There’s a category of political intellectuals who proudly proclaim themselves “realists,” then proceed to defend and advance a deeply faith-based agenda that centers on the ongoing necessity to prepare for war, including nuclear war.

These intellectuals, as they defend the military-industrial status quo (which often supports them financially), have made themselves the spokespersons for a deep human cancer: a soul cancer. When we prepare for war, we honor a profoundly embedded death wish; indeed, we assume we can exploit it for our own advantage. We can’t, of course. War and hatred link all of us; we can’t dehumanize, then proceed to murder, “the enemy” without doing the same, ultimately, to ourselves.

That isn’t to say there’s an easy way out of the mess we find ourselves in, here in the 21st century. Indeed, I see only one way out: a critical mass of humanity coming to its senses and groping for a way to create a peace that that has more resonance than war. We don’t have much political leadership around this, especially among the planet’s dominant — and nuclear-armed — nation states. But there is some.

BANGKOK, Thailand -- One year after destroying a popular elected
government in a bloodless coup, Gen. Prayuth Chan-ocha rules with
absolute power over a country suffering from newly discovered "death
camps" for Rohingya and Bangladeshi migrants, a flat economy, and
diplomatic feuds with the U.S. and Europe.

Gen. Prayuth publicly shrugs off Washington's criticism of his May 22,
2014 coup and his junta's military trials and coercive "attitude
adjustment" confinement for civilian dissidents.

After ripping up Thailand's constitution, he orchestrated an interim
charter giving himself absolute power as prime minister "regardless of
the legislative, executive or judicial" branches, plus immunity from
prosecution.

Gen. Prayuth then empowered Thailand's U.S.-trained army to officially
function as police by seizing property and detaining suspects.

"Even though we didn't like the coup, we train Thailand's military so
that in the future when all this settles down, America will still have

The abortion debates is the last place I would have looked for inspiration in methods of handling the major political and social problems of the world. Politically I've always thought of abortion -- the topic of abortion, that is -- as part of a fraud. A so-called democracy is limited to two political parties, both of which serve corporate monopolies, both of which invest primarily in war preparations, both of which cavalierly sacrifice the future habitability of the planet as well as the immediate survival of numerous species, both of which advance income inequality, both of which strip away our civil liberties -- and yet, the two of which are depicted as diametrically opposed, supposedly offering us a world of difference at the polling place. And how is this done? Easy, one of them is pro- and the other anti- abortion! I can't count how many people have listed everything they oppose about a presidential candidate and then begged me to vote for that same candidate in order to determine the abortion issue in the U.S. Supreme Court.