Healthy lifestyles would not have suggested you be a capitalist in 1948 Shanghai when Chairman Mao came to power. And history well knows indeed, for the decade to succeed, it was off with their lives, a million bullets a month, for those months to proceed. By 1950, the Panda was so secure in its new throne, while North Korea was a distraction, it took over Tibet. And while we all huffed and we puffed, and defended Seoul to the end.



Korea, unlike far away Tibet, was on a peninsula so easy to defend. Our navy supreme, it would be impossible, obscene, that we be thrown back into the sea at that small south eastern corner. So, we showed them our stuff, landed by guff, near Seoul and have held it since there, that's enough. We went up to Manchurian borders, China rushed us back by our bluff. So we have massive borders and will not sign any agreement that bans land mines.

Do we really seriously need to be so afraid? Of these poor starving people, who may attack us again any moment while they forage for scraps of food, they may come back at us yet. Dick Cheney assures us, be very, very afraid of North Korea, that mighty menace. They are a menace, but will not get through our net. Are we nervous, or paranoid, or silly to the world? If that indeed apparently does not matter, then we take seriously that mad hatter, over there, as the next threat of the world. His people are starving, he relies on our stuff, but threatens us with weapons, and we take all his guff.

Saddam did not have this, and did not threaten us so. But he threatened my daddy, and he had to go. So on Mugabe, despot and foe, we sneer but ignore you, as you well now know. But the original Chairman, when he was young, had ideals less filled with hatred, as his Red Book as sung.

The idealistic Red Book of Chairman Mao I read in my university youth, and marveled at it's pure insight to basic human needs and trust. It was like reaching Confucian or Buddhist compassion and logic. Share your food with the people; do not give them a fright. Always smile and hide your weapons when you enter a new village. Offer them, do not take from them. Prepare before you enter each village that you have foraged for food, some wild boar, some rice in a field, and bring it into the village with smiles, and hug their children.

For they are your newer, larger army, if you can be wise. And as you gather your kingdom, so will you rise. I am not sure those were his actual words, but I have most harmoniously tried to pass on what Chairman Mao, he who, in his young idealist years said in his Red Book to me. And to you.