And of course, we are to vote for these particular politicians along the way. Perhaps these politicians believe their rhetoric, perhaps they don't -- but they don't create a better society when they call on people to gang up on someone else. And all too often the "others" they target are in no position to defend themselves, making the attacks unbearably cruel.

We teach our children to speak up against bullying. We adults should do the same.

Also demoralizing to me are the candidates who think the rallying cry of "Tax cuts!" will be their Open Sesame to elective office. They know perfectly well that the US economy has always been a public-private partnership (Homestead Act, anyone?). They know also that the US economy shed jobs during the tax-cutting years of the Bush administration. Still, they try to get the electorate to believe that tax cuts will be a silver bullet, and they forestall scrutiny of this position by stirring up rage against "the government." It's easier to demonize "tax-and-spenders" than it is to try to figure out what long-term changes are underway in our economy and what mix of private entrepreneurship and public infrastructure (education?, broadband access?, research support?) will open up opportunity for all. They don't help our country when they encourage people to join them in anger at some "Other" instead of thinking things through, sharing experiences, analyzing, discussing, listening, questioning, and working together.

Most appalling are the outright lies about President Obama. I remember well how schoolyard bullies would pull out all the stops -- calling their victims every name they could think of, whether contradictory or not. Obama seems to rise above it all -- but the politicians stirring up Obama-hatred are drawing a lot of otherwise decent people down into the gutter with them.

I sure hope the President isn't one of them. In general, I think, President Obama has raised the level of political debate in the US. But his recent charges of foreign money distorting the US political process through secret accounts in the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have the whiff of demagoguery about them. Surely the issue is anonymous corporate political contributions made possible by a recent Supreme Court Decision -- and not the "foreignness" of funds sent to the Chamber by overseas members.

I am sick of this! If everyone is on the attack, everything gets distorted, everyone is defensive, and no one can learn from anyone else.

Meanwhile, the beautiful fall days keep coming. Yesterday, in a pasture above the house, we found wild orchids blooming. They are "Ladies Tresses," so named for the spiral of white blossoms that winds around the stem, like a lady's braid. We had never before found this prairie flower on our land; indeed, we had assumed it had gone the way of the bison, cougars, and elk. But now here we were, surrounded by orchids. Perhaps they had bloomed before, and we had missed them -- or perhaps they had been awaiting just the right conditions to emerge. The ones we found were growing singly, in the middle of grazed patches, in a pasture that was in the last year of a 3-year burn cycle. We began to flag the orchids, in order to collect seed later on, but there were so many orchids we ran out of flags!

Wouldn't it be great if our politics could surprise us the way the tall grass prairie does? How wonderful it would be if our politics gave rise to life-giving creativity, just as the prairie, when given a chance, expresses its biodiversity.