In the course of human events the decision for our actions is made by the heart and not the rational mind. We may think we rely upon the Spock's of this world but we even love Spock best when he action comes from the heart.

I entered my adult career based upon my most accessible talent which is empathy. Whenever I shine a light through the lens of empathy and put myself in another person's shoes, the fundamental truth of people's choices become crystal clear.

Take this walk with me and look through the eyes of the newest criminal class of people who stole the bolts that held America together for pennies on the dollar. When we set foot upon the bridge that all our ancestors had built, it collapsed sending us into the river. Some were drowned but all were soaked and sent scurrying to the bank. The only people who were safe were the bankster class in their private jets and helicopters.

Over a year later when I look at what has happened with extreme empathy I bear no malice for those who willingly betrayed and destroyed their country. We all know the rational reasons like; training raider traders at Enron and moved on to Wall Street, and the mortgage companies that knowingly sacrificed the future for short term bubble profit and the rating companies that stopped rating and started living off bribes and every other rational reason for removing every law that would have prevented financial collapse.

But the real reason was cowardice and fear. Sit down in your office at the investment company of Kaplan and Associates. Look out the window on a crisp blue morning. For 40 miles you can see a mighty city and beyond the Atlantic. For 6 seconds you can watch an airplane grow larger and then slam into your investment company office. You are dead, but all of the traders who survived accross the country shared you last moments.

You don't need all the peculiar paradoxes and resulting conspiracy theories to explain what happened. In your heart you feel that you could be next. While you are here the best thing you can do is get everything you can take and get out. Its everyone for themselves. Country be damned, laws be damned, if you can get to a lifeboat or buy a yacht with stolen money you will do it. The fear justifies cowardice. The financial gain justifies the traitorous betrayal of your heritage.

Everything that was stolen was done with fear at your back. The larger forces that want to see only two or three banks owning the entire world can not be held back by you, anymore than anyone in the towers on 9-11 could hold back the commercial airliners.

In combat you do things you would never deliberately do anyplace else. You did what you had to do, but in the final analysis you did it out of fear and cowardice. There were heroes that fateful day but the survivors who called themselves Wall St. who had to live and work among the ruins day after day, were not among them. The stench, the reminders, the scrambling for safety was embedded deeply and silently in their heart for years.

Perhaps watching financiers hearts turn into cowardly monstrous banksters was foreseen by war criminals like bin Laden but I doubt it.
I write this post not to excuse what happened or ignore the little word greed that is always used to justify and excuse great evil, I only wanted to wear the other guy's $1,000 shoes and see for myself why I would hurt every man woman and child to save myself. For all the good people who blew whistles, lost their jobs and did the right thing, I bestow upon you the honor that heroes deserve.

Courage or cowardice. Fear of death. Everyone for themselves. These are the reasons why men and women sold the bolts of our bridge to the future for pennies. Empathy exposes more than the emotions of those who allowed or caused the greatest theft of treasure the world has known since WW II. Empathy shows us that we can not judge too harshly since we too may have sacrificed our principles and integrity for a chance to survive and prosper beyond our wildest imagination without a thought to the bodies beneath and behind us.