Voting choices

As I was balancing my checkbook, I noticed that a payment that I had sent last week had not been debited to my account.  I wondered if it was corporate slowness on the part of the recipient or a less efficient postal service.  That led me to think how too many Republicans are trying to make the postal service inefficient.

From that I thought about the voter mantra of “choosing the lesser of two evils”.   Isn’t that a bit harsh?  Shouldn’t it be “choosing the lesser of two incompetents”?

Syria: Fighting evil with evil?

My following letter to the editor of the Duluth News Tribune was published 2013-09-08.  I also sent it to President Obama, Senator Klobuchar, and Senator Franken.

Thanks to U.S. Rep. Rick Nolan and the News Tribune for their opposition to an attack on Syria (“Nolan is steadfast against Syria strike,” Sept. 4, and, “Our View: Nolan listening, leading on Syria”).

I read somewhere that evil is treating people as things. Someone in Syria treated 300 or 1,400 people as things with a poison gas attack. The first figure is from some in the opposition; the second is from the U.S. government.

Now the U.S. government is threatening to be evil by treating several hundred or even several thousand people as things. Will the victims of Tomahawk missiles be those who ordered or carried out the gas attack or will they be office workers and pedestrians who were in the wrong place at the wrong time?

Philosophy from science-fantasy

"Power is power as the sun is the sun, the wind is the wind.  The villager blesses the rain as it falls on his crops.  The pillager uses it to cover his approach.  It is the wielder who determines the good or evil."

"Teachers are rare beasts.  We find they thrive best in a supportive environment whether they teach toddlers or adults."

Sherry S. Tepper Waters Rising, a novel of good and evil in a post-Apocalypse world