An old pair of shoes left behind.
A broken umbrella put under a bench.
Chewed gum stuck on a pole.
We've all left things behind on purpose because they no longer served us.
We left things behind because we wanted to.
It wasn't by accident that we left our clothes on the floor.
We did it on purpose because we were too tired or just plain lazy to do the right thing and put them in the laundry.
We all have left things behind, but what about people?
That sibling who couldn't keep their nose out of our business.
The co-worker who is always talking about how great their family is.
The clerk at the grocery store because they ask how we are feeling.
People can be left behind too.
We leave them on purpose.
They have become an annoyance, to be avoided.
The spouse who we once loved now we can't stand.
We go to court and have the legal system divorce us from our emotions.
We use institutions of varying sizes to mitigate our responsibilities.
Our religions keep us separate from those who don't believe like us.
Our commerce organizations segregate us to only do business with those like us.
Political charities we give our support and money to fight to keep alliances from forming.
The communities in which we live are there to keep in those like us and keep out those not like us.
And our police force for our communities is there to serve and protect yet discriminate who can enter.
Lost on purpose.
There are those among us who have lost their humanity on purpose.
They desire the world at the expense of their own soul.
They protect their right to kill who they want when they want without regard to who they make afraid.
A belief that strength at any cost is right.
They have freely given away their humanity to gain freedom of responsibility to their fellow man.
They hate you and me.
We represent the other.
The taker.
They only see limitations.
A limit to wealth, to prosperity, to food, to shelter, to compassion.
Their compassion extends only to the length of their own fingertips.
Have you ever tried to make someone give up their religion?
The person who has left their humanity behind on purpose is not going to be persuaded to pick it up again.
They have made a life choice.
No argument is going to make them turn their eyes and look at you or me with love.
They only see us as so much dirt beneath their feet to step on and over.
Again, when was the last time you went back to the trash pile where you left those old shoes 25 years ago and retrieved them?
People who have left their humanity behind are not searching for it.
They're are happy hating.
Our President is happy helping them hate.
Hate has brought him power.
Hate has delivered him respect.
Hate fills his bank accounts with wealth.
Why would he stop hating certainly not for you and me?
He and his re-election campaign are banking on hate.
The Republican Party continues to bank on hate.
Ever since they welcomed the Southern Strategy, which was a free lunch given to all those segregationists and racists who left the Democratic Party after the civil rights movement broke the back of that party.
The racists joined into common cause with the business conservatives of the GOP who they courted and danced with in their discrimination of brown people and women.
They have a belief that there are more haters in our Republic than soft-hearted, soft-headed people.
Conservatives have had this bone they've been chewing on for the past 100 years or more believing that America has been waiting for its great hate awakening.
A belief that we all hate we just don't realize it and we need to let it go.
The belief that America is conservative, not liberal.
Conservative America can't believe that brown people, woman, and gays are equal to a white man.
It is remarkable how self-fulfilling the world view is of conservatives and hate.
The darkness they have created for themselves and their adoption of this world view of hating the other blinds them to the light of love.
Because of it, they can't see the writing on the wall.
The sack they wear on their heads rebreathing the same old tired air.
They can't hear the voices in the street.
They only recognize their own closed-minded communities of hate and mistake violence for the inevitability of what they see as a just cause.
Through strength, they are right.
They can't hear someone like me say that sentiment is pure evil.
That sentiment is the sword on which so many warriors for love have fought against.
It is the monster that tears apart nations, communities, families, and individuals.
So certain is darkness of the outcome of this battle with love.
The darkness of the soul has a very short memory.
Since its only interest is self, it doesn't recognize outcomes.
It doesn't realize the motivation created by one child crying.
It doesn't realize the feet it puts in the street with each mass shooting.
It doesn't see what the death of one brown person can do to the outcome in the voting booth.
It doesn't hear the chant…
Do something.
We are not afraid.
We shall over come…
Today.
Peace
DFrey
