I just turned on 5 minutes of the inauguration, and it was all god all the time.

I am ashamed of the country we have become. I am beginning to realize a more full view of our fore “fathers”: The people who had the courage to rebel and fight the odds in a transatlantic crossing and the fear to kill the indigenous people and the persistence to eke out a subsistence for themselves…. it was hard and they committed crimes to liberate themselves and they lacked a type of trust and curiousity.

Well, they were strong in their freedom-loving and defiance of British government and they crafted an amazing document declaring all “men” (at least) equal but they were also mean as hell and rigid in their opinions of entitlement. They relied on their religious faith to help them through the many trials. Those qualities have come back to haunt us now, even though we are the largest and most bully nation on the planet! We are no longer a small band of brothers fighting great odds just to survive. Can the men celebrating in Washington allow that to sink into their consciousness? Can they realize God loves everyone? Have they ever read about false pride?

Psychology 101 shows us how easy it is for victim to become oppressor given the slightest opportunity. They are just two sides of the same cycle of violence. Our men in Washington are pretending to be victims (I know – the pain of being the oppressed takes a long time to heal) while they dominate the world, becoming more hated every day, and creating the largest oppressed class ever imaginable – the terrorists. They fight us, and they fight their own Arab rulers who deny them freedom.

What I want to see is a liberation from the cycle.

I want to see consciousness in action.

Consciousness thrives with a high level of personal responsibility and a willingness to understand the intrinsic power we each possess. America has so much power it is almost unfathomable, yet we are operating in a culture of fear and terror of our own making.

When will we grow up? When will we wake up?

Apple is celebrating at its annual rite of passage — Macworld Expo — in San Francisco. I highly recommend it, at least once in a lifetime. To be sure the exhibit hall is loud, and the smarmy ones among us may complain the presentations are not challenging enough, but it is one amazing immersion in some of the most fun and creative uses of technology one can find. Mac users being the friendly types, there is also this rather rare open-hearted energy that infuses not just the convention center but the environs of San Francisco as well. I was there a few years ago, and ended up iChatting in my hotel lobby with other attendees. We had chosen the venue because it had Wi-Fi, and we were all toting our PowerBooks and iPods around.

I don’t which came first: the apple or the fun and friendly. But Apple people are like Toastmasters with groove: you can go anywhere in the world and find a Mac User Group and be welcomed in. Or you can be sitting in Borders with your laptop and an iSight and when another Apple laptop user appears… there is a wink in the eye and an energetic “hey sis/hey bro” message shared between the two.