Horse Sense

Common sense ain't common. – Will Rogers

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

They perceive the world in the same way with the same conclusions.

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

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

We are not born with common sense.

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

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

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

Common sense is must be learned from a teacher.

A big part of common sense is ethics.

Being able to discriminate between right and wrong.

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

Doing right is common sense.

Do no harm to yourself or others.

Common sense.

That's not to say there are not teachers of the anti-golden rule among us.

Do unto others before they do unto you.

You can do anything as long as you win.

There is definitely a kind of anti-common-good.

The argument being anything that maintains power is good.

It's called politics.

But politics is the opposite of common sense.

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

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

It's common sense not to steal.

It's common sense not to kill.

We depart from what can easily be distinguished, what is common sense when we say it's common sense that everyone should pay taxes.

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

It's common sense that everyone is equal.

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

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

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

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

These people in power are the leaders of business.

The leaders of governments.

The leaders of religion.

The leaders in our circles of family and friends.

Tyrants come in many shapes and forms.

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

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

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

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

That common-sense spread to the French in 1789.

1833 saw the end of slavery in England.

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

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

Today we still are dealing with a senseless human society.

We still have a mixed bag of nuts myself included.

Highlights, lowlights, and every kind in-between.

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

Common sense is a muscle.

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

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

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

Doing right, doing good never harms anything or anyone.

Separating families at the border causes harm.

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

Not allowing people to vote causes harm.

Holding back military aid for a political favor causes harm.

Common sense says to do no evil. What does your common sense tell you?

Peace

DFrey

Fear

I'm not going outside today, it's raining.

Can't cross the street; those teenagers are skateboarding.

Turn off the TV, I'm tired of seeing black faces.

Stop talking to me; you're making me feel uncomfortable.

I'm not paying my taxes because it's going to those people.

That woman has no right to dress like that.

School isn't for me.

I bought a gun today.

That's the wrong side of town.

Who does he think he is?

I can't get a better job.

Men don't have any rights anymore.

Where am I going to go to the bathroom now?

You can't be equal to me.

My mother is dying.

I have died inside.

Where is hope?

Fear.

Like a wall, some fear is so high we can't see the top of it.

While other fears are only ankle-high and trip up our day.

Fear prevents us from realizing a better, more beautiful experience of life.

Some fear is good for us.

Fear, in its basic form, is a challenge to the normal tides of life.

Basic fear, once overcome, allows us to grow into our lives.

Childhood fears of riding a two-wheel bike for the first time.

Fear of the dark.

Once we grapple with these basic fears, we can travel down the road of life and look up at the stars with wonder.

However, too many fears create anxiety about the possible.

I need a raise, I need to ask for more money at work.

But if I ask, I'm sure they will fire me. It's safer not to ask, maybe, just maybe they will reward me without me asking?

This may seem like a leap, but Dr. Martin Luther King said, freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.

Life is the oppressor.

None of us are getting out of it alive.

The typical day to day drag of life can put fear into anyone.

Let alone the tyrant we might be subject to both in society, at the workplace, or even in our own home.

If you are hungry, you must say so.

Too many Americans are afraid.

They are afraid of the change in demographics.

Translated, white people are afraid of becoming a minority.

Too many don't see women as equal to men.

Too many don't see the gay community at all.

Too many are afraid to challenge the story they were told of the American dream and their purported privileged place in it.

Too many are afraid to confront political, economic authority and demand their right to be treated equally.

Too many fear imagined consequences of racist myths and their loss of political-economic power.

Too many listen to the monsters that feed this fear for profit.

Fear.

What can we do about fear?

The best approach is to provide support to the fearful.

Like a pair of training wheels, provide an ear, a shoulder, a hug, a hand to steady the fearful's course.

A nightlight of truth.

Hold a light up in the darkness to push back the shadows of doubt and ignorance.

A light to show that the fear that seemed all too real was nothing more than the imagination of the ego.

Fear can keep us from enjoying what life has for all of us.

Each life is precious, and some need a little more love than others to be what they can be.

It is up to the torch bearers of life to illuminate a path through the valley of fear.

Because on the other side is where peace is waiting on us.

Drop hate.

Be hope.

Peace

DFrey

Ethic

"There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest."

― Elie Wiesel

Our shared identity as Americans is in jeopardy.

A slow-rolling tide of past injustice that either has never been addressed or reluctantly salved by previous generations is ripping apart our society once more.

The devil at the wheel is racism.

That blind driver of human fear would rather this Republic be damned and burn in fire than to take the hood off of prejudice.

Since the end of the Civil War, both sides of the conflict sought to place blame for the thousands that were killed, for lives destroyed, for the communities torn apart.

The anger, the fear settled upon a scapegoat.

Black people.

Never mind a whole people were forced into slavery by the great western religions.

Never mind whole continents of nations prospered from the free labor.

Somebody had to be responsible for the war between the states, and black people were cast as the villain in the tragedy.

Confident that the purveyors of slavery could not be responsible for they were good Christian men only doing God's will.

Even before the great conflict of the states, the founders feared the one variable that they could not control that they saw would doom the American experiment to failure.

Ethics.

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

A people of a nation must be basically good for democracy to work.

People must be fair.

Must be tolerant.

Must have a common morality that believes in justice for all.

These core values of a good people can be destroyed and tossed aside when economic tyranny victimizes a society.

In simpler words, when the man takes from the poor and gives to the rich, the people lose not only their cash but their dignity, their hope.

The people live in fear of what is to come because they have nothing left to fall back on.

Time and time again in recent American history, the trust and faith, the goodwill of the common man have been used against us.

There is only so much time given to an old pair of shoes before they are thrown out.

The shoes full of holes, of unfulfilled promises, are no longer trusted to get you through the day.

Labor unions failed the people.

Congress failed the people.

Government agencies failed the people.

Banks failed the people.

Manufacturing, industry, corporations failed the people.

And in 2016, half the people threw out the old pair of shoes of the establishment for what they believed would restore their American Dream.

But he too, he who shall not be named, also took advantage of fear for his own power.

And he found far too many in government who were also willing to raid what was left of the dream to their own economic advantage.

With some help from Russian organized crime...

We find ourselves in a nation that John Adams foresaw as the doom of democracy.

A nation that has turned its back on intellect.

A nation that ignores the moral character of its leaders.

A nation that disregards virtue in favor of getting the other guy before they get you.

The once high bar of ethics now pushed down into the mud.

The voice of the fearful demanding they get theirs and the rest of the nation, the rest of the world be damned.

That's where we are as a society.

Half the nation believes the other half has no ethics.

Half the nation believes they are the real Americans; the others are not.

One is right.

One is wrong.

I just wrote today, when people are living through change in the consciousness of a society, they will rarely recognize it until their world is beyond their grasp.

Witness the conservatives in Congress and the nation.

The times they are changing.

The world will not stop for you or for me.

By nature, the universe changes.

We do not have to grasp it, to understand and accept it because it will happen regardless of our belief.

It is a fact that the universe is in flux.

What is not in flux are ethical standards.

The time to do right is always now.

Our American experiment is rapidly concluding.

It is arriving at a result asked by the founders.

Can a government of the people, for the people, by the people continue?

Will the people decide it is better to use any means necessary to hold onto power?

Will the people forego the ethics that defined the American people, which is liberty, justice, freedom, and equality for all so that they can have social, economic vengeance?

Tipping points.

That moment when you save yourself or you trip and fall.

Are there enough people left in this nation that have a shared moral character, a shared ethic who will catch us?

Are there enough people who believe in intellect over urban myth, memes, barstool knowledge who will keep us from breaking our necks?

Can this nation rally its virtue and avoid the slavers, the tyrants who are ready to shackle us all?

We are living through change.

From darkness comes light.

Let compassion be our guide for those who live and fear and for ourselves too.

Never stop to confront evil.

It is our duty, our ethical privilege to stand here and now.

Peace

DFrey

Moral

"Always do what is right. It will gratify half of mankind and astound the other."

― Mark Twain

Why do people on the left become angry with Chuck Todd on Meet the Press?

Why do people on the right and left become angry with the deposition of predator priests in the Catholic Church?

Why does the average citizen not believe in the words of the average lawyer, politician, salesman?

Why are you not supposed to talk about politics and religion at dinner?

Sociopathy.

A complicated psychological description of a personality disorder which is the basis of the moral compass of politics and religion.

A sociopath will do good or evil, it doesn't matter to them which they do as long as they get what they want.

What they can want is but not limited to power, wealth, sex.

Politics, by definition, is amoral.

Religion, by definition, is moral.

However, they are the same coin, heads, and tails, which both are the currency of the sociopath.

They both will do good or evil to get and maintain power, wealth, and sex.

This has been known in intellectual circles for a very very long time.

Both conservative and liberal circles.

It's not that it was kept from the public masses by a conspiracy.

It is known that the public, the people, on average, would not understand that it was taking place.

Much like through song lyrics, people hear what they want to hear.

Many Republican candidates play Springsteen Born in the U.S.A., thinking it promotes a love of patriotism.

Born in the U.S.A. is the exact opposite telling the tale of how the country used young men, exploited their patriotism to serve the power and wealth of the establishment, and got them killed for nothing.

The average Joe and Jane of the recent past didn't see the amoral behavior of the world's institutions.

That is until early in the 21st Century, social media exposed the rot.

The rot that has been nurtured by political and religious intellectuals placed there to defend a system of sociopaths.

So when people watch Meet the Press, and they see no objection raised in the face of blatant corruption, of lying to the American people, they now ask why?

Every day, more and more people's eyes are opening and asking why?

Why does a political party defend blatant corruption and abuse of office?

Why does a religious order protect child molesters?

Why does a news organization give equal time to propagandists?

Sociopathy.

Sociopathy has dominated our world since time began.

Individuals, groups, nations believing that the world is theirs.

That anything goes, they can lie, cheat, steal, and kill as long as they get what they want when they want.

It is the cancer on the soul of humanity.

But now, now for the first time in our history on the planet, the curtain has been raised on the puppet-masters.

The parasites flourishing on humanity's blood of human kindness.

Today, the layers of marketing, of P.R., of media manipulation, drift out of their grasp.

However, as their power to control their narrative slips from their fingers, they will and have become more desperate.

The defenders of politicians and religions sell fear to the fearful.

These defenders heap blame on the "other" as the reason why you have been left economically behind.

The last thing these defenders of sociopathy want in this world is peace.

Peace would mean cooperation.

Peach would mean loss of their power, of their wealth, of their sex trafficking.

Sociopaths and their institutions are why we don't have nice things.

Remember…

Politics and religion both do not care by what means they maintain power over you and me.

The ends justify the means.

However, this time, something is different.

This time we all can hear voices around the world calling for real change in our social media.

This exploitation is not just local but the world over.

Politics and religion go hand in hand and are the language of the sociopath control.

The sociopaths means of grooming the victim.

Just try to bring this observation up, and you will be painted as a nut job.

You'll be painted as a conspiracy believer.

But too many people are seeing that the emperor has no clothes.

As Mark Twain said, half of the public will be astounded that you do the right thing for the right reason.

We all can call out our politicians and religious leaders and demand they put up or move on.

We can call out injustice.

We can call out their insincerity.

We can call out their corruption.

We can call out their abuse of our collective goodwill.

We can put a stop to this tyranny of the mind and body.

We together can make the dream reality.

A true brotherhood of man.

Peace

DFrey

Opportunity

"A dream of equality of opportunity, of privilege and property, widely distributed; a dream of a land where men will not take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few."

– Dr. Martin Luther King

It's incredible how so many can look across their street and tell themselves that they are better off than the person living next door.

Isolation.

Isolation of mind.

Isolation of action.

Isolation of opportunity.

Opportunity comes in two equal but distinct ways.

First, is there an opportunity?

Is there the possibility of employment in my community?

Will I be hired?

Is there a chance for a better paying job that will give a better life.

A happier life?

This is best illustrated by what use to be the box standard economic reality across America, and that is the one-industry town.

Back in the day, one such town was Loudonville, Ohio, where the Flxible Bus Company was the dominant industry.

All across the mid-west, many of the towns had just one industry.

The expectation was created generation after generation that the lowest bar of employment was the local factory job.

But when those jobs were taken out of America by the owners and boards of those companies, places like Loudonville were left holding an empty economic bag.

The story has been repeated in every corner of our Nation.

From the shoe factories in New England to the cotton mills of the South to the steel and rubber industries of the Great Lakes to the plane manufacturing industry of the West.

There are just too many "use-to-be" places of opportunity that are now gone forever.

Now our manufacturing corridors are empty.

Too many of our communities no longer have a wealth of opportunity.

It all was stolen like a thief in the night by all too human evil.

Greed.

The second type of opportunity is one of personal discovery.

It depends upon the individual to ask themselves a simple but one of the most challenging questions one has to ask of yourself eventually.

What do I want to do with my life?

When you live in the city I currently reside in Los Angeles, there is an abundance of choices.

Living here, you can choose to be just about anything you want to be.

You can be an executive, you can work as a manager at a fast-food service and make six figures, you be a nurse, a lawyer, you can paint houses, you can paint landscapes.

The opportunity to do what you see, what you imagine, has virtually no limits.

However, back in Ohio down around the southern border with Kentucky, I'm very familiar with the town of McArthur.

A lot of great people live down around there, but the local jobs are few.

You got to have enough money to put gas in your car and drive up towards Columbus or over towards Athens and Parkersburg to have a few more opportunities.

When you grow up in place devoid of choice, you, by nature, put a limit on your choice.

It's not that you don't realize that there are doctors, nurses, lawyers, astronauts out in the world making a living.

It's just not in the crayon box of choices when the biggest employer in your town is the Dollar Store and Taco Bell.

Opportunity is a two-way street.

There has to be the opportunity to take hold of, but also has to be the psychology that says I have a choice I can do it.

All anyone asks is for the opportunity to succeed.

But we Americans have and continue to have a consistent urge to limit each other's opportunities.

We continue to limit access to opportunity to minority communities.

That limit is called prejudice, its heart beats with racism.

This prejudice extends to everyone who is not white.

Women also bear the prejudice of the limitation of opportunity inclusive of all races.

As Dr. King says, there are too many men out there willing to take from the many to give to the few.

Today is Thanksgiving 2019.

The sentiment and the visceral acid thrown about today by the conservative party in this Nation makes it more like 1919.

These few men who have profited off the selling of the American dream are taking the opportunity to capitalize on the economic nightmare that they created.

The real loss and abandonment that so many of their victims feel where opportunity no longer exists these economic vultures have taken hold of by the heart and mind.

It is an evil we stand against this Thanksgiving, where men pit men against each other, falsely blaming the other as stealing their rightful hope.

Their economic future.

When light casts its brilliance, darkness is created.

Yet from within that darkest of nights, a single candle can push back the despair and restore hope.

The challenge of this Thanksgiving has been faced by many before us.

Generation after generation are called to keep up the good fight.

As the night draws near and the grinding teeth of despair cry out, it is up to each of us to hold our light up high and push back against the darkness.

We can become the opportunity to build a better world.

Light your candle, be thankful for what you got and help share the wealth of this life to all.

Peace.

DFrey

Timid

"The true source of our suffering has been our timidity. We have been afraid to think… Let us dare to read, think, speak, and write." – John Adams

Why do we fear to be wrong?

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

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

Prejudice.

Prejudice is a kind of temerity of the timid.

Lazy minds.

Prejudice is making judgments without truth or real evidence.

Do you see the link I'm talking about?

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

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

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

Each of these examples is a kind of prejudice against society to learn the truth.

Even if that truth betrays or throws down what we personally believe to be true.

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

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

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

You don't want to look at the pile.

You know you have to go buy soap.

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

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

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

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

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

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

PESN

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

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

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

My corruption of not taking responsibility to do right doesn't matter in the broader context of right versus wrong because everyone is out for themselves anyway.

Welcome to the Jungle baby!

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

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

Boyscouts.

The Deep State.

Never Trumpers.

Adams is right.

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

It destroyed Reconstruction.

It denied the Equal Rights Amendment.

It shut the door on Gay rights.

It has allowed racism to flourish.

It has grown white nationalism.

It has promoted economic disparity between the rich and poor.

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

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

Is it too late to do anything about it?

Let us dare to read.

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

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

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

And write…

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

Write to that friend that has lost their hope.

Write and be that hope.

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

You are a star in a gathering host.

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

It always the time to do right.

Peace

DFrey

Judgment Day

We hold these truths to be beyond question.

That everyone has the right to life, liberty, and happiness.

Everyone includes the young, the old, the teen, the middle age, the straight, the gay, you, me, and the stranger too.

This nation was founded on those truths.

Those truths of our Republic are real then and now.

What isn't true is the haphazard barstool knowledge too many Americans bring to how their government works.

Too many rely upon urban legend.

Too many rely upon personal myth.

Too many rely upon that guy whose a know it all at the end of the bar to give them the answers.

Too many gather together to tell each other stories with no basis in truth.

It's a sad truth about humans that the real reason they gather together, like minds, is to support each other's prejudice.

That prejudice doesn't exclusively mean racial.

No.

It also includes those who like to sew quilts.

Those who like to fix up old cars.

Those that believe their God is better than those peoples God.

People stick together because they like the company of each other.

That's a no brainer.

They like what each other says.

When was the last time you joined a group or in a conversation that pointed out how wrong you were?

Many Americans believe that the government is wrong, is corrupt.

Why?

The answer is easy because it's the same sediment that countless generations have expressed over and over again.

That sediment is because the government isn't doing something for me.

If the government is helping me, then damn them let the whole thing burn down.

John F. Kennedy famously intoned at his inauguration, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what can you do for your country.

It seems many Americans have either forgotten those great words of civic responsibility or chose to do the easy thing and join the nihilist crowd.

The Nihilist Crowd is a non-exclusive group of people who want others to take on their responsibility and hand them their due.

All the while complaining that doing anything to help make your community, your home, your life any better is a waste of time.

Everything is corrupt.

Our Republic is in desperate need of its citizens to pick up their civic responsibility and join in the fight.

There needs to be active participation, an intense realization of how government works and who it actually works for.

We have to end these urban legends, these tropes used by scalawags the world over telling us your government doesn't work for you; it works for those people.

Frankly, it's a very sociopathic way of thinking that everything is corrupt, so why bother doing the right thing when the wrong something will work.

Somehow two concepts got lumped together.

Change equals corruption.

For this nihilist anti-community, anti-republic, anti-ethical thinking has adopted the idea that any change is corrupt.

Freeing the slaves was a corruption.

Giving women and blacks the right to vote was corruption.

Allowing black children to go to school with white children was a corruption.

Black and white people marrying was a corruption.

Welfare is a corruption.

School lunches are a corruption.

Prayer out of school was a corruption.

Allowing gays to marry was a corruption.

Having a black President was a corruption.

To the nihilist conservative mind, all of these changes are corruptions of how they believe the nation was founded and for whom.

Have you ever seen that picture of Jesus at the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the creation of the Constitution too?

Change equals corruption.

And anyone wanting change is corrupt too.

It's no wonder, so many Republicans believe the government is corrupt.

We're not talking about corruption like stealing money out of taxes…

No!

The corruption that the conservative nihilist believes is taking place is the corruption of traditional values of white purity to be perfectly clear and honest.

Consequently, why so many support this current President even in the face of boldface criminal and personal crimes and corruption because of his verbal stance supporting conservative nihilism as I'm calling it.

Judgment day…

This past Tuesday, the American people demonstrated once again that they heard the call of Liberty and have come running.

The third nationwide election and Republicans got their walking papers handed to them once again.

They may rail against change and call it corrupt all they want.

But change comes like the rising of the sun without their or any of our permission.

It's a beautiful thing when you're in harmony with the tide.

The nature of the universe is based on one truth.

Everything changes.

Peace

DFrey

Rule of Law

On the playground in fourth grade is where it all starts.

A rule is laid down concerning kickball, what the boundary of a foul ball is.

Most of the kids understand.

A few take that rule and write it in stone.

It's the beginning of a lifetime of two outwardly similar individuals living under two different assumptions.

The heart of the law and the letter of the law.

The letter of the law says you can't cross the street when the light is against you.

The heart of the law says I'm rushing to the bathroom before I have an accident.

The letter of the law person believes you should fill your pants; those are the rules.

The heart is soft.

The letter is hard.

Two different types of people living side by side in the same office, the same job, the same family.

Rules have to be obeyed, or society will break apart.

Rules are ethical up to a point, but circumstance has to be taken into account.

The heart of the law individual most always will jump to the end of the book and read the last page.

The letter of the law individual will dutifully read each and every page till they get to the end.

The heart of the law person will play their music loud after 10pm because they are in the mood.

The letter of the law person will call the police and report a noise violation.

The heart doesn't temper its designs with practicality; it jumps.

It is emotional, it rushes to the end, knowing its conclusion is correct because it feels it.

The letter takes each step in a decision with precision, with effort, step by step, the procedure followed by procedure never making a judgment until all the facts are known.

Neither is helpful.

Neither has a grasp on reality.

Neither helps moves humanity towards a better day.

Each in their own unique way, keep on keeping on holding humanity back from advancing.

Advancing towards a better day towards a real brotherhood of man.

Each can learn a lot from each other.

The letter needs to be tempered and internalize that circumstance plays a significant role in all of our decisions.

The heart needs to develop the patience to let all the facts come out before proclaiming what is right and what is wrong.

Our nation has been wrestling with the law for a good long while now.

Who is the law for?

Who is the law against?

Who does the law work for?

The President believes he is above the law of the United States, which he represents.

There are people in the House and Senate and in the media who agree with him.

They believe that the Constitution is in error.

They believe that the President sets what is real and what isn't real.

My question is, what happened to law and order?

What happened that so many of our representatives believe they are exempt from the laws that they write?

The laws that the administration is to enforce.

The laws that the judiciary is to adjudicate.

How can they defend injustice?

How can they support criminality?

How can political tyranny within a party be justified?

What happened to all those individuals who believed in the letter of the law?

They may have been stick-in-the-muds, but they could be counted on doing the right thing when everything was said and done.

What is it that adheres them to this President, who shall go un-named, so tightly that they would abandon their rigid principles of law?

Case in point...

Secretary and Ambassador John Bolton.

Has a point of view.

A person who has expressed a belief in the rule of law.

A person who worked with and around a group of people who do not believe in the American Experiment.

He traveled and networked with people in this administration who look to subvert the Constitution to maintain their power and accumulate personal wealth.

Is he okay with this?

Has he been corrupted also?

I say this all in bewilderment because what was up is now down and what was down is up.

Republicans and Democrats have traditionally disagreed with each other over how to cut or raise a tax.

Not how much of the Constitution they were going to agree with or burn.

A real palpable sickness has entered into the minds and hearts of our conservative brothers and sisters.

I lament that it may be caused by a weariness of our rocket speed societal changes.

A weariness caused by the stress of too much too fast.

With no way of digesting and integrating change into their lives.

Conservatives, liberals.

Tortoise and rabbits.

Slow, fast.

Different but two outward-facing ideals on the same coin.

They don't see eye to eye conservatives and liberals; that's because they are back to back.

They need each other more than they know.

Conservatives in our nation have a fever.

We liberals need to show our compassion and be the hope that they need.

We have to lift the hate they're holding onto.

We have to reach out and demonstrate that we can walk the walk and talk the talk.

We have to let them know we have their backs.

We have to support them and help them see past their fear.

We just can't sit around and hope things will be better.

We can't have justice alone, and they can't either.

Reconcile and find truth together.

That's how democracy heals.

That's how freedom rings.

That's how justice sings.

That's how hope works.

Be the hope.

Peace

DFrey

Costs of Freedom

The rain comes down.

The refrigerator is empty.

Nothing in the cupboard but crackers.

Standing at the window, the grey sky barely moves.

Silence in this box on a hill.

Yet in my head, the thunder of disquiet rolls and rolls and rolls.

I could go out?

But I'd get wet.

The umbrella is broken from the last time I used it.

The last time I tried to resist, resist the elements.

I recheck the sky for any change in the weather, but no, it's still the same outside.

Maybe things will change in a little while.

I'll read to pass the time.

Celebrity news, no…

Sports, the World Series, looks to be a no brainer.

Children being killed.

Parents in terror.

Legislators looking for truth where it may lead.

Legislators playing games with the Constitution.

Tyrants and their disciples thumb their noses at justice.

Fall and spring may never come back in my lifetime…

Is it still raining outside?

Yes, it's still coming down looks like there is no slowing down.

I'm hungry.

Maybe there is something I didn't see in the cupboard?

Maybe way in the back?

Nothing.

I drink a glass of water.

I check back at the window.

The rain falls…

Damn it, I'm going to have to do something.

I go to the bathroom.

I brush my teeth.

Thunder shakes the room.

It's gotten worse outside.

I turn back to the sink and look into the mirror.

I look at my reflection and ask what are you going to do now?

What are you going to do?

The thing I want, the thing I need is not outside.

It's in me.

It's within my power to change the weather.

To better my life and my community.

What's kept me inside.

Fear.

Fear of the unknown.

Fear of failure.

Fear of being uncomfortable with the truth.

Fear of the revelation that all that I thought was true is not.

Fear of beginning again.

I put on my coat and hat and rush to the door.

I pull it open without hesitation.

The rain falls, and falls, and falls…

I put my hand out and feel the rain soak my hand.

Looking up into the sky, the rain washes over my face, over my eyes, and into my heart.

The thing that I was afraid of is a part of me not separate.

I look over at my neighbors, and they, too, have stepped out to resist the climate.

We take each other's hands and are soon joined by more than we can count.

Drop hate.

Lift hope.

Peace

DFrey

To Fight For My Neighbor

Who is my brother?

Who is my sister?

The tie that binds us all together is an awareness of combined interest.

That interest centers upon the knowledge that if you are free, so am I.

And to tell you the truth, we who fight for freedom are not the only ones who recognize the fact of this freedom.

The power brokers, the aristocrat, the king, the prince, the tyrant, the President, the crime boss, knows this truth also.

That's why the tyrannical spend so much of their time and effort fighting against freedom.

You see a free people a free person is not afraid.

Fear is the enemy of free people.

Fear is used to find the cracks in the resilient nature of free people.

Fear loves to sew the seeds of doubt, of anxiety into society.

Fear will break apart the strongest alliance.

Fear will destroy a community, a society, the individual.

We can never allow fear to govern who we are to become fools to cower and capitulate to bullies.

To fight for my neighbor.

The concept of standing up for what is right, to stand with, and for those who can and cannot stand for themselves is not inherent in our human nature.

The self, the ego governs our actions.

It dictates to us to preserve ourselves at all costs.

Compassion is learned.

Caring for others is passed down through traditions as well as personal human interactions.

I was hungry, and you fed me.

I was lost, and you found me.

I was under attack, and you defended me.

I was sick, and you cared for me.

The act of stepping out of one's own ego into the realm of compassion for others is the core of what it means to be superhuman.

When you take the time out of your day to go vote, you are exercising your superhuman powers, your empathy, by demonstrating your compassion for your community.

The knowledge that freedom is the essential wellspring for all society is why we fight for our neighbor.

I give my vote so you, too, can live a better life.

I pay my taxes so we all can drink clean water.

I drive defensively because your life is meaningful too.

Agreed upon norms of society.

I will fight those who oppose your freedom to live a good life too.

Anger at the world is fertile ground into which fear plants seeds of hate.

There is no doubt that anger, hate, fear has a profit.

The merchants of arms sales, drug sales, human trafficking, gambling, the energy industry all profit greatly through the use and destruction of human lives.

Many of them have great PR and marketing stories that keep the prying eyes of the average citizen from asking too many questions about how they make their profit.

It is why holy hell rains down upon anyone who dares question the merchants of fear by defying them and calling out their toadies and industries.

They don't want the apple cart, their access to unlimited profit, their feeding at the hog trough of human destruction to end.

So when someone stands and says I will fight for my neighbor, it is why ridicule is heaped upon them.

To fight for my neighbor.

Today, Rep. Elijah Cummings from Baltimore, the son of a sharecropper, passed from the earth.

Elijah stood in the doorway and told fear to back off.

He got up every day joyful to join the fight for freedom and justice.

Like so many before him, he too has passed the torch to each of us.

The fight is eternal, but also real is the promise of love.

Pick up that light and fight for your neighbor.

Peace

DFrey

Justice Now

Justice now.

A child can't wait ten years to be fed.

A people who march in the street asking for freedom can't wait for someday to arrive.

You can't ask justice to wait for a tyrant who brutalizes their nation and the world to give themselves up.

Time doesn't wait for any of us.

Time doesn't wait for those who are afraid.

Those that have been given the reins of power by us need to check themselves.

They need to check themselves now.

Justice now.

That family killed by bombs falling how long will history wait for justice?

That woman assaulted by a powerful man how long is she supposed to wait to ask for her attacker to be prosecuted?

How long is it for some men and women to know they are responsible for despair?

Telling justice to wait is justice denied.

The very act of saying "wait" is a conscious act of tyranny.

That thing, that dark beast we fight with, is the tyranny of men over other men.

Today I said politics is an amoral belief system.

Politics, at its roots, is sociopathic.

It doesn't care if it does right or wrong; it only believes in what results are effective to win.

To keep power.

But now, here and now, this very moment in time the nation, the world is awakening.

The world through social media has broken bubbles of isolation.

Those institutions that were safe behind their barriers of public relations, of the story they told about themselves are being revealed as lies.

What is being exposed is the amoral positions, the amoral platforms of all of our institutions.

The fact that our institutions are willing to sacrifice you and me so that they can maintain the status quo is the rule by which they live.

In government, there is no Jimmy Stewart, as in the movie Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, that will stand on their own for justice.

That's a sweet story, but it's not reality.

What we see in Washington is the reality.

A bully on one side daring anyone to step across the line in the sand.

On the other side, a group passing notes to each other that the bully chews up and spits back.

What is at the heart of this all?

It is simply nihilism.

Nothing matters.

Social media has also revealed that too many of us are not willing to put our actions where our ideals stand.

We are too willing to let that guy be beaten by a cop.

We are too willing to let that woman be shouted down.

We are too willing to let a people be bombed because they're over there.

We are too willing to let the rich steal from the poor.

We are too willing to believe the evil in our ear telling us that you can't stop it, so why do anything?

Justice now.

This country is built upon the ideal of freedom.

But does a people deserve freedom if they are not willing to stand for it?

You simply have to say no!

We, as a people have to stop being a helicopter parent and grow a spine, be decisive, and tell the children in the White House, "No!"

This problem in Washington with this President is not going to be solved by giving him and his henchman a time out.

They are not going to be stopped by taking away their access to their phone.

Grounding them.

Telling them, they need to treat other people better.

The wolf is not stopped by moral principals on a nice letterhead.

Now.

Now is always the right time to do right.

Now, hear the cry, now, feel the despair, now be the wave that lifts hope.

Justice now.

Justice now.

Justice now.

Peace

DFrey

Defiance

Give me liberty or give me death.

It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.

There comes a time when silence is betrayal.

You're not supposed to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality; wrong is wrong, no matter who says it.

Defiance.

A word.

Used by men and women who stood against the tide of injustice throughout the history of our world.

The defiant.

Heroes of truth.

When no one around them would stand to stop the tide of tyranny, they stood in opposition.

The sent a shot across the bow of corruption that resonates yet today.

Defiance.

Defiance in the act of standing against the dark heart of humanity is what we all can recognize as having a true spirit of compassion.

Yet today on the lawn of the White House, a President stood in defiance of our Constitution.

He stood defiant to our traditions.

He spits in the face of our ministers of the fourth estate.

He dares those sworn to uphold the law to investigate him.

He mocked the legislation branch for their duty to the country and the American people.

His retort?

So what…

Psychological projection is a defense mechanism in which the human ego defends itself against unconscious impulses or qualities (both positive and negative) by denying their existence in themselves while attributing them to others.*

When the President stands before us and points his finger at all those that are corrupt around him, its blatantly clear that he's blaming everyone else for why his hand is in the cookie jar.

Damn the defiant.

This President is not playing political games.

He is not a chess master.

He does not have prescience beyond his own self-interest.

He's highly capable of acting reasonably.

He can pretend, to a minimal extent, he knows about statecraft.

But bottom line as a sociopath it's all an act.

He has learned from many criminal mentors throughout his life how to dodge and deflect when the good guys are on your trail.

There is enough public information about who this President has rubbed elbows with starting with his father Fred, the original slum lord to Jeffrey Epstein, to Kim, to MSB, to Putin, to Xi that he does not care for the truth.

Learning from one tyrant to the other in his life, he has learned how to skate on the edge of legality and get away with crimes.

You are known by the company you keep.

It should now be abundantly clear that this person in the Presidency is not like any of the other occupants of that office since his hero Andrew Jackson.

Even our American society had grown since Jackson days when the President owned slaves and committed genocide against native peoples.

Some of us recognize that this current occupant of the White House has an obvious problem with the truth.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi recognized that this President would impeach himself.

How could she know that?

Speaker Pelosi must know sociopaths like I know sociopaths that they will keep on doing wrong for their own benefit come hell or high water.

They can't stop on their own.

Someone or something has to draw a line in the sand.

Someone has to be…

Defiant.

We, meaning both sides of the color divide in this nation, red and blue, Republican and Democrat have to stand.

We have to stand now as a people in defense of our Constitution.

This isn't political.

This is a defense of our freedom from an individual and his henchmen who want to subvert our rights for their profit.

They will stand their ground also in defiance.

They will dare us to have the courage of our convictions and come for them.

Like petulant adolescents, they will scream and cry unfair, everyone is corrupt, you're corrupt for even trying to stop us.

You're ignorant, unjust, traitors...

Republicans and Democrats must unite as the adults in the room.

It's time to give this President and his posse a time out.

Peace

DFrey

*Wikipedia.com

Backbone

There are many lifeforms on our planet that do not have a rigid spine.

Jellyfish are a type.

So are insects who are hard on the outside but soft in the middle.

Broadly lifeforms without spines are called invertebrates.

Strangely, we as a people have decided that we prefer our elected leaders to be spineless.

Collectively, politicians do not have spines.

No backbone.

They look like you and I but for one crucial difference.

They have to be given cover to react.

You won't find a politician rushing into harm's way.

That is unless the herd, everyone else is also rushing in to save the day.

The politician can always be counted on last.

Politicians are not leaders.

Politicians morals are bendable.

Politicians can be said to be afraid of their own constituents who put them into office.

They are malleable.

They blow with the wind.

To stand upon a principle of morality, of justice, they have to have a shield behind which they can take cover.

It's just about damn impossible to find a politician who will stand up by themselves for principle even if it's in our Constitution.

Two or more standing together, yes.

Our ideal of a congressman and senator is a fiction that makes a good story.

But the reality is indeed something entirely different.

This past week something or someone handed out backbones to our legislative branch of the federal government.

Like lifeless puppets one moment, suddenly the Blue Fairy came through the window and made them real boys and girls.

Was it the President and his double-dog dare you can't bring me to justice I can do anything I want rants of late that gifted them with a backbone?

Was it high crimes we don't know about yet?

Was it a tiny spark of duty they pledged to uphold to protect we the people and our document the Constitution of the United States of America?

You never see 100 percent of anything these days.

But this week 421 congressmen and women, 100 senators male and female agreed that the whistleblower should be heard.

That was a disturbance in the Force.

Something shifted.

Something fell off the shelf.

Something lit a watchfire on the mountain peak of Rohan.

Politicians are not used to having a backbone.

Don't expect they will be comfortable with it for long.

Like toddlers learning how to walk, they will stand, stumble, and fall…

But they will get up again.

Those of us in the front lines calling for help to defend our Republic have looked behind us and have lamented there is no Calvary coming to save us.

No hail mary.

No plot twist.

We were doomed to a no-win outcome for justice.

Yet when the world seems darkest, and please trust me as one who can speak about life after a fall, life always finds a way.

Even jellyfish can rise together and find common cause.

Life versus darkness.

Justice versus injustice.

Truth versus deception.

Corruption, tyrants, criminals all have a blind spot.

You see, darkness cannot t see into the light.

Darkness assumes the motivations of the light are the same as theirs.

We who live in the light know that is not true.

We do not seek profit, power, or wealth when we do right.

We do right because it is right.

We don't need thanks when we extend our compassion, our love to help others.

That is where the darkness of man's soul always makes its fatal error.

Tyrants can be counted on like clockwork to be evil.

Just like this President, it can be counted upon to impeach itself.

Do right.

Drop hate.

Lift hope.

Show your backbone.

Peace

DFrey

Impossible

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

There are impossibilities.

You can't build a stairway to the moon.

There is no way to stop time.

I will never be an Olympic athlete.

Impossibilities are limits.

Limits define the extent of expectations.

Humanity has and continues to impose limits on itself.

What it believes to be impossible.

We can't provide housing for free.

We can't educate those people.

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

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

The Constitution can't be changed.

You are not equal to me.

Those people are lazy.

I'm a winner you're a loser.

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

Or it should be.

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

If equal rights are impossible, why even try?

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

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

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

It is the foundation of nihilism.

Nihilism rejects the value of your life and mine.

It is the Bible from which the sociopath preaches.

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

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

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

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

Nihilism is the acid that is thrown onto hope.

Nihilism is the friend of the tyrant.

That tyrant is only limited by their access to power.

Not all of us know a dictator personally, but we do have a relative or friend who believes in the impossible.

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

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

Who are they?

What is it they want?

They want you and me to live in fear.

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

Fear is used by tyrants to manage expectations.

Fear is used to keep the possible from happening.

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

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

Trying to keep things from changing.

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

They the tyrant, the nihilist, those that believe in the impossible don't like the world we who believe in the impossible are working to make a reality.

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

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

They don't want strangers coming to their country.

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

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

We're upsetting the apple cart.

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

Some of these people are so angry they will kill us because of our belief in the possible.

Their belief in fear is that deep.

Their oneness with hate knows no limit.

Can the ocean keep from rushing to the shore, it's just impossible.

Can you keep justice for all from falling down upon our nation, it's just impossible.

Can you stop the brotherhood of man from filling our hearts with hope, it's just impossible.

That sound you hear in our country that echos down that street where a guy is being beat.

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

That sound you hear as feet march for our human right to exist free from fear.

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

Don't say no say yes I can.

Do right.

Peace

DFrey

Fallen

Seeing evil and stopping evil.

Most of us can see an act of cruelty and recognize it as wrong.

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

These people have desires.

These desires must be filled no matter the cost.

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

Psychology has defined them as sociopaths.

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

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

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

I had lost touch of myself, which is a thing to say but doesn't describe the reality accurately.

I had lost touch with the world.

I had become isolated.

I had convinced myself that I did not deserve love.

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

Many days I couldn't catch my breath.

Other peoples anger would make me run.

Peoples' emotions had since the first day I could remember struck fear in me.

In my early years, most of which I cannot remember, I know that my father was a rageaholic.

His physical and mental abuse was continuous.

But my tale is not about my father.

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

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

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

I had always assumed I was the cause of other peoples anger.

So as to not anger them, I would never ask for clarification of their emotions.

I internalized others pain and gave back humor.

My wife and I never argued.

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

Empathic personalities like my own are not magical.

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

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

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

Previously a person came to live with us.

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

Their preferred victim was middle-age housewives going through a divorce.

The graphic details of their constant exploits are horrendous that this person would tell me all on their own.

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

That was until they provided me proof of their exploits that they kept in a notebook.

Their reason for showing me their monster?

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

The club of the immoral.

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

The club that would lie about everything and even that is a lie.

The club that weaves a web of deception that the sociopath believes no one can see through.

That club that says as long as it's short of murder you can use people however you want.

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

They falsely believed I was a monster like them.

I wanted to get away from this person.

I wanted to leave this world behind and all it's evil.

I knew I didn't belong here.

Then a friends voice, a single drop of human kindness gave me pause in my dark journey.

I stopped on the edge of forever and listened.

It was at this moment the beast entered.

The beast put their sights on my friend.

I told the beast repeatedly to leave my friend alone.

The beast dismissed me and consequently destroyed my lifeline.

I fell.

I fell into the dark of night.

I fell.

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

I turned and saw no one.

The voice came from inside me.

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

To spread hope.

To talk of love.

Unexpectantly, the crucible I had lived through had gifted me.

I now had in my hand the sword of justice.

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

I had fallen so that I could stand.

If you have fallen, you can stand too.

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

Do right.

Peace

DFrey

Season of Cruelty

Baseball for the year 2019 draws to a close.

Summer thinks about hanging on all year round.

Grandma isn't able to get out of the house anymore.

A political party gives up being for all Americans.

The season of cruelty continues.

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

A natural disaster.

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

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

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

The poor are given poisoned water.

The season of cruelty continues.

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

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

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

Children in America are locked in cages.

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

Children in America are shot to death in their classrooms.

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

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

The season of cruelty continues.

The President tells us everything he says is a joke.

The season of cruelty continues.

Every season has its end.

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

They will go away.

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

Seasons are soft lessons for hard heads.

For those that forget easily.

Seasons don't yell at first.

Seasons don't come in with a bang.

Seasons come in when a society opens its door.

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

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

It has been a rising tide of hate.

A tide filled with ignorance.

A tide awash with selfishness.

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

Those that thought their world was build upon a higher ground have fallen into despair.

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

Seasons teach lessons.

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

However, a lesson should be learned.

That before the change of season comes again you must work hard to prepare.

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

The lesson is that hate and ignorance will always be with us.

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

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

This tyrant will not be in power forever.

But there will undoubtedly be others like him.

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

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

We must faithfully do right.

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

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

Lest we forget.

Lest we forget our brothers and sisters.

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

Freedom.

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

It is the reason for the season.

Peace.

DFrey

Party Planner

Do you allow your crazy Uncle to plan Thanksgiving dinner?

Every family has one.

A crazy relative that sits at the end of the table declaring how the world should be if they were in charge.

Everyone in the family knows who they are, the crazy one.

They don't discuss it.

They just say to each other that they are, "that way."

Are they allowed by the host to bring the main course?

The dessert?

Do they get to plan any games?

Do they get to decide who sits where?

Do they get any real decisions that will affect the outcome of the meal and gathering?

The wise answer should be no, they do not.

To allow them any hand in the decision making would herald them as the official party pooper.

The party pooper.

Every family has one.

Fact in point, 1 in 25 people in the U.S. are officially party poopers.

Psychology defines them as sociopaths.

See The Sociopath Next Door by Martha Stout, PH.D.

They are not serial killers as depicted in the movies if that's what you are thinking.

No.

The sociopath has many faces.

And that face is always turned towards admiring themselves.

They know the difference between right and wrong but will do either to achieve the thing they want.

They see no difference between good and evil.

What is paramount in their lives is what I call the thing that gives them their orgasm.

It doesn't mean sex, but it can undoubtedly be sex.

It can be power and wealth too.

Power over the conversation at the dinner table or at the negotiation table.

Wealth took out of the community and society or out of your wallet.

Sex took from individuals with low self-esteem or running a sex trafficking ring.

The sociopath cares only for themselves and their orgasm.

It is why you don't allow the sociopath to have a part in your dinner plans.

They will let you down every time.

But in their own way, you can always count on them to act the same way every time at every event.

They will be the party pooper.

They will spoil your event.

They will spoil your nation.

They will spoil your life.

They will destroy your party.

If you know, 100 people it's a good bet 4 of them are sociopaths to one degree or another.

We have one in our family that destroyed our lives for a time until we recovered.

Our nation has one right now as President.

It's taking a while for some of our other elected leaders, as well as media, to come to the conclusion that the leader of the free world has a personality disorder.

Just like in my own circle of family and friends, it took a long while before some realized there was a problem.

While still others refuse to admit there is a problem yet today.

Just like in our national discourse, the good people keep hanging on the chance that the evil person will change.

Good people are ingrained with the idea of redemption.

But redemption works as a practice only if the person who needs redeeming wants redemption.

If they don't care if they do good or evil, they'll tell you what you want to hear so you'll get off their backs.

They are incapable, the sociopath, of having a moral dilemma because they have no morals.

They are extraordinary human beings because they have no empathy whatsoever.

Are you getting the picture of why you don't want them planning your next Thanksgiving dinner?

That crazy relative can have a place at the table but theirs some things you cannot as a person of goodwill allow them to do.

You can't have them give the blessing.

They can't give a toast.

You can't have them set the table.

You can't let them have control of the conversation.

You can't let them plan for the future.

You, yourself, have to plan around them.

That's some free advice to the Congress and the Senate.

Take it for what it is worth.

You don't have to know what I know about sociopaths being party poopers.

You're getting a mouth full of first-hand experience right now.

Don't choke.

The misery will keep on coming until the day you say stop.

Peace

DFrey

Barstool Knowledge

Washington never told a lie.

Twinkies can never spoil.

You have to wait 24 hours before you can report 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 states an experience and a round-robin follows of everyone else saying how their experience tops the previous.

Barstool knowledge starts out reasonably innocent.

A white lie that once it has played its way through the group think of fellow sloshed minds metamorphose into fire breathing dragons.

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 God would become angry.

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

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

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

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

When the uncle tells that racist joke and 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.

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 run-in with an individual and we forevermore see similar people as jerks too.

Barstool knowledge.

None of it is valid.

It gives comfort to ignorance.

It pads the truth, 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.

Barstool knowledge hasn't destroyed nations up to this point in human history…

At least not until this past week.

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

If you are not familiar, the President used direct quotes from fascist leaders of WWII Germany to say he is the chosen one, 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, his tariffs aren't being paid by U.S. citizens, did I say he said he was Jesus to the Jews and that was all in a three day period?

The President indeed demonstrated his barstool knowledge of theology specifically in regards to Judaism as well as his professed love of Christianity.

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 about their perception of the world and how it is there 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 allowing the individual to survive in an adverse world.

However, sociopaths are not conducive to a stable government, a stable economy, 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.

The world is their actual oyster.

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 the house is on fire.

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

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

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

How deep?

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

It's that deep.

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

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

We got to stop allowing the relative or friend from telling the racial joke.

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

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

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

Here's some real knowledge to drop.

Love expects more of every one of us every day.

Tell the uncle to pass the potato's, act civil, or leave the table.

Peace.

DFrey

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, Orwell speak from their experience of those who would deny Liberty to others.

The other being you and I.

At 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 of 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 the earth to agree to put to the test our principles of freedom.

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, one ethnicity?

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

Could we over come?

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, 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 of 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.

The freedom-loving people of the world admired us.

In the hearts of some nations, a bond of friendship of 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 the door be shut.

There's no more room.

No more room?

The ignorant are consistent in how small they believe and think.

Freedom has arms as wide as the universe.

Liberty encompasses all of time.

Justice is forever.

Love will always demand more.

We, as a people who believe in love, 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 who believes in might makes right.

It is the voice of the 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 have 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 and gives it a place to live a death sentence.

The forces of good are 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

DFrey

Lost on Purpose

An old pair of shoes left behind.

A broken umbrella put under a bench.

Chewed gum stuck on a pole.

We've all left things behind on purpose because they no longer served us.

We left things behind because we wanted to.

It wasn't by accident that we left our clothes on the floor.

We did it on purpose because we were too tired or just plain lazy to do the right thing and put them in the laundry.

We all have left things behind, but what about people?

That sibling who couldn't keep their nose out of our business.

The co-worker who is always talking about how great their family is.

The clerk at the grocery store because they ask how we are feeling.

People can be left behind too.

We leave them on purpose.

They have become an annoyance, to be avoided.

The spouse who we once loved now we can't stand.

We go to court and have the legal system divorce us from our emotions.

We use institutions of varying sizes to mitigate our responsibilities.

Our religions keep us separate from those who don't believe like us.

Our commerce organizations segregate us to only do business with those like us.

Political charities we give our support and money to fight to keep alliances from forming.

The communities in which we live are there to keep in those like us and keep out those not like us.

And our police force for our communities is there to serve and protect yet discriminate who can enter.

Lost on purpose.

There are those among us who have lost their humanity on purpose.

They desire the world at the expense of their own soul.

They protect their right to kill who they want when they want without regard to who they make afraid.

A belief that strength at any cost is right.

They have freely given away their humanity to gain freedom of responsibility to their fellow man.

They hate you and me.

We represent the other.

The taker.

They only see limitations.

A limit to wealth, to prosperity, to food, to shelter, to compassion.

Their compassion extends only to the length of their own fingertips.

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

The person who has left their humanity behind on purpose is not going to be persuaded to pick it up again.

They have made a life choice.

No argument is going to make them turn their eyes and look at you or me with love.

They only see us as so much dirt beneath their feet to step on and over.

Again, when was the last time you went back to the trash pile where you left those old shoes 25 years ago and retrieved them?

People who have left their humanity behind are not searching for it.

They're are happy hating.

Our President is happy helping them hate.

Hate has brought him power.

Hate has delivered him respect.

Hate fills his bank accounts with wealth.

Why would he stop hating certainly not for you and me?

He and his re-election campaign are banking on hate.

The Republican Party continues to bank on hate.

Ever since they welcomed the Southern Strategy, which was a free lunch given to all those segregationists and racists who left the Democratic Party after the civil rights movement broke the back of that party.

The racists joined into common cause with the business conservatives of the GOP who they courted and danced with in their discrimination of brown people and women.

They have a belief that there are more haters in our Republic than soft-hearted, soft-headed people.

Conservatives have had this bone they've been chewing on for the past 100 years or more believing that America has been waiting for its great hate awakening.

A belief that we all hate we just don't realize it and we need to let it go.

The belief that America is conservative, not liberal.

Conservative America can't believe that brown people, woman, and gays are equal to a white man.

It is remarkable how self-fulfilling the world view is of conservatives and hate.

The darkness they have created for themselves and their adoption of this world view of hating the other blinds them to the light of love.

Because of it, they can't see the writing on the wall.

The sack they wear on their heads rebreathing the same old tired air.

They can't hear the voices in the street.

They only recognize their own closed-minded communities of hate and mistake violence for the inevitability of what they see as a just cause.

Through strength, they are right.

They can't hear someone like me say that sentiment is pure evil.

That sentiment is the sword on which so many warriors for love have fought against.

It is the monster that tears apart nations, communities, families, and individuals.

So certain is darkness of the outcome of this battle with love.

The darkness of the soul has a very short memory.

Since its only interest is self, it doesn't recognize outcomes.

It doesn't realize the motivation created by one child crying.

It doesn't realize the feet it puts in the street with each mass shooting.

It doesn't see what the death of one brown person can do to the outcome in the voting booth.

It doesn't hear the chant…

Do something.

We are not afraid.

We shall over come…

Today.

Peace

DFrey