True Believers

Racism is a religious movement.

Racism has no room for compromise.

This is why we stand and fight this enemy of humanity.

Purity is the product of minds that believe there can only be one solution to a problem.

I was raised by racists.

My extended family, growing up, were racists.

Family friends were all racists.

They ranged from the card-carrying openly hostile bigot to the meek and mild "Go along to get along" varieties.

I am well versed in the lore, the beliefs, and the practice of racists.

What they say openly to each other and what they say in private at the birthday party.

At the picnic.

At the seasonal Christmas gathering.

Racism is a religion.

It is born of religion.

Inherent in every religion, our focus, the three Western religions, is the foundation of the believer versus those who do not believe.

It is there in black and white, transcribed for all to see.

When told, many of us want to deny what's written in the holy texts of the three religions that claim Jerusalem as their holy city.

It's challenging to introduce facts to those who only need to believe and discount facts.

The fact that Jesus was a Jew.

His parents were Jews.

His followers were Jews.

The initial religious groups, fanboy clubs that formed after the death of Jesus, were two Jewish cults, factions, that understood the teachings of Jesus in two different, fundamentalist views.

They both fought each other in a "true believer's" Thunder Dome.

I'm on the right side of Jesus.

I'm on the left side of Jesus.

Two cults entered, and only one emerged.

Both cults of Jesus, these two Jewish cults, had their origins in an inherited belief that the world and humanity's relationship with the only God was an absolute worldview.

One God, one faith in opposition to a pantheon of deities and cultural traditions.

At the time and place of the fighting between these two Jesus Jewish cults for supremacy, the Eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea was packed with religions that all believed in a pantheon of Gods.

The Jews broke with the millennia of tradition.

There can only be one God.

There can only be one People.

The Jews are chosen by God as his people.

Everyone else needs to fill out a form in triplicate.

In a twist of historical irony, White Europeans, upon first hearing of the Jewish cult story of Jesus, believed they were the chosen people of the new Christian God.

Somehow, someplace ironically, they didn't comprehend that the Jewish book of faith they 'retconned' was about the journey of the Jewish people's faith.

The Jewish cult of Jesus was based on the historical beliefs and prophecy that the oppressors of the Jews would be destroyed and the Jewish people would become kings of the earth.

Jesus was the prophesied answer, the Son of God, who blew the whistle, starting the countdown to the end of the world.

The early Christians and to this day present-day Christians maintain that the chosen people of God are people of the White race.

God has to be white because that's how he's painted on the ceiling of the Vatican, right?

To tamper with the ordained order of the universe is to put yourself ahead of God almighty.

You have to be a Communist to believe that all people are equal.

Equality = Communism

There is no room for compromise.

So it is written, so it is so.

These believers in White supremacy cannot, in good faith with the Jewish God they stole, allow for any deviation from who God favors as the best race on the planet.

Racists can't allow Whites to be second-class citizens.

Again, in a crazy piece of human irony, the White racist has pitted their population minority world against the population demographic of the whole world.

I still can't understand how a minority population, White racists, convinced themselves that they are superior to the rest of the world?

At best, Caucasians in population only represent 15% of the world's population versus all the other races.

The White race is not a majority.

However, the White racists still tell themselves every day that they are the majority.

Listen to them.

This is why we, the majority who stand for justice, who stand for freedom, who stand for what is right, are in a battle with this enemy of humanity.

Consider...

Racists are like rocks in the stream of life.

They will not move.

They will not change.

Only the flow of life will eventually wear them away to sand.

We cannot and should not allow a group of people who do not want to join life to dictate how our lives should be.

Birds don't wait for someone to allow them to fly.

We can't wait for racists to allow us to be free.

There can be no negotiation with evil.

Peace

Daniel J Frey aka Toby

What Is Myth?

Myth is a corruption of truth.

Simply, I use the term 'myth' to describe lies that we believe, which give us comfort from reality.

Need it put more plainly?

A myth is a fairy tale we believe is true.

With the added complexity that our fairytale is true and everyone else's fairytale is a lie.

Myth is a large umbrella that shelters many a human belief.

Under the umbrella of myth, you will find, yes, all the religions of the world.

Both past and present.

But you will also find under that shelter of self-delusion prejudice.

You will find racism, entitlement, apartheid, segregation, urban legend, intellectualism, science deniers, liberals, conservatives, family, and friends all seeking shelter under the umbrella of myth.

You will even find yourself.

The umbrella of myth is a human invention.

It was not given to us mystically.

We created it for a specific reason.

Fear.

Fear of the unknown.

Myth gives us a reason why bad things happen.

Myth gives us control over things we can't control.

Myth tries to remove the random nature of the universe.

Our greatest fear is death.

Consequently, the greatest stories we ever made up to tell ourselves are those stories about life after death.

Those stories give us comfort from the inevitable termination of our existence.

If we believe in them, we get a coupon to "live after we die for free."

It's obvious why we created such stories.

Fear is the motivation behind all myths.

An example is the fear of the stranger, which motivates racism.

The endless storytelling occurs worldwide and in our homes, businesses, and places of worship.

Those people are not like us; they don't believe like we do, we're better.

There is a common theme underlying all the fear that shelters under the umbrella of myth.

That common theme is self.

Selfishness.

I am good, everyone else is bad, I deserve everything I want, and I don't care who I harm to get what belongs to me.

Selfishness.

Selfishness shelters under the belief that it is good to sacrifice the lives and well-being of the other to keep intact the myth.

At all costs.

The sacrifice of family, friends, happiness, but most of all truth, truth is the first and most important thing to destroy to maintain our personal delusions.

Fear will always be with us.

There is only one power in this universe that can overcome it.

Love.

Love lifts the chokehold of fear so we can see the world as it is and not through our personal expectations.

Love will allow you to see the need in the world, hear the cry for peace, and feel the urgency of now.

Love will let you understand we only get one chance at life.

That's why every life is essential.

Love makes clear that today is the day we do right, not after we're dead.

Love is the only power that can drive back the night terrors of fear and allows us to live together as we should, not as we imagine.

Peace

Daniel J Frey aka Toby

Why I'm Not Grateful

Is the ocean grateful that the river runs into it?

Is the sky grateful for another cloud?

Is a lion grateful for the hunt?

Are you grateful to be able to vote?

What does it mean to be grateful?

To be grateful implies something was given to us.

Something that was not expected.

Something that we could not achieve on our own.

Something that goes beyond our expectations.

Is the bird grateful it can fly?

No.

It flies because it can.

It is expected.

It doesn’t owe anyone or anything for its rightful ability to take flight.

It’s what it does.

As humans, we should expect to be fed and have shelter, safety, justice, freedom, and love.

These rights of life are not given.

These rights are part of the expectation of life.

Freedom is an inalienable right.

We are all born free.

Our rights as humans.

To be grateful implies these rights are given to us.

By who?

Show them to us!

This is the argument stated in the Declaration of Independence of why our founding fathers were not “grateful” to the King of England.

Since the foundations of civilization, men have corruptly manipulated the weak.

The most insidious is the evil that men do to the minds of the innocent.

The most hateful is the idea that we should be grateful to them.

Grateful that we are allowed to exist.

To whom?

To White racist men in the White racist world, in White racist pulpits, in White racist places of power.

They want us all to be grateful to them forever.

They want us to owe them for allowing us to exist.

They want us to be on credit until they say we are paid up.

They want us to be grateful that they allow us to have our sustenance, shelter, safety, justice, freedom, and even our love.

Who we love.

There is no end to this mortgage of suffering.

I get fired up when I’m asked to be grateful for the air I breathe.

I get fired up when I’m asked to be grateful I’m allowed justice.

I get fired up when I’m asked to be grateful I’m allowed to live.

If you want me to be grateful, give me something I don’t have on my own.

Give me an equal opportunity to work.

Give me a chance.

Give me financial credit.

Give me the freedom of the vote.

Give me respect.

See me.

Peace

Daniel J Frey aka Toby

The Deep

What do you see?

What do you know?

What do you believe?

The surface of the ocean tells you nothing about what takes place below.

When you live on the surface, the tides are out of your control.

The waters below hide things moving there.

The sun burns to the horizon.

The gulls gossip with each other.

Above the seas, life there has no contact with what moves below.

Deep water.

To those who live deep under the surface, what takes place up top has nothing to do with their reality.

No matter how much the winds of change may blow up top, the people of the deep are not moved.

They are insulated from the critique of weather.

Life below is steady.

Predictable.

Below the seas, life there has no contact with what moves the above.

What do you see?

What do you know?

What do you believe?

The people on both sides have chained themselves to an ideology that says they are special.

They are the chosen.

They will rule over their enemies in life and after death.

They are in love with their conflict.

It fills them with purpose.

It feeds their prejudice.

And they are hungry.

How do you find a compromise between two opposing people who believe the total destruction of their opposition is required so they may live?

The thousands of children on both sides that have died have not moved them.

The destruction of their community on both sides has not moved them.

The thousands upon thousands who have died on both sides are ignored.

Only the point of contact between the two sides of the conflict has ever been addressed.

The window dressings, the easily understood issues, the things that can be whined about without touching the sea monster at the bottom of the ocean or the dragon circling in the sky.

What aspect of this conflict remains unaddressed?

What is it in the deep waters and in the sky that brings fear to the peacemakers?

Something so profound that, if talked about, would shake the foundations of society?

That which shall not be named.

God.

Religion and its structure are at the core of the conflict.

Either one is right, the other is wrong, or both sides are wrong.

And there's the rub.

The three religions of the West all claim the same spot on earth as theirs and theirs alone.

There has never been any room for compromise within these three groups.

King of the hill or ruler of nothing.

Like blind fish and birds, the faithful follow the voices of hate they were born into.

There can be no compromise with those who oppose us as rulers of humanity.

It's written in the holy books of all three faiths.

The problem is now defined, so what do we do?

We send a message of hope.

We let the people of the deep know that life is possible on the land.

We tell the people of the land that life is possible in the deep.

It's a different life than what they have known, but it is life.

We must ask them as many times as needed to understand we share this world with them.

The people on the land and the people of the deep can live together.

There can be peace only if those who live in the deep want it as much as those on the land.

Otherwise, the oceans will roll, and the sky will thunder.

The storm will continue.

Peace

Daniel J Frey aka Toby

No Justice No Peace

A universal truth is that for every action, there is a reaction.

If there is no reaction, then the action never happened.

You overdraft your bank account.

The bank fines you for your error.

You drive through a stop sign.

The police give you a ticket.

You forgot to buy bread.

You're eating cold cuts with no bread.

For every action, there is a reaction.

Justice delayed is justice denied.

What does that mean?

It means cause and effect.

It means the poor, the minority, the old, the forgotten, the people on the margins who live this universal truth.

When crimes, inhumanity, intolerance, bigotry, and racism are poured out on these groups, nothing traditionally happens.

A black man is shot and killed in the street, and seven years later, with no trial and no justice, the officer who shot them is exonerated and proclaimed a hero.

Nothing happened.

The black man is still dead.

The man who shot him doesn't lose his job; he's moved to another town.

Rinse and repeat.

Justice delayed is justice denied.

We have all seen the videos of the insurrection enacted against our capitol, our congress, our senate, and its employees.

They not only destroyed property through smashing and breaking, but they also filmed their crimes as they ransacked, urinated, and defecated in the seat of our Democracy.

They did this in the people's house.

So you're telling me if a group of people broke into your house, smashed up the place, urinated and defecated everywhere, and left a note saying die bitch, you're okay not arresting the culprits?

You're okay with doing nothing?

As if nothing happened…

No.

No justice, no peace.

Bullies do not respond to timeouts.

Bullies do not care about your feelings.

Bullies only think about themselves.

Bullies respond only to one thing and one thing only.

Consequences.

Without a response to their actions, bullies will do their bullying again, and next time it will be worse.

No matter how hard it is, the bully must be faced and stopped.

Just ask those who appeased bullies in the past what monsters were unleashed when nothing was done?

Ask Chamberlin.

It's strange how the evil side of mankind believes it can get its way until it can't.

Then the darker angels of humanity howl like spanked children, declaring how dare you, you punished me.

You stopped me.

You angered me.

The bully is only stopped when we seek justice over them.

Justice comes right quick.

Let it come.

Let us bring it for the right purpose.

Justice renews hope for those who despair.

Justice lifts the minds and hearts of the lost.

Justice now, justice now.

Justice now.

Peace

Daniel J Frey aka Toby

Rescue

You can't save a drowning person if they believe they can swim.

A person's confidence in their belief provides protection from self-doubt.

The enemy of any belief is doubt.

This is why belief is fortified through a structure of rituals.

You daily repeat a ritual to remind yourself of your commitment to your belief.

Any doubt means you have slipped up.

You left the belief; the belief did not leave you.

A daily affirmation, a daily repeating of sacred words, enshrines the structure of belief in your daily ritual.

Consequently, generally speaking, most beliefs do not lose any followers.

They live, worship, and believe within the protection of like-minded practitioners.

Racism is a belief.

Racism is a belief.

People live, worship, and believe alongside their fellow practitioners that the white race is solely responsible for the history of this world.

Racism does not lose many followers.

Racists use words of discrimination against the race, gender, and sexual orientation that they know are not as important as they are.

The believers in white apartheid have no doubt in their correctness.

Their faith has been given to them by their Bible, which is the word of God.

God created Adam, and he was white.

Moses white.

Jesus white.

The devil... Black.

Racists' belief tells them that the Bible is the story of the white race fighting against the forces of evil led by dark-skinned people.

They have no doubt.

You can't save a racist when they know that white equals power.

There is no doubt.

For centuries upon centuries, racism has been fed and grown in wealthy homes and poor.

It is a structure that gives comfort against the harsh realities of life.

Some of us liberals believe we can rescue the racist.

But like a person drowning in a river, if the lifeguard is not careful, they too will be pulled down to the bottom and die.

Racists can't hear us call them back to shore.

Racists can't see that too many people have died.

Racists feel it in their hearts and minds that they are right and we are wrong.

Half this country voted for racism in November of 2020.

Half this country voted for the protection of the Confederacy.

Half this country voted for the separation of immigrant children from their asylum-seeking families.

Half of this country voted for discrimination against women and gays.

They don't want to be rescued because the water they're swimming in is fine.

They see no danger.

They don't see the dark water rising.

They don't feel the riptide pulling them down.

You can't tell a person they're wrong when they believe they are right.

Racism is a belief.

These senators and congresspeople are defending the white power structure in America.

They are willing to burn the Constitution to keep that structure in place.

This is what we who believe in the Constitution's heart are fighting against.

We genuinely believe in the words that all people are created equal.

So what do we do?

We listen to wise words on how to travel together to the beloved community.

We resist evil.

We make friends across the divide.

We defeat injustice that makes victims of both the target and the actor.

We suffer hate with dignity and grace.

We love, not hate.

We know that the universe bends towards justice every time.

Every time.

That's what we will do.

Peace

Daniel J Frey aka Toby

Masks of Hate

Slave Masters.

The Church.

The Klan.

The Anarchists.

The Nihilists.

The Fascists.

The Neo-Nazis.

The Skinheads.

The White Supremacist.

The Proud Boys.

The Boogaloo.

Pepe the Frog.

Q-Anon.

The history of the masks of hate.

The masks of hate that people wear.

People, yes, people wear these masks for a reason they believe in.

People wear masks of hate to cover their fear.

A fear planted into their spirits by people they trusted.

A fear of a world they do not want to see come into existence.

People fear a world where everyone is equal.

Because in an authentic sense of fear, equality means personal responsibility.

If everyone is equal, there is no one to blame when things go wrong except for yourself.

When life doesn't turn out the way you expect it, who is to blame?

Whole societies, whole industries, and whole religions base their existence on blaming the other.

The other guy, the other stranger, the other foreigner, the other unrighteous asshole.

Scapegoats.

A person, a people, to blame for why we don't have nice things.

I certainly can't be to blame because God is on my side.

I'm not the asshole.

My friends believe the same way; we can't be wrong.

My parents wouldn't lie to me.

Masks of hate.

And who maintains these masks of hate?

Who has built empires of wealth on the destruction caused by these masks?

People with wealth and power.

Ever try to take a bone away from a hungry dog?

A hungry dog will bite your hand.

It will let you die so it can have just one last chew on its bone.

It won't listen to reason.

Its only concern is that the bone belongs to it.

The bone is believed to be the dog's only means of survival.

If the dog hasn't learned how to share, trying to take a bone away from it will bloody your hand.

People wear all kinds of masks.

The mask of hate covers the fear of reprisal.

That inevitable future that is coming, we can all see it now.

A brotherhood of man where blacks and whites live together.

They judge each other by the content of their character, not the color of their skin.

People have a fear of this future becoming real.

They imagine the same horrors that they allowed to happen to black and brown people to be reciprocated.

They are fighting for a false way of life.

Just like that dog fighting for that last piece of gristle on a bone.

So, as we prepare to vote out the White House's chief hater and creep, keep in mind the prize.

A world where children are no longer taught to wear masks.

A world where children can be who they are.

Free, living in truth and justice for all.

Peace.

Daniel J Frey aka Toby

Racism

Racism is a belief.

It is founded on a biblical principle in Western society.

More specifically, in the evangelical interpretation of what the followers believe is the divine word of God.

The following is the foundation of White racism in America: The Bible.

The Old Testament, taken from the Jewish faith, the Torah, was plagiarized by Christians.

After centuries of debate and internal genocide of its followers, Catholic Christianity introduced its Bible in the late 1500s.

Pissing off the Protestants in England who, in the early 1600s, introduced their King James Bible.

The King James Bible is the official racist text for racism, not the ungodly Catholic one.

The King James Bible.

The word of their White God.

The Bible is the literal, actual truth.

So Yahweh, Jehovah, God laid down the rules for a Bronze Age society, which was for the Jewish people.

The word of God is a guideline for everyday living.

Everything has a place and a place for everything.

Each person is born into a set of circumstances that God has prescribed for their life.

To wish for and to want anything better for your life is a sin against the will of God.

A poor person wants to have money.

Sin.

A woman who does not want to be beaten by her husband.

Sin.

A slave wanting freedom.

Sin.

To change your life is to declare the will of God is in error.

Which is a sin.

Punishable by death.

We are not to 'want more' than what we are given.

This is why in the Charles Dickens tale of Oliver Twist, when the orphan boy Oliver asks for 'more' gruel, he is seen as a sinner.

He is depraved, going against the will of God.

No matter if he is hungry, starving, or wanting more than what God has given you, it is evil.

So, the Protestants took the holy text of another culture.

People copied it word for word, gave some sizzle to some of the text, and presented it as their own holy book told to them by their White God.

This is the origin of the Old Testament in both the Catholic and Protestant Bibles.

Not the New Testament, which is a collection of letters written to the members of the early Christian Church some 150 to 300 years after the death of Jesus.

But that's for another day...

Racism.

Racism is a belief.

To paraphrase Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the most racist hour in America is that hour in church every Sunday.

The second most racist time is the hour that proceeds in Sunday school. 

I was raised Evangelical, a Quaker.

I can affirm what Dr. King has said.

The tenets, the foundations of racism, are taught in our protestant, evangelical houses of worship to the faithful as the foundation of society.

White makes right.

More than once, I listened to the following tale from the pew.

Noah built a boat.

He and all the animals, including his family, his sons, and their wives, rode out the storm.

When the land was dry, Noah was thirsty and decided to make wine.

He planted the seeds, grew the grapes, made himself some new wine, got drunk, and passed out.

While he was passed out, his sons performed some unnatural acts upon the sleeping Noah.

God got upset.

He visited a curse upon the three sons of Noah.

Upon Ham, he cursed him for being black.

That's why we have black people today.

Their blackness is an outward sign of their inherited sin.

That is why black people are considered lesser in the eyes of God than white people.

Dogs will have a better chance on judgment day than a black.

Do you understand the problem?

Racism is a belief.

It's a religion.

White religious people are defending their faith in God and the order of the universe when they are standing up for racism.

To present any kind of rational argument before a racist is useless.

Have you ever tried to get someone to give up their religion?

Give up drinking

Give up drugs?

Unless they see their problem, it's impossible to elicit a change in mind and heart.

Once a person is a racist, their fate is set in granite tablets.

Like weeds in a garden, racists will always be with us.

But we don't have to let the weeds take over the garden of humanity.

We can keep racism in check.

We, the people, have that ability.

That power.

Because together, we are stronger than any Bronze Age story.

Together, we have the power to demonstrate a better way of life.

A life where harmony makes the very stones sing.

As night is to day, the light of justice, of freedom for all, must rule our lives.

Why?

Because love is easier to live with than hate.

There is a philosophical idea that we need opposites to understand what is right.

As night is to day.

As hot is to cold.

The beauty of life is to see the wonder, the miracle of the diversity of humanity.

All want the same things.

Life, liberty, freedom, and love.

Love asks more, never less.

Add love, and find hope.

Peace

Daniel J Frey aka Toby

Hello?

The media has a collective cognitive disorder.

The media reports news and then forgets what information they said.

When the Pandemic first struck America, all news sources put up CDC charts of the potential total number of deaths over time.

Does anyone remember those charts?

When you looked past a year, those numbers mounted up to 500,000 to a million dead.

Every day, you can hear the media wince about why this President acts the way he does.

Why does he lie and act the way he does?

Why?

Why?

They seem to forget that they tell us one week he's a sociopathic, malignant narcissist liar, and the following week it's totally forgotten.

Why does he keep lying?

Why does he have trouble with facts?

Why doesn't he remember what he said?

I'll acknowledge that the media are providing a kind of service to the nation.

Not everyone is up to date on every turn of current events.

These media people have busy lives; they can't be expected to keep track of facts.

Current day fact: Those who enter a public building today have to be reminded that there is a plague killing a thousand-plus people every day, and they need to wear masks.

Some people, very human, may not realize it's still killing people.

They have to be reminded.

The average person is too busy to keep the facts of a worldwide plague at the forefront of their lives.

A plague...

So the news purveyors do a rehash, a gentle reminder to their consumers each day of what was on the previous day's menu.

Yet the media forgets what they say as soon as they say it.

Yet the media forgets what they say as soon as they say it.

Yet the media forgets what they say as soon as they say it.

The biggest one in the past year, which continues every day, is what the media said about the mortality rates for black and brown people.

After the first two months, studies of mortality rates demonstrated that black and brown people were more adversely affected by COVID.

Black and brown people died more often than white people.

It was said over and over and over again.

Then, by June, we start to get a set of silly questions out of our news hosts.

Why are the President's supporters not wearing masks?

Why is the President saying you don't have to wear a mask?

Why are the President's rallies requiring attendees not to wear a mask?

Why are guys and gals with red hats, white trucks, and Trump flags all refusing to wear masks in public?

These questions require a memory.

The news hosts told America that black and brown people die at a higher rate than white people.

These questions require deductive reasoning.

Being able to recognize that 2 + 2 = 4.

If our news hosts didn't do more than just read the news and look at what the red hats are saying to each other daily.

Conservative Americans posting to each other over social media shared this scientific data that COVID-19 kills blacks.

Let the celebration begin!

The news hosts ask, Why are people not wearing a mask?

The answer is racism.

Racism you fools.

The second the news media said blacks die at a higher rate than whites from COVID was the second that white apartheid America took off their masks.

It is why white racist Americans will not put their masks back on.

A side note, that's 37% - 40% of Americans, which is the current President's base.

Understand the simple math?

COVID became a plague that kills them, not us.

It kills brown people.

White racists want brown people dead.

It kills brown people...

This lack of cognition is genuinely an all-too-human response.

News flash!

Did you know that McDonald's has a new breakfast sandwich?

Did you see that rat running away with a slice of pizza today?

Did you know we landed on the moon?

Humans take in information at all speeds.

From instantly to not at all.

News organizations report the news, but they don't necessarily understand what they are saying.

They speak before they think.

They expose themselves as readers, not thinkers.

They drill into the middle of a story and are proud of the hole they made.

But they all have a problem with the bigger picture.

The bigger meaning of what happens in the world.

If problems could be solved by throwing a switch, it would have been done long ago.

Problems in any society are an ugly mixed-meat sandwich.

Everyone in their camp thinks they got the best sandwich.

Each camp is willing to go to war over the selection of meat and condiments.

What we all need is a bridge of information.

A conduit of truth.

A concierge of just the facts.

Just the facts.

The facts.

Some good people are keeping track, making connections, and doing the work of analysis of the facts.

How for every action, there is a reaction.

The leaping from headline to headline, screaming like Chicken Little that the sky is falling, will only make a nation weary.

Listen more.

2 + 2 = 4

Serve, We the People.

Facts.

Listen.

Peace

Daniel J Frey aka Toby

The Dark Waters Roll

This is a moral check-up…

How are you doing?

How is the nation doing?

We all find ourselves being asked what our response to injustice is.

Not too long ago, we believed our nation had a moral awakening…

A generation was asked to stop discrimination and segregation and realize that everyone is created equal.

We didn't know what we were asking…

We were pushing for an answer we didn't want.

By asking the question, its aim was to address a long-standing cancer of the American experiment.

For every action, there is a reaction.

Humanity doesn't respond instantly to change.

The reaction came decades later, at the end of segregation and the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The reaction?

Recently, we elected an immoral President.

He broke the dam, and all the dark waters that our nation had hidden from consciousness since 1964 have flooded back into everyone's lives.

Reminding us that the dirt on our souls cannot be hidden forever.

This first monster of our own creation was unleashed once again.

Brown children put in cages to destroy the American dream of freedom.

Our legislative House and Senate turn their backs on executive corruption so that they can pack the courts to end women's right to privacy.

Promises of a return to an all-white America where jobs are aplenty for the white land owner, the money piled high, and all that equality BS buried…

Dead.

Dead and buried and good riddance.

Communists!

The conservative, less government, fiscally responsible, Constitutional purist Republican Party led over a cliff by a sociopathic, day-trading, pied piper.

Our intelligence services mocked, and admonitions of collusion with America's enemies, Russia, were ignored.

Everyone can be bought.

You just have to find what they want.

Our President betrays his oath to the Constitution and is impeached.

Yet our courage to stand for justice has run away and hidden behind indifference to truth for political gain. 

This President was not removed.

The dark waters roll…

The dark waters roll...

A plague is unleashed.

One person's nightmare is another person's free lunch.

The virus, like the American President, doesn't know what empathy is.

The virus rolls across the world, piling bodies with a casual efficiency.

As it makes its way across America, we become them.

Them.

Prejudice feeds upon lies that support its belief.

The virus is only a problem for the old, the brown, the black, not white male America-loving Capitalists.

Magical thinking believes that a death toll of 100,000 is the limit and can't it wouldn't go higher.

Can it?

The bodies pile up.

The dark waters roll…

George Floyd was killed by four Minneapolis Police officers in full view, fully recorded.

The third leg of this American sickness steps down onto all our necks.

We are told we didn't see what we saw.

The third monster is unleashed.

The original sin.

The hole in the heart of the Great American Experiment.

Racism.

Mr. Floyd had no idea that day, when he woke up, that he was going to light a nation's sense of justice a fire.

Like so many heroes, he was at the wrong place at the right time.

His life was stolen from him.

Those who murdered him did not understand what they were doing.

They lit the watchfires of our democracy.

From hill to hill.

From the valley to the plain.

From the mountaintop to the ocean, the call went out that our democracy was in danger.

No person's life is in vain.

No one.

George Floyd made a difference in the world.

I wonder what he's thinking about as the world stands up in his name? The call for justice?

The dark waters roll…

The flood has not abated.

We are afloat, you and I, in this uncertain place and time.

I want to give you hope.

For the first time, there are enough of us to row this lifeboat to that blessed shore.

The world hears the cry, "I can't breathe."

We can row this boat ashore.

Our captain is justice.

This dark tide will yell and scream, but it can't stop the journey of the light.

We can all bring justice once and for all.

For all.

We will answer that question posed over 200 years ago.

For once in its entire history, will the many become one?

Listen…

Look...

The waters part, and in the middle walk a free people under the light of justice.

Peace

Daniel J Frey aka Toby

Impossible

Steve Martin said once that it was impossible to put a Cadillac up your nose.

There are impossibilities.

You can't build a stairway to the moon.

There is no way to stop time.

I will never be an Olympic athlete.

Impossibilities are limits.

Limits define the extent of expectations.

Humanity has and continues to impose limits on itself.

What it believes to be impossible.

We can't provide housing for free.

We can't educate those people.

We can't feed you unless you work for it.

We can't provide for your safety because that would limit our access to guns.

The Constitution can't be changed.

You are not equal to me.

Those people are lazy.

I'm a winner, you're a loser.

A good portion of humanity believes that the world is set in stone.

Or it should be.

Belief in the power of the impossible means shelter from reality for too many of us.

If equal rights are impossible, why even try?

If the 2nd Amendment can't be changed, just shut up and bury the dead.

If a President won't sign a bill, why would we want to talk about that?

Belief in the impossible allows the shallow-minded evil of low expectations and high personal interest to hide behind a straw man.

It is the foundation of nihilism.

Nihilism rejects the value of your life and mine.

It is the Bible from which the sociopath preaches.

Incidentally, that's a bit of irony because the nihilist rejects all religious and moral principles.

From its conception, the idea of nihilism was created as an intellectual canard.

It is a dull instrument used to smash the ties that bind humanity together.

Like a plow forced into the solid ground of society, it turns over the soil of compassion and destroys trust.

Nihilism is the acid that is thrown onto hope.

Nihilism is the friend of the tyrant.

That tyrant is only limited by their access to power.

Not all of us know a dictator personally, but we do have a relative or friend who believes it's impossible to make change.

Isn't there always someone who says that's impossible, why would you bother, don't waste your time, you can't do that?

Why do these people in our lives want to set a limit on the possible?

Who are they?

What is it they want?

They want you and me to live in fear.

They are your brother and sister, your friend, your parent, your relative, your pastor, priest, Rabi, police, congressman, senator, and President.

Fear is used by tyrants to manage expectations.

Fear is used to keep the possible from happening.

There are a lot of people selling fear these days, aren't there?

There are a lot of people throwing a rope around expectations and trying to pull it back in.

Trying to keep things from changing.

They can feel the world tipping up onto its side and all the pieces on the chessboard of life falling out of place.

They like order their order.

They don't want to share a lunch counter with a person with brown skin.

They don't want to buy a cake from a Gay baker.

They don't want strangers coming to their country.

They don't want you to have a home and a hot meal.

Their god told them that the world was only for them and not for all of us.

We're upsetting the apple cart.

We need to sit down because we're rocking the boat of their expectations.

Some of these people are so angry that they will kill us because we believe in the possible.

Their belief in fear is that deep.

Their oneness with hate knows no limit.

Can the ocean keep from rushing to the shore? 

It's just impossible.

Can you stop justice from exposing the evil plots of mankind?

It's just impossible.

Can you stop the Brotherhood of Man from filling our hearts with hope? It's just impossible.

That sentiment you hear in our country echoes down that street where a guy is being beaten.

That sound you hear is when voices shout for the re-establishment of our democracy.

That sound you hear is the feet marching for our human right to exist free from fear.

We are the ones to take up the challenge to make the impossible possible.

Don't say no, say yes, I can.

Do right.

Peace

Daniel J Frey aka Toby

Season of Cruelty

Baseball for the year 2019 draws to a close.

Summer thinks about hanging it up till next year.

Grandma is no longer able to get out of the house.

A political party gives up being for all Americans.

The season of cruelty continues.

Human families come to our nation's door seeking comfort but are separated and abused.

A natural disaster.

Wealth intended to give relief from despair is diverted to build a wall to stop the future at our border.

The same hate marches in the streets of the big city and also through the living room of the country house.

The sexual abuse of women and children is a protected lifestyle of the rich.

The poor are given poisoned water.

The season of cruelty continues.

Elected men and women worry more about their position than holding accountable those who spit on our Constitution.

The elected officials enable the purveyors of cruelty to rip and rend our society. 

Media spokespeople for the current President tell us there is only one truth, and that is in the mind of the leader.

We have to wait to be told what to think by our great leader.

Children in America are locked in cages.

Children in America are taken from their hospital beds and deported.

Children in America are shot to death in their classrooms.

Promises of pardons are given to the loyal tigers who stalk the streets of America, who rend the hope of the people.

The Chosen One tells us he's loved better than Jesus.

The season of cruelty continues.

The President tells us everything he says is a joke.

The season of cruelty continues.

Every season has its end.

As Mahatma Gandhi said, even the worst tyrant will someday die.

They will go away.

However, for those living under the rule of the tyrant, the season will be cruel.

Seasons are soft lessons for hard heads.

For those who forget easily.

Seasons don't yell at first.

Seasons don't come in with a bang.

Seasons come in when a society opens its doors.

What can wander through the door and into the hearts and minds of people could be good or bad.

Like the ocean tide today, a cruel wave washes across America.

It has been a rising tide of hate.

A tide filled with ignorance.

A tide awash with selfishness.

A tide that has washed away the moorings of humanity and compassion.

Those who thought their world was built upon a higher ground have fallen into despair.

They have found the water has risen all around them.

The same hate that generations fought and died fighting against still lies at the bedrock of our American experience.

Seasons teach lessons.

When winter comes, when the world becomes cold and hard, if sustenance has not been laid away, the season will be cruel.

However, a lesson should be learned.

Before the change of season comes again, you must work hard to prepare.

This season of cruelty we are living through is here to teach us a lesson.

The lesson is that hate and ignorance will always be a part of us.

A nation, a society, must learn that the fight for justice doesn't end at the end of a season.

Again, like the tide, it rises and falls with the season.

This tyrant will not be in power forever.

But there will undoubtedly be others like him.

There will undoubtedly be followers of hate ready to support cruelty once again.

We, as defenders of the faith, defenders of the Constitution, and defenders of the truth of freedom and justice for all, must do the good work.

We must faithfully do right.

Not just for ourselves but for the generations to come, who will also have to pick up where we left off.

And fight the fight against man's wilful ignorance.

When this season ends, there will most certainly be another one coming.

Lest we forget.

Lest we forget our brothers and sisters.

Those who are within and outside of our borders who believe in the same hope for which this nation was founded.

Freedom.

Join hands, join hearts, join minds together to build not a wall of hate but a bridge of love.

It is the reason for the season.

Peace.

Daniel J Frey aka Toby

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

Fringe

Carpets.

Carpets have a fringe.

A fancy decorative edge.

A flash, a glint there to catch the eye.

The broad weave of the carpet, the dull, boring part in the middle, is usually not as attractive as the golden edge.

The center of the carpet is where you stand.

The fringe has an initial appeal.

Look what I have bought into.

But it soon gets old.

You walk into your room, and the fringe trips you up.

What was once a feature is now a distraction.

It catches the dirt.

You can't get it clean.

Its only purpose was to draw attention.

Maybe I spent too much?

The broad weave of the carpet does the real work.

It keeps your feet warm when you walk across the hard, cold floor.

The fringe can't do that.

Now, the fringe has tripped you up once too often.

It's time to trim the fringe back.

Maybe cut it off entirely.

Once free of the fringe, your carpet has a new life.

It no longer serves two purposes.

It can fulfill the reason why you bought it in the first place.

It can do the real work.

Fringe.

Political movements.

Movements have their fancy edges also.

They throw out flashy objects on social media to draw attention.

They stir the pot and get people talking.

But do they put feet into motion?

When the world is cold and hard, are they there to give comfort and compassion?

Or do they only think of themselves?

Do they only think about how much money and power they can pile up?

Often, the political fringe will trip up a given society.

It will cause the self-destruction of the individual.

The political and social fringe can draw attention, but when it comes down to doing the real work, they trip up the body politic.

Fringes, political, and social fringes are out only for themselves.

Like the social media poster who sets out a sympathy trap, they bait for clicks only to increase their following.

They're not there for the children.

They're not there for the dogs and cats.

They're not there for the poor.

They're not there for the person who has done their time and needs a job.

They're not there for those who have lost the people they love through addiction.

They're not there to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and give comfort to those who despair.

No.

No, they are there only for themselves.

Right or left self-interest does not discriminate who they ask for money.

On the contrary, self-interest is an equal opportunist parasite willing to take advantage of the compassionate as well as the racist.

It's not just those who want to save the turtles that get taken advantage of.

The hardcore racist gets taken advantage of, too.

People like the President tell them things that they have long believed to be true about non-white races.

He makes a pact with them that only he can change the movement of time and restore the glorious White past.

They want to believe in their racist Santa Claus and will follow him over a cliff to their own economic and social doom, only to make it all come true.

The fringe.

However, remember that the fringe is not the broad weave of American society.

The heart of America is where the real work is done.

The fringe, all fringe, wants you and me to believe they are there for us, but they are not.

The pitchman who wants to sell you the greatest frying pan ever made will not be there to comfort you when your job goes away.

He won't be there when you can't pay for the medicine you need.

He won't hang with you at the time of your despair.

He'll still want that payment of $19.99 each month.

Our attention should be on the broad weave of our Republic.

Let the voices of intolerance, racism, and hate be so much fringe.

Like a crow at the top of a tree that squawks, don't let it distract from our true purpose.

Our purpose is to give warmth and compassion to each other in this cold, hard world.

To give a place for each of us to stand upon the earth.

To realize each one of us our truth, our purpose, and to reach for and obtain that purpose.

We are all here to embrace, not pull apart.

We are here to bring people together, not separate them.

We are here to love, not to hate.

Peace

Daniel J Frey aka Toby

Gone

Standing on the corner waiting for the ice cream man.

Seeing the Wizard of Oz only once a year on TV.

LPs, 45s, CDs, cassette tapes, VHS, Super 8.

S&H Green Stamps.

Manual typewriters.

White-only counters.

Single-sex public restrooms.

50-cent coffee.

Stockings.

Compassion.

Charity.

Civic courage.

Responsibility.

Leadership.

Consequences.

Justice.

Reason.

Common ground.

United States.

Gone…

Vanished...

Like a thief in the night, America awoke to find its house empty.

A shell in which individuals cannot see each other because of the hate that wraps their heads like a blindfold.

Those things that were once so familiar that we could touch, see, and hold onto vanished like a mirage.

America has awakened from its dream of ideals.

A dream that reassured its people that everything would be okay.

Everyone was going to have justice.

No one was above the law of the land.

No one was above the law...

Like a dream, as the hours and days pass, that dream becomes increasingly harder to recall.

Email, texts, news, social media, entertainment, sports, school, job, and lifestyle —none of these aspects of our daily experiences speak to a healthy Community.

None of it brings two people together over a common piece of ground.

Gone are the ties that once bound each of us to each other.

Where did they go?

Who took it?

Who is responsible?

We are.

You and me together.

We did it.

We destroyed the American dream.

Dreams do not vanish on their own.

To make a dream come true, you have to work to make it real.

Otherwise, a dream, including the American Dream, is a story with no more relevance to reality than any other dream.

Understand how, when someone tries to tell you their dream, we don't really listen to what they are saying?

Dreams require individuals and society to strive every day to reach for the dream of a better tomorrow.

Dreams require you and me to march against giants.

Dreams require us, no matter how beaten down or how tired, to stand once again and say the ignorance of mankind will not rule our lives.

Like a dream, those American ideals that are gone are only out of sight, not out of mind.

The mind can bend time and space.

The mind can span the distance between you and me; we can see each other and know we want the same things.

We strive for good work that will provide us with a fulfilling life.

We want to be free of living in fear.

We want hope.

We need a new American dream.

The old dream was at its heart only for the few.

This new dream should align with the truth revealed by this President, his administration, and his believers.

This President demonstrates the truth that ignorance never goes away.

The truth is one political movement, conservatives, courted that ignorant vote and have no intention of letting that vote go.

We, the people, the majority, must recognize that you can't teach an old dog new tricks.

Ain't going to happen.

We ain't going to convince ignorant racist Americans they should just give up everything they know to be true and join us.

That's absurd!

We need to take that dime in our hand that we were going to give to the ice cream man and find ourselves another corner to stand on.

Those brothers and sisters are not going to follow us to a better community for everyone.

They won't get on the Freedom Train.

This means we shouldn't be waiting for them to decide if they want to join us; we need to move forward.

We have to realize that we are not going to get the racists to behave and sit cordially at our table of humanity.

They want the food fight and want to turn over the table of the Brotherhood of Man.

Our Block Party has to move location because our angry old neighbors are upset that our party attracts the wrong kind of people.

We have to be content with what we have.

We need to get along to that better world.

That doesn't mean we won't hold an open seat at our Block Party in case hell freezes over, but it also means we need to be realistic that some people hate us.

They don't like the people at our party.

We all need to do the right thing right now.

When you're saving a life, you don't worry about your appearance.

You do the right thing.

You can't dream of a better world; you've got to make it better with your own hands.

'Ideals' will only get you so far unless you are willing to stand for them.

They are meaningless if you don't put actions to your rhetoric.

It's clear that this President and this administration are willing to fight for their ideal world.

Will the good people of these United States fight for theirs?

Who will win out?

Injustice or justice?

It will depend upon you and me.

Peace

Daniel J Frey aka Toby

Rules

Signs.

No Fishing.

Don't Walk.

Stop.

Yield.

Bio Hazard.

Caution.

Yield.

Do not kill.

What is your reaction to rules?

Do you cherry-pick what you believe applies to you?

I'm in a hurry; the speed limit doesn't apply to me; I have an appointment.

I'm late.

You're in my way.

Why are those rules there anyway?

If someone stops you on the street and asks you for directions, do you spit in their face?

What are rules good for?

Many of us perceive rules as restricting us.

Laws restrict our freedom.

Buckle up.

The seatbelt is uncomfortable.

Don't text and drive.

I have to make that call, or they won't like me.

The misconception about laws, about rules, about signs, is that they restrict you.

Somebody put up that sign to stick it to me.

I'll do what I want when I want to whom I want.

Nobody can tell me no.

Nobody knows what I've been through.

Laws are there not to restrict just you.

Rules were not created to cramp just your desires.

Rules of behavior are not in place as a form of punishment.

Laws are there to protect you from casual disregard and violence.

The biggest rule of all: Do not kill.

It's there to protect you from being killed.

It's laying down a moral line in the sand that says all life is precious.

This is the only experience that we will ever be guaranteed to have in the life we live now.

No one has a right to that life except the person living it.

Your belief stops at the point of your nose.

That moral law, do not kill, is saying not just to you but to that other person who you made angry in line at the store, you cut them off because you were in a hurry, that they do not have the right to take vengeance on you and take your life.

Because you were being an asshole, shitting everywhere you went.

That person who is reckless and texts and drives just like you in the car next to you, that restriction is there, so they don't t-bone you and cripple you for life.

The 'Don't Walk' sign is there to prevent you from ruining someone else's life by blindly ignoring your own self-interest and stepping off the curb into oncoming traffic.

They run you down in the crosswalk because you deserve to die.

After all, you were in their way... don't you know how important they are as compared to you?

Society has rules for a reason, and that reason is to make life better for everyone.

Everyone.

Rules are not meant to deprive you of your freedom or your choice.

Rules are there to protect you.

It's stopping other people from harming you.

It's about saving you.

To keep us all safe.

It's not just about you.

It's about all of us.

We, the People.

Laws provide a foundation of protection from the misdeeds of others.

It's the grease in the machinery.

Without that grease, the gears of life will grind and tear us all apart.

Our society would implode, and that wouldn't be good for anyone except the scavengers.

The vultures.

The Nihilists.

Yesterday, up in the air in North Carolina, scavengers were circling.

The smell of racism was evident in the air.

The President, who has been put in charge of our Republic, encouraged the buzzards to partake of the rot he served them.

Since his campaign, he has fed a steady diet of the red meat of racism to the bigots among us.

The assembled crowd was confident in their jeers that this nation was not founded upon the principle of freedom and justice for all but only for the White race.

That principle?

From many one.

The wound that has hollowed out the American heart.

The wound which has never been cleaned since the Civil War.

We, as a nation, applied a temporary bandage and hoped that the gangrene of racism would somehow cure itself.

Here we are today, in the first half of the 21st century, grappling with a law established in 1776.

Freedom, justice, and the right to happiness for all.

That bandage that covers the rot of racism must be ripped away so that the light of justice for all mankind can shine upon that wound and heal it once and for all.

How long are we going to ignore our own stink?

How long does it take for a people to understand that freedom is for all?

Black, brown, white, men, women, children, straight, gay, from many, one rule.

Freedom means, in this great American experiment, the capacity to extend love beyond self to the person I don't know, in recognition that they, too, are human and will extend that same love back to me.

The grease.

The sign.

The law.

The rule.

Through love, all things are possible.

Peace

Daniel J Frey aka Toby

Not Me

When I see an elderly woman stumble and fall.

When I see a man standing on the corner, lost.

When I see a girl disobey the traffic laws.

When I see a boy take a hoodie from the store.

I say not me.

When I hear the angry voice of a man who has lost his job.

When I hear a young person's song, it beats my ears.

When I hear the cry of another woman's child.

When I hear the tenor of despair because of lost love.

I say not me.

When I feel the desperate pleas for justice.

When I feel the passion of anger against violence.

When I feel the burning rage of neglect.

When I feel the fear of those who hate.

I say not me.

Not me?

None of us is without fault.

We committed our faults freely.

Our faults can define us and how we conduct our lives to the end.

Our faults can drive us to persecute or towards an awakening.

Our faults can blind us or open our eyes.

Our faults can deafen our compassion or open our hearts and minds wide.

None of us is without fault.

We all share the responsibility for our society and our community.

Through neglect, we've allowed the shallow, the petty, and the self-interested to dominate our social discourse, our Republic.

Our government and our law enforcement leadership are so corrupted by their own vice that they are unwilling or unable to prosecute crimes committed against our society.

Money launderers, sex traffickers, pedophiles, tax frauds, and sexual predators, as long as they serve a political party, are exempt from justice.

Obvious crimes committed by officials of this government along our borders go uninvestigated and are not stopped, as private enterprise profits off the imprisonment of children and adults.

What has happened to the leadership of this nation, I ask?

What is it that these guardians of vice are protecting?

Are we to believe, as I have stated, that they are all, every last one of them, so corrupted by their vices that not one of them can hold a jury over any of these apparent crimes?

Their fellow thieves, rapists, murderers.

If it's not their vices, what else can prevent apparently good people from standing for justice and bringing the criminal to trial?

Is the can of worms, the Pandora's Box of corruption, so great that every last official is awash in a quagmire of their own muck?

They can't break free and are resigned to the fact that nothing can be done, so they do nothing?

Shame only on those humans who can still feel it.

Apparently, many people no longer understand the meaning of love.

The definition has been lost.

The definition is that your reputation and how you will be remembered are built upon how you treat other people.

For evil or good.

Of course, many don't care how they are remembered and don't give a shit about the consequences of their actions.

Yet here we find our nation, the U.S.A's Gold Standard is now to grovel and fetch for the carnal pleasure of hate?

Is that where our society has planted its flag here in the 21st Century?

Have the dreams of a nation of a people been so torn and discarded that even a simple point of justice that we, our American society, don't tolerate child rapists is now too difficult for us to prosecute?

The apparent moral bankruptcy of our two political powers, my conservative brothers and sisters standing for power at any cost, and my liberal brothers and sisters sitting spineless, afraid to rock the boat, is overwhelming.

I feel rage.

I understand the neglect of spirit.

Yet...

I hear the cry of pain of another woman's child.

I see the man lost because of fear.

I taste the fear of change.

I stand.

I shout and fight against the silence.

I will never be silent.

Peace.

Daniel J Frey aka Toby

Challenge The Impossible

Can a single drop of rain wear down a mountain?

Will a grain of sand stop a flood?

Does a single battle win a war?

Do you only have to brush your teeth once in your lifetime?

How about painting your house just once during its life?

Will you own only one pair of shoes?

One pair of pants?

One pair of socks?

One love?

Impossible…

How long does it take for some people to be free?

How long will it be until some people stop believing they have a right to kill?

When will the day arrive when tyrants in the world, in your neighborhood, and in your home be stopped from destroying lives?

What hour will it be when a person can walk in their community free of fear?

How much time does it take to heal the broken?

To bring hope to the hopeless?

To love the loveless?

To break the illusion?

To care?

Impossible?

If you are reading this, you are in a war that has been going on since humans first gathered together.

Welcome to the battle.

As long as we are still human, this war will continue indefinitely into the future.

It is a war between those who hate and those who love.

It is a conflict that will have no end.

It is what humans, such as Gandhi, Malcolm, Sakharov, Mandela, Malala, Orwell, Keller, and King, called the struggle.

The struggle.

The impossible struggle will not be over in a day.

Or a week.

Or a year.

Or a lifetime.

Or solved by one candidate.

One leader.

One follower.

The impossible struggle.

It is the act itself, the struggle against impossible odds, where victory is achieved by love.

Evil cannot win unless good does nothing.

Brotherhood is a relationship.

And just like any relationship, effective communication is essential.

You need to give flowers.

You need to share meals.

You need to participate in the good times and be there in the times of grief.

Dropping a coin in a charity bucket doesn't pay for your seat on the Freedom Train.

The struggle is a daily grind for those who follow the light of love.

You get up each day and struggle.

You go through your day and struggle.

You go to bed and rest your head upon the struggle, only to get up the next day to do it again.

The haters will not stop hating.

Neither will love stop loving.

Our strength is not in some decisive battle that will win the war against man's self-hate.

No, our strength is like that in a single drop of rain.

That single drop joins with other drops to form fellowships, communities, and organizations.

Those drops turn into a river.

A river that cuts its way through the mountain of fear and hate.

It broadens and picks up those in lifeboats.

It rescues those who are adrift in the waters.

It rushes past the obstacles to man's own folly and ignorance and soon joins up with the sea.

The dark, brooding mountains of hate and regret left behind.

That drop of rain and countless others have formed a sea of sparkling light and love.

A place where you and I can rest on the shore of a brotherhood of man.

Peace.

Daniel J Frey aka Toby

After the Tears

The unexpected shock.

The eyes strain to see life.

The heart leaps into the throat.

After the tears…

An old photo of a happy day.

The hand of a baby daughter in yours.

Eyes that look up and see you for what you are.

After the tears…

Death will kill all you love.

Death makes you run away with all that you love.

Death haunts your every step towards freedom's precious light.

After the tears…

With the flood all around.

With your baby holding tight to daddy's strength.

With all you have, it wasn't enough.

After the tears…

No one heard.

No one saw.

No one cared.

After the tears…

After the tears come the rolling thunder of justice.

A people should not tolerate the conditions of physical and a type of mental enslavement.

In our nation, minds and hearts are captured by an ideology that allows mothers, fathers, and their children to die in dark waters at a nation's doorstep; it is not a nation dedicated to life.

It is not a community.

It is a society that has lost its purpose.

A sickness that has been allowed to fester way beyond its expiration date.

This nation we live in has always understood what the right thing to do is.

Even other nations have been able to read our credo and have understood that Liberty, with her torch held high, is there to welcome the weak, the fearful, those without hope, the tired, the sick, the forgotten.

The credo to love the stranger.

This nation we live in has forgotten its credo.

This nation has forsaken its honor.

This nation has abandoned human decency and compassion in favor of a short-lived political power.

Our nation's mind is set against itself.

Through the roar of political lions, through the ripping apart of safety in neighborhoods, through callous disregard, lives are lost because it serves the ideal of divine retribution.

They deserve what they get because they are not like me. 

Because they are not like me…

Not like me…

That's right.

That is not like us.

That is not the American ideal.

After the tears…

You don't have to be an empath to know that a baby girl clinging to her daddy's back who drowns with him as he sought freedom is wrong.

It's evil.

It's an evil perpetrated by men and women in power in our nation.

We allowed them to have power at our discretion.

Not some mythical monster.

Not some alien from another planet.

Men and women, humans who cannot see the tears of the individual, only the inside of their closed hearts.

It stops.

It stops now.

It stops today.

We know what the correct answer is.

We've all learned it once upon a time in America.

The idea of Love came into the world and immediately set heart against heart.

Those who follow love cannot also support blind human hate.

True Love will separate a man from a woman.

True Love will divide the parent from the child.

True Love will demand that a nation do the right thing every time.

Every time!

Love asks more of us each and every day till the day we pass from the Earth.

A nation that practices love doesn't allow babies crying for a crust of bread to die.

Stones of hate are not passed out to feed the hungry in a nation that proclaims it believes in the Golden Rule.

Each and every death of anyone in our nation's custody and those seeking refuge is further evidence of the cancer on America's soul.

I'll keep saying it, I'll keep asking it, I'll keep demanding it, I'll keep standing.

I'll never be silent…

After the tears will come the rolling thunder of justice.

Either you get yourself straight, or the world will get busy on your ass.

After the tears…

Peace

Daniel J Frey aka Toby

A Tree

It is understandable why you can't hear the song of a tree.

What is not understandable is why you can't hear the pain you create.

We can all lose our connections.

Connections to the world around us, our community, to our family and friends, to ourselves.

Regret.

Regret for our actions reminds us that we have harmed someone we care about.

We don't want to be the "bad" person.

The person who acts and doesn't care who they harm.

Especially our friends and family.

Where do we draw the line between those we include in our group and those we exclude?

On a playground, children make fun of how a classmate is dressed.

Maybe they came to school that day in their pajamas.

Adolescents believe that becoming an adult is about doing adult things.

If they believe that a person over there hasn't consumed alcohol, hasn't smoked, hasn't had sex, they become the judge, jury, and executioner, condemning that person as an outcast.

A loser.

Most adults don't move far from their own adolescent brains.

A parallel example is How well do you draw?

Most of us stopped drawing sometime as we entered high school.

If you picked up a pencil and were asked to draw a cow, you would render at the very same level as when you last attempted to draw.

However, drawing, like any other skill, has to be exercised to keep in shape.

If you practiced your art for a few weeks, you would improve.

We humans can adapt.

We are not relegated to staying in a self-imposed past.

We can grow.

Growth can only begin once you love yourself.

The foundation.

First, we all need to forgive ourselves.

We need to break the chain of our own making that constrains our true selves.

A universal chain to break is racism.

Most aspects of racism are learned.

The roots are passed down genetically like cancer; its darkness stops the growth of the individual.

Racism stops the growth of the community.

But this is nothing new.

Racists are not ignorant of which side of the line they stand on.

They like where they are at.

They know they don't like you.

Every aspect of their lives informs them, from their community to the God they worship, that they are doing the right thing.

So, how are you going to convince them otherwise?

Do you think telling them they need to grow will change their minds?

Do you think asking them to quiet their minds and listen to the song of trees will allow them to feel regret?

…

…

Ain't going to happen, folks.

Ain't going to happen that way, for sure.

It's like standing out before a mountain and trying to call it down with your voice.

Humans don't work that way.

You're not going to convince a racially motivated person to vote for you because you say change is right for them.

Give the other side a chance.

Ain't going to happen.

The people who support the President are not concerned with who they harm.

We are not part of their group, part of their America.

We aren't even human beings in their eyes.

They don't want to come together.

They don't want to move to the city.

They don't want to be told they are wrong.

They would rather burn down the forest than allow for the possibility that they could be wrong.

They can't hear us.

They really honestly can't hear us…

What do we do?

What can we do?

We grow…

We grow ourselves.

We grow and become bigger and stronger than hate.

We grow our community one day, one person at a time.

We grow our organizations, we reach for our brothers and sisters, and we encourage those who are reluctant to get involved.

We grow by standing together, holding to the truth, and the fair application of justice for all.

We grow a smile

A smile that's more powerful and does more good than any rhetoric could do.

We demonstrate through the actions of our lives and our community that we are happy.

We are a happy bunch.

We grow…

Happy to have a family of every race, color, and gender, young and old.

The seed that casts itself upon the hard ground will never grow.

Hardened hearts…

Hardened ears…

Will never know the joy of that first green burst of a new life.

Time wears away the mountain…

But nothing in this universe will break a racists belief.

Regret will whisper into the hardened ears as they witness the happiness they refused to join.

From the hard, lonely places of the world, new ears will grow.

They will ask…

What is that sound?

We will answer…

Love.

Peace

Daniel J Frey aka Toby