Lost on Purpose
An old pair of shoes was left behind.
A broken umbrella was 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 is always talking about how great their family is.
The clerk at the grocery store asks 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 whom we once loved, we now can no longer 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 commercial organizations segregate us, allowing us to do business only with those like us.
Political charities, we give our support 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, to discriminate who can enter and who cannot.
Lost on purpose.
There are those among us who have lost their humanity on purpose.
They desire the riches of 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 from responsibility to their fellow man.
They hate you and me.
We represent the other.
The taker.
They only see a limited world.
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 intentionally is unlikely to be persuaded to reclaim it.
Their religion is the hatred of mankind.
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 happy hating.
They are happy hating you and me.
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 put up bank on hate.
A long time ago, in a decade not too far away...
The Republican party employed the Southern Strategy during Nixon's election. It was an invitation to a free lunch given to all those segregationists and racists still burrowed into the 'Olde Democratic Party.'
You see, the old racists had their largest membership in the Democratic Party before the Civil Rights movement of the 60s.
They had been there since the Civil War.
Johnson made the racists uncomfortable in the party when he signed the bill ending segregation.
Segregation was the ideal of being separate but equal.
Whites and nonwhites would not share, but they would have 'equal access.'
That never happened, that equal access thing.
Blacks and all nonwhites were discriminated against.
The racists accepted the invitation in a common cause with the business conservatives of the GOP, whom they mutually enjoyed their discrimination against brown people and women.
Then and now, racists 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 since the end of the Civil War, 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 embrace it.
Just like when the Emperor told Luke to embrace the dark side.
The belief that America is racist conservative, not liberal.
Conservative America can't believe that brown people, women, and gays are equal to a white man.
It is remarkable how self-fulfilling this worldview is of conservatives and hate.
The darkness they have created for themselves and their adoption of this worldview, which involves hating the stranger, blinds them to the message of love.
Because of this blind hate, they can't see the writing on the wall.
The sack they wear on their heads forces them to rebreathe 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 their strength, they are right.
They can't hear someone like me say that racist 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 the 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 on 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 overcome…
Today.
Peace
Daniel J Frey aka Toby
