Horse Sense

Common sense ain't common. – Will Rogers

Far too many of us believe that everyone around us thinks like us.  

They perceive the world in the same way and draw the same conclusions.  

Many believe they live in a community, and that community is harmonious.  

However, as the day is to the night, as the left hand is to the right hand, as the rainbow of faces and ages we see every day, we are all operating at different speeds of awareness.  

We are not born with common sense.  

An example, common sense once told us that the world had an edge, and we would fall off of it.  

Common sense told us there were no such things as germs.  

Common sense told us that only the man was responsible for the pregnancy, and the woman had no part except the oven to bake the bread in.

Common sense must be learned. 

Common sense must be learned from a teacher.  

A big part of common sense is ethics.  

Being able to discriminate between right and wrong. 

Unless you are a sociopath or a politician, you realize that doing right, making the right decisions to do good, is always the correct way to live your life.  

Doing right is common sense.  

Do no harm to yourself or others.  

Common sense.  

That's not to say there are no teachers of the anti-golden rule among us.  

Do unto others before they do unto you.  

You can do anything as long as you win.  

There is definitely a kind of anti-common good.  

The argument is that anything that maintains power is good.  

It's called politics.

Power makes right is their motto.

But politics is the opposite of common sense.  

Common sense is about the real idea that there is a common good that can be recognized by the average person.  

That the common good is just "a good" that, once deployed, will make a better life for everyone.  

It's common sense not to steal.  

It's common sense not to kill.  

It's common sense that everyone should pay taxes.  

It's common sense to obey the rule of law. 

It's common sense that everyone is equal.  

What gets in the way of the common person from understanding these visible sets of facts is a set of distortions, of lies told by the culture and the individual.  

These distortions and lies corrupt the understanding of simple truths for the benefit of a few over the many.

The benefit of a few over the man. 

The enemy of common sense has always been and will always be the powerful.  

Those in power, those in position over people, will never allow freedom willingly.  

These people in power are the leaders of business.  

The leaders of governments.  

The leaders of religion.  

The leaders in our circles of family and friends.  

Tyrants come in many shapes and forms.  

The last thing a tyrant wants is for the people to develop a unity of common sense.  

They sew words of distrust and disharmony, they fill the media with fake news that makes only them and them only the purveyor of truth and honesty.

Take a huge pinch of salt when anyone says only they have the truth.

Tyrants are good at lying; that's common sense.  

The American Revolution saw the common sense of not bowing to tyranny in 1776.  

That common sense spread to the French in 1789.  

1833 saw the end of slavery in England.  

April 9, 1865, saw the end of slavery in America after 100,000's died, and millions of black people were murdered, raped, and lived a life and death of bondage.  

A kind of common sense was found afterward, but we are still fighting to understand the truth that all men are created equal.  

Today, we are still dealing with a senseless human society.  

We still all live with a mixed bag of nuts, including me.  

Highlights, lowlights, and every kind in between.  

Some got a sense that they were born with it, while others had to dig for it.  

Common sense is a muscle.  

It has to be exercised regularly if we are to maintain a healthy society.  

A hurdle that common sense has to jump over is called harm.  

If what I believe harms someone in any way, does it truly stand for the common good?  

Doing right, doing good, never harms anything or anyone.  

Separating families at the border causes harm.  

Taking food stamps out of children's mouths causes harm.  

Not allowing people to vote causes harm. 

Holding back military aid for a political favor causes harm.  

Common sense says to do no evil. 

What does your common sense tell you?  

Peace  

Daniel J Frey aka Toby

Timid

"The true source of our suffering has been our timidity.

We have been afraid to think… 

Let us dare to read, think, speak, and write." – John Adams

Why do we fear being wrong?

Why would a person, a community, or a political party support apparent corruption and crimes conducted by its representatives and not investigate and prosecute the guilty?

What allows apparently good people to turn their backs in outrage and huddle against the bright light of truth?

Prejudice.

Prejudice is a kind of temerity of the timid.

Lazy minds.

Prejudice is making judgments without truth or factual evidence.

Do you see the link I'm talking about?

The timid are afraid to talk to that black man taking a knee.

The timid don't want to hear the reason for the immigrant fleeing murder.

The timid prefer to hide behind the excuse that nothing matters, that everything is corrupt.

Each of these examples represents a form of prejudice that prevents society from learning the truth.

Even if that truth reveals the corruption behind what we personally believe to be true.

John Adams, our second President, admonishes, asks, and reflects that what has kept this nation and the world from becoming a better place is our collective fear of confronting the truth.

I would add that it's part of the human condition, characterized by a general laziness of mind and body.

You know you should do the laundry; there is a huge pile, and you have no clean underwear.

You don't want to look at the pile.

You know you have to go buy soap.

You would rather tolerate the stink of your clothes than do the work.

It takes effort to gather your resources and apply the energy.

You just tell yourself everyone else is walking around in stinky clothes, too.

Your prejudice and your timid psychology allowed you to make up an excuse for not doing the right thing.

A collective timid psychology, a prejudice against doing right, has taken hold of the Republican Party and its supporters.

What I am calling a political-economic-social-nihilism.

PESN

PESN, in short, means that these people believe a myth that everything is corrupt.

If everything is corrupt, then my personal corruption, my prejudice, and my timid response will not be noticed.

If everything stinks, my stink won't be noticed.

My failure to take responsibility for doing right doesn't matter in the broader context of right versus wrong because everyone is ultimately out for themselves.

Welcome to the Jungle, baby!

This is a myth created by timid minds cobbled together on bar stools.

A world full of prejudice where corruption is the norm, and do-gooders are losers.

A discourse...

Boy Scouts.

The Deep State.

Never Trumpers.

Adams is right.

This timid myth of the world has held back the Great Society.

It destroyed Reconstruction.

It denied the Equal Rights Amendment.

It shut the door on Gay rights.

It has allowed racism to flourish.

It has grown white nationalism.

It has promoted economic disparity between the rich and poor.

It has strengthened a dark discourse of social dystopia and fascism in social media, networks, and print.

It has allowed the monsters who feed off the fear of the timid to take control of half of our Republic.

Is it too late to do anything about it?

Let us dare to read.

Read everything, especially those writings that challenge us to do more.

Think long, hard, and deep, ask the questions, and get to the answer at the bottom of the well of deceit and corruption.

Speak truth to power, demand freedom from the tyrant of the mind that says your freedom, your happiness, your equality, your hope, is not essential.

And write…

Write to that person who stands in the doorway, stopping the freedom march.

Write to that friend who has lost their hope.

Write and be that hope.

Most of all, do not be afraid of the night as you travel on your course.

You are a star in a gathering host.

Together, bravely, with courage and great spirit, we will do right.

It's always the right time to do right.

Peace

Daniel J Frey aka Toby

What Country

A majority of the citizens of this country were born here.

We have grown up in a culture of freedom.

A freedom that allows us to pursue our own happiness.

But that freedom does not come without a responsibility.

That responsibility comes with asking us what country we want to live in?

To be able to keep and enjoy this Republic requires a majority of us to agree on a set of ideas.

Of principals.

Of morals.

Due to our current state of affairs, it would seem that we do not agree on the same ideas, principles, and morality.

The Republican Party now supports the idea of power by any means.

The Republican Party now believes no one can be held responsible for a crime; they are above justice if the individuals accused believe they are not guilty.

No need for a fair trial by peers.

The Republican Party stands behind the leader of its party, who has been demonstrated to be a liar, a cheat, and a sexual predator.

The Republican Party freely admits that the President has no ideas, has no principles, has no morality, and they are OK with that because he believes in cutting taxes for the wealthy.

What has happened?

What has happened to our country?

What country is this?

John Adams said, " The preservation of Liberty depends upon the intellectual and moral character of the people. As long as knowledge and virtue are diffused generally among the body of a nation, it is impossible they should be enslaved."

Without their tacit agreement, a body of the American people has become enslaved to the idea of social and economic nihilism.

Nothing can be done; everyone and everything is corrupt.

So, what does it matter as long as I'm left alone?

As Adams warned, there is a large population in this country without civic-social-economic virtue.

They are the lost souls washed up upon the beach of economic vulture capitalism, which has been picking at the bones of the American psyche since 1776.

The industrial, political, social, and wealthy tax dodgers of this country are consistent.

They consistently feed off their prey, the American people, to the point of killing off the host.

They have sucked the civic morality of this nation almost dry once again.

We, as free people, cannot survive and prosper where a whole class of people and special interests are separate and unequal to us.

The wealthy, the wealth producers, the corporations cannot be allowed the status of untouchable.

We, the people, are unworthy of asking them to do their fair share and be a hope for the people, not their bloodletting Barber surgeon.

These economic parasites have created this social-political nihilism and use their victims to maintain power.

They have infected this country and have brought our Republic to a breaking point.

This President is not the symptom; he's the tip of the iceberg that poked his head out of the green greed swamp ass.

This President is supported by social, economic, and political powers that have been caught with their hand up the skirt of Liberty.

What country do you want to live in?

That's what's at stake with this impeachment of this President and the upcoming election.

Enemies of freedom come primarily from within the borders of any country.

They know the weakness of its citizens.

The enemy from within knows how to twist the truth to get what it wants.

It's why all civil servants in this country swear an oath not to an individual but to an idea.

The Constitution.

That idea that if a majority of us hold it to be true, we, the people, will not be enslaved by tyranny.

A tyranny both foreign and domestic.

What country do you want to live in?

The time is now to do right.

Reach out across the space that separates us and be the hope.

Don't tell your neighbors to hope by themselves.

That's how we got into this mess in the first place, when politicians promised prosperity and had no intention of delivering it.

Be the hope.

Cancel out the evil of nihilism.

Be the hope.

Make a difference simply by being kind, allowing compassion to be the guide to a shared purpose of knowledge and virtue.

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

Fallen

Seeing evil and stopping evil.

Most of us can recognize an act of cruelty as wrong.

However, some people don't see cruelty as wrong.

These people have desires.

These desires must be fulfilled no matter the cost.

No matter the cost to their community, their friendships, or their family.

Psychology has defined them as sociopaths.

Their desires, their passions, and their pure lust must be gratified regardless of who they hurt.

One such person caught in a web of evil was I.

I was in a bad place of my own doing when evil entered my home.

I had lost touch with myself, a phrase that aptly describes the situation. Still, it doesn't accurately capture the reality.

I had lost touch with the world.

I had become isolated.

I had convinced myself that I did not deserve love.

An empathic spiral.

Day after day, the weight of other people's fears and especially their anger washed over me like an unrelenting tide.

Many days, I couldn't catch my breath.

The anger of others would make me run.

People's emotions had, since the first day I could remember, struck fear in me.

In my early years, most of which I cannot remember because I lost my memory of my family when I was 17 due to a near-death experience.

What I do remember was the hands without a face hitting me till I bled.

I was told that my father was a rageaholic.

His physical and mental abuse was continuous.

But my tale is not about my father.

It's about how I was hanging onto my life by a thread and how that thread was cut by a sociopath.

I found myself running into oblivion because of my own fear of anger.

I believed I shouldn't be alive any longer.

I never forced myself to ask why a person was angry.

I had always assumed I was the cause of other people's anger.

To avoid angering them, I would never ask for clarification of their emotions.

I internalized others' pain and gave back humor.

My wife and I never argued.

But year after year, I receded, believing in error that she was angry with me.

Empathic personalities like my own are not magical.

We may be sensitive to emotion, but we're not mind-readers able to discern the origin of a feeling.

As in my case, my total lack of self-esteem always dictated to me that I was the cause.

So, in the last summer of what was going to be my life, I determined I was going to leave this wicked world.

Previously, a person came to live with us.

It was during that time that I came to find out through a four-year conversation that a 20-something sexual predator slept under our roof.

Their preferred victim were middle-aged housewives going through a rough divorce.

The graphic details of their constant exploits are so horrendous that this person would recount all their adventures on their own.

No prodding is needed.

They would drink a six-pack and tell the tale of sexual abuse.

Their bragging at first, I thought, was the talk of a blackout alcoholic drug abuser, which they also turned out to be.

That was until they provided me with proof of their exploits, which they had kept in a notebook.

Their reason for showing me their monster?

They thought that because I did not believe in a religion, it meant I was part of their club.

The club of the immoral.

The club of sociopaths who will do whatever is needed, right or wrong, to achieve their goal.

Because the sociopath, the psychopath, knows there are no eternal consequences to our actions here while we are alive.

There is no hell.

No heaven.

The sociopath's club credo is to lie about everything, and even that is a lie.

Their club members weave a web of deception that the sociopath believes no one can see through.

The club membership bylaws state that you can use people however you want.

This person allowed me into their mind, their reasoning, their wants, their desires, their lusts.

They falsely believed I was a monster like them.

I was the opposite.

I wanted to get away from this person.

I wanted to leave this world behind and all its evil.

I knew I didn't belong here.

It was at this moment that the beast, in pursuit of their orgasm, put their sights on a friend.

I told the beast repeatedly to leave my friend alone.

He couldn't, he wouldn't his lust had to be filled.

I didn't know that at that moment my future was sealed.

I put my plans into action to end my life.

To wander off into the Pacific Redwoods never to be seen again.

But then...

That friend read something in me and asked an important question.

How are you?

I told the truth.

I was leaving.

Then...

Then, that friend's voice, a single drop of human kindness, gave me pause in my dark journey to oblivion.

I stopped on the edge of forever and listened.

I had to...

It was the voice of love...

I fell.

I fell into the dark of night.

I fell.

When I hit bottom and realized I was not dead, I heard a voice call my name.

I turned and saw no one.

The voice came from inside me.

It said I was ready now to begin the good work.

To spread hope.

To put light onto the darkness.

To talk of love.

Unexpectantly, this crucible of self-hate I had lived through had gifted me.

I now had in my hand the sword of justice.

I had learned of evil, which had given me my armor.

I had fallen so that I could stand.

I was broken so I could be rebuilt.

If you have fallen, you can stand too.

It is not through our blessings that we are useful; it is through our trials and hardships that make us into who we are meant to be.

Our scars show where we have been.

Do right.

Peace

Daniel J Frey aka Toby