Letter to Hillary

Man, it is so easy to send a letter to your congressmen (person) these days. I had a few minutes to spare, so I went to www.senate.gov, found the web page and contact page for Hillary Clinton, and fired off a quick e-mail (via a form on her page). The link is:

http://www.clinton.senate.gov/contact/webform.cfm

You can get representatives through www.house.gov.

Here is the contents of my e-mail to her (recorded here for posterity):

Okay, I'm just going to blurt this out. What's the real reason you voted to let Bush attack Iraq?

I don't buy that bit about the evidence, because anyone could see that GB was so eager to attack Iraq that he could never view the evidence objectively. Nor do I buy the idea that he was supposed to use work with the U.N. to get the weapons inspectors back in Iraq and only use the threat of war as a last result. Anyone who read the news knew that George would only put a token effort into meeting that criteria before declaring war.

Personally, I think all the democrats were either bought off or were threatened. To me, it looked like the democrats were all against going to war, then all of the sudden they changed direction and voted GB the authority to invade.

By the way, I agree with you whole heartedly that we shouldn't pull out of Iraq right now, but I also agree with Bush that a time-table isn't appropriate right now either. Of course, my rational is a little different. I just think that for us to go in there and totally screw up a complete country and then walk away and leave in a shambles would show an incredible lack of any sense of responsibility for cleaning up our own messes.

Another "by the way", I understand you might try to run for president in '08. I think it would be great to have a woman president, and I think you'd make a pretty good one and have a good chance of winning, but if you want my vote, I'll have to hear some bold statements coming from you. I signed up to receive updates on your web page, so hopefully I'll hear something.

Right now I could see myself voting for either Howard Dean or John McCain, but I haven't looked at the issues too closely. I like Howard Dean because he voted against going to Iraq, so he wasn't bought or didn't succomb to threats like I think everyone else did (call me crazy, but that's what I think), and because he was one of the first to come out against the war after is started.

I like John McCain because he's not afraid to come out against his party. I'm not so much against republicans as I am against the idea that a group of people can come up with ideas behind closed doors, and when they come out, they all spout the same line. I want to see the disagreements that went on. I don't like the idea that they all put together a united front. As far as I'm concerned, I'm the one running this country (through my votes), and if I can't get accurate information on the issues, then I can't make good decisions about what I vote for. Anything that gets in the way of my finding out what's going on in government and why undermines democracy and is bad for this country.

Anyway, I've rambled enough. I hope you do run for president, and I hope you win, and I hope you do a good job after you win. We always think of ourselves as being one of the most progressive nations in the world, and yet a 3rd world country like India, and probably several others, had a woman leader before we did. It's embarrassing.

Thanks for listening,
LeRoy James

(Actually, I used my real name in my letter to her, and almost did here as well, but that would blow my secret identity, so I changed it at the last minute :)

Theory on origin of mythical peoples

When my mom was a little girl living up in Marin County, she used to hear stories of this "wild man" that lived up in the mountains. Years later she came across a book called "Ishi, the last Yahi". Ishi actually died many years before my mom was born, but like the internet "urban legends", the stories of him were transmitted from child to child long after Ishi died.

The Irish have legends about a people called the "Tuatha de Danann", or "People of the Godess Danu". (I'm pulling this off the web, I'm not Irish myself). From what I've been able to gather, it seems like the Tuatha de Danann were considered a kind of fairy folk, but the stories about them sound more like a people migrating to Ireland from somewhere else and then encountering the people who already live there.

This started me thinking. There were a lot of migrations of different peoples throughout pre-history, as shown in the archeological record. (The only one I specifically remember reading about is the "Beaker People" moving into Europe, but I'm sure there were others).

When people move from one area to another, they're going to have interactions with the people who lived there before them. As time goes on, and the original people are either absorbed or move on, these interactions will be less and less, but the stories of these interactions will live on in the oral tradition of the new people.

If the new people were much more powerful or aggressive than the original people in the area, then the original people will probably hide from the new people, and the stories will reflect this. Mythical peoples like Fairies and Leprechauns are known to be secretive and hard to catch.

On the other hand, if the two peoples are more evenly matched, there will be more violent encounters, and the stories will reflect that. I think stories of giants may be an example of this. In Roman/Greek mythology, the gods vs. the titans may be another example of this, where the gods were the heroes of the new people, and the titans those of the original people.

In either case, encounters with the original people will become fewer and and farther between as time goes on. Eventually the original people will be gone, but the new people won't really know when that happens. To them, it will just have been a long time since an encounter happened. As with Ishi, the stories will live on, and occasionally, someone will report a new encounter, either imagined or made up.

Of course, if the original people are more powerful than the new people, then the new people won't be able to replace the originals. You may still have stories, but they'll be of a different nature.

It would be interesting to look at the history of the various mythical peoples, and compare it to the archeological record of peoples migrations to see if there is any correlation. Even the names by which we refer to these mythical peoples might reflect the names by which these ancient peoples were know.