Boston - 234 years ago

It was on this night that a beginning was made in 'the new world', and an old world began to come to an end. That old world, ruled by a despot, acceded to by smaller minded would-be despots, reached across the globe. Indeed, it was said that "The Sun never sets on the British Empire", as it had colonies on nearly every continent. But, as the Sun slowly set in the West on this one night, men who were bone-weary of that tyrant's ever increasing greed, paid for with taxes on almost every essential item of life, and the enforcement of his rule by his far-flung henchmen, gathered to demonstrate their resolve to end that rule. Before the night was over, 342 wooden chests of tea had been dumped into Boston Harbor from the 3 ships that held them. 200 men, dressed up as Mohawks, had done the deed, out of a crowd of some 5,000 - 7,000 people who had gathered at the docks. About 4% of the gathered crowd had decided to act, rather than just merely complain about the 'tea tax' and then submissively pay it. That was about 2% of the estimated population of Boston.

History shows that about 2% of the people are required to make any significant change. It was estimated that about 2% of the American colonial population desired freedom from tyranny, about 2% were Royalists (loyal to the Crown) and the rest couldn't be bothered with fighting for the freedoms that they enjoyed - at the cost of 4,435 lives and 6,188 wounded, out of the estimated 217,000 who eventually fought in that war. Luckily another 5% of the colonial population saw the light and threw in with the 2% who started the war for independence.

Today it would take about 1.5 million to free this country from the oppression we face in the coming years. That's based on an approximate 70 million males old enough to actually do something. That's if they could first be convinced there actually IS something worth fighting for, other than their 9-5 barely more than minimum wage jobs, Monday night football and a Wally World on every other corner selling toxic Chinese toys to their children.

I wonder if we're capable of changing things around in time to avoid the eventual "Mad Max" scenario Mssrs. Miller and Gibson so prophetically outlined for us 28 years ago. Can we bring an end to this nightmare world we have so complacently accepted, or is it about to bring an end to us?

All endings must have a beginning . . .

In the first days of Autumn, after much reflection on the past few years, my recently passed older teachers and friends, and my own mortality, I begin.

These thoughts are not intended to be so much a long-running epitaph (though they may turn out to be exactly that) as much as an instruction to a younger, more vigorous generation on the state of things - both seen and unseen. Perhaps they will show a way forward out of the mess America has become in the late 20th - early 21st century. Perhaps these youthful people I direct my words to will take the hint and actually DO something about it, instead of acceding to the thought control so all-pervasive and prevalent among the "XYZ (read:TV) generation".

And so . . . on to the bean field.