her voice, goes from PTA to town council, runs for Lieutenant Governor, loses.

Here she is, juggling home, kids, and, of all things, politics in a new state, mostly rural, ruled by old boy cronies, now enjoying the power bonanza of energy resources. She has endured the sniping, innuendo and vitriol that comes with the territory. Then she takes a long shot. Young family in hand, a hard working husband, little kids, she runs for Governor, beats the old boy network and makes it.

Isn’t this the gold standard of the new woman, the ideal, the fully liberated female with the energy to take on the once impossible split role of full time working mom? Come on guys. Love her or hate her, agree or disagree with her, credit is due.

She gets picked by a candidate for President to be his running mate.  She makes a great opening speech, despite a high pitched voice that is sometimes squeaky. Of course, she knows what she’s in for. Politics in America has always been a blood sport. For a woman it is double bloody based on years of put downs and women’s place is in the home sort of thing. The snotty superior snobby media give her the bum’s rush. She is dubbed stupid, ignorant, uninformed. Governor of what? Alaska. Hell, that’s not even attached to the mainland. A potential Vice President of the United States? Get outta here.

Most haven’t a clue to the policies she has supported and fought for when Governor. Are they really that far out of the mainstream of the American body politic?   She is indeed right of center and it’s fair game to oppose her vigorously on those grounds. That’s expected in politics.

But I have found that many people who hate her can’t articulate their policy reasons. Ask a bully why he or she bullies and you’ll get the same answer, meaning no answer. Or something like: I just can’t stand her. Or just plain “yuk.”

I may be prejudiced. I hate bullies.

Okay so the ticket loses. Some people blame her for McCain’s loss. How many times have you heard that lately? I would have voted for McCain but I was frightened by that dopey lady from Alaska.

What now?  She has been anointed America’s dummy by the media elite. Mention her name and the Ivy League league establishment has a twenty point rise in blood pressure. In my circles, they get indigestion and I catch hell if I am less than negative.

She has been proclaimed a lousy mother, a money grubbing greedy bitch, a loud mouthed moron and given a thrashing in the press that would have floored any stout hearted male with an outsized ego. No politician, man or woman has been so vilified in the national media. Not in my lifetime. In my opinion the Sarah haters have crossed the line.

After her Vice Presidential loss the much maligned lady discovers that once you look behind the rot proclaimed by the smarty pants opinionators, there are lots of people who really admire her. Millions. Politics aside, many like her feistiness, her resilience, her strong feminine creds. For lots of young ambitious girls in Middle America who want more out of life, she is a genuine heroine.

Guys admire her toughness, her kick ass attitude and, yes, her good looks. She is a wife a guy can be proud of.  Not everyone of course. But enough for some genuine mass applause.

Irony of ironies. All that endless drumbeat of negative media attention has made her a celebrity.  They spelled her name right and made it a household word. And, by God, if you are a celebrity in America you are really dumb if you don’t cash in. If Sarah is so dumb, I’d like to know what smart is.

This defense of Sarah screed comes on the heels of Joe McGinniss’ snarky book about Sarah and her family whose title I won’t deign to mention. I don’t even need to read it but the reviews indicate it’s full of gossipy innuendo and sly unflattering hints of dubious conduct. The usual, only more so.  Enough already.

If anything, the book by its very publication offers some insight by its mere publication into the Sarah Palin phenomenon. The negative publicity machine seems in perpetual motion. Soon the guy that impregnated her daughter will have a book out. It will undoubtedly offer more negatives for the usual pile on. Sarah, too, will write another one as well as members of her family. Every scrap of information about Sarah Palin sells. She has a helluva endurance record, commercially and politically.

She is one of the first Vice Presidential candidates in history whose name you will most likely remember. Past her peak? Hardly.

As for politics, remember the question that Reagan raised during his campaign? Are you better off now than you were four years ago?

I’ll give you Sarah’s answer.

“You betcha.”

In our present budget crisis the relationship between the two are unassailable. Our health care programs, for example, are based on the assumption that we want to live as long as possible and spend whatever it takes to hold back the inevitability of a visit from the grim reaper.

Most of our health care expense is spent in the twilight years, that brief period at the point where we can be subjected to every modern device to keep us alive even if our prognosis is hopeless, which in the scheme of things is a cost effective nightmare. In the end, according to experts, all this expensive effort offers a mere marginal time frame in which our lives can be extended.

It has been calculated that by 2015 the cost of terminal care for Alzheimer’s patients alone will rise to $189 billion and by 2050 to one trillion dollars. Unless a cure is found, it is a statistical possibility that about half of us who live beyond age 85 will have Alzheimer’s or some form of dementia requiring expensive terminal care, some of it long term.

Indeed, unless we find a cure for cancer, stroke, heart disease, diabetes and a myriad of destructive illnesses, the costs to sustain the lives of the terminally or advanced sick by life extension machines will skyrocket beyond our wildest calculations.

Of course, in our culture we revere life and make every effort to sustain it as long as we can. We measure a full life in years and look upon any life cut short by disease, accident, murder or war as the penultimate tragedy of human existence. Unlike the brainwashed fools who strap explosive devices to their bodies and welcome death for themselves and others for reasons that defy logic, or the depressed and fed-up who commit suicide, most of us want to cling to the conscious life.

How the hard facts of economics impact on the future of our country is the central issue of our times. When Sarah Palin, like her or not, rails against the possibility of “death panels” she does indeed pose a quintessential economic and moral dilemma for the future. Unfortunately, although she raises a chilling unthinkable possibility, she is prescient but offers no panacea.  Nor does anyone else.

The issue comes down to this: Is it possible to extract enough money from our citizens to pay the price for a tsunami of health care costs coming down the pike, most of which will be expended in the last months of life?

Which brings us to taxes. We all know that our economy depends these days on borrowed money. Most of it is borrowed from other countries, especially China. We know, too, that the majority of our income taxes, both Federal and State are paid by a very small percentage of the highest income earners in the country. More than fifty percent of our citizens pay no income tax at all.

This is a travesty. To be fair, everyone should pay something, even a token amount to show a sense of belonging and national pride. Such a suggestion surely may sound heartless and indifferent to the realities of being poor. Perpetual poverty is another dilemma that we have not been able to solve.

On the other hand the term “poor” should not be defined as a permanent condition. Millions have once been defined as “poor” and many have through dint of optimism, persistence and hard work climbed the ladder out of poverty. Having grown up in the great depression, a time when my dad was chronically unemployed and money was almost non-existent, I know the drill. It is an awful condition but one must never lose hope in the promise of America to advance our prospects. Without faith in that promise we are a doomed nation.

Simply raising taxes on those already paying the freight, who through imagination, hard work, innovation and yes, luck, might satisfy those with a bias toward the more successful among us, will not solve the problem. Any action that inhibits reward inevitably reduces risk. And reducing risk is a crushing blow to the entrepreneurs and dreamers among us who are the engine that, so far, made America unique and exceptional.

Closing loopholes, on the other hand, might be a good legislative choice and satisfy those who revel in the doctrine of “unfairness” and who continue to dub the financially able as slackers, accusing them of not paying their “fair share.” I’ve always wondered what percentage of their income constituted “fair share.”  The irony is that even if those of higher incomes paid one hundred percent of their earnings to the taxman, it still would not solve the problem of overspending.

Most of our politicians on both sides of the aisle know this, but their solutions are unfortunately based on their own selfish and obsessive ambitions and have nothing to do with the reality of our dilemma. Yes, we are spending more money than we take in.

What our politicians are doing is playing a balancing act on a fault line. Most of all they fear losing votes if they take away money from their core constituencies, who, like the proverbial comic live-in brother-in-law, will fight like hell against the threat of being pushed out of the house and going out to work on his own. Voters are naturally averse to any politician who will not support a cherished government stipend.

Indeed, we can all see what is happening in countries like Greece, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Ireland among others. They are the canaries in the mineshaft. Governmental attempts at austerity send thousands into the street protesting any attempt to take away or reduce their so-called entitlements.

Will America’s politicians stand up to the inevitability of the oncoming onslaught?  I am holding my breath. Still, self-sacrifice is one national trait that has buttressed the massive changes for the good that has strengthened this country over the years. If there is any of this quality left in our spiritual reserves we will have to summon it up quickly or face inevitable disaster.

As a supportive admirer of women who work and aspire, I can’t help concluding that Sarah has realized the feminist dream of having it all. It baffles me why she is not celebrated by women for this singular achievement, which could serve as an inspiration for young women seeking to make a difference through public service, and fulfilling their instinctive desire to have children and a stable family life.

I have heard this college educated working woman referred to as trailer trash. Trailer trash, indeed. Sarah earned her living as a commercial fisherman and Todd worked far from home on the oil rigs. I guess that kind of work is to the intellectual elite the new definition of trailer trash.

Most of the women in my social circles wrinkle their noses when confronted with any mention of Sarah, as if her name itself induces some nauseating effluvia.

Remember Harry Truman, the haberdasher who never went to college? I have vivid memories of this man being pummeled by the Ivy League snobs in our midst.

I’m sure the Sarah haters are disappointed that the anti-Sarah dirt they expected from her e-mails did not bear fruit.

Perhaps they expected some revelation of a fascist conspiracy, a secret agenda of a far right psychopath attempting to undermine America behind the mask of good looks and a perky personality.

I’m sure, too, they were hoping that the e-mails would serve to diminish her intelligence and ignorance of world affairs that the interview with Katie Couric tried to deliberately induce during the campaign.

It was that interview that set the agenda for the opening gun of the campaign to tar and feather Sarah as a lightweight brainless moron who was a walking political disaster.

Never mind that she busted the hold of the greedy big boys who ran Alaska for years, or that she was instrumental in pushing a gas line through Canada to warm up the frigid Midwest.

The sheer ugliness of the campaign to discredit her, not merely as a politician which is fair game, but a mother and a wife, and paint her as a clueless right wing fanatic, is, in my opinion, unprecedented and undeserving.

What I admire most about Sarah is the way she has absorbed every punch and continues to come out swinging. How can one fail to admire that kind of moxie? Take advantage Sarah. What’s wrong with making a buck? Rub their snobby noses in it.

The campaign against her for whatever reason has been relentless, hateful, sanctimonious and vicious. Miraculously, she has survived, and won respect from a large swath of the so-called working class. Indeed, try naming a Vice Presidential candidate of recent vintage. Most have faded into oblivion.

My friends characterize her as a dumb broad who has no business on the public stage. Unfortunately, they can’t offer much more than “I just can’t stand her” as their reasons for hating her. I guess I am an anomaly in the social world I inhabit.

So be it.  To them my irritant is an entertainment.

As for me, I like Sarah’s take no prisoners brass balls attitude. Maybe it’s time we Americans took some hard political lessons from someone who had to perform actual productive work for a living. Could she do worse than what we have had running the show in the last decade?

That said I would love to have a peek into the e-mails of Sarah’s political and media enemies. Might keep an army of psychiatrists busy for decades.

Oh yes, what ever happened to Katie Couric?

One begins to see a growing army of doubters and deniers alleging that the horrors perpetrated by the Nazis were exaggerations for purposes of propaganda by the allies who needed to portray the Nazis as Neanderthals.

The changes in perceptions, despite all the historical data, the endless documentaries and books attesting to the abject cruelty of the Nazis and their allies, the laws that Germany has enacted to prevent such a bestial catastrophe from happening again, are beginning to find traction in the old and new media. We no longer turn away in horror, but often observe these events  merely as spectacle, a performance by others for our entertainment.

Remarks by a Danish filmmaker about his sympathy for Hitler elicits chuckles, despite his slap on the wrist punishment, and a holocaust denier becomes head of the oil cartel. Sympathy for Israel, once the plucky little democracy created by the UN in the aftermath of the holocaust as a haven for this oppressed minority is now considered a menace to its billion strong neighbors and must now justify to the world its right to exist as a Jewish nation. Apparently the shortest distance between two points is human memory.

Perhaps there is so much evil being portrayed in the fiction of films and books that it seems commonplace to believe that real evil is also fiction. Even the most bizarre and tragic circumstances like peaceful protesters being killed on orders of power mad dictators, devastating floods, fires and earthquakes, massacres by machete, beheadings, suicide bombings, and an endless catalogue of assorted horrors are seen, if one isn’t at risk, as mere entertainments.

To most of us the bloody conflict seen on our screens seems repetitive and ordinary. We shrug with vague acceptance when we learn that the weaponry of mass destruction is proliferating, that religious wars are accelerating, that true believers of one cause or another butcher true believers of opposing causes. Mankind seems to float on a river of blood. All of this is filmed, packaged and sent to our homes and offices through the miracle of technology. We are voyeurs of evil. We love it.

There are, for example, thousands of Internet sites set up by ultra fascist groups hawking monstrous accusations against the same imagined enemies conceived by Hitler and his supporters. Many of his ideas have been recast, notably in Arabic and used to promote Jihad and brainwash potential suicide bombers.  Copycat Nazi hate machines have been rejuvenated, thanks to the Internet and they are gaining adherents and supporters.

One might say it has always been thus. Evil is mankind’s hobby. Killing fields are everywhere.

Of course, the great stars in this mass charade are the so-called leaders who orchestrate their appearance with contrived props, cheering crowds, their words packaged for digital dissemination. It’s getting so that every time I see and hear a speech by a politician I think of Charlie Chaplin and his indelible performance of Adolph Hitler in the film, The Great Dictator.

If there is any bottom line to all this sturm and drang it is that if it is not happening to you directly, it is merely entertainment. And if it is happening to you, rest assured that others will be viewing your agony on a screen somewhere holding a bowl of popcorn, mesmerized by the spectacle.

I do not believe that President Bush was lying. But I do believe that some cunning character in the intelligence chain had contrived the falsehood in such a way that it gained credence throughout the world, aided and abetted by Saddam who must have been enjoying the charade until it blew up in his face.

That was eight years ago. Since that time technology has moved ahead at warp speed and it would be doubtful that such a lie could be perpetrated so flawlessly. Indeed, the recent killing of Osama Bin Laden illustrates the point. Technology is making it increasingly difficult to get away with a cunning lie.

Bin Laden’s whereabouts were studied and pinpointed. Advanced technology made it possible for the Navy Seal helicopters to sneak into Pakistan undetected, do the job, then beat a quick retreat, albeit with the probable loss of the technological know-how embedded in a destroyed helicopter tail that made it possible. DNA technology made Osama’s identity proof positive. What is even more remarkable was that the entire operation was observed as if it were a reality television show.

What I am trying to illustrate is that we have all become googleized and it is becoming increasingly impossible for any public figure to lie about anything. Nothing can be hidden. Instant research has arrived. There are no secrets. Technology is making it impossible to lie.

There is, in fact, little wiggle room for hypocrisy. For example, when the President of Pakistan denies that elements in Pakistan had made it possible for Bin Laden to live there and continue to operate, no one, including his own people, could possible believe him.

While I am dealing here with public figures, I make that claim for private people as well. Technology has narrowed the options for lying in every public activity from petty crimes like speeding to serious crimes like murder. There are cameras everywhere. People are watching and listening. Privacy is swiftly disappearing. Like most things about technology, it has a good side and a bad side.

For a public figure it spells the end of hypocrisy, which is especially confusing for those like me who were brought up on George Washington’s story of the cherry tree. Yes, I did chop down that tree.

When our leaders tell us that we are going to war to protect civilians from being massacred in Libya, and then blandly ignore the brutal massacres of innocent civilians in Syria for example, we wink at each other. We know this is a lie because technology has brought us the truth in pictures from smart phones and sound recordings from victims in Syria.

It is getting more and more impossible to lie. Wall Streeters who profit from inside information are also vulnerable to technological advances. Ditto for organized crime and other attempts to operate clandestinely.

We’ve come a long way from the days when Thomas Jefferson could deny his affair with the underage Sally Hemmings.  And Newt will have a tough time rationalizing his tawdry adultery record although the Bill Clinton experience does offer a game plan for how to beat the system by redefining the meaning of words as in what physical action constitutes having sex.

When the White House invited a rap star who has disparaged cops, excused a convicted cop killer and purveyed pandering hate lyrics, googleization made it impossible to deny it, and the administration spokespeople were forced to provide pretzel-like explanations that sounded foolish, sanctimonious and blatantly hypocritical.

It should be obvious that technology has ushered in a new age of transparency. Nothing will be safe from the seeing eye and the hearing ear. My meager examples are just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. In fact, the iceberg has already melted.

On a public scale the upcoming Presidential election will be the most totally transparent public vetting of the century. Hypocrisy will not cut it. Lies will be impossible. Every media meister from every political persuasion in the world will be playing “gotcha” in visible chapter and verse. There will be no place to hide. Speeches will have to be totally googleized and teleprompters had better be working.

If there is a glimmer of hope for our species it might be that technology will force us all to adopt again the old verities trumpeting honesty, morality, ethics, compassion, fairness and decency.

The facts are that the gates of privacy have been breached forever. Perhaps the last bastion is the human mind itself, where the imagination still reigns supreme and thoughts are protected in the buried vaults of the human brain. If that is ever penetrated from outside by technology, God help us all.

You put in a call to customer service of a company whose stated goals are to correct problems, field complaints, offer instructions or make reservations for airlines or hotels or whatever. This service is advertised heavily and assures the customer that all inquiries will be prompt, efficient and helpful.

An automated voice will prompt you to make decisions that will hasten your inquiry and either attempt to correct your problem by pushing buttons or, if a live agent is busy, politely ask you to wait. Many of these automated services will give you a heads up on how long it will be before you are connected with a live operator.

Most of us have accepted this impersonal process and have put up with it despite the frustrations and one-sided inability to react to a human voice connected to a human intelligence.

I guess one might justify this hardship on the basis of our tolerance of paying the price in inconvenience that comes along with the astounding gadgetry that has revolutionized our lives. Those of us who grew up in another era where such matters were handled via live people exercising human intelligence might curse this increasingly automated world, but the fact is that it is here to stay and I suppose we will have to accept its frustrations and live with it.

My beef, which is the subject of this essay, is what occurs when you do, at long last, reach a live person. What we usually get on the other end of the line is someone that speaks in a tongue that is allegedly English but is, for the most part, incomprehensible, deeply accented and missing the subtle nuances and pronunciation that makes all the difference in clear and comprehensive voice communication.

I am all for the global marketplace, but in this area of the spoken word, my experience has been so frustrating that I must lodge a fervent protest, even to the wind, that this practice by some of our most beloved and successful companies is painfully counterproductive and, in a number of ways, irritating and regressive

The most obvious negative concerns employment. In this time of high unemployment why can’t these jobs be filled by our own countrymen and women who speak American English?  Think of the thousands of unemployed who would use their native born assets to earn their keep and help us all crawl out of the terrible burdens imposed by unemployment.

Yes, I can understand that there are Americans who will resist taking back breaking seasonal agricultural jobs now being filled by cheap and desperate labor from Mexico, but customer service is the kind of job that Americans can welcome and, in the process, improve the public relations of those companies who employ thousands of workers in third world countries.

Am I the only complaining party? Where is the outrage? I have resisted mentioning the companies I deal with by name, although it is a common practice of all American based companies these days.

Whenever I get a heavily accented voice on a customer service line my blood pressure goes up ten points as I try my best to communicate with the person on the other end of the call. I try to be polite but it wastes precious time and energy to make the connection, if ever. Sometimes I will simply hang up in frustration and seriously try to avoid the company that employs these foreign voices. Such practices seem to negate the whole idea of customer service.

Okay, it is not true of everybody, and I suppose the companies calculate that if they get fair results fifty percent of the time it is worth the candle, especially since they are employing labor at what is undoubtedly cheaper wages than they would have to pay Americans.

Having spilled some bile over this, I’ll bet you have me down as an ingrate for not mentioning the problems of Spanish speakers and those immigrants who arrive in America with no knowledge of English. I do not know of the difficulties encountered when callers choose Spanish language customer service.

Having grown up in a world of immigrants speaking another language, I can sympathize with their plight. On the other hand it is inescapable that the English language will continue to predominate in America for the foreseeable future and those who do not use and understand it as a necessity to live and flourish in our culture will be marginalized and their futures seriously obstructed.

I understand the realities of the global marketplace and disparity in the cost of labor that makes American companies salivate when they can shrink their labor cost by hiring foreign workers. While I do admit a jingoistic urge when it comes to sending jobs overseas, I understand also the realities of cost reduction and the profit motive.

In this case, however, I have no reservations in calling for these jobs to be brought back to our shores.  It is a foolish and counterproductive practice in an era of high unemployment at home. I suppose an argument can be made that these global companies are helping third world citizens to become consumers of American products, but that offers no solace to those here at home who are having a tough time finding jobs.

It is not often when a personal predilection and complaint fits into such dual categories meaning that it would be both good for people like me who use customer services frequently and good for providing jobs for unemployed Americans.