What are we creating?

To be honest, I don't know who John McCain is. Hero? Prey? Anti-hero? Predator? Erratic, solid leader? Is he a today's Beowulf? I just don't know, but I know he has stirred up something that is pretty ugly. He didn't create it, but he has tapped into it.

He began this process in choosing Sarah Palin as his vice president without caring if she had the ability to actually be president. He felt or maybe knew she would arouse the extremists of his party. Palin also didn't create what we are seeing at these rallies, but she calls out to it and clearly is excited by it. McCain is the responsible one though as he is the one the Republican party chose to run for President. What follows during his campaign is his responsibility.

I am one of those people who typically reserves judgment on people, and likes to think they mean well-- until I am proven otherwise. This crowd that McCain and Palin have aroused, that's hard to see anything positive about it: Anger is Crowd's Overreaching Emotion at McCain Rally.

Do we generate emotions in others because of our own attitudes? Do we draw to us those who are like us?

Video of some McCain Palin Fans at a rally.

Senator McCain arouses these people's sense of being wronged, stirs up their anger and fear by suggesting they don't know who Obama is. Then last week he was himself booed when he tried to cool it off. His crowd didn't want to hear that Obama was a decent family man and someone not to be feared if he was elected president. McCain has been creating a whirlwind of negative drama. Is there any stopping that?

McCain and Palin say we don't know Barack Obama. Usually what they have been saying is the opposite of what is true. What if we do know Obama, his temperament, those who he has drawn to him, his mistakes, his successes, but it's McCain and Palin who we don't know?

So who is John McCain? He's been a senator a long time but how many voters really know him? Have people not taken seriously enough his famed vicious, out of control temper, his ego, his own lies or exaggerations? We now know how he responds in emergencies-- running off this way or that, reacting like a drama queen; but there is another way he responds and it is the one voters better fully be thinking about.

John McCain's temper is no laughing matter.

How much of what we think we know about John McCain came from him and the collegial environment in the Senate where they protect each other? He catered to the media to get them to like him and overlook what they might have seen. Watch this video and think long and hard about what you are seeing:

John McCain's Rage is a National Security Issue

How many people have we heard saying they love McCain, including Joe Biden. And yet... yet, there is this to understand. What is this instability when he runs from solution to solution, from idea to idea. There is this out of control rage. There is something more.

McCain is saying that we can't trust Obama because of a casual relationship with someone. What about McCain's casual relationships? Like this one: John McCain and his liking for rich and sometimes shady friends visits the yacht of suspected (at that time) con man. McCain was there for to celebrate his 70th birthday in Montenegro with Ann Hathaway, her Italian boyfriend, Raffaello Follieri, and someone else.

At this time Follieri had not yet been indicted but the investigations were ongoing. Why was McCain there? Tip: it wasn't working on an education committee. Follieri's connection was to a lobbyist that you will have heard of if you have listened to McCain try to explain his Fannie Mae connections away-- Rick Davis, McCain's campaign manager.

Entering the yacht is the same McCain who partied with Charles Keating before his indictment. This is the one criticizing Obama for working with Ayers? There has never been any evidence that Obama had a friendly relationship with Ayers, that he vacationed with him, but there is with McCain and many who have less than savory reputations.

Okay, taking a deep breath and remembering a recent phone conversation with my daughter. She was telling me that they had their second Obama/Biden sign stolen from their yard. They live on a street where all the signs are McCain/Palin. They have now put up a third Obama sign. She has her children assigned with the responsibility to bring them in at night to try to prevent this one's theft. If McCain followers want to take them, they will at least have to do it in daylight.

As we talked, she added something which I think is very true and fits this idea I have been considering. She said we can't let ourselves think on them too much. When we do, we are giving them energy, our energy.

I know that it's true. Don't let anger at them fester inside us. Do what we can, stay informed, act when we feel it is right, but then release the results and let the emotions go because anger is what they are seeking to grow. When we become angry, aren't we building their power?

Obama said in a recent rally of his own that anger is easy to generate, but what does it do for the problems we are facing?

There are those who are trying to gain power by pulling negative energies to themselves. When we feel angry, we are adding to their power and losing our own.

We, who see the needs in the world so differently, need to center on white light, loving energy, and positive actions, building a contrasting power that swells up as it grows, that can show a better way even to those who are hate-filled because of their fear and mistaken in their belief that anger gives them power.

Anger doesn't give us what we want. There is another way. We need to illustrate it through our lives, and when we feel ourselves losing our own focus, take some time to get it back. If that's not easy for you right now, watch this video: The Shift. There is another way.

(It seems I should not have to add this but, I understand, that not everybody who is going to vote for McCain/Palin is like that crowd in the video tape. They aren't all racists, nor all being fooled into thinking a tenuous connection some years back means Obama is a secret terrorist. Some are voting for what they see as logical reasons. I think they are wrong, but that's America, that we can all make our choices for ourselves-- not be led or manipulated by someone else into a choice that goes against our own long-term, best interests for a strong nation and a good place for our grandchildren to raise their own families someday.

The photos are chosen because they are reflections from vacation this summer.Taking time to reflect is what we all need to be doing. The first is Sprague River, Oregon; the second in the Lamar Valley, Yellowstone Park.)