Barstool Knowledge

Washington never told a lie.

Twinkies can never spoil.

You must wait 24 hours before reporting a person missing.

Buddha was fat.

Adam and Eve ate an apple.

Jesus was born on December 25.

Obama is from Kenya.

Barstool knowledge.

The things that people tell each other while consuming their drugs of choice.

Barstool knowledge is defined by another term, one-upmanship.

That lame practice in a conversation where one person shares an experience and a round-robin follows, with everyone else saying how their experience tops the previous one.

Barstool knowledge starts out reasonably innocent.

A white lie that metamorphs as it's told from one barstool to the next until a worm becomes a fire-breathing dragon.

It's been a fact of human society since one monkey sat on a branch next to another.

When one monkey said that the sky-God told them that they had to give them half their food or the sky-God would become angry.

I don't see the sky-God.

That's correct, but he can see you.

Oh, yes, I must obey; here's half my food said the first monkey.

Happy in the belief that once appeased, the sky-God would no longer send them misfortune.

It's interesting how easily any of us can succumb to barstool knowledge.

Barstool knowledge is generally easy to hear from your uncle, aunt, father, mother, brother, sister, or friend, who at every family gathering causes that uncomfortable moment.

When the uncle tells that racist joke, everyone chuckles but is really embarrassed.

The party guest exclaims their story is a joke, but everyone knows it is true.

Barstool knowledge.

Psychology informs us it's because it feeds our expectations.

Our prejudice.

Our individual experience.

Our fear.

But our individual experience does not necessarily mean it conforms to reality.

We meet one jerk, and because there is this inherent need in humans to categorize, we label everyone similar to that one person as a jerk.

We had an unfavorable encounter with an individual, and we will likely view similar people as jerks as well.

Barstool knowledge.

None of it is valid.

It gives comfort to ignorance.

It pads the truth and keeps reality out of our minds.

It sponges away our responsibility to others as well as to ourselves.

Barstool knowledge is an adolescent mind preferring a lie to the truth.

A preference for fantasy, the way we wish the world should be, the world should be under our control, there to please us, not as it really is.

Speaking of barstool knowledge...

This past week, the President took it up a notch and demonstrated his lifelong affiliation and confirmation of his Doctoral degree in barstool knowledge.

If you are not familiar, the President used direct quotes from fascist leaders of WWII Germany to say he was the chosen one and that Jews are not loyal to our democracy.

He also said he was the second coming of Christ.

He was, in fact, Jesus, the economy is the greatest ever, we have great background checks, climate change is a hoax, Putin played Obama, the President wants world peace, U.S. citizens aren't paying his tariffs, did I say he said he was Jesus to the Jews and that was all in three days?

The President indeed demonstrated his barstool knowledge of theology, specifically regarding Judaism, as well as his professed love of Christianity.

He's a sociopath!

I said, sociopath.

I have had and continue to have direct experience with a sociopath.

Now you do, too, if you are residing in this Republic under this President.

They live in a world created in their own minds, shaped by their perception of the world and how it exists for them alone.

Their reality is in their mind and has nothing to do with the group's experience with reality.

At its core, sociopathy is a self-defense mechanism that allows the individual to survive in an adverse world.

However, sociopaths are not conducive to a stable government, a stable economy, and stable relationships, both personal and impersonal.

You can never pin a sociopath down to the truth; they are experts at moving their own goalposts.

It is also conclusive that sociopaths attract other sociopaths.

That's why all those people with barstool knowledge are so drawn and attracted to their messiah.

Sociopaths, at their core, cannot and will not ever share.

Like Homer Simpson at the buffet table, they will take the whole tray of fried shrimp with them back to their table and consume it alone.

The world is their shrimp buffet, for one.

The only thing that will ever stop a sociopath and their followers is a consequence.

Something or someone has to draw a line in the sand and say stop.

They will not do it on their own.

They will not recognize that the house is on fire and call for help.

They will not, for any reason in heaven or hell, stop on their own accord from wreaking havoc.

Only the good people, the good people who, with conviction and moral purpose, have the ability to stand before this President and tell him to stop.

The confidence and insistence upon the belief in barstool knowledge is so deep…

How deep?

Have you ever tried to persuade someone to abandon their religion?

It's that deep.

I'm reminded of the beloved song "We Shall Overcome."

The only way that the Brotherhood of Man can be made to come true is if the good people stop allowing the bad ones a seat at the table of peace.

These sociopaths only want to turn the table over and take everything for themselves.

Peace is not an option.

We've got to stop allowing relatives or friends to tell racial jokes.

We've got to call out the fan at the sports game for yelling a gender slur.

We must walk together, arm in arm with those who want a better world, and step over and around those who don't.

They're rocks on the path of brotherhood.

Step lively past them.

We have to understand that we can't save everybody, only those who want to be saved.

Here's some real knowledge to drop.

Love expects more of everyone every day.

Tell the uncle to pass the potatoes, act civil, or leave the table.

Peace.

Daniel J Frey aka Toby

Liberty

They who can give up essential Liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither Liberty nor safety.

Better to die fighting for freedom than be a prisoner all the days of your life.

Those who deny freedom to others deserve it, not for themselves.

If Liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.

Liberty and justice for all.

The thread that binds our civil society together is being pulled thin once again.

Benjamin Franklin, Bob Marley, Lincoln, and Orwell speak from their experience of those who would deny Liberty to others.

The other being you and I.

The foundation of the idea that all men are free is found in the expression of Liberty.

For all its failings, our democracy has agreed upon a belief in the inalienable rights of its citizens and in the people of the world to their right to Liberty and justice.

Patriots, known and unknown, in the halls of Congress, in the halls of tenements, have fought the good fight against the ignorance of the selfish.

We were the first nation on Earth to put our principles of freedom to the test.

The Great American Experiment.

Could we, the people, form a government for the people and not to the benefit of one person, one party, one corporation, one religion, and one ethnicity?

Could we overcome our inherent selfishness as a species and, together, promote the general welfare of all peoples?

Could we overcome?

No country in the world had declared for itself a challenge like this before.

No king, no prince, no czar, no queen, no business leader, and no religious leader declared that the average man had the right to independence.

Independence of thought, of congregation, of vote, of movement, of association, of speech, of press, of religion, of petition, or grievance to your government.

As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, "Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed."

Liberty and justice for all.

We demand our freedom.

The freedom-loving people of the world admired us.

In the hearts of some nations, a bond of friendship and kinship was recognized.

France gave this nation a gift, an emblem of what the American people stood for in the world.

Freedom.

Americans fought with themselves for freedom.

They fought in the world for freedom.

They welcomed all those who came to their shore seeking freedom.

What better emblem than Liberty to stand with her torch held up high so that all could see the open door to that land high upon the hill of human ideals.

Even when the foundations were laid for the statue, the grinding teeth of the selfish demanded that the door be shut.

There's no more room.

No more room?

The ignorant are consistent in their narrow beliefs and perspectives.

Freedom has arms as wide as the universe.

Liberty encompasses all of time.

Justice is forever.

Love will always demand more.

As people who believe in love, we can do more than one thing at a time.

Freedom is not just for you; freedom asks you to extend that same freedom to everyone.

Liberty is not just for America; it is for every nation on the globe.

Justice is not just for one race; it is for all genders, creeds, and colors.

To think, to express that this ideal should go away strikes at the core of who we are as a people.

It is the exact opposite of those who believe in humanity.

It is the voice of hate.

It is the cruelty of selfishness.

It is the criminal mind that believes that might make right.

It is the voice of the self-ignorant.

The hateful seem to have a short memory.

They act as if they have come upon some brand-new idea that none of us has ever heard before.

They boldly stand before us and proclaim hate and selfishness as a cure for all the problems in the world.

As if none of us haven't heard it all before and have rejected it.

Each and every generation has rejected hate because of where it leads.

Hate leads any society that fosters it to a death sentence.

The forces of good, taken as being weak, will rise up and wash away the ugliness of hate.

This President and his sponsors and supporters little realize the sand upon which they stand.

Ask history, where are all the tyrants now?

Where are their statues?

Where are their people?

How are they remembered?

Now, ask where the leaders who promoted the general welfare are?

Who pushed for freedom?

Who demanded Liberty and justice for all?

Where are their people?

We're still here.

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

Tactics

Let us listen to the sound.

Let us let the future worry about itself.

Let us take the time to be in the now.

Now.

Silence the mind…

Back in the day, our nation was at a crossroads, as it is today.

Liberty and freedom faced a test of resolution.

Could the idea of freedom stand against the dark tide of prejudice?

Like a slow change of season, the people did not recognize that the nation had a growing divide.

Like finding frost on the lawn overnight, summer had turned and fallen into fall.

Searing fear, coupled with divine instruction, informed one side.

Fervent ideals bonded with modern practicality informed the other side.

The divide grew.

Freedom was only for the White man.

Freedom was for all men.

Each side planted a flag and pitched their tents on the battlefield.

Two camps.

States' rights to determine what's best for their people versus Federal rights to determine what's best for all the people.

Tactics were developed on both sides of the question of who would be a slave or free.

Words versus action.

Words versus violence.

Violence versus violence.

War.

Once the war was over, the side for freedom for all won.

The defeated side never accepted the outcome.

A man could never tell them what was right when it went against the word of their God.

Tactics…

I used to be an Orderly back in the day.

I worked at a suburban hospital in Cleveland, Ohio.

Brentwood Hospital.

I learned how to take a pulse.

You put your hand on the stranger's wrist, and you time how many beats in the artery you feel in the wrist.

You measure the beats in 15 seconds and times that number by four to get the pulse.

Most of us don't think about our heart rate or our pulse.

Our nation has a heartbeat, a pulse.

It doesn't take a particular skill to find it.

Or to listen to it.

To measure it.

Our Republic is demonstrating that it has an ongoing cardiac condition.

It has an irregular pulse.

A blockage…

You won't get a genuine sense of it through your local news.

You won't get it each night on your national news.

You have to get against the wrist of the nation, against its bones, to feel that there isn't something right going on.

A way to get to the pulse of our nation is to listen to the voices.

It takes a little time.

But you'll soon hear there are two camps in our nation.

One who wants our world to do better…

The other wants to kill the better world people as soon as possible…

They make them uncomfortable...

Tactics…?

There is a malice in our nation driven by fear and hatred.

It is eye-opening to the degree of aggression the President's supporters are willing to be vocal about.

Mostly, the left advocates making things work better.

Yes, I know, some use violent, angry, foul language against this President.

But there is no movement on the left where they are actively arming themselves to take on this Presidency.

However, on the right, there is a steady drumbeat to kill all the liberals.

Kill the libtards.

On the one side, you have "save the turtles"; on the other hand, you have "kill all the queer lovers?"

Change versus genocide.

Is that really a tactic?

Is that really where the GOP and Republicans, along with their supporters, are pitching their tents?

That's the flag they want to follow?

Tactics…

Elizabeth Warren has been offering some tactics on how to grow and protect the middle-class economy.

Beto talks about LGBTQ equality.

Sanders' tactic is to promote democratic socialism.

Biden cheerleads about how we can do better.

Harris talks about immigration and fairness.

Buttigieg promotes better voting rights protections.

These are all political tactics aimed at appealing to the voter's potential for Reason.

I'm the best person to do the job for you, the thing you are most concerned about.

I'll get it done.

Tactics…

Yet, on the other side, a call for mental and physical destruction of the opposition?

Put all those Democrats into military prison camps.

Diport all the immigrants, legal and illegal.

There is, from my limited health experience but excessive political knowledge, that the nation as a whole has a heart blockage.

Our Republic is on the verge of another heart attack.

We need a doctor…

We need nurses, medical technicians, cleaning staff, laundry services, and food services; damn, we need to get our ass to the emergency room pronto.

It is just plain flat-out wrong for any portion of the leadership on the Right to allow such sentiment and rhetoric to be promoted in social media.

We are witnesses to the pulse, the blood flow of bad ideas between fearful people.

But hold on…

Attacking fearful people will not help them overcome their fear; it will only make them worse.

You can't beat a person and expect them to love you afterward.

A great sin of neglect was committed in this nation after its war between the states. 

Our nation's leaders and its people should have come together and worked to heal the nation's mind and spirit.

Instead, everyone went to their corners, where they nurtured their resentments and fears.

They let God sort them out, and he/she/it didn't do a good job of it.

That ugly disease of the American heart called racism still clots our arteries.

We're on the verge of a cardiac malfunction…

We need a stent put in to open our compassion artery.

We need to put our people to work to grow strong.

We need to dream again together.

We need a steady diet of hope.

We need to lower our blood pressure through the exercise of justice.

These are good, sound tactics.

Silence the mind…

Listen to the people.

Drop hate, lift hope.

Peace.

Daniel J Frey aka Toby

Masks

Most of us try to put our best face forward, but that face may not be our real selves.

I wear a mask.

It is a mask that I have put together to protect myself.

I suffer from too much empathy.

Too much empathy is a type of handicap in this world.

People's emotions can flood into me.

The first mask I use to deflect emotions that can flood over me is to hum to myself.

If the number of angry people around me increases, I'll sing a random song softly to myself.

At other times, I put on the mask of humor.

My best shield, my preferred boundary.

I have used that mask ever since I can remember.

It's my oldest and favorite.

That mask was developed to survive physical violence.

When you're raised in a home where violence, mainly random bi-polar violence, occurs, it turns out to be a good thing to keep your empathy at a frosty level of awareness.

Dad could switch on violent anger at the drop of a hat.

He could be laughing and joking at one moment, but one unpredictable remark or action from you could send him into an angry fit.

It could sometimes be defused with a well-placed piece of observational humor.

Sometimes, it could not, and the bloody beatings would follow.

I still do not do well around anger.

I don't run away.

I don't hide.

I've learned to face it.

Look into its empty eyes for a while.

The darkness of man…

However uneasy it makes me.

Just like a monster in a nightmare, I have found that if you stare into the face of anger, you will see its source.

Tonight, around the world, in our nation, in our homes, we are facing a nightmare.

The source material of this nightmare has been crafted from our own shared experience.

There are issues that we, as a people, have not addressed because we are fearful.

Fear is a force.

Fear, if not confronted, will grow into a monster called anger.

The beast called anger stalks the streets of the American consciousness.

Anger leads to hate…

The fear in the world and our nation is a genuine concern.

Many want to hide from the truth.

It is more fearful to look into the source of the anger than it is to project that anger at the innocent.

I'm sure my father had a problem that made him angry.

But like most humans, instead of addressing the problem head-on, it was easier to beat his kids to a bloody pulp.

They offered no resistance.

So you're saying most problems don't offer significant resistance?

No, the complete opposite.

That's why problems are a problem because they resist ordinary human effort.

Most problems require the extra mile, extra effort, and more willpower than the average person is willing to expend to resolve.

The biggest problem we have in this Republic is "Race."

A nation founded on freedom yet kept slaves.

That is, by definition, hypocrisy.

A Constitution that says all men are free, yet these over here are not.

The human duality of mind…

To be human, by definition, means you can keep two thoughts in your head that are in exact opposition to each other.

Military intelligence.

Crash landing.

Jumbo shrimp.

Free Lunch

Masks…

The war between the States never ended.

The battle to free men's hearts continues today.

Many wear the mask of civility, but in their hearts, they don't believe that all men are equal.

Behind these masks, a dark ocean of anger has swelled.

The finger of blame is pointed at the innocent.

Scapegoats.

When the real source is never examined.

Where does this anger come from?

How do you tell a person they believe in a false God?

How do you tell a person they swallow a false story about themselves?

How do you help a person understand that their problem is not outside of themselves?

It's inside.

It's them.

They are the creators of their doom.

Like an addict, they blame everyone but themselves for why they are at death's door.

The racist needs someone else to blame because to face the nightmare that they are to blame for their life is too much to bear.

Generation after generation scapegoat and blame their object of resentment, never once looking into their own hearts, minds, and actions, that they are the source of their unhappiness.

Masks…

Masks are only effective in the short term.

No mask will save you from the beating.

The only way to save yourself is with the truth.

Be kind to yourself.

You are deserving of love.

Open your heart and your eyes, and awaken from your nightmare.

See that you are surrounded by a golden light.

That darkness that you are afraid of?

You only had your eyes shut.

Peace.

Daniel J Frey aka Toby

Stronger Together

One day, you may find that person you love, and they will love you back.

Stronger together.

That time when you were on top of a ladder, and that friend held tight at the bottom until your work was done.

Stronger together.

When your mother kept you home because you were sick.

Stronger together.

That night, when you got a flat tire and called for help.

Stronger together.

One night, it was late; a mother and a father got a call that their son was in an accident.

The nurse couldn't tell them what was wrong until they showed up at the emergency room.

Once they got to the hospital, the nurse could answer their questions.

Their son had been drinking, and he had run a red light and struck a utility pole.

No one else was hurt.

The father could have come down hard on his son and told him never to darken his door again.

The mother could have screamed and yelled and demanded why her son could make her life so miserable.

They both could have made the actions of their son about themselves.

However, their son was no longer a boy; he was a man.

He bore the responsibility of a man.

Of an adult.

They came to his bedside and told their son that together, they'd find the answers.

Together, they can weather the storm.

Together, they are stronger.

A storm of another kind has found its way into the heart of America.

A storm of the soul.

Dissolution of the conscious.

A thunder of misplaced rage.

A flood of half-truths mixed with a hailstorm of outright lies.

A belief that has been cultivated by activists and opportunists of a kind of White American Apartheid.

A division between them and us.

Right and left.

Good and evil.

A propaganda that your absence of economic security is because the other has taken your fair share.

The other is responsible for all your problems.

I'm here to say that's a load of horse shit.

It may grow roses, but it's hard to swallow.

This division, sewn by these opportunists, pushes the buttons of the disenfranchised.

You tell a generational factory worker their job is now gone because those union people asked for too many benefits when the truth is the owner of the company, whose God is profit, moved the company to maximize their investor's profit share.

It has been the same damn story for all of human history.

The rich and powerful, the few, continue to pit the poor, the majority, against each other.

Consequently, the majority never hold those responsible for life's misery accountable.

The powerful know they must keep the people segregated and divided to maintain their hold on the reins of power.

Otherwise, a true democracy might break out…

They know we are stronger together.

Stronger together.

The wind is howling outside.

For that matter, the wind is howling in a lot of homes across America, too.

That wind is saying we don't need those people.

That wind says we can do it by ourselves.

That wind that whips up rage, hate, anger.

There can be no peace without honesty.

One day, a man took some friends fishing.

While out on that lake, a storm came up.

The people in the boat became afraid.

They began to blame each other for even considering they could venture into the unknown.

Their fear turned to rage.

Some wanted to turn back; they were afraid of the unknown.

The others wanted to get to the other side of the lake; they were afraid of where they had come from.

Both sides blamed each other because they both believed there was no hope.

They began to fight each other.

They saw the worst in each other.

The storm was going to send them to the bottom of the sea, and it was the other side's fault.

How could we be to blame, "Aren't we better sailors than them?"

Then, the boat's owner, the adult at the wheel, told the wind to be silent.

The rage stopped.

The boat owner told his friends, Don't you see you're all in the same boat together.

Your fear is our fear.

Your hope is our hope.

Your love is our love.

We are stronger together.

Peace

Daniel J Frey aka Toby

Grounded

Our President is a boil on humanity's neck, but he's not the only one.

As the world becomes smaller with information, both real and false can be had in an instant.

The veil that was the American dream has been lifted.

It is not a pretty picture.

Like the reveal of Dorian Gray's portrait, all of the hatred, the crime, the bigotry, and the injustice have left us with a gruesome portrayal of what America has been hiding from.

Through our own personal experience, all of us, no matter where we come from, try to put our best face forward.

Even though we may have a load in our pants, most of us, most of the time, want to be perceived as good people.

However, if we were perfect, why is there still fraud?

Racism?

Rape?

Child molestation?

Murder?

Somebody is committing these crimes against humanity.

The lifting of the veil that had previously covered the American way of life is only the most recent curtain-raising in history.

This underbelly of our society has been there since before the Pilgrims landed.

This is a significant point to understand.

We all like to believe in a good story.

There are many good stories at the heart of any society.

The core story that founded this nation in 1776 was that all men are born free.

He has always been free.

Anyone, including any organization that includes governments and religions, who tries to abridge that natural order, this inalienable right, is a tyrant.

They who oppose this Natural Freedom are tyrants.

Broadly defined, it is referred to as the tyranny of men.

These individuals and organizations are not friends of humanity; they oppose freedom.

Yet even though there have been those who hate others' freedom and will burn and kill to prevent those freedoms, these people are also a part of the fabric of humanity.

The threads of humanity are made of many fibers.

Most are common.

Some shine brilliantly.

While sadly, many are dull.

And some threads are just plain evil.

But all of them are part of the quilt of humanity.

Our nation was founded upon the idea of freedom, remember?

A bold proposition, given the history of the world.

Could people reconcile the social and ideological war that has been going on between those who believe in freedom and those who do not?

All of the previous institutions of the world, no matter the people or the region, did not wholly believe in the innate freedom of man.

The power of institutions of governments of religions is to control and to segregate.

Freedom is only granted at the price of membership and is reserved for those within the organization's power structure.

The American experiment aims to determine if enough people can overcome their past and their myths and embrace the concept of freedom for all.

Could all the threads come together and form a nation?

Could they drop their racism?

Could they drop their segregation?

Could they drop their story?

Could they drop their hate?

And pick up hope?

From the inception of that proposition of freedom for all, and including to this very hour, America and Americans have been at odds with their history and traditions.

And for those that have been at odds, those that feed and prosper from the old beliefs of segregation, division, hate, and racism, they have been looking for their personal savior to come and destroy their enemies and set them up as Kings of the Earth.

Their prayers were answered when Trump ascended to the Presidency.

Those racists knew a great day had arrived.

This President would usher in a new world.

This President and his followers believe they are the beginning of a new American brand of White Apartheid.

Make no mistake about it; the fear of a future Brown America by many Americans is genuine.

They see the demographic shift, and they are terrified.

Like dogs under the table being fed scraps of meat, people like the current President nurture the fear that white people are doomed as a race.

Don't start; nothing won't be nothing.

Right now, right today, we are at the bookend of the story started by European greed.

If the Aristocracy of Europe didn't want to lose their White identity, they should have stayed home.

It's ironic, and I understand very few actually get irony, but here goes…

It's ironic because the European Aristocracy believed that the White race was dominant.

Their arrogance allowed them to freely explore the world and claim it as their own, with little regard for the people they encountered along the way.

Those tens of millions of more people…

It turns out that, numbers-wise, the White population is a racial minority.

Fact.

It's also been perplexing to me how a minority group gained control of a majority, and that majority didn't conclusively tell this minority to sit down and stop rocking the boat.

But that's a digression.

Another discussion.

Back to the boil on our necks.

This President perpetuates a false narrative that many Americans believe, allowing him to shield himself from personal scrutiny as he accumulates financial wealth.

He's not a patriot.

He's not there for the majority.

He's there for a minority.

He's in office for the one.

Himself.

It's becoming increasingly obvious.

The only way to get rid of a boil is with a lance.

The actual substance of the argument must be pierced.

And in our case, the lance of truth must pierce the prejudice of tyranny.

The veil has been lifted, and our way is clear to see.

We must be grounded in the knowledge that freedom and justice are for all.

We're going to try to save as much of the quilt of America as we can.

But that lance can be used for more than lancing old boils.

It can be used as a needle to sew new bright threads of compassion, truth, and honor into the fabric of our nation.

Do not suffer fools.

Drop hate and pick up hope.

Shine the light of truth before freedom's door.

Peace.

Daniel J Frey aka Toby

Baby Teeth

The world is growing up.

Living has a way of creating a set of expectations.

When you are a child, you think you will have your teeth forever.

Then, one day, one of them comes loose, and soon they are all falling out.

Your expectations did not match Reality.

Most of us believe the stories told to us by those in authority over us during our early years, such as our parents and caregivers.

These stories we naturally believe to be true.

Why would our parents lie to us?

An example is that someday, you will have a job.

Most of us get some level of education, and from there, we make choices and pursue a career.

Life sometimes throws us a curveball, and instead of a career with a 9-to-5 job, we end up with an hourly wage at a fast food joint.

When we were told we would grow up to have a career and dream about what that career would be, the difference between Reality and our dream can be strikingly different, can it not?

Right now, you and I are living in a time of change.

We are witnesses to what I'm calling a clash of expectations.

Each of us expected our lives and the world to work one way, only to be confronted with something very different.

That difference is Reality.

This clash of expectations today occurs because, for the first time in history, we can have both the truth and lies delivered into our hands and minds instantly.

Steve Jobs wanted to put the power of the computer into everyone's hands.

He saw it as a way of incorporating, blending, and merging the human race in a specific manner to achieve the harmony of humanity through knowledge.

He helped usher in the communication age.

People like Buckminster Fuller recognized that the desktop computer would be the most revolutionary force to unite all aspects of humanity on a critical path of knowledge.

For the very first time in human history, humanity would be able to know information instantly.

Unfiltered.

Joseph Campbell, on the other hand, saw a canyon opening up in humanity's future.

As Arthur C. Clarke put it, humanity was coming to its own childhood's end.

It was going to lose its baby teeth.

Campbell rightly witnessed the end of humanity's transitional traditions.

When I was a child, I thought like a child, and when I became an adult, I thought like an adult.

Childish things are to be put away when we become adults.

Campbell observed that the world over had lost those cultural traditions that previously told children, 'Now you are no longer a child, now you are an adult.'

Our modern society…

As an adult, you are responsible for the common good of the whole.

Children, conversely, are primarily concerned with their own happiness and welfare and are often selfish.

Previously, in the West, this time of transition from childhood to adulthood was called the age of responsibility.

When a person reached the age of eight or thereabouts, the child was recognized by the adults in the community as being able to understand the difference between right and wrong.

Being aware of that difference meant they could be held responsible for their actions, not only for themselves but for the community.

They realized Joe was old enough to trust that he could take the cows down to the river for a drink and not leave them there to go off and play.

Responsibility…

The individual left behind their childhood and took on the role of the adult to support and defend the common good.

Our modern society has allowed that tenet of humanity, what it means to be a human and an adult, to drift away, much like Wilson the soccer ball did in the film Castaway.

Today, we allow 40-year-old adults to behave in public as if they were toddlers.

Somehow, collectively, we are afraid to tell these adults to put away their toys, clean up their rooms, and behave like adults.

Be responsible for your community welfare.

There is obviously a whole host of issues that these childish expectations from these immature adults can come into conflict with Reality.

I deserve a trophy!

I will marry Prince Charming!

I will have the perfect career!

I'm always right; you're always wrong!

You can't make me!

I'm winning; you're not!

I'm better than you!

It's mine!

Children.

Children.

The Child/Adult can resist growing and being responsible for more than just their selfish interests well into their 80s.

However, one day, they will have to face Reality.

The truth.

We only get one chance at life, and sitting at the children's table, living as a petulant child tyrant, is a sad existence.

A sad existence for the child and the parents.

In America today, we find many people who we have previously elected to Office who demonstrate that they are still children.

These representatives of ours whine, they stomp their feet, they cry out, and these Senators are throwing a tantrum because they refuse to do the chore that they were sent to elected Office to do.

Their expectations of power and prestige as a member of a representational government have come into conflict with the Reality of which is more critical, their self-interests or the Constitution?

They resent having to serve the Constitution and not solely themselves.

The Constitution is written for We the People, not I, the indulged child/adult.

At the head of our government currently sits a particular kind of spoiled brat.

Indulged throughout his life, never told he was wrong by those who served his father; he believes himself to be his own law, his own justice, his own judge.

He has an expectation that his world cannot be challenged.

It's time that the adults in the room introduce this child President to Reality.

It's time to give him a timeout.

Peace

Daniel J Frey aka Toby

Broken

Broken is not a bad word.

Most, if not all, things in our universe must first break to be useful.

When we break away from the story, we reflect on the world and our place in it, and we can then come to terms with the truth of life.

We become an instrument of the power of love.

Do you live behind a wall of your creation, and did you have help building it?

All the isms out there in our world purposely put up rigid walls to keep people locked up.

The isms fill minds with half-truths and goad followers to attack and deny all others as false.

Have you ever heard anyone say you can't trust so and so because they are ________ fill in the blank?

Compassion, honor, duty, and truth all fall away in favor of the prejudice and the advocacy of the given ism.

The ism feeds the personal prejudice of the individual of the group to keep its followers from straying.

But more importantly, it feeds the need to maintain power and position that the followers of the ism are afraid they will lose if they don't fight back.

But what happens if you let your narrative of how you believe the world works fall away?

What happens if your world breaks?

Think about this sentence: billions of years ago, a star exploded, creating the elements you are made of.

Just reading that sentence could break a worldview.

Only in the supernovae of a star, a star large enough that when it reaches its end of days, it collapses on itself, forcing together atoms.

These atoms that are broken and reforged in the massive explosion constitute the elements we find in our solar system.

Think about it.

A Sun in the past had to die to give life to us today.

That is the truth.

You don't have to accept it as the truth.

However, the universe doesn't accept your personal story.

The universe neither accepts our sense of morality nor asks for our permission to do the things it does.

The universe is.

It is up to each of us to discover it.

Discover its truth.

When we break from prejudice and see the world as it is and not how we pretend it is, the distance between you and the next person is just an arm's length away.

We all like to think of ourselves as being unique and special.

Unique, yes, on the outside, but in the heart, we are all the same.

Fear keeps us from doing what we are intended to do with our lives.

Once broken, we can hear the call of love.

Once broken, we can see the need for love.

Once broken, we can reach out to the world with compassion for the first time.

Break the walls of the ism.

No matter how small a person may believe they are, love will give them both strength and courage to make a difference in this world.

A young woman named Rosa Parks made a difference that day when she defied the Jim Crow laws, which were unjust.

The unnamed people who march in our streets against the immigration policy of this president have moved the conscience of a nation.

The Parkland students, the parents of Sandy Hook, have moved others to stand against the ism of the merchants of death.

That person you saw who dropped a coin into a bucket made a difference in the world that day.

It's ironic that the smallest, what seems to be ineffective, the broken, are precisely the type of people who love to change the world.

Our world is broken.

Some of us have been tasked by love to bring the pieces back together again.

To heal.

To bring back hope.

The world will not be the same as it was.

The world will be better.

Peace.

Daniel J Frey aka Toby

More Than A Feeling

America has a problem, and it appears to be us.

One step forward, two steps back.

That's right.

One step forward, two steps back.

The problem that America has did not arrive with the election of the current President.

No.

There has been a sickness at the center of the American heart that we, as a people, have ignored generation after generation.

Just like our physical health, the mental health of America is not what it can be.

There is obviously something broken in our will.

There is obviously something overheated in our choices.

There is obviously something falling apart at the center of our idea of Justice, of fairness, of the common good.

At least half of our nation's population lives in a world without hope.

I don't mean they can't live day by day, but to tell you the truth, that's just what I mean.

If all you are doing each day is just getting by, just living, lust living because you have lost hope for your future, you are living in purgatory.

You are working hard each day but getting nowhere.

You feel your head slipping under the surface of the waters of life.

You are choking on the words of promises not kept by those entrusted with your vote.

On the other hand…

The condition of America's mental health is not held solely contingent upon the actions of others; we, the people, are also responsible for letting our conscience get distorted.

Loss of income and loss of job opportunities are a part of life.

They always have been.

Life ain't easy then you die…

There have been places and times in the past where economic opportunity failed the people of the world and created a fertile ground in which political opportunists and tyrants ransacked and destroyed nations.

They plunged their populations into wars, blaming others for their own financial and moral circumstance.

It's easy to say the devil made me do it, but it's harder to take personal responsibility for your own failures.

Your own demons.

Yet, here in America, we, the people, have always understood that the good of the many is extended to the few and to the one.

Our great American experiment is about a nation of many living together through thick and thin.

Our strength is that we leave no one behind.

The rich, the poor, the healthy, the sick, the old, the young, and all the colors of humanity work together to make a better nation, a better world, and a better life for each other.

Here we are at this time and in this place in America.

The times they are a-changin' yet again.

Today, instantly, people can unite or divide over a single Tweet.

Words matter.

Words can make people swallow hate, or words can lift them out of fear and give them hope.

Each of us has a responsibility to the nation and to one another.

We need to give each other hope.

What can hope be?

Hope can be if you become sick, you can't lose your home.

Hope can come from not being afraid that your child will be killed in their classroom.

Hope can be working hard and earning a living to pay your bills with a little extra left in your pocket.

Hope can come out of the shadows of racism, misogyny, and sexual bias and contribute without fear of economic and social retribution.

Hope can be an educational safety net that, if your career opportunities change, your new education is free.

None of these ideas to bring hope are new.

No, they are not.

They have been there since the foundations of this Republic.

We, the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, ensure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.

All that means is we believe that hope belongs to everyone.

The more Justice, the more peace, the more security, the more universal good, the blessing of love and hope will be had by this generation and the generations to come. 

Who doesn't want that?

Who would work against that?

Those who profit from fear, that's who.

Fear is power, and for those who either want control or want to retain it, fear is the thing that is fed.

Fear can do a lot.

It can build walls.

It can start wars.

It can starve people.

It can stop dreams.

It can destroy compassion.

It can throw down honor.

It can drown duty.

Fear is the enemy of hope.

More than a feeling, hope is the foundation of America.

After all this time, after all the people who have fought for, died for, and have stood for what this nation stands for, we are not the generation to turn our backs.

No.

Let us each ask ourselves and our neighbors to do better.

Not just for ourselves but for all those generations yet to come.

Let us each, in our own way, drop hate and lift up hope for all.

Peace

Daniel J Frey aka Toby

Where Are The Strong

When the unexpected tragedy falls upon us, we ask Where are the strong?

When the flood overwhelms our home, the water rises, and we ask Where are the strong?

Long days at the bedside of our loved ones, wiping away the crust from their mouths, we ask Where are the strong?

A child cries in the night, alone, afraid, in the next room, their mother is beaten, she asks…

Where are the strong?

A man is stopped in the street because of the color of his skin. 

He's afraid, having done nothing wrong, but a fear he's grown up with confuses his reason.

He's afraid.

He runs.

He's shot dead by the police.

We ask.

Where are the strong?

A mother and father are raped and killed, and their child runs out into the darkness away from their home.

They run, run, through the night until they collapse.

They find their way north.

North.

They follow the story they hear of a land where mercy and hope rain down freely.

They make their way through fear and terror only to be stopped at the border of America by people who forget how to care, how to share, and how to love.

Where are the strong?

Over here in Washington, there is an administration headed by a man who is familiar with corruption.

His familiarity with corruption comes from his own mouth.

He admires tough, corrupt men.

They get things done.

He's been around "flippers" all his life…

This President doesn't see that the rules either before he became President or after apply to him.

Rules are for losers.

We who believe and follow the rules are a waste of flesh and blood.

Suckers.

Things to be taken advantage of.

This President and his defenders use the goodwill of those who follow the rules to hide their corruption.

One horrible lie after another rained out of the mouths of these people, spinning a myth greedily gobbled up by the fearful.

On and on, day after day, they spit on the face of justice and laugh, daring anyone to stop them.

Who can stop them?

We all ask, Where are the strong?

Who among us will have the moral courage to stand and do right?

Who will realize that they must sacrifice their all to make a difference?

What we fight against is a dark sickness of man's soul that has eaten its own since the foundations of the world.

This evil, this corruption, will not stop unless and until people of goodwill stand up against it and say no more, not today, not ever again.

There is no bargain with evil.

There can be no compromise with corruption.

You can't spin political partisanship enough to share a seat with fraud, graft, and malfeasance in office so that you can save your job.

Is that what it's all boiled down to?

Saving your job?

Congress…?

Senate…?

You don't want to make waves, you politicians, because you might lose your job? 

When Joe got his boat out and went up and down the flooded streets, saving his neighbors, he was supposed to be at work that day.

When Alice took care of her mother, who was dying of Alzheimer's, she missed that job interview.

When Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. marched in the streets, he didn't receive his pension from the Baptist Church.

When Robert Kennedy was shot dead in LA, he didn't get the job he wanted as President of the United States.

The life you have, the freedom you enjoy, was built by hands, both great and small.

Each set of hands has set into place bricks of justice, of freedom, laid there by people just like you and me.

No different…

Rich and poor, old and young, lay there with the intent that freedom and justice for all make a better world for us all.

No one, no one, not even the President of the United States, is above the law.

If we cannot hold a corrupt President responsible, what does this government, what do our representatives, what does this country and these people stand for?

Is the Constitution just some kind of racket?

Is the Declaration of Independence just a come-on for suckers?

Is Democracy a fraud?

No.

No, it is not.

We, the people of the United States, cannot be extorted by this President.

We, as a people, do not have to do the heavy lifting alone.

No.

There is a whole nation of people, a majority that holds the truth of justice dear to them.

I've asked, ' Where are the strong? '

We are the strong.

We're the people.

We are not afraid.

Love asks more.

Peace.

Daniel J Frey aka Toby

Right From Wrong

How can you know if you're in the right?

Many people, past and present, have and will go to their graves believing they are right.

Over 620,000 Confederate soldiers died for the cause of the South during the American Civil War.

They believed they were in the right.

1,773,700 plus German soldiers died during World War I.

They believed they were in the right.

Then, the German people still believed they were in the right, and the rest of the world was wrong, and for a second time, they went to war with the world, and over 4.3 million soldiers were killed, and over 500,000 civilians were killed.

They got the message that they were wrong.

3 million North Korean soldiers died for their cause.

They believed they were in the right.

1.1 million North Vietnamese soldiers died for their belief.

They believed they were in the right.

This doesn't count the tens of millions of non-believers killed by these true believers during these conflicts, who murdered the other under the assumption that there can only be one truth.

Today, we can see who was on the wrong side and who was on the right side during those conflicts.

But why didn't the people during those wars see the writing on the wall?

Why couldn't they see they were wrong in the first place?

There are big questions of right and wrong, but there are also everyday interactions, conflicts, and issues that require answers. 

How do you know you're in the right?

How many of us are willing to kill for a belief?

In our nation, many believe that they have the right to own guns and to kill whom they want when they want for their reasons.

No one can stop them from killing, not even the Constitution they believe in.

We have subtler folks who casually discriminate based on race.

Discrimination is a kind of casual death sentence upon the victim who is never given a real chance to thrive.

Greed drives many to accumulate wealth through fraudulent businesses, charities, and religious organizations.

Greed instructs the follower that the innocent are sheep, and you are the shearer.

Take from the stupid; they'll never miss it.

Does taking from the poor to make oneself rich ever raise a flag that they are immoral?

Does it matter to them, and if it doesn't, why?

Does a type of social or economic racism allow the person to convince themselves that this other kind of person doesn't deserve to be happy?

I'm of the mind that you either like humanity or you don't.

You're either willing to lend a hand or believe that life is a party and it's there for the taking.

I'm also of the mind, given our current time, that the split between those who are aware and support the common good versus those who don't care about it is approximately 60/40.

I'm being an optimist, and based on the current polls, which demonstrate that 40% of our citizens support our current President, and 60% don't.

That ratio can be applied to every issue that comes up today.

There are, 40% of the nation who want children locked up.

There are 40% who want to discriminate against brown people.

There are 40% who don't want women to have equal pay.

There are 40% who would be happy with a dictator as long as that dictator favored them and oppressed the 60%.

There are 40% who want no restrictions on their right to kill with guns.

There are 40% who don't want the LGBTQ+ community to exist, let alone have equal rights.

There are 40% who don't want abortions for any reason.

There are 40% who believe that the rich and corporations love them.

There are 40% who don't believe that man can change the climate.

There are 40% who don't want to share food, neighborhoods, the street, the sidewalk, waiting in line, your right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

There are 40% who don't believe in the Constitution and want it abolished.

It's a truly sad thing to consider.

How could so many be so willing to destroy so much and yet still believe they are in the right?

What blinds people to pain?

What makes people deaf to the sound of sorrow? 

What makes people ignore the crippling predatory power of poverty?

What takes away a person's ability to feel the anguish of hopelessness in another?

Is it as simple as "At least it's not me?"

How did generations, these generations that share this nation with us turn their hearts and minds away from love?

What put up the walls?

What burned down the truth of the common good?

What ground up common decency?

How did respect become hate?

Why did so many stop dreaming?

Why did so many of us stop dreaming of a better world?

They stopped dreaming altogether…

So many have swallowed the pill of bitterness and now spew rank hatred in their wake.

Why?

How can a person believe that hatred, discrimination, intolerance, and selfishness are standing on the side of goodness?

Of goodness?

Of compassion?

Of honor?

Of duty?

Personally, I'm gobsmacked.

America, and please, psychologists, tell me if I'm wrong, but America has a personality disorder.

An example is the "Opioid" problem.

Yes, a corporation and doctors collaborated to make money from their product.

They are sociopaths, for sure.

However, there is another problem that is more disturbing than corporate greed and the willingness to abandon their customers.

It's called personal responsibility.

Vast swaths of the Midwest have seen and are living in the aftermath of losing heavy industry and manufacturing to other countries, driven by corporate boards' pursuit of ever-growing profits.

Unemployment, economic downturns, and even depressions of the past meant everyone had to work harder.

Tough times made a tough people.

Can do spirit.

It didn't mean that they threw morality, society, self-respect, and belief in the rule of law out the window and went from no job to heroin addict overnight.

Historically speaking, if you're out of work, you become an alcoholic.

But opioids?

Heroine?

How is that doing right?

What makes one say I am different from the rest of these losers, I'm not an addict, I got this under control, I'm in the right?

I need this to get my life straight?

This personality disorder that America has did not develop on its own.

No.

No.

People do bad things when their dreams are taken away.

When people can't dream, it means they are depressed.

Suicidal.

When dreams turn into nightmares, some people lash out in fear and anger.

There is something we as a nation need to know, something we all need to hear.

We can dream again.

We have to, and it is our duty to dream again.

We don't have to believe we need to tear up and burn down what we have to make a clean start of it again.

No.

You don't set your house on fire because you need a new pillow.

Some of us need to calm down.

Open our eyes.

Our minds.

Our hearts.

Understand that the first principle of being right is to believe in truth.

Even if that truth reveals that we are in the wrong.

There is and only has been one truth in all of human history.

Not your truth or my truth, but one great universal truth that has united us from birth to death.

Wisdom comes from compassion.

It's why a man a long time ago said, "What parent would give their child a rock if they are hungry?"

Too many fellow Americans believe they are in the right and are handing out rocks to the rest of us to suck on.

That's got to change.

Love means doing more, not less.

Love asks more of each of us every day.

Reach out to that brother and sister and share some of your courage with them.

Lift that box off their heads called fear.

Push away the night terrors created by their fear.

Ask them to join in a new dream.

Peace

Daniel J Frey aka Toby

Fundamental

The times they are changing.

The people at the top have undergone numerous name changes throughout history.

A moving target is hard to hit.

For a very long time, they were known as bandits.

Then Master.

Then King.

Then Aristocracy.

Then the Man.

Then, the Ownership Class.

They have had a few things in common over the past 10,000 years.

The ownership class does not like to share.

The ownership class does not like public education.

The ownership class does not like the Public period.

The times they are changing.

In the past, 400 years ago, the fear that struck at the heart of the Aristocracy was movable type.

Moveable type meant that anything said on any given day could be printed and read by thousands on the same day.

The Kings in the past were not afraid of the public learning of their thievery in time for the public to take action.

The Master's controlled the narrative about themselves masterfully.

The public couldn't understand the motivations of the wealthy because we were poor.

Not just poor in the pocketbook, but also poorly educated, poorly understood politics, poorly endowed with brains that were equal to those of the rich.

Moveable type enabled the almost instantaneous dissemination of facts to the general public.

It took many social and political revolutions, including the American Revolution, before the Aristocracy regained control of the narrative.

You can point to the American Civil War as being one of the turning points in history, where a War of the Aristocracy was committed to further the power and control of industry.

The First World War was a war between the Aristocracy of Europe.

Every war since then has been about control of corporate power over resources and who ultimately sits on industry boards, controlling the planet's natural wealth.

Those commodities are oil and uranium.

The Man in control of the "Business" gave money to politicians who wrote the laws, who then made the world favorable once again to the aristocrats.

Dissent was easily suppressed through the media, and narratives casting doubt upon public institutions were firmly ingrained in the public perception once again.

Can't trust the government…

Freedom had the drapes pulled, and the public didn't see it coming.

The ownership class is good at its public relations; you have to give them that.

However, an immigrant to America had an idea from watching Star Trek. Steve Jobs wanted to own and operate a company that built and supplied the computer that controlled the Starship Enterprise.

Today, over 2.1 billion smartphones are in the hands of the public, and this number continues to grow.

This is causing, yet again, a fundamental shift of power to which the Aristocrat is once again in jeopardy.

The Ownership class is throwing the kitchen sink at the truth, trying to stop the information age.

At least those are aware enough to see that their yacht is on fire.

The Masters are losing control of the narrative once again.

Every day, countless millions can see and hear how their neighbor fell off their skateboard and broke their tailbone.

They can see and hear what their government representative has said about cooperating with an enemy of their country.

They can see and hear the owner of an airplane company say, "…oops, we made a mistake, people died, our bad."

They can see and hear how current-day Aristocrats tell women what they can and can't have in their bodies.

The narrative is no longer in control of the invisible corrupt.

We are witnesses to a transition in history, just like the time of the invention of movable type.

Our world is changing.

It will change fundamentally.

The genie is out of the bottle.

No amount of alternative narrative can prevent the truth from being revealed.

The sight of a man running away, shot in the back by police.

A Sex Trafficker is sitting with your senator, your president's family.

A teacher is choking a student.

A teen is shooting a store clerk in the face.

Men in the street are carrying tiki torches and chanting slogans of Nazis.

The sight of a melted North Pole.

This power, which has been given to us in the palm of our hands, is an instrument for fundamental change in our world and our society.

For the first time in human history, those who feed and profit from fear can no longer hide.

What happens next?

The times they are changing…

Peace 

Daniel J Frey aka Toby