Labor Day
The holiday has been pretty fun. We ended up at a buddy's place eating barbecue and ice-cream with strawberries. We are going over Sixteen Candles. We are debating what kind of geek Ted is. Long Duck dong just came on. I remember watching this movie years ago. Molly looks more like my daughter might now. These people used to look like peers.

Middle East
I worry about what happens in the Middle East. Just narrowing it down to Israel and the Palestinians is difficult. They are all interwoven. For centuries the people from all around the area have had tribal customs. Only in the last couple of centuries have nations been the norm. Now Israel have declared war on Hamas. It is just the latest step in a long chain of events. I believe one tribe has a dispute with another tribe. Then they make friends with a third tribe. The two tribes gang up on the other tribe and so on. Now, thousands of years later, people are taught to hate each other and no one has known why for several generations. They make up reasons. The Middle East is no different in this respect than say Ireland or Africa nations. Peace will never come until the people stop teaching their children to hate, not just “those guys”, but any one. People refer to this as the cycle of hate.
Are there ever legitimate reasons to fight? Of course there are. When the Nazis invaded Poland, that was a good reason to go to war. When Communism took hold in Vietnam, that was a bad reason to go to war. The USA was fighting an idea. If only we had known that people get sick of Communism after a couple of generations, things would have been much better. There is really no telling.
I wish there were some one who had the pull to stop it all. Everywhere. God doesn't seem to want it to end, else it would. People used to escape this cycle by moving to some frontier. That is why people came to America. The land of the free. The classless society. That isn't entirely true. There are no new frontiers. There is nowhere for people to run too. There is nowhere to hide. Now, one must fight for freedom. I know Europeans took America from the indigenous population. The American Indians didn't believe a person could own land. All land belongs to Mother Nature. Thus they sold Manhattan island for a handful of beads.