S.D.S

   It's funny. Karl Marx had the right idea. He just chose the wrong people. The Russians have as much business attempting to institute socialist "Utopia" as they do trying to fit into a good suit. It's like putting a saddle on a cow. Good luck! Better if he had chosen a more worthy people for such an experiment in human socio-political evolution. His own brethren, the Germans, may have pulled it off, albeit a bit stridently. The British could have put a charming and snobbish face on it. The very private Swiss, perhaps. Maybe the Japanese. But instead, in the end, he chose the paranoid and brutalizing Russians, of all people. So much for good ideas.

     That exercise in abject futility notwithstanding, this doesn't diminish my enthusiasm for a better human condition. Marx felt the same way, and it led to a revolution. Robespierre felt the same way with the same result. Gandhi. Jesus. Visionaries who understood that passion of purpose can change human history, and it doesn't happen by accident. It's a calculation.

     The "Battle of Seattle" had the same passion and clarity of purpose as did "Kent State" three decades before. Then, it was a military conflict. Today, it's an economic one, and both stand as stark testimonials to a desperate need for a better vision through another good idea. But so long as we continue to be governed by those beholden to greed, corruption, self-interest and social injustice, then we'll never realize that better vision, because no one of the ruling class will ever come up with a better idea. It wouldn't be in their vested interest.