"All acceptance is the key to the gateless gate." (Old Zen saying). Good advice, especially when it comes to things we can't prevent or fix. And knowing the difference between the two; what we can fix and what we can't, is the beginning of wisdom. Without wisdom, I'm afraid that stupidity is all that is left.

So what can we fix? America, I believe, is waking up to the fact that we can no longer fix anything. Like gluing together a model airplane that increasingly disintegrates with each flight, pretty soon there are no parts left to glue.

We are trying to glue together a health care plan to help folks, but the insurance companies already are raising rates, as high as 25% just for next year for Medicare Advantage Policy holders. They are doing what they can to make more money before the government cracks down. That will be close to a one hundred percent increase by the time the law takes effect in 2013, and no one can stop them. So clients are angry.

Health insurance companies are angry. They have been making a "killing" (maybe a bad term) for many years now, 3% profit on billions of dollars adds up to more money than one can count, and their cash cow is being revealed for what it has been, unbridled greed accomplished through influence peddling.

Doctors are angry. Everyone wants to cut their payments and they still have medical school loans to pay off!

Drug companies are angry. GlaxoSmithKline, for example, made a 30% profit this last quarter, and is expected to make more off the people's backs next quarter, while many of us lost our jobs. But still, drug companies are afraid that their astronomical, unregulated bought and paid for through congress earnings may be cut a little by new laws and transparency into there devious practices.

Hospitals are angry because insurance companies and the government won't pay their exorbitant rates any longer, rates pushed up by medical supply manufacturers, who by the way, are angry as well!

Politicians are angry because nothing of value comes out of congress any longer. It gets watered down to the weakest common denominator. Nothing can be fixed.

Everyone involved with health care is angry. Why? Because everyone is about to lose - everything.

Actually, anyone involved with just about anything anymore is angry, because we no longer understand how to compromise. Religiously we can't compromise, which involves joyfully accepting other's beliefs as legitimate. We can't even accept stupid science (you know, the misguided people who stupidly insist that the world is older than 6,000 years), as legitimate anymore without getting angry, It's our way or the highway, and this translates into life as entrenched ideas that we would rather kill someone over than compromise. Why is this? Where did this violent streak of anger begin?

It began when we decided to value wealth more than each other.

We lost our faith, and may never get it back. Sure, we still pretend to be faithful, but to whom? I suggest that we are more faithful to our stockbrokers now than we are to the commandments. How can a little lying or dishonesty hurt when we make money from it? The problem is, when we lose our faith and substitute it with wealth accumulation, we get angry. Never peaceful.

It works like this - everyone is conspiring to take our money away; politicians, poor people, welfare cheats, the "Government," . . . relatives! All with their hands greedily out to relieve us of our wealth. No wonder we are mad. Just read any article in any newspaper and money will likely be involved at some level.

Greed we can't fix. "Don't be greedy." Hah. Greed and greed's consort; anger, have taken root and has grown into a forest of materialism. These are our only values now, and they are being taken away.

Our standard of living will decrease for many reasons, such as globalization (labor is ten to a hundred times cheaper in developing nations), rising prices from milk to gas, and a falling dollar. And our anger will increase proportionately and exponentially as we tear out each others throats to keep as much of our money as we can for ourselves. It will get ugly.

And there is no fix. We have gone way past the point of no return in our spiritual lives by substituting spiritual practice and discipline for that which is pleasurable. The mention of poverty as a necessary element in religious understanding is not only laughed at, but looked at as a threat. There is no fix.

"All acceptance" to the idealistically insane that are now apparently running our country or would like to, is a term that to them represents surrender, and they will never surrender. There is no fix.

So enjoy your anger, go to bed seething every night and don't allow anyone to get the upper hand. If we can all agree on this, I am sure that we can find some hapless country out there to engage us in war. Then we can become really angry, and we will all be happy again. And wealthy after the war.

"All acceptance is the key to the gateless gate." (I can hear us all laughing now!)