Opinion: Why I'm Running For Governor of Nevada

Letter from a human being to an essential McDonalds Worker:
I apologize for this letter being soaked and illegible but it is soaked in the tears of every dead American and every living species on the planet that we call home. I apologize that I cannot give you more than what you receive from me today as this is the rest of what I have after my budget for the month as I am a disabled veteran and live on a limited income.

But it is money I DO NOT need for my survival and thus should go to those who have more need than myself. I apologize for the Government that exists today and that was in existence the day you were born as I contributed to it by my inactivity. I apologize but no longer can I stand, sit, or lie by without my voice being heard. It is my first amendment right under the constitution of out nation. Cognitive dissonance has become a campaign rally slogan and I cannot stand for this as an educated human being. I apologize for this being long, but I've spent a lifetime living a life of privilege and have a lot to say. Reading this, compared to the length of the life of a bowhead whale, will take but a nanosecond. You might say it is my manifesto, but unlike others before me, it is a manifesto of hope and love, not fear and hate.

When I grew up in a middle class white suburb of Los Angeles in the 1970's, I was taught in public schools. My parents couldn't afford private schools. They came from middle class families who were immigrants. They instilled in me the values of saving and being thrifty, not spending your money on frivolous things and to treat people how you would want them to treat you. Having lived through the depression of the 1930's and seen just how bad things can get, they realized that preparedness is a GOOD thing. I'll never forget my grandfather taking me to the local bank to start a savings account with $5.00 as a young boy.

What I learned in public schools were mostly facts — facts presented to us by those who not only taught us but those who wrote the textbooks that we read. I learned that the "Indians" were "Savages" and that "Negros" were something you saw on the cover of a National Geographic and that "Slavery" was a thing of the past, just like the civil war. I learned that Columbus was a hero for discovering America. I learned our forefathers, who founded this country on that BASIC premise that "We hold these truths to be self evident, that ALL men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness", did no wrong. I learned that Father Junipero Serra was a hero for starting a series of Spanish Missions in California. I learned about the horrible death of General Custer and his men at the hands of "Savage Indians" and that these "savages" were now in reservations due to our god given right - "Manifest Destiny".

My mom's family came to Los Angeles in the 1940's and settled in the area known as Westwood. They paid $14,000 for their house and my mom went to college at UCLA. They then moved to Pasadena in the 1960's to an area today known as Highland Park and then to a suburb of Los Angeles called Arcadia, where I grew up and went to school. My parents, who divorced when I was six, paid $39,000 for their home in Arcadia in 1971 which led to my single mom paying a monthly payment of $109.00 for thirty years. There was no internet. There were no video games other than pong. Social media meant borrowing a book from a friend. We made telephone calls on telephones that actually had cords. Christmas was great. The illnesses of polio and measles were all but eradicated by vaccines. We watched tv in black and white. I had what you might call a typical middle class American childhood. We were happy.

It wasn't until I went to college and studied subjects like anthropology, world religions and eventually my major, Geology that I began to see the bigger picture than just MY life and MY needs. College teaches you to think critically - to not accept anything at face value unless backed up by evidence that your peers feel is valid, not just you. Anthropology teaches us that there are ONLY three basic needs for survival - food, shelter, and human companionship, and that without any of these three, individuals and societies CANNOT survive.

For an interesting take on this, just watch the first episode of the original Twilight Zone television show written by the genius Rod Serling. Anthropology teaches that we as humans originated from Africa and subsequently left for "greener pastures" to inhabit the continents you see today, and if you trace our ancestry a little bit farther back than Ancestry DNA does, we are ALL Africans. Skin color just has to do with melanin and vitamin D. Look it up. Taking a class in the world's religions teaches us that despite our beliefs, we are all in this human experience together and that we shoud be kind to EVERYONE regardless of their religion, race, color, ethnic background or sexual orientation. Everyone dies, despite these differences. No religion as a fundamental concept, and I repeat, no religion, teaches hate, including Islam. Only people teach hate. Geology teaches that we are only here for a microsecond in the scope of Geologic Time but the effect that we can have on our planet in that second can profoundly effect that very planet we live on. We can see it with our own eyes in the fossil record. We as human beings right now are contributing to the largest mass extinction the earth has ever seen, including the one that killed the dinosaurs. That is not subjective. That is objective truth.

College also teaches that reality is based upon what YOU perceive through YOUR senses and what you were taught by YOUR culture. An example of this is the fact that the Inuit, who we know as "Eskimos", believe that their version of hell is cold as they live their entire existence in freezing cold, and to them spending eternity in cold would be hell. If you were to tell an Inuit that YOU believe that hell is hot, they would think that you were mentally ill. Is one right, both right, or both wrong. The FACT is they are both right because they perceive THEIR reality by only their experiences and senses. Reality is a very subjective thing. Today they still live the same way they have for thousands of years, right up the road from us in northern Canada and the arctic without any knowledge of Donald Trump.

We now know SOME truths. We know "Manifest Destiny" was a sham used just to take land from the Indigenous People, African Americans have NEVER been given a fair break even to this day, America wasn't discovered by Columbus, who was only after riches and contributed to the genocide of an indigenous people, that Serra used the Indigenous People as slave labor to build the missions, and that 12, count em', 12, of our American Presidents actually OWNED people, human beings, just like you and me, including Washington and Jefferson, who we now know fathered children with his 16 year old African slave Sally Hemings while in his 40's. These are truths. We have evidence. It is not subjective. Look it up. What is subjective is our judgement of them. But do we as humans have that right? We are inherently imperfect by nature. A basic tenet of Christianity exemplifies that point: Judge not, lest ye be judged.

My favorite President is Abraham Lincoln who, despite freeing the slaves, promoted "Manifest Destiny" and led to the near extinction of our Indigenous People. Does this mean he's not in "Heaven" or that he wasn't a great man? I don't think so. We are who we are due to our learned culture, our values and the time and place that we live. Lincoln will ALWAYS and should always be, considered great, although he, like every other human being, was flawed. Let us not forget to memorialize other human beings who were also flawed, and who have made equal contributions to the human condition, to love, not to hate. We should not memorialize men of war - we should memorialize those of peace. Memorials are only effective if we understand the historical context in which they were erected.

Throughout my lifetime I was also told about what was called "The American Dream" - that symbol of American pride that included a good job, a good education, the ability to buy a home and raise a family, and don't forget that "white picket fence". As long as you worked hard, you could achieve anything, including the Presidency if you so chose - hell, a peanut farmer even became President. The "irony" of this American Dream today is that the harder I work, the less it seems I am able to achieve the fundamental premise of that dream, that basic tenet written by Jefferson so long ago. Life - check. Liberty - check. Happiness, on the other hand, is elusive. Even after graduating with a BS in Geology and incurring ENORMOUS debt, I was told to "just" work harder and you can achieve that "American Dream".

The TRUTH is that my parents moved from Los Angeles to Pasadena to get away from the African Americans who had started to come to California in great numbers in the late 60's. We then moved from Pasadena to Arcadia again to get away from the minorities and integration in schools that was becoming popular in the early 70's. I didn't see one black child from K-6th grade despite the next town over having a large population. Our houses were just more expensive and no minority could afford one. That is the truth. There is evidence. It is not subjective. Does that mean my parents are not in "heaven" or were not good people? I don't think so. Though flawed, they taught me to love, not hate. They just didn't take the time to "walk a mile in someone else's shoes", as Scout would say.

The TRUTH is you have to be literally a millionaire to become president - look it up. The TRUTH is that despite being the "Happiest Place on Earth", Disney was a very flawed man. The TRUTH is that my degree is worthless and you can get educated by "remote learning" and the internet - don't let them fool you. Children are another thing altogether. They need to be in school as the years from 1-5 are the most formative on one's life and during that time children NEED that human interaction, that human companionship, but we need them to be safe. One child lost is one child too many.

Ask yourself WHY Betsy DeVos is so adamant about sending children back to school? The truth is that she is the SECRETARY OF EDUCATION and yet has no children and is the heir to a fortune with a net worth of $5.4 billion dollars and is part of the 88th most wealthy family in the United States - Welcome to the Twilight Zone. The truth is Ben Carson, a millionaire with a net worth of $30 million, and who has no experience in housing or the homeless or anything else that has to do with "Urban Development", is the secretary of Housing and Urban Development - Welcome to the Twilight Zone. This is the truth. It is not subjective. Look it up. But yet Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, the daughter of an immigrant and a former waitress, and who is a freshman Congresswoman from the Bronx, New York, a region comprised of mostly poor people, who fights for the rights of the poor and underprivileged, is considered a communist by our President - Welcome to the Twilight Zone.

We are now facing a crisis the world as WE know it has never seen. The coronavirus has brought the world to it's knees and we are humbled. If ever there was a time when the "blinders" have been removed or the Kool Aid has been tossed, it is NOW! I wouldn't be surprised if the next headline I see in the paper is that Kool Aid files for bankruptcy due to so many people refusing to drink it any more. Although most people wish to blame our President, he is definitely and obviously not the cause. History will show he was but an aberration. The perfect analogy to this is the great book The Wizard of Oz, written by L Frank Baum in which in today's Twilight Zone world that we are living in, Donald Trump is the "Yellow Brick Road" and "The American Dream" is the Wizard behind the curtain.

The internet, which began as a way for governments to communicate better regarding research and development, is partly to blame. Far cry from where the internet is today, huh? Today, in 2020, though you can do SOME real research on the internet, the majority of college research is only available while you are in college. Ask yourself why you can't access college peer reviewed papers, but yet you can access any idiot with a Youtube channel telling you all about how the civil war was all about "States Rights". States rights for what? Today we live in a time in which objective science and reason are falsehood and a Qanon conspiracy is the truth. We're ACTUALLY having a conversation on whether a face mask is good to wear to protect you from illness - are you kidding me? Just ask ANY doctor on the face of the planet. Maybe it's because a college education costs close to $100,000 today and that most people are just uneducated.

Someone's making all that money and it sure isn't me. Wealthy people are better off than 99% of the people in this country or in any other country in the world. Just look online - the "AVERAGE" income for Americans today according to the government and to which they base ALL of their policies on, is $60,000 a year, which, if you do the math you learned in public elementary school, equates to $31.00 per hour. Do you make that at McDonalds? Do you even know ANYONE personally who makes that kind of money? When one person makes billions and everybody else makes peanuts, it kinda skews the average a bit - just another example of basic public elementary school math. Poverty in this country is anyone who makes less than $6.65 according to the government, one whole dollar less than the National Minimum Wage. Go online - employees at McDonalds in Holland make $22.00 per hour and a Big Mac is only 37 cents more! Why is that? They used to call you unskilled labor - now they call you essential workers. These are truths. We have evidence. It is not subjective. Look it up.

This coronavirus has made us as human beings brutally aware of the inconsistencies our governments and the wealthy have told us for decades and the blunt fact of the inability to live up to the basic tenets not only ascribed to in the constitution and declaration but in every religion worldwide. We have lost our way. We have filled the oceans of the world with kool aid and are slowly drinking every drop till we make a desert out of the earth, unable to sustain life. We have strayed away from the values of kindness and compassion, along with deep empathy for those who are less fortunate than ourselves. When I was a child and took the ride "It's a Small World" at Disneyland, the world was huge, filled with lots of different people of many colors. I had no idea of their hopes and dreams - their "American Dream". We used to see the poor, the homeless, the less fortunate in the world as something other - those who just didn't work hard enough and if they would just work harder, their dream would come true too. WE SEE THEM NOW! The "other" is us. We just kept living our lives, placing more and more value on the rich and becoming rich as the "American Dream" slipped away for almost everyone. The salaries of actors and performers, of sports figures and heads of corporations began to rise while the middle class was decimated and salaries for teachers fell.

Today, we live in such a Twilight Zone world where an actor like the Rock can be paid $89 million a year, an athlete like Roger Federer can earn $106 million a year, and a CEO like Elon Musk, who's stock price just hit an all time high DURING the pandemic, can earn $513 million a year, all while his employees can't even make a living wage. This is a man who MADE $45 million dollars from paying a $20 million dollar fine to the SEC, who wants to put a high speed train "underneath" one of the most active earthquake zones on the planet, and who as I write this is privatizing the US Space Program. This is the truth. It is not subjective. Look it up. And don't even get me started about Jeff Bezos, who paid ZERO income tax this year despite the fact that if you combine the incomes of Bezos and Musk, they have enough money to pay each and every man, woman, child, cat AND dog in America a stimulus check for $1200 and still have a billion each!

Yet in this strange Twilight Zone reality, teachers get paid $38,000 a year, which if again you do the elementary math, works out to $20 per hour before taxes, well below that of the "average". We live in a world in which Sheldon Adelson, the richest casino billionaire is worth $26.8 billion (thanks Google) and where there are slot machines in grocery stores, bars and gas stations, while Nevada, the state where everybody goes to gamble and lose everything, has an annual State budget less than Adelsons net worth and is short billions now due to the pandemic. But what they would like you to believe is that you NEED to go back to bars, casinos, concerts, sports venues and even Disneyland, because without going back to your menial jobs and their businesses, they won't be able to buy their next yacht the size of the Titanic. They're even putting gambling into video games now as loot boxes in an effort to milk you even more. The Twilight Zone is becoming more and more like a reality show every day. I'm not saying don't watch Jumanji or play Cyberpunk 2077 or go to a concert or a ball game or even go to Vegas. I'm just saying we need to pay the right people the right amount of money based on what all human beings value, not what the wealthy want us to value.

NOW we know America is not the greatest country in the world. No country is. Just google it! This is a fact. This is not subjective. Just like human beings, our countries are flawed because they are run by human beings. The older I get, the more I realize how little I actually know as a human being on this planet. We've got a lot to learn, but that's what life is all about - learning about the human condition, not the condition of a single town or municipality or individual but the condition of the planet, it's people and it's history, as we can learn much from our history, though flawed. But we CAN take the best of each country, each town and each municipality and make a better world for all. I think the interest in UFO's and Aliens that has picked up over the last several decades is just an example of just how longing we are for hope. Because our lives are not fulfilling, we begin to hope that there is someone better up there in space that will come and take us away. The truth is you probably won't see it in your lifetime. And if you did, you might not want to go with them. Just ask the reporter in "To Serve Man" by Damon Knight, a great story that ended up being another Twilight Zone episode.

We must now act. We must change what we value. We must human up. We see it in the people at home making bread, one of the first things human beings made on this planet together, and what fundamentally changed us from hunter gatherers to people of agriculture and led to the first societies. I wouldn't be surprised if you start to see people growing corn and wheat in their yards in the coming months. Now, today, our planet is dying. Our food is poison, our water is undrinkable, our oceans are filled with plastic and our animals are going extinct as I write this - just google the story of Raju the elephant and you'll se what I mean. The rich, the wealthy, the elites all over the world will tell you we have lots of time and we can't solve these problems now - we just don't have the money. But as Geology tells us, time is constantly ticking away while the rich die rich and the poor die poor and the planet adapts. Only the rocks survive.

Maybe we SHOULD go back to a simpler time when one man or woman didn't dictate what is good for the majority. A time in which we traded equal goods for equal goods. To use the words of Dr. Spock, "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one". When I spent a summer working on an archaeological site in Guatemala, I lived in a town where there were no paved roads, no big screen tv's, no microwaves, no cell phones, none of what we value as Americans today. But yet, despite what we in America may call a miserable life, they were happy. Their basic needs were met. Ask yourself if YOU are truly happy with your big screen TV and Iphone or is it just cheap crap? The Yanomamo, who live in the most remote part of the Amazon, who had never seen a white person until recent times and who had been doing just fine without us, is being decimated as I write this.

They caught the coronavirus from a white man looking for gold. They don't even know who Donald Trump is. All they know is that they are dying. Just watch "The Gods Must Be Crazy" and see just how much damage one coke bottle can do to a society. The wealthy want to make nothing public and to privatize everything from our hospitals, to our schools, to our prisons, to the space program, to even the "border wall", while eliminating anything that doesn't bring them wealth - including the Amazon Rain Forest. I just found out today the government is turning half of the Desert National Wildlife Preserve, one of the most pristine areas on the planet and home to countless wildlife and many sacred Indigenous sites, into an impact area as I write this. Look it up. Again, who do you think is making money off of those decisions? Me? You? The animals? The Yanomamo, who own the Amazon? Our Indigenous people? The time to act is NOW!

I'm not going to lie to you like our President. It's going to get bad. It's going to get really bad before it gets better, but be strong, be brave and be kind, stay home if you can, and wear a mask. WE WILL GET OVER THIS! We are Americans - there's nothing we can't do if we put our collective minds to the task. We are the land of the free and the home of the brave. You WILL survive. America will survive. Humanity will survive. The planet will survive. Love is encoded in our DNA, not hate, or we wouldn't have been able to survive this long.

Today there are millions who cannot even meet their basic needs to survive, while the rich just keep getting richer. Don't let them fool you into thinking that there's no money to pay for the changes that need to be made. Just ask Jeff Bezos and the Walton Family who own Walmart. The money's there - they just don't want to give it to you. You need to act. Take the blinders off. Drop the kool aid. YOU are the leaders of tomorrow. You can only work with the system that is in place and that you are given, but you CAN make a change. VOTE! Vote for peace. Vote for science. Vote for empathy. Vote for your elders. Vote for the disabled and the Veterans. Vote for proper gun laws that benefit the people, not the gun manufacturers. Vote for Indigenous People's rights. Vote for human rights. Vote for the planet. PAY IT FORWARD!!! EDUCATE YOURSELF! TRAVEL! MEET NEW PEOPLE! HUMAN LIVES MATTER! ANIMAL LIVES MATTER! Billionaires don't. And when this pandemic is done and we have a new President - Unionize!! They are always crying about minority this and minority that, The rich ARE the minority in this world. You are the MAJORITY. YOU are the 99%. YOU are the future leaders of tomorrow. VOTE! Stand up for your rights as a human being. Rod Serling would be proud. He's up in heaven with Abraham Lincoln laughing and yelling at the top of his lungs "I told you so".

P.S. My favorite cartoonist, Gary Larson, who uses animals to show the hypocrisy and lunacy of the human condition, has started to draw again. Though he's been retired for years, maybe he sees new material in the present crisis. Look him up. He will give you a new outlook on life, and give you a much needed laugh in the process. I'll leave you with the words of a greatly flawed man that still ring true today. I memorized this as a young boy in a public school:

"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that ALL men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that THAT nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." - Abraham Lincoln

In the words of Black Elk, a holy man for the Oglala Sioux, the tribe that killed Custer and 267 other members of the 7th Cavalry on a sunny day in June at the Little Bighorn in 1876 and that LEGALLY owns the Black Hills where Mt. Rushmore, a monument to OUR presidents, is located: "Know the power that is peace".

There is an old joke that at this moment is appropriate: A fellow was stuck on his roof in a flood. He was praying to God for help. Soon a man in a rowboat came by an shouted to the man - "Jump in, I can save you". The stranded fellow shouted back "No thanks, I'm praying to God and he is going to save me - I have faith". Then a helicopter came by and the pilot shouted down, "Grab the rope and I will lift you to safety". The stranded fellow shouted back "No thanks, I'm praying to God and he is going to save me - I have faith". Soon the water rose and the man drowned. He went to heaven where he told God, "I had faith in you but you didn't save me, you let me drown. I don't understand why?" To this God replied, "I sent you a rowboat and a helicopter, what more did you expect?". (Given to a drive through McDonalds worker on 7/13/2020 in Arizona, along with $600 in cash)