There is great confusion among we humans on the nature of reality. This is not surprising, since The Great Evil* doesn’t want us to understand such simple things. They would rather convince us of the all consuming nature of well, consumption, and keep reminding us that our intrinsic value to life on Earth comes from consuming. This means both the consumer mentality where ‘baby needs a new pair of shoes’ and more critically the consumption of bullshit narratives that have driven our culture for hundreds of years. Yuck.

The time is always now. The answer is always love.

Such has been a mantra of mine for some years. I now feel it in my bones. I live Here in the Presence - as we all do. Yet I am not driven by the freight train of events. Because I know we All Live Here in Eternity Together Right Now.

Our culture has been sadly ignorant of the nature of life and our place in it. It's quite simple. We exist only Now. We imagine past and future events unendingly, but Life, and hence we, exist only Now.

With thirty five candidates running for the nine seats that make up the Cincinnati City Council, we thought it useful to name the five most important candidates to move our city forward. There are a number of good candidates, but we're specifically focused on getting these five candidates elected. They have proven themselves to be engaged citizens who live with integrity, which is of course what we require. We don't need council folks who enable developers and corporate interests to out weight the needs of we, the people of Cincinnati.

Legislating from truth, integrity and love. Wow. What a notion. These precepts hold for those of us supporting legislators of truth, integrity and love as well. This is the simple context for being a World Five Politician. We see that we are all here together, sharing life at this moment, and we side with truth and love. Which means we live in integrity.

Welcome to America, circa end of 2020.

The COVID is full steam ahead, the country is in shambles, there are so many hungry and homeless, the President won't leave, the climate is in chaos, ecosystems are collapsing, pollution of every sort everywhere, and of course these are just the catastrophic symptoms.In our communities of whatever sort, we find brokeness. In our families conflict and way too much pain in our personal lives.

This piece may be premature, as there is a least a small chance Mr. Trump and his Republican allies might pull of The Steal, curiously shouting their motto, Stop the Steal. But for our purposes, we will assume even this beleaguered democracy can hold up through this assault as she has many times before.

In this crazy year of 2020, we’ve already been forced into some pretty substantial changes. COVID-19 has most of us in masks in public, social distancing and avoiding what used to be commonplace like going to a game or shopping. All changes we didn’t seek, but changes we have to deal with none the less. And that’s just coronavirus stuff.

Change or Die applies to the more active resistance to police abuse. If you’re a person of color, your very life is threatened by systemic racism and cops who want to control others instead of supporting their communities.

For some of us, the idea that Black Lives Matter is kind of a duh. Of course they do. Human life is a rare gift and should be held sacred, not disposed of as an inconvenience or act of hate acted out. George Floyd's murder by a Minneapolis police officer has been the straw that broke the camel's back, the camel being the corrupt culture of police and police unions. They are now so busted.

There is an implicit notion in our culture that corporations equal capitalism. Nothing is more false. 

Capitalism is the notion that folks make products or offer services, each with a relative value. The customers have the option of this pair of shoes or this house painter, and they base their choices on the perceived value each vendor offers.

It's actually quite a good system. Honest competition, along with a bit of salesmanship, lets the customer decide the best value or the vendor who most suits them. We learned about it in high school.

The corporate right to make money has always superseded our right to live.

I repeat. The corporate right to make money has always superseded our right to live. Do you need it again? The corporate right to make money has always superseded our right to live.

The coronavirus has revealed the deep level of unfairness built into a culture where corporations rule the day. COVID-19 has revealed the folks who are important to keep society intact. And we know it is not the barons of corporate America and their political lackeys who are taking an honest lead.