Fast Forward to Hillary

I was one of those Democrats who campaigned for Hillary till the last moment, so maybe I am really biased against Obama. I am, sadly - sadly because the country has had to suffer - vindicated because my greatest fears about Obama have been confirmed. I felt then and am convinced now that Obama has held this narcissistic view that being the first black President would be his greatest accomplishment and that he was interested in making history primarily for the benefit of African-Americans and only secondarily - though a close second - solving the country's problems. In retrospect, he probably felt that the country's problems were insoluble and therefore it was not his job to solve them and that successive presidencies after his would complete the job. He in retrospect never saw himself as another FDR.

It seems crystal clear now, according to our 20-20 hindsight, that he did not understand the gravity of the problems that confronted Americans and how he could use the power of his presidency to solve a big chunk of those problems. He may have understood the statistics, having a full grasp of those statistics, but he did not seem to know in his heart what the economic problems did to the psyche of average Americans. This is why he did not act immediately, with the urgency of FDR's fight against the Great Depression. He did not seem to know that the people being hurt the most by the economic meltdown were African-Americans, 92% of whom had voted for him in the 2008 elections.

Obama should have multi-tasked, fighting for his health care reform and solving the jobs crisis at the same time. Instead, he chose to merely throw money at the unemployment problem and concentrated on his history-making health care reform. All that time, the much-respected columnist of the New York Times, Bob Herbert, was imploring him to treat the unemployment problem as his version of FDR's World War II, yet Obama's response was only a professorial acknowledgment that there was a huge unemployment problem plus speeches about the need to solve that problem. When he noticed that Republicans were blocking his half-hearted attempts to solve the problem, he did not go to the American people and denounce the obstructionist Republicans in Congress.

Hillary has always struck me as a bulldog who won't let go once her jaws are locked on a problem. She has always been a problem solver and a clear, decisive thinker. It's what came out of the Senate when she served there. It's what came out of the Lewinsky scandal, when she decisively sided with Bill and not let her emotions rule the day.

Obama's governance has been marked by his obsession with writing history. He refused to go after those who lied us into the Iraq war and those who created the mess in our economy, intent on creating a historic post-partisan legacy. He didn't much care what kind of health care plan came out of Congress, he only wanted to make sure that there was a health care plan that history would credit him for. He seemed to be uninterested in the details of the stimulus bill that he signed, 1/3 of which consisted of tax cuts that he was ambivalent about. He simply made sure there was a stimulus bill and that he would be credited by history as the President who stopped the economy from sliding into the ravine.

Obama does not seem to have any patience for details and is terrified of conflict. His 2004 speech before the Democratic convention said it all. "There are not red states or blue states, there is only the United States of America."

This was received by Americans gleefully and wholeheartedly and Obama got rave reviews. It was also naive. It was like Bush standing on the decks of the U.S.S. Lincoln and declaring "Mission Accomplished."

Obama was very, very wrong. The fact was, there were blue states and red states, and in many of those states, there were blue towns and red towns, blue communities and red communities, blue families and red families, blue brothers and red brothers.

The great divisions that had riven the country would not suddenly disappear just because we wished them to disappear. Obama, incredibly, did not have the foresight to know that his election into the Presidency, should that happen one day, would exacerbate the deep divisions in the country. He did not seem to know that his ascension to the Presidency would turn red states into deep red and blue states into deep blue.

How can a man so eloquent, so intelligent, so celebrated as a brain-iac be so naive and/or innocent?

The answer may lie in the fact that Obama is not really a black man. He is only half-black. In fact, psychologically he may have thought of himself as white when he was growing up under the care of his Caucasian grandparents in Hawaii. I am speculating, I know, but it is entirely possible that Obama did not grow up as a black boy. He probably did not know he was black unless he looked at himself in the mirror. And even while looking in the mirror he may not have seen a black boy.

This is key. If he did not know that he was a black boy and later a black man, he would not be aware of the deep hostility that many Americans, especially in the deep South and the heartland, hold for people of color. And if he in fact knew of this hostility, he seemed not to be aware of the intensity of this hostility in the first two years of his Presidency. He seemed to think that the opposition's wall of defiance had been erected because of policy differences only and not because of his being a black man with a black wife and a black family.

I think now in his third year he is fully aware of the racial roots of the livid hostility that permeates the air in most gatherings where the opposition talks about him. The problem, however, is that he is not fully equipped psychologically to handle the ferocity of the hatred and insults hurled in his direction at every turn.

"Kenyan," "Socialist," "Commie," "Muslim apostate" - these are just some of the epithets that white racists are using to diminish him. And yet, incredibly, he thinks that his best response is not to give a response, or at best a tepid response. Or a discussion of policy.

At a time when there is a war for the hearts and minds of Americans, Obama's followers are being led by a man who doesn't think there is a war. He thinks that the root causes are just policy differences and therefore the conflict could be won by exceptionally good policy. He did not think, initially, that the Tea Party-led Republican House members, for example, were willing to bring the whole economy down if the demands of those Tea Party Republicans were not met. He thought that if he crafted policy that was reasonable, the Tea Party-ers would come to their senses.

He was wrong and the country now suffers because America is perceived as being led figureheadedly by a leader who just doesn't get it. The country in fact is now led by a minority Tea Party that doesn't reflect what Americans visualize for the country, but who is willing to destroy America in order to rebuild it, an America that would rise from the ashes of their own destruction in the image of the Tea Party movement. Shades of American Vietnam policy - napalm bombing of whole villages in South Vietnam by American forces so new communities would someday spring up and be like model cities that the American military had envisioned.

A brilliant piece of psychoanalysis came out in the New York Times today which encapsulates what Obama's calculations and/or character flaws might be that have led to his continued insistence that the best policy is to compromise with his uncompromising opponents who are intent on his destruction and character assassination.

The author - Drew Westen, a psychology professor at Emory University and the author of "The Political Brain - The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation" - offers lucid conjectures on why Obama is Obama. It would be a crime not to repeat the author's words, digest them and peruse them in this, the post-mortem on the Obama presidency, which will either end in January 2013, or virtually earlier if he decides to become a non-factor, stepping aside for a suddenly resurrected Hillary.

"The most charitable explanation is that he and his advisers have succumbed to a view of electoral success to which many Democrats succumb — that “centrist” voters like “centrist” politicians. Unfortunately, reality is more complicated. Centrist voters prefer honest politicians who help them solve their problems. A second possibility is that he is simply not up to the task by virtue of his lack of experience and a character defect that might not have been so debilitating at some other time in history. Those of us who were bewitched by his eloquence on the campaign trail chose to ignore some disquieting aspects of his biography: that he had accomplished very little before he ran for president, having never run a business or a state; that he had a singularly unremarkable career as a law professor, publishing nothing in 12 years at the University of Chicago other than an autobiography; and that, before joining the United States Senate, he had voted "present" (instead of "yea" or "nay") 130 times, sometimes dodging difficult issues.

"... Perhaps those of us who were so enthralled with the magnificent story he told in “Dreams From My Father” appended a chapter at the end that wasn’t there — the chapter in which he resolves his identity and comes to know who he is and what he believes in.

"... (Obama's) stories virtually always lack one element: the villain who caused the problem, who is always left out, described in impersonal terms, or described in passive voice, as if the cause of others’ misery has no agency and hence no culpability. Whether that reflects his aversion to conflict, an aversion to conflict with potential campaign donors that today cripples both parties’ ability to govern and threatens our democracy, or both, is unclear.

"A final explanation is that he ran for president on two contradictory platforms: as a reformer who would clean up the system, and as a unity candidate who would transcend the lines of red and blue. He has pursued the one with which he is most comfortable given the constraints of his character, consistently choosing the message of bipartisanship over the message of confrontation.

"But the arc of history does not bend toward justice through capitulation cast as compromise. It does not bend when 400 people control more of the wealth than 150 million of their fellow Americans. It does not bend when the average middle-class family has seen its income stagnate over the last 30 years while the richest 1 percent has seen its income rise astronomically. It does not bend when we cut the fixed incomes of our parents and grandparents so hedge fund managers can keep their 15 percent tax rates. It does not bend when only one side in negotiations between workers and their bosses is allowed representation. And it does not bend when, as political scientists have shown, it is not public opinion but the opinions of the wealthy that predict the votes of the Senate. The arc of history can bend only so far before it breaks."

What an indictment. The problem for Obama is that the people who are saying these and similar things about him are not his opponents - they are his supporters and people who voted for him in 2008 and are no longer inclined to vote for him next year.

I can't see any future for Obama in these few months leading up to the elections in 2012 - does the election season start in December this year or in January next year or have the general elections already started? (Obama versus an unidentified Republican) - and he would do everybody a big favor by simply getting out of the way and letting the Clintons try to salvage the Democratic Presidency that is still the country's hope against the abuses and terroristic tactics of the Tea Party-led Republicans.

I suspect that there will be a growing grass-roots movement to encourage Hillary to step into the primaries. But, life is long, with many twists and turns. Obama can still salvage his unraveled presidency by issuing an executive order that declares United States debt as a sacred promise that America will always honor. His executive order will abolish the debt ceiling and declare that debt ceilings are unconstitutional since the 14th amendment clearly states that all legitimately acquired public debts of the U.S. shall be honored. This would effectively prevent another debt ceiling debate in the future and reassure the world that the U.S. will never, ever default on its obligations.

The resulting debate would put Obama front and center once more in the public's consciousness, resurrecting his image as a consequential President and not as a spectator in the history that is now being made by Tea Party Republicans.

The only hitch to this grand design is that Obama would not do this. It will require boldness and a willingness to gut it out, to stick it out the way Bill Clinton did during the impeachment hearings and the subsequent trial in the Senate. Obama does not have it in him to be subjected to threats and actual Congressional deliberations on his impeachment. Obama thinks his job is to be re-elected and any constraints on his electioneering are out of the question.

And he still wishes to this day that people would just get along.

This is why Democrats will increasingly call for Hillary to come forward and claim the Presidency which should have been hers to begin with had the country not been bamboozled by an eloquent but vastly inexperienced and untested Obama. Remember the 3:00 a.m. phone call that Hillary had warned all of us about?

The meaning of meaning

While driving my son to school one morning he asked me: "Dad, what is the meaning of meaning?"

I hesitated, reflected on his question for a while. He thought he had stumped me.

"Meaning," I finally said, "is what words stand for. It is the idea or object that is being characterized by the use of a word or group of words."

I knew I was losing him. Finally, I said, "meaning is the idea or object that we want to express or convey whenever we use a word or group of words."

Didn't help either.

I knew my son actually knew the meaning of "meaning." He just wanted to know if I really had an answer for his every question.

Since that morning, I have thought off and on about his question. What, indeed, is the meaning of "meaning"? I googled the word. Here's what I found:

There's a book titled "The Meaning of Meaning," authored by C.K. Ogden and I. A. Richards. The late I. A. Richards just happened to be one hell of a literary critic. The book is a classic semanticists' delight, something worthy of perhaps the greatest semanticist of the English language, the late S. I. Hayakawa.

Nothing will beat a dictionary definition, however, because every dictionary definition takes into account all the known meanings of a word.

From Dictionary.com
mean·ing   
[mee-ning] Show IPA
–noun
1.
what is intended to be, or actually is, expressed or indicated; signification; import: the three meanings of a word.
2.
the end, purpose, or significance of something: What is the meaning of life? what is the meaning of this intrusion?
3.
Linguistics .
a.
the nonlinguistic cultural correlate, reference, or denotation of a linguistic form; expression.
b.
linguistic content ( opposed to expression).
–adjective
4.
intentioned (usually used in combination): She's a well-meaning person.
5.
full of significance; expressive: a meaning look.

Like most words, the word "meaning" has many uses, for various and distinct purposes. One profound philosophical point made about meaning comes from an author who has written about his impression of the book, The Meaning of Meaning. The author, Em Griffin, writes about an encounter with one of his students in a Philosophy class he was teaching.

The student, named Brenda, asked the professor: "Sir, my boyfriend wants me to put out physically to prove that I love him. Does this mean that he loves me?"

The author/professor relates how that question stumped him. Finally, he decided to answer the student's question with his own question: "Before we answer that question, let us first know your definition of "love."

The author goes on to say that the meaning of a word is not in the word, it is in the person that is using it.

What a word means is always what the user of that word intends for it. Words do not have meanings independent of the person using it.

When a priest asks you "What is the meaning of life," you know what he is driving at. You know that he wants you to think that earth is your temporary home and that the after-life is your true destiny.

When a college professor asks the same question, the professor's intent will depend on the professor and his state of mind at the time he asks the question. Is the professor an inspirational leader? Is he an agnostic? An atheist? Is he an existentialist? Or perhaps, like Camus, an absurdist?

The meaning is in the person using the word, not in the word itself.

"She called me a slow poke," said Donald. "Does she mean I move too slowly in our relationship, or does she mean it takes me forever to climb the four flights of stairs to her apartment?"

"What do you mean I don't do anything around the house? I take care of the laundry, I clean the pool, I take care of our child after school." The husband is clearly frustrated that his wife does not think he is doing anything around the house, when he has all these chores that he has just enumerated.

"Your dad means well," the mother assured her teen-aged daughter, "he is just having a hard time expressing himself to you right now because he sees your ear-rings and the rings on your eye-brows and he wonders where his little baby girl had gone."

"I mean... I mean," the mail-room clerk stammers, not sure that he is expressing his thoughts clearly to his boss.

"The boy carries your books for you when you get out of your car and walk uphill on your driveway towards your house. He mows your lawn, he feeds your cat when you're away. Does any of that mean anything to you?" asked Maggie's friend Cheryl. "That's just it," Maggie tells Cheryl. "I don't want this fourteen-year-old doing all these things for me. I can't reciprocate, I'm not his mother."

"There are dozens of mosques in New York, it's just one more mosque," says the Imam. "Yes, but none of the mosques are a stone's throw from Ground Zero. Think of what a mosque that close to Ground Zero would mean to the grieving families," says Giuliani.

A word's meaning, the meaning of an action, or a gesture, is often determined by context and by the dynamics of the relationship between the sender of the message and its recipient. To a loving couple, a word such as "pest" could be a term of endearment. It could mean that the man is a horny sonofagun.

And so, my dear son, if you are reading this blog post, the meaning of meaning is the thought that the communicator wishes to convey, and not necessarily what most people think the word or group of words means.

Channeling S. I. Hayakawa: Help!

Plunder and the Philippines

1972 was a special year for me. It was the year I was supposed to go back to the Philippines. It was the year I was to reclaim my destiny. Five years. Five years was all I had given myself. Seattle was lovely, especially in the Summer and in the Fall. But it was not my home. My home was 6000 miles away - on the biggest island in an island chain in the Pacific. I had given myself five years in my new home, Seattle, and then I would go back - my family in tow - and make something of my life. I was convinced that someday I would be an important man in the Philippines, but to accomplish that I needed to go back.

It was getting a bit late. I was already 31, but I knew that if I was too old, I was only too old by about five years. And what's five years compared to the rest of a man's life?

Psychologically I was already back in the Philippines. I wrote one of my childhood friends that Seattle had become too toxic for me. I resented going to Dick's Burgers to picnic on burgers and french fries. My taste buds yearned for tinapa (smoked fish) and salted eggs mixed with sliced tomatoes. To me, that was a picnic. Not those french fries. Not those burgers. And I wanted to eat fried rice and tuyo (salted fish) on the mornings.

Everybody who knew me knew that my ultimate goal was to go back to the Philippines. I told my bosses that, I told my friends, I told my wife.

Tragedy struck. The legitimately elected (elected by landslide) President, Ferdinand Marcos, declared martial law, jailed all his political opponents, including the student leaders at the University of the Philippines and other universities. Some of the jailed leaders were my friends.

1972 was a bad year to go back. 1973, 1974, etc. were not a good time to go back. But my soul was already back in the Philippines, stuck and in limbo. I had already lost interest in forging a career in the U.S. I went through a string of jobs - good jobs, because I was terrific in job interviews - but I was unhappy.

I had what in retrospect was a delusion of grandeur. I thought of myself as a man of destiny, that I had no business being in the U.S., that my true home was the Philippines.

But I could not make it my real home because I did not trust myself. I was convinced that I would eventually end up in jail if I went back because I was not one who would keep my mouth shut if I saw injustice being done to my fellow Filipinos.

So I suppressed my dream as the calendar swiftly turned, day after day, season after season, year after year. Till I woke up one day and decided that America was my home and there was no going back.

Though I was never a victim of Marcos' atrocities, I was in a very real sense also his victim. He robbed me of my dream. It was a dream that would not be replaced by any other dreams for many years. I walked around, defeated without having even started. A man with no dreams.

1986 was prolonged delirium. The country finally unchained. By a woman, by a housewife. Cory Aquino was the widow of a murdered hero. Greatness appeared to be in store for a people long neglected but ever exploited. By outside colonizers. By the elites in society. By nearly everyone who could afford to buy a plane ticket to take one to this island chain. The whole world had watched the toppling of a hated and despised dictator, his dowager wife, his palace guards. The whole world learned from Filipinos how to topple dictators and dictatorial regimes. Shortly after, the Berlin Wall came down amid a cacophony of hammers. The Iron Curtain was shredded. Even China was taken to the brink by peaceful demonstrators, who had molded their tactics after the People Power revolution in the Philippines.

Meanwhile, did the Filipino people really win? The hero's widow proved powerless against the mutineers. Except for top brass, the military never really accepted her and let her know in many different ways. The widow was beleaguered, besieged by her many foes. To add insult, there were rumors that her relatives and cronies were as pigs in a sty.

The old power structures during the Marcos years started streaming back into the Philippines. They were back in force, reclaiming the wealth, prestige and power they had enjoyed. Even the highly successful Fidel Ramos presidency would not prevent the gradual return of Marcos elements back into Philippine elite society.

By the time the actor-turned-politician, Joseph Estrada, was elected President, the whole Marcos clan and nearly all his cronies, were back in power. The message to the Filipino people? It's OK to plunder the government, to murder the people, to steal from political opponents because the Filipino people are very forgiving. Either that, or they have no real power. Or they are too stupid to know how to use their inherent power as the supreme ruler of their land.

So the Joker, Estrada, himself plundered the treasury, fearing no downside. Sure enough, though convicted of plunder, Estrada was pardoned by his successor, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.

Arroyo, herself, feared no prosecution because she owned the wheels of justice. The Ombudsman was a classmate of her husband's at the Ateneo and would never prosecute her if she was caught stealing from the blind to give money to her friends in the illegal numbers business. Arroyo felt she was above the law, and by extension, her husband too.

Now comes President Noynoy Aquino, the hero's and the widow's son. He was swept into office by the accumulation of rage and hope of a people that was fed up with all the far-too-imperfect, far-too-fallen leaders who had masqueraded as the people's saviors. All the while focused on the country's meager resources. How these leaders went about appropriating for themselves a percentage of all major government contracts was a study in genius. There are many different ways powerful people could make money on government contracts, and all the leaders knew all those ways.

The jury is still out on President Noynoy. So far all we have seen is shadow boxing. No prosecutions, only threats of prosecution. No judgment day, only talk of the people exacting revenge upon their exploiters.

One very disturbing and maybe very telling indication that President Noynoy's administration may yet be same old, same old was the recent appointment of Vice-President Binay to head the committee to decide on the request of Senator Bongbong Marcos - yes, the late dictator's son - to bury his late father with full military honors at the Libingan ng mga Bayani (Cemetery for Heroes). Because of the uproar over this suggestion, VP Binay has made a counter-offer, to bury the late dictator not in the Cemetery for Heroes but in an Ilocos Region cemetery with full military honors.

What!...? Full military honors? Is this how dictators are treated by countries with a conscience and with high standards of morality?

The late Marcos, to begin with, was granted asylum in an island paradise - Honolulu - while most other dictators ended up in unglamorous cities to live out their retirement years. Cities such as Riyadh, Cairo, Asuncion, Paraguay, Karina,Zimbabwe, Santiago, Chile. Marcos, of all the dictators, ended up in paradise to live out his retirement years. And now that he is dead, he is to be given full military honors?

Ano siya, sinuswerte? (What? He's the luckiest man alive - or dead.)

I don't know VP Binay personally. I know of him, that he was a good administrator while serving as Makati's mayor. But this suggestion to bury Marcos with full military honors - even if it's done in Ilocos and not at the Cemetery for Heroes - is a travesty. It makes a mockery of the People Power revolution that toppled Marcos in 1986. It sullies the memory of those who had been murdered by Marcos's secret police and military. It sends the wrong message to the people: that Filipinos are so forgiving that the man who had ruled with an iron fist, had plundered the Philippine treasury, had murdered and incarcerated so many innocents, deserved forgiveness.

Why did Binay even think of making that suggestion? Was he gunning for national reconciliation? Is reconciliation more important than the Filipino soul? The Filipino soul had been wounded by this man, Marcos, and no reconciliation is possible without the continuing and proper punishment meted out to this man. Others have suggested that the family of Marcos and his cronies should be barred from leadership positions going forward. I'm not getting into that, since that is an altogether different question. Suffice it to say that if Marcos is buried incognito, with no honors, that should take care of the future of the Marcos children. None of them should ever be allowed to ascend to the Presidency and a Marcos incognito burial will get that done.

Reconciliation is not possible without justice. The relatives of Marcos' victims have not been adequately compensated. Many have received no compensation. No apology has been received. Marcos's heirs and cronies are high-flying and thumbing their noses at the country. Meanwhile, a greater percentage of Filipinos are dirt-poor and in desperate straits than before Marcos became President. Our economy is in a state of arrested development while our Southeast Asian neighbors are overachieving, thanks in large part to the lack of development - even negative development - during the Marcos years.

And now Binay is suggesting that this Marcos guy deserves full military honors?

This, folks, is why the government's treasury is being plundered. President Noynoy will probably break the chain of Presidents who have seen the government treasury plundered, but when he is gone and someone else (Binay, Roxas, etc.) is in power, the treasury will be plundered again. Why? Because the message is clear: if you are president, you can plunder, murder, pillage and maybe even rape all you want and the Filipino people will forgive you. You might even be given full military honors when you die.

And this is the country I had dreamed of going back to, for which I had sacrificed my early years in America? What was I thinking?

Oh, but I will go back. I will keep going back. Probably not for full-time retirement, but for significant chunks of time. It is not the Filipino people's fault that they are gullible or too forgiving. Filipinos have known only exploitation. It's already in their genes. They will be exploited, fooled, their treasury plundered, and they will still smile and shriek and sing the Wow-wow-wee theme song. They are a lovable people and easy to please. They seek to be pleased. With the slightest compliment. With the minutest of favors.

This is why plunder will always be open for business.

Adrift in an Ocean of Troubles

I asked a friend recently if she was interested in what was going on in the Philippines and was stunned by her reply. The woman, who at one time occupied some of the highest government positions in the country, confessed to me that she held out very little hope that the country would be able to emerge from the ocean of troubles that smite it constantly.

She is not alone. Many of my friends - retirees all - do not want to retire in the Philippines even though it would make good economic sense because they feel that the country, at least in the foreseeable future, will not prove equal to its many challenges.

Even leaders of industry in the Philippines seem to think that it will be a cold day in hell before the Philippines starts functioning like an efficient Tiger. One very successful Filipino industrialist and businessman told me, quite frankly, that it will take 500 years before the Philippines can emerge as one of the South East Asian tigers.

Why is there so much pessimism about the prospects for our country?

I'm sure a good part of the reason is that we seem unable to produce first-rate leaders. With the exception of perhaps Fidel Ramos and Ramon Magsaysay, all Philippine presidents since independence from the U.S. on July 4, 1946 have been damaged goods with feet of clay.

The Filipino people elected Benigno (Noynoy) Aquino last year amid so much pomp and high expectations that even if he did very well it was almost impossible for him to live up to the people's hopes and wishes. And he hasn't exactly governed well. In fact, his administration is adrift, seemingly unable to decide which gargantuan problems it would tackle first.

Why can't we find good inspirational leaders who can hit the ground running, taking the country where it must go?

I noticed a copy of my book, Out of the Misty Sea We Must, on my bedside table last night and chanced upon the last chapter in that book. That chapter, which is also titled Out of the Misty Sea We Must, perhaps has the answer for why the Philippines is a perennial candidate for membership in the Union of Failed States, or UFS.

The chapter is quite long, so I'm copy-pasting only the relevant parts.

Chapter 19: Out of the Misty Sea We Must

A friend recently commented that all the Philippines needs is more time. The U.S., after all, took more than a hundred years before it found its stride and galloped toward an economic development and boom that had never before been witnessed on earth. A lot of countries, such as Australia, Canada, South Korea, Japan, China, India, Ireland, Spain, Brazil and others took a long time to mature and got on the road to economic and political development only after many tortuous years.

Based on the experiences of those countries, does it necessarily follow that the Philippines – if given more time to develop – will eventually hit its stride and become a first world country?

To answer this question, we have to ask: Does the Philippine experience share the same characteristics as the American experience, or that of Australia, Canada, Brazil and other countries? Do we have anything in common with America other than our love for everything Hollywood?

The U.S. and the Philippines both revolted from major world powers to erect their own self-determining independent governments. But, there is one very important distinction. In the case of the U.S., the rebels were the same people as the tyrants they revolted from. The American patriots were the same racial stock as the Red shirts they drove away.

In the Philippines’ case, it was not Spaniards in the Philippines who revolted against Spain. It was the natives, more specifically the educated natives. The country was founded not by westerners but by the native populations who had never experienced being citizens of a modern country.

The Australian experience is similar to that of the U.S. The Australians are mainly people who came from Britain and who eventually cut their umbilical cord. Australia was not founded by the Aborigines, which were the native nations in Australia before the white man arrived. The same was true of Canada. Canadians are mainly British and French people who gained their independence from Britain and France. They are not descendants of American Indians. Brazil was founded by Portuguese and black immigrants, not the Indians who are the original owners of the land, and who still live in the interior Amazon regions.

Philippine independence is remarkably independence from a foreign people. The same is true of African independence. When the world’s powers – England, France, Germany, Belgium and others – were driven out of Africa, the people who took over were native Africans, not descendants of citizens of the foreign powers.

This is key. America did not miss a beat when it separated from Britain because Americans were the same people as the British. Americans simply did what they would normally have done if they had remained subjects of the British throne. Americans also had in their possession the advanced culture and thinking habits of their oppressors. They had the genetic memory of an advanced civilization when they founded the new country that the world now lovingly or disgustedly call America.

The economic development that was going on in Britain and the rest of Europe was also going on in America, though it was refined and Americanized further by the introduction of slave labor in the large plantations.

The Philippines and African countries were exploited unabashedly by their colonizers. Filipinos were intentionally kept ignorant by the Spanish authorities for fear that Filipinos would realize that they were being exploited and would revolt. Only the Filipinos in the elite class became educated, with literacy levels remaining dismally low.

The Americans who came after the Spaniards left introduced an American-style public school system that tried to educate the masses and lift their standard of living. This American initiative was successful, but only to a point. The Americans were never able to erase the effects of centuries of educational deprivation that the Filipino people had been subjected to. While literacy rates have improved dramatically, it is by and large basic-level literacy. People think in oversimplified terms, which is why they cannot change their political, economic and religious systems if their life depended on it.

Filipinos lag way behind their southeast Asian and Asian neighbors in quality of education, which probably explains why the Philippines is underperforming economically in a region where most countries are overachieving.

The quality of a democracy is determined by the educational level of its citizens. A quantum leap in the Philippines’ educational system will improve the quality of democracy there and this will lead to a dramatic improvement in governance. This in turn will lead to a decrease in corruption levels, which will then lead to an increased willingness on the part of the people to pay their income taxes. If people have assurance that their taxes will be used to educate their children and not line the pockets of their corrupt politicians, tax collections will increase dramatically.

WE MUST FIND THE RIGHT TRACK

We got to where we are almost by trial and error. We had never had any experience being one nation. The pale faces cobbled together a group of island paradises and handed it to us saying, “here, this is your country now, do with it as you please.”

We did not start out like America, or Australia, Canada or New Zealand, so we should not expect to get the same results that they did. We, rather, started out like the Congo Republic, or many of the small and inconsequential African states who were freed from exploitation by their white masters and let loose in an ocean of uncertainty and chaos.

We cannot therefore expect that eventually we will become like America, or Australia, or Canada. The track we’re on will probably lead us to where the African nations are. Or, if our population doubles as expected, to where Indonesia was before its recent resurgence.

Giving ourselves more time when we know we are on the wrong track means that eventually we will be so deep in that un-enchanted forest of our own creation and may sink in the bog of our Malthusian existence.

We must get off that beaten path that has led us to where we are and find the right path. It will mean that we will listen only to our own hearts. We must not be captives of the thinking processes that the IMF’s, the World Banks, the CBCP and others have programmed into our brains.

We must do all the thinking, all the imaginings, all the statue wrecking, all the creation ourselves and set sail with the confidence that we alone are capable of thinking of what is good for us – not for the world. The world has led us to where we are, just as it has led much of Africa where it is. It is time we wrest back control of our fortunes from the rest of the world.

We must find that solution that makes sense for us, even if this solution causes our patrons to abandon us. No one will shed tears if we as a nation fail. Failure has only one author and success has many fathers.

If we succeed in this venture to get on the right track, to build a new Philippines, the whole world will rejoice with us and claim that they too had fathered our child.

We already know that we have been wrong all these years, that all our assumptions have been wrong. That the trust we have placed on our masters – including the Church that has stifled progressive thinking in our country – has been misplaced and undeserved.

We have to ready our boat now. It is morning, and we must set sail on our own and be masters of our ship.

Out of the misty sea we must.

An "Of the people, by the people and for the people" campaign

It all came to me in a dream. For much of the week I had been thinking of how the problems that confront my United States of America can best be solved, using common sense.

I was thinking along these lines when I fell into a deep slumber after a night of ballroom dancing. I was dog tired. In an instant I was dreaming.

I had seen the movie Inception and was convinced that people could, with practice, change their realities inside their dreams.

This, as far as a I can recall, was the content of my dream:

I arrived at the White House gate in a limousine - not clear how I got into the limo. The driver was flashed an OK sign to drive deeper into the White House grounds and I was dropped off at a special entrance. A couple of suits met me and motioned me to an elevator where the two men accompanied me. When I came out of the elevator, a nice-looking woman, someone I wouldn't mind ballroom dancing with, took over. She asked how I was and I said fine. I told her it was all so unreal to me.

When we got to a heavy lacquered door, she opened it for both of us. I was startled when I saw four figures inside what I immediately recognized as the Oval Office. The President was sitting behind his desk, while Senator Reid and former speaker Nancy Pelosi sat in the sofa and lounge chair. I did not recognize the man who was standing beside President Obama, but after the computer in my brain sorted out the features of his face I decided it was the Chief of Staff, Richard Daley.

"Mr. President," began the young lady in a smart green dress, "this is Cesar F. Lumba of Las Vegas, Nevada. If you don't need me for anything else, I'd like to go back to my office."

She left as I stood frozen in front of the President with whom I have at best a lukewarm personal relationship. I like his policies on national security, but I am thoroughly disappointed in his economic policies and his tendency to give up the bank in his compromises with Republicans.

"Sit down, Mr. Lumba, right here in front of me," said the President, as he motioned me to one of the chairs in front of his huge desk.

Just then, Senator Reid and Speaker Pelosi rose from their seats and sat in the chairs next and in front of me. President Obama and Mr. Daley came around the desk and sat in the other two empty chairs.

We formed a circle - the five of us - and carefully eyed each other.

President Obama opened up the conversation: "We called you in here, Cesar - can I call you Cesar? (I nodded) - because we think that of the millions of Americans who consistently vote in elections all across America, you represent the great majority of Americans. You are liberal on social issues but you are economically a conservative. You have a firm grasp of what's going on in the country, but you are also in many respects misinformed. You love your adopted country with a passion, but you also hate what it has become. To us, you are the perfect person to ask about what the heck we should do leading up to the elections of 2012, which we feel will be the most important elections of our lifetime - more important even than the 2008 elections."

"Mr. President," I replied, "how can I presume to know more than you and the others in this room about how to solve the many problems that are sinking America's chances to recover from its doldrums? Shouldn't I instead be asking each of you this question?"

The soft-spoken Senator Reid interjected: "If I may, Mr. President. The reason we called you in, Cesar, is that we know that we can count on you to speak your mind. We want to know what the American street is thinking. How do we solve the Medicare problem? How do we strengthen Social Security? What will Americans accept and not accept?"

"You want to take the pulse of average Americans and perhaps pick their brains?"

"Exactly," said Speaker Pelosi. I noticed that the former Speaker looked younger than her years. It must be the genes.

"We think that the elections of 2012 will be pivotal in our nation's history. We can put the country on a trajectory towards solving most of the problems, or we can assure continued paralysis through constant politicking on both sides. We would like to know what you think so we can fashion a campaign geared towards the great majority of Americans. If we can speak to the heart, soul and mind of the majority of Democrats and Independents, we will take back the U.S. House, the Senate and retain the Presidency. And this time, we will all be united so we can pursue policies that will benefit the poor and the middle class and not just the richest 2% in our country," said President Obama.

This was all I needed to get started. "Mr. President," I began, "I have a winning Democratic strategy that I have been carrying in my head for some time now. I am deliriously happy that I am face-to-face with you and Mr. Reid and Speaker Pelosi. Even your Chief of Staff is here. What an honor you are bestowing on me. I am so passionately involved in the 2012 elections - despite the fact that it is only May, 2011 - and you do me a great honor by asking me for my input.

"We must take back the House. But this time, we must take it back with people who will be in lock-step with us. We don't need any more Democratic congressmen who are marching to a different drummer. We tried this before and voters were livid. They thought they elected Democrats; turned out some of the people they elected were Republicans.

"Especially in the Senate. We had sixty Democratic senators, Mr. Reid, yet we couldn't beat back the threats of the Republican filibuster. Why? Because we had among us Republican senators we were passing off as Democrats. If we want to get things done in the new Congress, we must have only Democratic senators who will vote as Democrats and not as Republicans.

"We start by running only House and Senate candidates who will pledge in public that they will support our party's platform. People such as Senator Nelson of Nebraska must be made to understand that he is expected to vote as a Democrat and that we will not tolerate his pro-health insurance industry policies.

"With the right kind of people running for office, if we win back the House and expand our majority in the Senate, we can do a lot of good for our country. We will have a government of the people, for the people and by the people, and not a government of the special interests, by the special interests and for the special interests."

"That's all fine," said President Obama, "but how do you turn right-of-center America into basically a left-of-center society?"

"Mr. President," I quickly replied (I felt myself completely animated), "the old labels are no longer important because the Independents are now a huge chunk of the electorate. And the Independents will go left-wing or right-wing, depending on their mood and convictions. Right now, the mood in this country is to solve our problems. The independents don't care if the solutions are left-wing or right-wing, all they care about is that the solutions must make sense and hold a lot of promise.

"We know we can count on Democrats. If we ran Charlie Sheen for the Senate, Democratic voters will vote for him. It's the Independents who hold the key. We must therefore gear our campaign towards the Independents.

"How do we do that? We must come up with our own version of the New Deal, or the New Frontier, or the Contract with America. And don't forget the Great Society. Americans have been clobbered by the Great Recession, by the jobless recovery, by the flight of jobs to China and other countries. They look around and see that the only people who are benefiting from the recovery are the super-rich, the rich and the well-connected. Everybody else is struggling. Our homes are under water. There are many among our friends, neighbors and relatives who are either unemployed or who constantly fear of becoming another unemployment statistic.

"There is clearly a resentment for the rich and privileged few. Since those rich and privileged few will never vote for Democrats anyway, we must exploit this resentment by turning the 2012 campaign into a campaign against those rich and privileged few. If we are successful, those whose knee-jerk is to support the rich and privileged few (the Republican Party) will fall by the wayside.

"Mr. President, your 2008 campaign was a 'Yes, We Can' campaign. It was also about 'Change We Can Believe In.' So why don't we call the 2012 campaign an 'Of the people, by the people and for the people' campaign? This will strengthen our hold on the middle class, the poor, the immigrants - those who feel that they are getting the short end of the stick while the rich and super rich have never had it so good.

"This 'Of the people, by the people and for the people' campaign will have as their foundation eleven pillars:

"1. If a Democratic Congress is elected again, our first order of business will be to put Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security on solid financial footing.

"2. We will tax the rich and super rich. We were the undisputed greatest country in the world when our top tax rate was 70% - during the Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford and Carter eras. I don't know if the top tax rate should be 70% again, but it must be high enough to generate much needed tax revenues that will help strengthen the entitlement programs and reduce our sovereign debts.

"3. We will also increase taxes on the middle class and on businesses that outsource their manufacturing to other countries. The middle class must share in the sacrifice, while the businesses that are responsible for creating economic booms in other countries while decimating the work force in the U.S. must be taxed heavily for the privilege of selling their products and services in the U.S., the world's biggest market.

"4. We will scale back our military commitments abroad and convert our military to rapid-response and high-tech warfare combat-ready units. We will completely withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan, close many of our military bases and shore up our national defenses. The goal will be to cut down our military expenses to 75% of today's level.

"5. We will work for a Medicare-for-all system, patterned after the Canadian and Australian models. The American people and their employers will be taxed to pay for this Medicare-for-all system. The important difference will be that the premiums will not be as high as today. Since Medicare and Medicaid are the biggest drivers of the government's deficit spending, the savings will immediately put the government firmly on the path to fiscal sanity.

"6. We will introduce a financial services tax of 0.5% to be in effect for at least ten years, or until the nation's sovereign debt is reduced to about $5 trillion. All financial transactions, without exception, will be subject to the tax, which over the years could raise trillions.

"7. We will create incentives for American and multi-national businesses to bring jobs back to America by selective tariffs and other disincentives for locating factories in China, India, Ireland and other countries.

"8. Full employment will be a goal against which every U.S. national administration will be measured. Full employment will be defined as 4% unemployment rate or better, and any substantial increase in the unemployment rate will cause a series of fiscal remedies to automatically go into effect.

"9. The U.S. will not accept anything less than preeminence in green technology. We Democrats will put our best and brightest students in the field and will devote as much resources and attention to the attainment of that goal as the country did to put a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s. Of course we will not neglect our energy needs during the transition to renewable sources of energy. We will encourage massive production of natural gas and increased oil drilling and production within our shores and offshore.

"10. We will do our part in the fight against global warming and will prepare the country for what appears to be inevitable: the inundation of cities, the disappearance of barrier islands, the sinking of marshes. The U.S. will be best prepared to meet head-on the challenges of rising oceans and violent changes in weather patterns.

"11. Finally, and most importantly, the Department of Commerce must be replaced by the Department of Exports. It will be the Secretary of Exports that will promote American products throughout the world and the Cabinet Secretary will be tasked with promoting the manufacture of U.S. products for export. The Secretary of Exports will have the power to discipline organizations such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which lately has been advising its members to manufacture products overseas."

Just then, as if on cue, White House stewards opened the door and wheeled in a coffee cart. One of the stewards was a cute Filipina, and there was a smile in her eyes as she briefly stared at me.

"Oh, just in time," the President announced. "You make a lot of sense, Cesar. You have exceeded even our highest hopes for this meeting."

The transition to my waking was jarring. I wanted to go back to sleep and resume my dreaming, though I knew there was no guarantee that I would pick up the same dream. Slowly but surely I became wide awake. It must be 5:00 a.m., I thought, since I always wake up at right around 5. But, when I looked at the alarm clock, it showed 6:37 a.m. I had overslept.

South Orange

I've always known that the number "11" was my lucky number. In my early years I believed in horoscopes and read everything I could to discover what was in store for me according to the stars. I learned that as a Piscean I was given to mood swings - from the depths of the ocean to the bright light of the noon sun, as the fish swims just beneath the ocean's surface.

After my tumultuous early career years, when my body was in the U.S. but my soul was in the Philippines, I hit my stride only after I had moved to 11 Warren Court, South Orange, New Jersey and started working at 11 Kulick Road for a Japanese company in Fairfield, New Jersey.

My love affair with number 11 started in my 13th year as a student athlete in De La Salle College, a kindergarten to Masters private school in the Philippines run by the Christian Brothers. Having been told by syndicated astrologers that my lucky numbers were 1 and - less so - 2, there was no question that I would adopt number 11 as the number on my basketball uniform at La Salle. On opening day of the Archdiocesan Athletic League Midgets 1954 season, I exploded with 14 points out of my team's total 42 points. It was the highlight of my brief career as a basketball player.

I had dreamed of a career as a basketball star in the Philippines. I played basketball, breathed basketball, sunned my heavily pigmented skin shooting baskets all day in the hot equatorial sun. Basketball was my life.

My parents had other ideas. They took me to three different cardiologists because they wanted to hear from a doctor what they needed to hear: that I needed to stop playing basketball for health reasons. Long story.

I did not know it as deliverance at the time, but my tumultuous marriage fell into ruins while I lived at 11 Warren Court. It was bad for the kids - all divorces are bad for the kids - but for both my first wife and me it was an opportunity for a new beginning. Would I have gone through it all if I had known how it would affect the kids? Of course not. But, what's done was done and we all had an opportunity to move on. Compliments of 11 Warren Court.

The house was 40 years old and in bad shape inside when we bought it. It looked like a sparkling all-brick English tudor on the outside, but it was crumbling inside. I would spend tens of thousands renovating the interior over the years, when $1000 was still a lot of money. The moldy bathroom. The termite infestation. The worn and dirty carpets. The unfinished third-floor room. The unfinished half of the basement.

It felt like home. I had never felt more at home than after I had moved to 11 Warren Court. I remarked to my first wife that I suspected that I might have been reincarnated and that in an earlier life I had lived in that house at 11 Warren Court.

My former next-door neighbor, a guy named Bob Krueger, who had raised his kids at 9 Warren Court, wept when he saw his house a few years after he had sold it. It was the only house he had owned and in his sickly old age he was overcome with deep nostalgia as the memories rushed while he sat in his car watching the old house - the one and only house he had ever owned.

I was afraid something akin to that rush of emotion would await me upon seeing that old house in South Orange once again. It was my son's spring break from April 16 through April 24, and I took him back to South Orange, where he could reconnect with the friends with whom he first saw the world. I had a lot of loose official business to take care of and spring break 2011 was as good a time as any. It was after all my lucky year - the 11th year of the 21st century - so what could possibly go wrong?

Sure enough, the trip went smoothly as son Paul and I renewed our friendships with old friends and former neighbors. Paul and I stayed at the house of long-time neighbors Mike and Carolyn Banks, who had just remodeled their kitchen and bathrooms at a cost of $100,000-plus. I immediately called my wife to tell her how elegant and expensive the kitchen and bathrooms looked.

It didn't start auspiciously though since we went from the brightness and warmth of the Las Vegas sun and 90 degree weather to winter in New York and New Jersey. When our plane touched down in New York's JFK airport at 6:00 a.m. on the 16th of April, it was winter. What about spring? Wasn't it supposed to be spring? It was obvious from the start that the New York area was the land that Spring forgot. It was cold, dreary, foggy, damp, wet and soporific. And I had lived in this neck of the woods for thirty years?

From across the street, on the lawn of 8 Warren Court, our house in South Orange looked small and boxy. The couple who had bought the house cut down the front-lawn tree that had framed the house and made it look like a tudor on the English countryside. Now it sat there on a tiny lot squat and unpretentious, looking like a decorated box. This was not the house I remembered. I had romanticized this house over the past four years. This was the house that I had thought would bring me to tears when I cast my eyes on it one more time - perhaps for the last time before I moved on with finality?

No, this can't be that same house. This house was small, much smaller than I had
remembered. Now I fully understand why some friends who had seen our house years ago remarked that our house looked like a cute gingerbread house, where Hansel and Gretel might have lived.

Son Paul had the greatest week of his young life. He spent three days with Marshall, his Warren Court friend who is a few months older and with whom he had discovered the hypnotic spell of video and computer games. The two best friends forever never really lost touch because they kept communicating in cyberspace through XBox Live and web cams. Marshall is still a head taller than Paul, but since the two of them move like Thing One and Thing Two, nobody notices the height disparity.

The poignant scenes were reserved for the meeting between Paul and his best friend in school, Sean Taylor. Paul knocked on the front door of the Taylor residence even though the house looked like there was nobody home. I had remarked to Paul that the Taylors were probably not home because it was spring break. "Let's just knock," Paul said.

When Mrs. Taylor opened the door, she was smiling from ear to ear. I sat in the car and observed the scene at a comfortable distance, but it was obvious that she was so happy to see Paul. She called Sean Taylor down and Sean and brother Brian came rushing down the staircase. When Sean reached the fourth or fifth step, he stopped and clutched the bannister and eyed Paul. I had already entered the house and was standing in the anteroom. Paul stood at the bottom of the stairs while Sean had the look of a kid who did not know what was happening all around him. Paul had the same expression on his face he always has. He had the confident airs of someone who knew exactly what was happening because he had made it happen.

Kathleen (Mrs. Taylor) related to me that Sean had often wondered if he would ever see Paul again after we had moved to Las Vegas. Sometimes, Sean would ask his mother to drive through Warren Court just so Sean could see the house where Paul used to live. Paul and Sean were best friends at Marshall School from kindergarten to 2nd grade - both mildly ADHD and both having each other's back as they learned to form alliances on Marshall School's rough and tumble playground.

Paul wanted to see as many former classmates on this trip as we could find. Unfortunately, I had forgotten where his other friends lived. Except Zach Britton, who made a brief appearance at the Taylor residence after hearing that Paul was at the Taylors'.

South Orange in grown-up talk is a disaster. A lot of houses are on the market but are not selling. Everybody we saw on this trip told us how lucky we were that we had sold our house in August, 2007, just before the housing market crashed. Now, every third homeowner in town is trying to sell his house because of the insane property tax system. Property taxes have skyrocketed as the New Jersey state's finances have taken a turn towards possible bankruptcy. The state is no longer there to help the small towns and cities, so South Orange must raise funds by taxing its residents.

The brother of one of my friends in the old neighborhood now pays $33,000 a year in property taxes because his house has been appraised by the town at $1.5 million. Furious, he put his house on the market so he could, like me, become a property tax refugee. Nobody is buying. He is selling his house for $799,000 and still nobody is buying.

He went to the town assessor and argued his case for lower property taxes. He could not even sell his house for $799,000, so how could it possibly have an assessed value of $1.5 million? To no avail.

Some good things - enough to tickle - are happening in South Orange. The old supermarket building in town has been renovated, and new tenants - an upscale supermarket and a swanky restaurant on the second floor called "Above" are the new occupants. The dumpy parking lot of the old supermarket now has a three-story mixed use building, with two floors of ritzy apartments and stores and offices on the ground floor.

On the main street, South Orange Avenue, store owners are fleeing the high cost of commercial rentals, which have been made necessary by the dreaded first-in-the-nation property taxes.

What will become of South Orange as residents flee for low-property-tax areas like Florida, Nevada, Texas and California? For years there have been talk of South Orange and Maplewood merging and becoming one town once again. South Orange did in fact start out as a part of Maplewood, broke off because of concerns about its needs not being met. Now it may be necessary for the two towns to become one once again if those two towns are to have a decent chance to be viable in today's fiscal environment.

The New Jersey governor, Chris Christie, is gutting the state government to force a balanced budget. He obviously wants to set an example for the local governments like South Orange and Maplewood. If Christie's state government is the wave of the future, local governments all over the state will be forced to scale back and pool resources. Public education will suffer, roads and bridges, public safety will deteriorate.

More will be demanded of county governments, as small towns and cities become less independent and more dependent on the counties' meager budgets.

The limits of taxing properties in South Orange have been reached. Unless property taxes are rolled back, few residents would want to stay in that town. We, the Lumbas, fled South Orange in 2007 primarily because of our high property taxes. Others before us and still others after us have done the same.

Paradoxically, a monumental collapse of the housing market may be the only hope for the town's residents because that would force the local government to substantially roll back taxes. This, of course, would be the worst thing for seniors who until the housing collapse had been counting on selling their houses and using the proceeds to partially fund their retirement.

Is South Orange the metaphor for the entire United States experiment?

Sweet Bird of Youth

About a month ago, I took a sabbatical from this blog to view my blogging from a distance. Was I writing useful stuff? Was I helping anyone? Was my blogging centered in people's needs and interests and not merely my attempts to prove I had something to say?

A part of me knows I have something important to say, yet another part of me says that I delight in appearing knowledgeable, smart and sometimes witty. A part of me wants to write for the sake of writing. It's akin to arguing for the sake of arguing. You hear people say all the time, when they interject a hypothetical, "Arguing for the sake of argument."

A little more than a week ago I was introduced to a book that could possibly change my life and perhaps other people's lives.

The book, called "NO More Heart Disease," traces the author's life's work to Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite. Nobel, as almost everyone knows, at the end of the 19th and dawn of the 20th century packaged powdered nitroglycerin mixtures in dynamite sticks that revolutionized modern-day living. Through Nobel's invention, mountainsides have been blasted to make way for roads, mine shafts and tunnels have been built, neighborhoods have been demolished to make way for shopping malls.

Nitroglycerin, invented by a chemist in 1846, is a substance that has been around for more than 150 years. Nothing new with this product, which is even used to treat angina pectoris, or chest and other pains. Exactly how nitroglycerin works to ease the pain was not widely known during Alfred Nobel's time, and that is probably the best explanation for why Nobel himself refused to be treated with nitroglycerin for his cardiovascular disease, even when all other treatments had failed. He died of complications of that disease.

Nobel, against his doctors' advice, refused to use nitroglycerin for his ailment because he did not want a substance used in producing dynamite, or its by-product - nitric oxide, which comes out of automobile tailpipes - to enter his blood stream. To him, nitroglycerin was simply a product for the sewers, not his body.

A Brooklyn boy with a prodigious love for chemistry, Louis Ignarro, was so fascinated by Alfred Nobel's life and dynamite itself that he soon found himself devoting his scholarly energies to a greater understanding of nitroglycerin. His research took him to the study of nitric oxide, which most assuredly comes out of cars' tailpipes but is the primary substance in nitroglycerin that treats angina pectoris.

His interests led him to a career in pharmacology. Through collaborative research with other medical scientists, he learned that there was a silver bullet in the treatment of atherosclerosis - hardening of the arteries - and arteriosclerosis, the clogging up of arteries. It was nitric oxide, but he did not know this at first.

The enormity of the subject transfixed him. It was well-known that the average human body has 80,000 miles end to end of arteries, veins and capillaries. Every cell in the body needs oxygen and nutrients, and the body's infrastructure of arteries, veins and capillaries are the conduit for the blood that oxygenates and feeds the cells in our bodies.

Heart attacks and strokes are the result of blood vessels no longer functioning at optimal levels or are clogged up, depriving organs - especially the heart and brain - of oxygen and nutrients. His life's mission, he felt in his gut, was to find ways to improve the functioning of the blood vessels. His medical research and experiments led him to an amino acid known as L-Arginine. This protein would prove to be effective in repairing the endothelium, the one-cell-thick lining that protects the blood vessels' interior walls.

Ignarro knew that the interior walls had to be protected, otherwise the vessels would harden, a condition known as atherosclerosis. Atherosclerosis or hardened arteries, makes arteries inefficient conduits for blood.

Ignarro knew that the key to delaying, even reversing aging was the proper functioning and health of the blood vessels. In fact, 75% of aging is caused by damaged and worn-down blood vessels.

His research revealed that a substance, which he called "endothelium-derived relaxing factor" or EDRF, was produced by the endothelium and was the body's defense against harmful molecules and substances that damage both the endothelium and the blood vessels' interior walls.

It took years before researchers discovered that the substance was nitric oxide, the very substance found in nitroglycerin and auto exhausts, and which substance the human body produces in sufficient quantities in youth but in ever-decreasing quantities as we age. Nitric oxide, chemical formula NO, or one atom of nitrogen and one atom of oxygen, is secreted by the endothelium in much the same way that the linings in our mouths produce saliva. Nitric oxide protects the endothelium from free radicals and bacteria.

Once this relationship between the health of blood vessels and nitric oxide was established, one would think that it would all be downhill from there. No such luck.

As we age, the endothelium is damaged, veins, arteries and capillaries are blocked all along the 80,000 miles of blood vessels. Because the endothelium is the main source of nitric oxide, not enough NO is produced, and eventually the blood vessels harden to the point that organs no longer get enough sustenance, leading to disease and eventually death.

Ignarro knew that to delay aging and prevent strokes and cardiovascular disease, the key was to keep the blood vessels young and healthy. To accomplish this, the endothelium needed to be repaired.

His research introduced him to an already known protein called L-arginine. That protein was found to repair the endothelium, bringing it back to health and appeared to reverse the hardening of the arteries and other blood vessels. It also appeared to melt away the plaque buildup in arteries, sending the liquefied plaque to the kidneys for disposal.

The problem with L-arginine, however, was that its effect lasted only a few seconds. Hardly the kind of treatment that anyone would be interested in. Through his many experiments he found that L-citrulline, another protein, when combined with L-arginine, worked synergistically with the latter to encourage production of nitric oxide by the endothelium for 24 to 36 hours. This pharmacological breakthrough eventually won for Ignarro the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1998.

Ignarro was almost home. Since much of the damage to the endothelium is caused by free radicals (oxygen atoms missing one electron) he knew instinctively that the mixture of L-arginine and L-citrulline had to be combined with powerful anti-oxidants to do the job. Determining sufficient quantities of antioxidants was the next big challenge, which Dr. Ignarro was more than equal to.

Ignarro was at Nice (France) airport in 1998 when he retrieved his voice mail and heard his friend in the U.S. tell him that he had won the Nobel Prize for Medicine for his successful research into the cocktail mixture of L-arginine, L-citrulline and antioxidants to combat atherosclerosis and arteriosclerosis. He got the call on April 1, so he assumed that it was an April Fool's joke.

When he arrived at his destination - Naples, Italy - some journalists and photographers greeted him as he alighted from the plane, walking down the metal staircase. He looked behind him because he thought that a celebrity was closely on his trail. There was nobody there.

When his Italian friend, a pharmacology professor, handed him a copy of a press release announcing Dr. Ignarro's Nobel prize, Ignarro fell to his knees on the tarmac, overcome with emotion.

It was as though the decades of hard work and disappointments typical among researchers looking for that proverbial needle in the haystack - all those years of not being taken seriously by the medical community - had melted away. History, of course, is replete with examples of announced breakthroughs that in the end proved to be worthless - even harmful - junk. So how does society know that this time, this discovery is for real? Society only knows after the fact.

The book, "NO More Heart Disease," is a runaway best-seller at amazon.com. It sells for $10.87, with free delivery.

More importantly, the book has encouraged medical researchers to conduct parallel research on the effectiveness of nitric oxide treatment on cardiovascular and other diseases. A brilliant researcher, Dr. Joe Prendergast, has confirmed not only that nitric oxide treats and repairs the endothelium and interior wall of the blood vessels, it also acts as a signaling agent for the maintenance of the vessels.

A substance that is present in dynamite and that comes out of auto tailpipes - nitric oxide - is our own bodies' defense against degenerative diseases of the organs, the blood vessels themselves, cellular damage, and even microbes and other harmful substances that invade the blood stream. In fact, Ignarro and others discovered that our white blood cells repel invaders by producing nitric oxide and using that gas as an important weapon.

And because nitric oxide, through continued and prolonged use and in sufficient quantities, cause normal functioning and regeneration of blood vessels, the effects of disease and aging are known to have been reversed. People who were on the waiting list for heart transplants in the High Desert Heart Institute in Victorville, California (Dr. Prendergast's study and treatment, not Ignarro's) recovered and were taken off the waiting list. Thousands of Dr. Prendergast's diabetes patients recovered from the organ damages that the disease had wrought on those patients.

Because blood vessels tend to become new again when sufficient quantities of nitric oxide are used in treatments, physiological aging stopped for most patients, and in many cases there was evidence that aging was reversed, meaning that people actually got younger.

The excited buzz among the researchers is that because aging is caused primarily by blood vessel decline and because nitric oxide repairs, regenerates, makes supple and softens blood vessels again - to the point that old people eventually become physiologically young again - theoretically people's life expectancy could someday increase to 150 years, instead of today's 79 years.

Has modern medicine found the fountain of youth? I certainly hope so. If man can build robots that think, look, feel and fall in love like humans, why can't man discover a way to doubling his life expectancy?

So far, only man's optimism is eternal. But, in the not-too-far distant future, maybe man himself will be close to being eternal.

(Disclosure: I am involved in the marketing of a product that uses Dr. Ignarro's discoveries to treat cardiovascular, diabetes and other diseases. The product, which increases blood flow as one of its primary effects, also allegedly treats some forms of male impotence. I can't vouch for this personally because this claim is based on theory and not on actual testimony of the product's users.)