A Time Not Seen

The day you were born.

Your first steps.

The moment when you saw the sky.

A time not seen.

The war of Independence.

The war between the states.

The war for human rights.

A time not seen.

Before smartphones.

Before telephone poles.

Before telegraph wire.

A time not seen.

The edge of the universe.

The edge of our solar system.

The edge of despair in the human heart.

A time not seen.

Like a toddler new to the world, America is about to take a step of fate.

It would appear reason and ignorance are evenly balanced.

The cliff is the virus.

Science and its companion medicine shout out warnings to step back.

This country has seen death before.

But not at the hands of so merciless a God as this virus.

It laughs at a few hundred thousand.

The grim skull of the virus will not be full until it takes millions of lives from coast to coast.

Too many want to step off the cliff to see what happens.

If only those who want to tempt fate were the ones to lose their lives.

You cannot stop a fool from shooting their own foot off.

However, the determination of those who want to ignore reality are committing a kind of social suicide.

They don’t want to go alone.

Their hatred of government, of laws, restrictions, of minorities, and women spur them over the cliff like lemmings.

The jaws of the virus feed at the bucket of the prejudiced.

What makes America the worse at handling this global crisis?

Racism.

Both ethnic and economic.

A time is rapidly approaching that has not been seen.

Unless and until there is an effective vaccine, the virus will mount bodies to the sky.

This country has not seen a million people perish in one crisis.

Other nations have.

Other nations came out on the other side.

Different.

Matured.

They came to understand the value of one human life.

We, as a nation, have not learned that lesson.

This nation is falling and does not recognize its descent.

Let us change the trajectory.

Let us challenge the fear.

Let us make this a time not seen.

A time where compassion is our guide.

A time where hope is the arm that comforts us.

A time where love asks each of us to do more each and every day.

Let us, please, see that too many have died.

Do something now.

Peace

DFrey

Fear

Where does fear come from?

Children are afraid of the dark.

What lurks out in the space unseen, unknown, unfelt, unplanned for?

But is fear a thing?

Is it something that can be touched?

Is it a monster under the bed?

Is it an entity that roams and attacks us without warning?

Or is it something inside of us?

Is it something we tell ourselves?

Specifically, is fear about us and not about fear itself?

There are, of course, many things to fear.

Spiders.

Paper cuts.

Snakes.

Auto accidents.

Plane flight.

Job loss.

Illness.

Death.

These are all things that, in their specific ways, can stop our plans.

But is that what fear is really?

Is fear a reaction to a force that has changed our schedule?

The COVID virus.

This virus has changed the plans of everyone on the planet.

It is going about what viruses do it is spreading and multiplying.

Our deaths are not its purpose.

Killing off its host is not suitable for any host in the long run because it doesn't allow it to succeed.

It wants cooperation so it can live.

Fear.

Our plans changed.

Those that deny the science are living in fear of the truth.

Their non-cooperation with social distancing and wearing a mask is couched behind a veil of personal freedom.

Our brothers and sisters are afraid of the virus and believe spitting in the face of reason will allow them to dodge the grim reaper.

Their fear allows them to take no responsibility for the despair, the death they will cause.

Ultimately fear is a scapegoat that creates a narrative of denial of personal responsibility to the community and self.

The Devil made me do it.

The virus needs no help to kill.

But who needs our help are those who live in fear.

America is going to live through a time that it has never seen before. Simple algebra can demonstrate real fear.

As the statistics demonstrate, only 5% of the US population has been exposed to the virus, with 85K deaths.

What happens when short of no vaccine and 100% of the population is exposed, how many people will have perished?

North of 1.5 million Americans.

That's the number the CDC has been gagged from telling.

That's the human tragedy that's being kept from the airwaves.

That is a real fear.

Yet fear can stimulate courage.

Fear can grow purpose.

Fear can challenge a people and a person to do what is right.

Without fear, we wouldn't know what love is.

Love will see all of us through this time.

Love will brush aside the terror of night to reveal the truth of the day.

See those that are living in fear and give them hope by your example.

Wear your mask with pride that you are saving other's lives, not just your own.

It is only through looking out for each other that we together will get to our joy.

Darkness is the nature of the universe; each of us is a light in that eternal night, which is why we each have an obligation to tend that light called hope.

The moon silent went on a stroll between the stars, and when it looked down on the earth there, it saw even more stars all the same above and below.

Peace.

DFrey

The Takers

You and I are considered the takers by conservative America.

If you are on welfare.

If you are on food stamps.

If you get a social security check.

If you are on Medicare.

If you are on Medicaid.

If you are on Obama Care.

If you are a working woman who took a job from a white man.

If you are a minority, who took a job from a white man.

If your housing is subsidized by the state or feds.

If you are a minority and got a loan to start a business.

If you are a racial minority, or a woman, or gay and ask for justice.

If you complain.

If you’re not satisfied and want a better life.

If you believe everyone should pay their fair share of taxes.

If you vote for a democrat.

If you believe in equal rights.

If you get a pension.

If you are living in an extended care facility.

If you are a migrant.

If you are black.

If you are brown.

If you are an Asian.

If you need childcare.

If you need an abortion.

If you want equal pay for equal work.

If you believe there is a need for a federal government.

If you believe in freedom of speech.

If you believe in a free press.

If you want the freedom to be safe.

If you demand police accountability.

If you believe in sharing.

You are a taker.

Isn’t that strange?

Humans come in two varieties.

Those that share and those who can’t.

Conservatives conserve, they don’t believe in sharing.

Those that do believe in sharing are painted with the derogatory slang as takers.

Consider a lesson taught by all good teachers both in society and in the home for generation after generation.

Share and share-alike.

We share to lessen the burden of the heart, mind, and spirit.

Those that don’t want to share have isolated themselves from the world as well as their own existence.

It is fear that keeps too many of us from reaching out and saying I’m in trouble.

I need help.

If we want that better world, we need to reach out and lift up our conservative brothers and sisters.

Let them see a beautiful community come together.

A place where we practice the common good.

A place where we practice freedom from fear.

A place where we practice giving.

Give so that those that live under the burden of fear may take of happiness.

Peace

DFrey

Politics

At its roots, politics is about keeping power at any cost.

The founders of our nation believed they had crafted a document that would stand against the sociopathic bent of previous generations of man's tyranny.

It has withstood the test of the past 200 years until it met those with no faith in government.

Those that have had no faith in the institutions of government have always been in the shadows.

In past centuries they were called anarchists.

Individuals in movements that believed you had to burn the barn down to save the cows.

The individuals found like minds who thought it more comfortable to destroy than to build.

A belief in slashing and burning the past to secure the future.

To throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Acceptable casualties.

It's what gave us the first world war.

A war between aristocrats who used the lives of the common man as their toilet paper.

The anarchists learned from their defeat and transformed themselves into nihilists.

Nihilism, the belief that humanity and all of its efforts amounted to nothing.

Why bother.

Why work for a better world?

What stands in the way of us having nice things are people not like you and me.

A type of nihilism created Fascism, which rose against communities of workers who wanted an equal footing with the ownership class.

Fascists, the attack dogs who tore into the throats of organized labor at the command of the institution of capitalism.

Only the best need apply, and so the German people followed their new modern sociopath into yet another world war brought to us by national elitists.

The fascists lost that round yet again, but they were not down long for the count.

Those that hate humanity but love themselves realized maybe they were too bold.

They sank like a heavy anchor into the depths of society.

There they whispered into the ears of those that would listen.

We can give you power.

We can restore your homeland.

We can make America great again.

They found ears, hearts, and minds willing to absorb their doctrine in conservative America.

Using the goodwill of people, using their innate fear of change, they slowly but surely carved out a platform of intolerance.

They found a voice in Regan who said, government was the problem.

They found a movement in fiscal conservatism.

The Tea Party.

Neo-Conservatism.

They found tax dodgers, racists, evangelicals, all who had a common ground.

They didn't want "change."

Who was responsible for forcing the silent majority to change?

The black, the brown, women, the queer, the liberal, the godless.

They took hold of the pumping heart of the Republican Party and emptied its red blood and transfused it with hate.

Let the government become so weak that we can drown it in a bathtub became the cry.

Then something strange happened quite recently…

A virus.

It didn't care what the politic of the day was.

It didn't care if you believed in it or not.

As if it were tailored made for the day at hand, it has the ability to trim the fringe.

Those that don't believe in science it has trimmed.

Those that don't believe in community it has trimmed.

Those that don't believe in government it is trimming.

Those that don't believe anyone has the right to tell them no, it has trimmed.

I've tried to give an answer to the question I hear people asking...

Where have these people come from that are complaining about staying home?

Our bodies are choice?

Most of us, dare I say a majority believe that we should all work together to save ourselves, which will save the world, right?

If we go out too soon we risk making the second, the third, the fourth wave even bigger than I should be if we all could practice some self-control.

Burn the barn to save the cows?

Ridiculous rhetoric of the past but the current policy of the GOP.

Politics.

Peace

DFrey

Angels

I have seen them on the earth.

As an orderly for five years.

As the son of an RN Elaine Frey.

As my wife, Denny cares for her patients in the ICU.

I have seen angels on the earth.

I have seen nurses wipe the bloody wounds clean.

Watched as they laughed about a daytime TV show.

Heard them cry after the patient's family has left the bedside of their loved one who had passed.

I watched as they prepared a meal after a long day at work.

Listened to them tell a doctor to pay attention to their patient who is in need.

I felt the care when I was sick, told to take my medicine, and force fluids.

Brotherhood, as they helped me prepare the body of those that have passed to take to the morgue.

A team, while the nurses hung IV meds, wrote quick nurses notes, bagged the patient, as I did the CPR.

Sitting down after a long night to have a donut, but they're all gone.

Saw them wheel a female patient in a wheelchair up to OBGYN; it's their first baby.

Was there as they filled out the chart.

Was there as they took the call from the attending physician.

Helped hold the patient as they cleaned and washed the patients who had soiled themselves.

Was there when it was their first day on the job.

There when they retired.

The hands of a nurse are a contradiction.

They are strong able to turn 300-pound patients.

They are rough, cracked from years of constant washing.

They are also filled with an unbounded understanding of the true meaning of love.

Love never asks for less.

Love asks all of us to do more than expected.

The crisis of a generation is upon us all.

We are all grateful that we are not alone in this world to face it.

There are angels there to catch us should we stumble.

Angels who bring the light of hope.

Thank you.

Peace

DFrey

Value

We stand for the value of one human life.

The movie is Judgement at Nuremberg.

Told is the true story of how German people led by their government committed selfish murder against the whole world.

Specifically, the Holocaust.

The purposeful elimination of a people, a culture for the purpose of the economic blame game.

For the purpose of the idea of racial purity.

For the purpose of hate.

Racism = Genocide.

Those voices of the Nazis, fascism, ethnic nationalism has not disappeared from the earth.

During this pandemic sweeping the world, those voices can be heard in the cheering section.

Let them die; they are on their last legs.

2 to 3% is an acceptable loss.

The cure can’t be worse than the disease.

We got to save the economy, so grandpa and grandma should be happy to give up their lives.

We stand for the value of one human life.

There continues to be a blind malignancy in the human soul.

A cancer we do not want to address.

Hate.

Hate is the virus that eats out the heart from within.

Hate drives the individual, even the nation, over the cliff of reason.

Hate leaves behind the shores of compassion in favor of the chaos of anger, of discrimination.

Yet hate is part of the human soul.

Hate and love are two sides of our existence.

Hate is not foreign, it is not grown by aliens from distant planets in our minds.

We conjure the monster ourselves.

We are responsible for hate.

Hate is our child just as much as love is.

With the realization that we grow the weeds of hate, don’t you think we can do something about that?

This virus has shown a bright light into the cracks of our society.

What some may have believed was whole and good in the light of this crisis has been shown to have great riffs in it.

The poor are dying in higher numbers.

The old are dying in higher numbers.

Black and brown people are dying higher numbers.

We pretend that there was a safety net, but when that net was called upon, it wasn’t there.

Who is to blame?

Everyone.

What can we do about it?

Everyone, every day, even right now, can decide to do the right thing.

The funny thing about the light, it can show you where you want to go.

We will want universal health care no matter if you are employed or not.

We will want a universal, guaranteed income.

We will want universal paid sick leave.

Simply put, we will want our government of and by the people to universally want to care and protect us.

Who is my brother, who is my sister?

We stand for the value of one human life.

Peace.

DFrey

Time

How has our expectations of what, where, and who we are has been changed?

It has been a little over a month since the stay in place order was issued by Governor Newsom.

The "what" is the virus.

The shark in the water.

The game of Russian Roulette.

The random finger of fate that reminds both the high and the low of their mortality.

The "where" is the place we thought we would be.

The plans.

Spring.

Planning our summer vacations.

The gatherings after work and on the weekends with family and friends.

Holidays.

Now, all put on hold.

Put on a shelf for another time a future place.

Who has been changed?

The nurse working a double shift and can't go home because she might carry the virus.

The waitress at the diner who no longer has a job.

The Doctor reusing their PPE.

The guy who works in construction because all work has been put on hold.

The Captain of an aircraft carrier who stood for his crew yet lost his career.

All of us have to one degree or another been changed by this event.

This crisis.

This space.

This time.

Change comes but not in the way we expect it too.

Or want it to…

When change comes, we have two choices.

To grind our teeth, to become angry, to resent the messenger, to deny reality.

Or…

To open our hearts, open our minds, begin the good work, become hope.

The first way leads to a dead-end making the world worse.

The second way leads to making the world better.

Time has allowed us to do something that hasn't been tried before.

This crisis has exposed the rot in our world.

Like a bright light into a dark corner, what we thought was healthy turns out to be sick.

We need a better health care system that serves all.

We need a better-elected government to serve all of the people.

We need a better faith that doesn't put money over the lives and welfare of its followers.

We need to look out better, not just for ourselves but for our community.

We need to care.

Our nation requires care.

Its people need care.

It's time for all of us to care for one another.

Stay home, save lives.

It's time we do the right thing this time the first time.

You are the hope the world is waiting for.

Peace.

DFrey

The Elephant in the Room

People are dying because conservatives do not believe in the federal government.

People are dying because they believe in the conservative idea of the individual.

People are dying because of their conservative faith.

The Republican Party has died, and like a dead elephant in a river, the sickness is spreading downstream, devouring anyone who drinks from that water.

The argument is as old as the country states rights versus federal.

From Nixon to Mitch McConnell, from Paul Harvey to Rush Limbaugh, the hatred and doctrine of killing off the federal government have been preached through the decades.

This conservative movement within the Republican Party has had it with our Republic.

They have preached Nationalism, white Nationalism, where white men rule, and all others need not apply.

They no longer will tolerate women as being equal, or blacks, or browns, or Asians, or gays, or anyone not a white Anglo-Saxon male.

To that end, people like Newt Gingrich got the idea that they could slowly starve to death, the federal government.

They could slowly weaken it to the point where they could throw the government into a bathtub and drown it.

Their words.

They could restore the proper order of the world.

Their white male God and then his agents here on earth, the white male businessman.

They have preached the ideal of the independent man.

The rugged individual.

A person who does not need any assistance from their government or others.

This whole conservative mindset of killing off of the federal government is based upon the real personality disorder that these individuals all share.

It’s sociopathic.

It’s only about me and my needs and to hell with you or me.

This sociopathic mindset is found in conservative circles, on Wall Street, in corporations, in traditional religious faiths.

Either our way or the highway.

Kill them all and let God sort them out.

Their words.

As of today, it is apparent that 2020 has been canceled.

There is a tiger in our streets.

It has been made manifestly worse by this stand it alone, profit is king, screw the weak doctrine.

Blatant profiteering taking place by friends of this President.

Yet, the universe has a sense of dark irony that the mind which focuses only on themselves cannot, will not see.

Those that work together will survive.

Those that cooperate will thrive.

Those that share will prosper.

Those who partake in the beloved community will see the future.

Those who believe themselves immune to death because of their individualism, their isolation from community, their hatred of the federal government will find that Tiger will not overlook them.

Mortality is the great equalizer.

There is nothing sadder than a life lived alone.

We come together to share life and to have more of it.

Peace.

DFrey

A Quiet

When dreams are lost to reality.

When day becomes night.

When anger transforms into action.

A quiet comes down.

As the reality of this virus impinges on our lives.

As the reality of leadership is met while others fail.

As the reality of mortality looks each of us square in the face.

A quiet comes down.

A quiet comes down.

In this time of quiet things that once we obscured, become clear.

The warmth of hot coffee.

The warmth of friends laughter.

The warmth of love past.

Love present.

A quiet comes down.

Days turn into starry nights.

Days turn into loud, defiant voices.

Days turn into the face of the moon.

Tomorrow comes.

A quiet comes down.

Together we can find a quiet place.

Together our compassion will get us through this year of pain.

Together united in a bond that transcends all of time and distance we call love…

When I am scared and alone.

And the world has turned cold and gray.

I think of the beautiful face of my friends.

I am not alone anymore.

A quiet comes down.

Peace

DFrey

Where We Stand

Right and wrong.

Right and left.

Right and doing nothing.

Right, and being alone.

Right is right.

What are the consequences of doing right?

It takes energy to do what is right as much as it takes to do what is wrong.

For the most part, most of us like to stand in the gray area.

That place in-between where we don't have to react.

We don't have to lift a finger.

We don't have to have any anxiety.

We don't have to fear if we are right or wrong.

The silent majority.

We can be left alone.

A truth.

To set a standard and to declare what is right versus what is wrong ultimately will shine the spotlight of scorn and ridicule upon you.

Why?

Do you know the old adage about the crabs in a barrel?

One of the crabs wanted to know what was outside of its world.

What was outside of the barrel that all of the other crabs were trapped in?

There were tales of the great beyond where everything you ever wanted came true.

There were also tales of monsters of dark creatures that would devour you.

This crab decided it was going to crawl out against the advice that it was going to be dangerous as it was admonished by its fellow crabs.

Well, just as the crab started to crawl out, the other crabs grabbed hold of it and pulled it back into the barrel.

Ultimately, they all found themselves on that night's menu.

They made their own worst fears come true.

They did nothing.

Doing what's right makes people angry.

Why?

It forces a spotlight upon their own lives, revealing their apathy.

Their nihilism.

They don't want that hot light upon them to say what is right because they don't want to face the possibility that they might be wrong.

Even in the face of a certitude, what is obviously the right thing to do, a child is sexually attacked, the person obfuscates and pretends they don't actually see.

They don't understand.

To have morality, to stand upon one's own morals is not antithetical to present-day Christian misinterpretation of the biblical passage of not judging others.

All recorded civilizations, societies, have had and a sense of morality.

What is right and what is wrong.

If you couldn't judge, there would be no courts, no one in prison for murder.

Anarchy would rule.

Taking a stand throughout the history of humankind against what is wrong has placed obvious targets upon these individuals who did.

But let's bring it down to everyday living?

The next time you're at dinner with your family and your uncle makes a racist joke, do you call them out on it?

When you are on the bus, and your bag is sitting on the seat next to you, do you pick it up so that the stranger can have a seat?

When you see a cop beating up on a guy, do you call for restraint?

You can see that your congressional district is gerrymandered do you call out your politicians to make it fair for all voters?

You know a neighbor is alone during this time of the virus crisis do you check in with them to see if they need anything?

These are a few examples of doing the right thing in everyday life.

They may be easy for you, difficult for others.

Doing the right thing will always bring about consequences.

For every action, there is a reaction.

Doing the right thing in the face of wrong, doing the right thing ultimately in the face of evil will leave you in an empty space.

Separate from the crowd.

I've personally found myself many times in that lonely space.

Most days, I feel I stand at the edge of an abyss calling out but hearing nothing coming back.

It is a tired world we all live in.

Now more separated because of this health crisis.

The effort to do what is right is neglected by many.

Given lip service by most.

The darkness of the world is taken upon the backs but by a few.

As Mark Twain said, "Wages of doing what is right versus what is wrong is the same."

Most of what we do on this journey called life will never be recognized or appreciated beyond our own recollection of events.

However…

Count me as standing against evil.

Standing against the wicked.

Standing against the corrupt.

A warrior for the light.

Giving comfort to the tired, the lonely, the sick.

For it is only in that blessed light that once shown into darkness, can it release the enslavement of man's mind to the shackles of other people’s tyranny.

We are bound together.

Peace

DFrey

Who is at the Door?

Fear is at the door.

We can choose to ignore it.

We can choose to confront it.

The irony of life is those that are the smallest have the most considerable courage, and the self-proclaimed best among us have no courage at all.

Our President, the captain of the ship of state, wanders the halls of the White House stroking his ego.

His officials under him run from answering truthfully about the wolf nipping at our heels.

Leadership comes from governors, mayors, local health officials.

This President and the GOP leadership are hobbled by their own hatred of self, which manifests itself into a hatred of humanity.

This is not the end of the world.

This is yet another chance for the world to come together and change its social-political-spiritual habits.

It is a moment to throw wide the door and let the breeze of truth blow out the darkness in our collective souls.

When trouble comes, it is then the mind focuses upon how much we need each other.

When darkness falls, we all join together and take comfort in the light of compassion.

This is a moment to realize deep down that life is about the "Now."

It is about living.

Life is not about saving for that end, that retirement, that last moment of existence.

That beyond the end of our lives; that's when our true life begins.

This life today not tomorrow is about the everyday texture, the ups, and the downs, that is what it means to live.

To live a life waiting for the next is to waste this one with a health dose of spite.

Irony teaches the humous in the juxtaposition of opposites.

How funny as death stands at the door, it can teach us so much about how to live.

We will live through this.

We will learn.

We will learn that compassion begins between you and me and spreads to touch all hearts even if they don't get it.

We will learn that love is the only power in this world that can conquer a disease.

Love is the only power that can conquer hate.

Take care of yourself and others, and know you are loved.

Peace

DFrey

Open

The purpose of Brain Blog is to open awareness of politics and the human spirit.

Consider the current economic state of the average American.

It sucks.

For over 35 years now, wages have been stagnant at the expense of corporate America, seeing record profits and growing the stock market to points a generation ago would have believed insanity.

While the average citizen grows older, sees their dreams die, their hopes vanish, the future has no place for them.

This creates fear.

When people are fearful, they will do anything to escape that fear.

They will discriminate against their neighbor.

They will arm themselves against the stranger.

They will blame all their woes on the immigrant.

They will believe in the person who supports their fears.

They will consume opioids until they die to keep the fear away.

Their fear is real.

Those that fear are desperate, they will try anything to keep the wolves from consuming them and theirs.

The fearful can be used by the wolves.

Both good wolves and bad wolves.

Wolves who promise everything you want can be free.

Wolves who promise once they get rid of the outsider America will be great again.

At some point, Americans will come to realize they are between a rock and a hard place.

Who should they believe?

They should believe in themselves.

They have to stop waiting for an economic, social Jesus to defend them from life.

They have to step into the role of an adult and accept that they can control their own future.

They must open their eyes.

To open one's eyes means to see the truth no matter how much it might disturb the story you tell yourself.

To open one's eyes takes a kind of simple courage.

An act of courage based upon the idea that what if I am wrong?

Eyes that are open see the wolves in sheep clothing.

Eyes that are open can navigate the stories told to get to the truth and make that truth real.

Eyes that are open will recognize that all of humanity is not getting out of life alive.

These eyes will understand that we need each other to survive this life with any hope of happiness.

Eyes that are open accepts responsibility and boldly steps forward to stand for justice for all.

An economy for all.

Happiness for all.

Love for all.

The fearful must open their hearts.

To open your heart is to live by compassion, but recognizing that evil requires judgment.

An open heart recognizes that when a person has done their time, they are to be welcomed home with open arms.

An open heart sees the fear of families fleeing for their lives at our borders and opens the golden gate of refuge freely.

Open hearts can hear people cry.

Hearts are funny things.

Once broken, they can either heal and grow or become hate-filled and twisted.

The heart is the hardest thing in the human body, and yet it can be the softest.

In this yet another political season, your hearts and eyes are needed.

Who can you believe?

Who can you trust?

Who will deliver the goods?

Eyes and hearts that are open will step forward and do the right thing.

Many will not want to do the right thing and keep their eyes and hearts closed.

Afraid of change.

But a change will happen one way or another.

The universe just works that way.

Life equals change.

Life is in constant flux, and that flux seeks goodness.

What is in the common good so that more people can be happy.

More people can prosper.

That is what life pushes for.

It pushes against those people who do not believe or want a common good for all.

But funny thing…

They have always failed to stop goodness and happiness from spreading.

Those who don't believe in hope for all.

Can't keep a good people down for long.

So consider if you believe in keeping to own self interest.

If you believe in keeping your hands in your pockets.

If you believe everyone else is wrong and you are right.

If you believe the economic and political stagnation in America is because of the immigrant, minority, women, and gays.

You are working against the nature of the universe.

The universe smiles, its eyes and heart open waits for you to open yours.

Join us.

Make the world better today.

Peace

DFrey

Where Are We?

At this moment in time, are we witness to a fundamental change in the American electorate?

In the past, presidential candidates did not strut themselves for two years before the election.

Traditionally there would be at most three candidates who would necessarily announce their candidacy just before the beginning of the election year.

Then Iowa would have their caucus sort of a coming-out-party get to know you introduction to the nation.

Then New Hampshire would be an afternoon tea for the potential voters.

Then South Carolina would be a backyard barbecue where hotter voices would emerge.

Then Super Tuesday would and still determines who the candidate will be.

Here we are in 2020 with a whole different paradigm confronting us.

All the traditional models are out the window.

The current president got elected by throwing out the norms and attacking the weaknesses in our American election process.

Presidential elections are now two year plus election marathons.

Death marches to self-imposed irrelevance.

What isn’t or hasn’t become irrelevant is the physics behind the elections.

For every action, there is an opposite and equal reaction.

Everyone thought Obama would make the middle and working-class lives better.

Due to racial circumstances beyond his control, the House and Senate blocked every effort to improve the economic stagnation that the middle and working class have been living through these past 35 years.

Well, if the intellectual couldn’t get this nation out of the mud, maybe the horse's ass could?

I’m very familiar with the far right, a simple majority of my family and friends are.

They all know the current occupant is not the roundest marble in the pouch.

He’s crooked as the day is long.

But they wanted someone, anyone, even a racist, sexual predator, low-level New York City real estate con-man who they believed could change the system.

The paradigm of American stagnation.

But the current occupant couldn’t deliver either.

He’s been too interested in undoing his predecessor's achievements and enriching himself to actual shepherd the House or Senate with any legislative proposals that would benefit us.

So here we are this election cycle, and what are we learning?

So far, the Democrats in the nation are teaching us that they are hungry to go even farther to the left.

Remember, Trump and his locking up kids, daily lying about everything, impeachment, daily lying about everything, is creating an opposite and equal reaction

The Democrats are desperate for ideological political purity.

Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada have demonstrated that.

What it also demonstrated in Nevada is that young people are voting in larger numbers and that the Latino vote is also looking farther to the left, looking for purity too.

What will South Carolina say about what the Black vote is looking for among the Democrats?

The question is, is this the moment in time that the electorate shifts to European style socialism?

What was thought before as a third rail is now not only demanded but supported by a majority?

The impossible socially and economically is now possible?

Has desperate economic stagnation, unregulated capitalism, corporate welfare, and tax evasion finally filled the American belly with enough resolve to overturn the American ideal of capitalism as our Lord and King?

It is evident all of the models used to predict past elections are useless.

Polls are for suckers.

Polls can be manipulated, paid off by the highest dark money spender.

What won’t lie to us is numbers.

Numbers who vote.

Numbers who march.

Numbers who speak up.

Numbers who believe that now is the time that change will finally come.

It is the old that believe that change will not happen.

Change always and will always arrive in precisely the way we didn’t believe it could.

Peace

DFrey

Where Are The Hero's

The boy stands on the corner of the street.

His mind races, not letting in the questions that pummel him from the bystanders.

At his feet lies his father.

Voices converge all around him.

Is he drunk?

Are you lost?

Who is that old man?

Look at that piece of shit.

The boy can't cry out.

His mind caught by jagged thoughts.

Thoughts that back him into a choking, dark corner.

As all of time comes to a stop…

A hand reaches past the boy and checks for a pulse on the neck of the fallen guardian.

The same hands flex, move the body into position, force life back into the tired heart.

Who are the strong?

Where is compassion?

The heart knows what the mind cannot conceive. The hero does what is needed.

A 911 call to our future...

The answer to all of our problems lies within the ideal of the hero that is in each of us.

Not born of radiation.

Not created by Gods.

Not given birth by a miracle of DNA manipulation.

We all know what the right thing to do is.

What prevents us from moving forward is the familiarity of our own doleful ignorance.

Our collective refusal to accepting that everything changes.

Nothing has ever in the entire universe stayed the same.

We either accept that, or we find ourselves at odds with life.

We will find ourselves always are at odds with the news, with people in line, in traffic, at the grocery store, at the DMV, at places of worship, at places of amusement, fellow diners, our community, our neighbor next door.

The list is as endless as living itself.

We can make the promise of heaven here and now.

We, the hero, can accept the call of the future, too.

"Do Right Now."

Peace

DFrey

What The Righteous Hear

There is a portion of American society that likes to tell everyone how terrible they are.

Yes, I mean those particular followers of Jesus, who at every opportunity like to hammer into our heads the story of their Lord and Savior as if we haven't heard it before.

Our brains are so addled by our sins we can't remember anything we are told.

However, I have found through my lifetime of experience in the far-right community that these followers hear a different set of words than what is written.

They read the same text as you or I and hear something completely different as it applies to them.

Curious?

The following quotes are what good people believe they understand as they read the red letter portion of their religious text.

– You shall love your neighbor if they are white, and if they are not white, you can ignore them, for they are cursed by your God.

– No one can serve two masters. Serve profit first, and your fellow man can take care of himself. Tell the unwashed to get a job you lazy welfare cheat. Stop stealing good people's hard-earned money.

– Judge not people who are white like you. Condemn those that do not look like you.

– You shall love your God with your whole heart. This doesn't leave room for anyone else, and they are going to hell anyway.

– For what shall it profit a man, if he works hard all his life and in the end has to share it with the monkey races.

– A new command I give you, love one another. But you faggots who love the same sex need to die so I can sleep at night, not thinking about what you're doing.

– Blessed are the merciful. Yet all of you who have used drugs a special place in hell is reserved for that scum.

– Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to cast a stone. Oh! He's talking to me. I'll throw a boulder at those asshole, non-christian, anti-Christmas, mongrel races. Especially at those godless Muslims trying to take over my government and my community.

– Suffer the little children, and forbid them not. Abortion, contraception, prenatal care are all the diabolical plans of Satan. All those abortion-loving baby murderers need to dive headfirst into a wood chipper. Jesus would love that.

– If you want to be perfect, go, and help the rich get richer because one day, they'll let you into their golden mansions and make you a billionaire too, no joke.

– For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, to save the White man from the other dirty races of the world, to live an everlasting life in heaven, separate and not equal, because our God plays favorites.

What do you understand?

It's a hard reality that the loudest voices of condemnation out of the religious right, as well as that silent moderate majority, are so afraid of the world we all live in.

Anger that the world isn't fair needs a scapegoat for far too many people.

It is far easier for angry people to blame others than taking on the personal responsibility that comes with living.

Making the world better begins with you.

The world is what you actually make of it.

If you see the enemy at every turn, every corner, behind everything you don't want to understand, you will find what you are looking for.

Let us help melt the hardened wax in the ears and warm the hearts of those who live in the cold fear of the stranger.

Be the hope that the world needs.

As a failed carpenter once said…

Be opened.

Peace

DFrey

Where Is Love

Oliver Twist in the musical Oliver laments and prays about the whereabouts of love while he's locked in the basement of a funeral parlor where he's an indentured servant.

This scene is no allegory.

There are no hidden meanings here.

He's trapped in a dark world where the light of love refuses to shine for him.

I want to ask the same question, where is love?

A lot of us think we know what it means.

We believe we have it, want it, can express it, know when it's being shown towards us.

But knowing the definition doesn't mean we can actually do it.

I know the definition of a pole-vaulter, but if I attempted an even modest leap, my lack of understanding of its meaning would result in a spectacular YouTube-worthy fail.

I have no experience or success at pole-vaulting.

Love is an ideal that many attempt, but few will be able to stick the landing.

However, you can find a few gold medal winners Mother Teresa, Jesus, Buddha, Gandhi, Lao Tzu…

Strong voices of love are not only in the past.

You can find among all of us strong hearts who can lead a workout class in love.

Love is the hardest emotion to understand with the intellect; it defies logic because it's the language of the soul, the song of the heart.

We're all tone-deaf; it appears in this world to love its melody its lyric.

Like Oliver, we're all locked in a dark world that mistreats us, batters our souls, misshapes our perceptions, ignites anger, walls in hate, whispers lies telling us we're misunderstood, alone, unwanted.

We cannot tell the difference between noise of fear the soft whisper of love.

Be the answer to Oliver's prayer.

Act with love.

Do it today.

Please do it for yourself first.

If you can't forgive yourself, you can't forgive others.

To love the world begins by loving yourself.

Peace.

DFrey

Easy Money

When you got that ad on Facebook for a miracle grocery bag that could hang in your cart? 

You know, it looked great, and you had to have it right! 

When you used it for the first time, and it ripped apart when you dropped a package of raspberries in it, did you think to yourself I was demographically targeted by a business participant in global corruption?

Just the other day, when you put your check in your financial institution and had a few words about why the banking fees seem to jump around so much?

Did you ask yourself if the banks we're honest with you that their costs were escalating?

Then that night on TV you saw that the same bank was laundering money for Russian Oligarchs and the US Justice Department hit your bank with a 7.2 billion fine. 

Did you think to yourself I'm participating in global corruption?

You look at your news feed, and it's filled with stories about your president, his friends, and family, all denying that they don't even know where Russia is let alone would they ever use Russian dressing on their mixed green salad. 

They would never talk, chat, poke, listen, speak, write, or have the occasion to know a Russian. 

Yet all these people and others, including you and I, make investments in mutual funds, in campaign donations, in real-estate, in building projects, in business start-ups whose locations span the globe.

I'm asking…?

Are you consciously aware of, or are you in denial that you may be contributing to corruption worldwide?

Does ignorance of your participation isolate you from prosecution? 

From guilt?

Personal corruption used to be a locally raised product. 

Your city councilman, your mayor, your chief of police, was looking the other way as local businessman conducted their business that did not fit within either our agreed Legal system or moral parameters. 

They got money put into their pockets, they got their driveway repaved, they got free donuts or a new car.

Then the 80s came along, and there was an upsurge in business graduates all looking to make it big on Wall Street and K Street. 

Pie charts, flow charts, charts about charts, who buys what, when, and where. 

Bottom line how can businesses squeeze more profit out without actually doing more work? 

There were resources of cash out in the world that was not being gathered by the right people.

Utilization.

How to attract people's savings into the markets so we can gamble the future with their money, not ours?

Consequently, the rise of the middle class investing in mutual funds was the starter pistol going off with a bang for the official race that is the globalization of corruption. 

With your investment in your future, you were told you are securing the lifestyle you deserved. 

Well...

There were others out there that wanted more too. 

The wolves, the bandits, the oligarchs, your average billionaire. 

The scheme? 

The expansion of corporations, of LLC's, of mutual funds, of political fundraising groups, all of which could be formed and created by people who did not live in your country.

The Supreme Court passes Citizens United saying it's okay for dark money to speak for corporations as well as it turns out anyone else both foreign and domestic in our politics.

This includes investments in business, false fronts, the credit card industry, online gambling. 

The false front, the sting, was made legal in the cooperation of both political parties in the United States.

The skeezy became tolerable.

The public is too ignorant to care.

Profitable.

Corruption became a one-stop location just like your corner, Seven-Eleven. 

As you are picking up your smokes, drop a dirty hundred thousand, from legal and illegal drug sales, arms sales, illegal real-estate sales, and human trafficking into a political action committee fundraiser.

The political action committee then puts that money into their clean bank, then they write you a check on the other side thanking you for your participation in lifting their candidate into the public eye.

Everyone wins, the politician, the oligarch, the bank.

You are a patriot.

We will make your country great again.

Translation…

Your newly bought and paid for politician will make sure they will dial back on the equal rights for all brown people, women, and gays.

We will restore the white people of this nation back to their rightful place.

Your modern era political parties at work.

Easy huh!

It used to be, corruption was conducted by the bent nose thug in your community. 

Today that thug includes those from other countries who then funnel money into your local, state or federal Chamber of Commerce members.

Who then look the other way as they forego inspections, EPA laws, the last 100 years of justice for the working man.

Each day the members in this global scheme plan a trip to a community bathhouse where they wash each other's crimes and give each other clean cash on the other side.

Easy huh!

Peace

DFrey

Mac and Cheese

Comfort, who doesn't have a favorite food? 

Even the dead, if awoken, would respond with a favorite respite. 

The range covers the whole world of food from salty to sweet, from sour to bitter, from the bland to the rich.

Mac and cheese. 

Near the top of most people's favorite foods, at least in the West. 

A comfort food which is given to children who fondly remember it into adulthood. 

A  simple, cheap dish as most comfort foods are.

There's a schism between store-bought pre-packed mac and cheese versus the homemade variety. 

The average child and teen will demand the store-bought pre-packed. 

Adults with there supposed refined taste pretend the homemade weak runny and burnt variety is the best.

Americans love of simple comfort.

No effort.

No demands.

Like tuning into a channel on TV that broadcasts nothing but static.

Comfort as white noise.

Comfort without effort, the American way. 

Another understandable reaction to a world that requires energy.

But people are not by their very nature convenient.

The public, as well as individuals, are inconvenient.

People have to have energy to not just survive but to thrive.

Their problems, their influence, their health and well being cannot be pre-packaged, fixed in 10 minutes, consumed then discarded.

To make room in our lives for other people causes us to balk.

Even to call a friend, to visit a relative all take an effort, which will remove us from our comfort zone.

It's hard to visit that lonely person because it reminds us of our own emptiness? 

It's annoying to give a hug to that friend who won't shut up?

Isn't it annoying to look up that address to send a letter to that friend you care about?

To honestly give comfort, love asks us to step out of our own safety to help those in need of relief.

Love asks more of each one of us.

It understands we will love those we know, but it asks us to add to our tally daily.

It asks us to comfort those without comfort.

It asks us to walk in the shoes of those different from us.

It asks us to recognize that any discomfort we feel in extending ourselves into the world will be compensated through our lives being made complete.

Happiness begins when we can see outside ourselves and take hold of the larger world.

Feeling uncomfortable about the state of your community, your government of yourself is a good thing.

We find comfort among those who agree with us – growth among those who don’t. – Frank A. Clark

Peace

DFrey

Evangelicals

Why do the Evangelicals support Donald Trump?

Some history. I was born into the Quaker church.

Both my grandfather and grandmother were Reverends in the Quaker church.

My mother called herself, " A preacher's brat."

My mother's mother and her father came to live with us once my grandmother was diagnosed with Alzheimer's.

After my grandmother's passing, my grandfather continued to live with us.

Even though the Rev. Larkin Hadley had retired, he still wrote a sermon every Sunday throughout the week.

I never heard my grandfather use racist dialog or tone.

Ever.

As much as my burned down memory can scrape a fragment together, every story I've ever heard was of a man of compassion.

He saved me more than once as a child from a bloody beating from my father.

However, religion does not conform to the will of the individual, or to an agreed-upon social morality, but to the power and influence, its leadership can wield over its followers.

They feed innate prejudice like a trail of breadcrumbs for those to follow.

In the mid-80s, when membership was declining, and it looked like the church was going to die, the Quaker Church at its Yearly Meeting decided to throw down their old values and accept a new reality.

What is the Yearly Meeting?

The Yearly Meeting is a gathering of all of the Quaker churches across the U.S. to discuss and plan the agenda of the church.

A gathering of both professional and lay members.

So, with the decline in church membership due to the social upheavals of the 60s, how was the Friends Church, as they renamed themselves, how could they bring in more members?

They believed they had to become involved in politics.

To speak up and make their position known.

To be socially active.

To pull back into their ranks the young people.

To put people back into the pews.

Heretofore they had a prohibition against involvement with politics.

What is Caesars is Caesars.

What is God's God, was dismissed in the face of their funding, tithes, and offerings drying up, due to empty pews.

The Quaker Church had become old fashioned, irrelevant to the movement of the society they found themselves in.

A name change occurs once again.

The Friends Church, who historically are the Quakers, becomes known nationwide as the Evangelicals.

Consider…

Just why did our founding fathers want a separation between religion and government?

The separation between church and state.

Dosen’t Christianity and the Bill of Rights and the Constitution agree with each other?

A government founded upon the principle that all people are created equal.

A government of the people, by the people, for the people has a distinct ideology, present, and upfront in that statement.

We are all equal.

Religion, on the other hand, makes marked separations between the saved and the sinner.

You are either for us or against us.

With God or against God.

Religion makes no room for the undecided, the marginal.

It sidelines the minority in favor of a majority who supports a version of God.

It is a rule, an idea, a dogma passed down generation to generation which cannot buy it’s own rules be questioned.

A type of window dressing, marketing, has been crafted to make the reality, "this dogma," more palatable to those not born again into religion.

"Love the sinner hate the sin."

The religious can marginalize the group, the individual who does not adhere to, who does not believe like me.

The religion encourages this separation.

This categorizing of who is worthy of God’s love and blessings and who is not.

You either belong to my club, or you don't.

If you don't belong to my club, you are an infidel and are worthy of death.

If not at my hands, then by my God, who will make you suffer in hell for all eternity for not wanting to be a member of my club.

Let's get real.

Religion segregates.

Religion discriminates.

Religion divides the deserving from the undeserving.

Religion blinds the faithful to see only one way to God.

Its purpose is to use the goodwill of the faithful to support the power structure of the religion.

To keep the King the King.

That segregation is taught from the pulpit and repeated in the pews every Sunday in our Evangelical houses of worship.

Segregation goes hand in hand with racism.

Ever wonder how good Christian people have the idea that the white race is superior and all the rest are akin to animals?

Well, you have to look at the story of the Great Flood to get the answer.

The story of Noah and his sons is used to illustrate who is deserving and who is not in the eyes of God by racist America.

After the flood was over and the animals were let loose to propagate once again, God wanted Noah to flourish also.

To that end, Noah was missing having wine with his dinner.

So Noah planted a vineyard.

Noah grew his grapes and made himself some new wine.

He drank of his new wine and passed out.

His sons seeing his nakedness had homosexual sex with him while he was unconscious.

For that sin, God gave each son a curse.

For the son Ham, he made his skin black as night.

Ham and his descendants were to serve the white man for the rest of time as the white man's slave.

This curse was to be a reminder of their sin forever.

What God has cursed let no man say it ain't.

This story was told repeatedly from the pulpit there in Cleveland, Ohio in that little Quaker church I attended.

It was repeatedly told to me by the Reverend as well as his wife, as to why it was wrong for the negro in 1968 to want more out of life than what God had granted in his mercy.

Rules are rules, you know.

Can't question God and say everyone is equal when God clearly made the slave a slave and the free man free.

That Constitution thing is just plain wrong-headed.

Those men with the white wigs must have gotten God's word all backward.

So this adopted myth, this cornerstone of racism in religious white America, is why Evangelicals support Donald Trump.

He uses their coded language of race and class segregation and he must be sent by their God to lead the stupid people like you and I back to God.

On April 4th, 1968. Martin Luther King Jr. is killed.

I'm eight years old.

Innocent of the world not understanding the turmoil.

When I heard that someone had killed Martin Luther, my eight-year-old heart was grieved.

Someone had killed the person who founded our church.

I was too naive to understand that Martin Luther King Jr. was not Martin Luther, the founder of the Protestant movement, the 16th century, and subsequent Christian derivatives.

At church that Sunday following the assassination, the adults around me were all happy.

They were laughing and patting each other on the back.

Gleeful.

They were happy somebody killed that agitator.

That nigger. They were happy that someone had killed a friend of Jesus…?

I didn't understand why good men praised evil.

My parents didn't understand why I cried.

Where was love?

I wept…

Peace

DFrey

Empathy

You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive. – James Baldwin

Many people suffer.

They do not let you know.

They keep their pain inside, not exposing it randomly.

They hold onto their fear.

They choke back their hearts.

They deny themselves.

What they don't recognize collectively is that they are wounded.

Broken.

What has caused these scars these wounds to the American spirit?

The abuse done by other humans.

Not time.

Not place.

Not entities.

People hurt people.

Power, money, sex the three ugly children of greed.

This greed manifests itself, meaning it creates itself through those who believe that anything goes.

Anything goes as long as you get what you want.

This kind of thinking, this idea of winning at any cost, is the opposite of empathy.

It is the antimatter of empathy.

It destroys hope.

The people who use this thinking of taking what they want, when they want, come in all kinds.

All colors.

All races.

All genders.

All ages.

They are your friends.

They are your President.

They are your corporate boards.

Across the heartland of America, the trust, the patriotism of its citizens have been abused.

We have been made to believe that our suffering economically is not the fault of those in power.

It's an old, old, old story.

Those who abuse never take responsibility now, do they?

They blame the victim or someone else.

How shocked would we be if Cosby, Weinstein, or the President stood up and said I was wrong I committed the crime.

I'm guilty.

They can't do it because they have no empathy.

They use people.

They use their trust.

They use their beliefs.

They use their faith to twist and manipulate to get their orgasm.

To get the power, the money, the sex they deserve.

At your and my expense.

At the expense of our humanity.

At the expense of our well being.

This is why there is such a large group of Americans who have lost faith in the system.

Generation after generation, their empathy has been used and abused against them.

By the corporation, the salesman, by the government, by the faith leaders.

This is why this President was able to manipulate the long desire for a better life in our country.

He exploits goodwill.

He made a promise to persecute and eliminate those that he and they blamed for their economic destitution.

Has he, did he?

No.

But he says he has and that's all they need to hear.

In their state of suffering, he has their ear because he is talking their language.

He is soothing their fears.

To those that have lost the American dream and blame immigration, unions, politicians, treaties, this President offers a kind of empathy.

This is why we must understand this deadfall in which too many Americans find themselves.

They are trapped by their myth, their economic plight, and the devil promising them a better life.

That is why we can't just talk about making things better.

We will not penetrate the economic wall behind which too many Americans find themselves.

We have to become the hope that so many people are looking for.

We have to engage and meet our friends face to face.

We have to acknowledge their pain, their suffering, their real loss of prosperity and hope.

We have to row the lifeboat out into the dark and pick up our brothers and sisters in the water and pull them to shore.

A life does not have any less worth just because it is afraid.

We are all in this together.

This awakening from our childhood.

This revolution of awareness.

Let us use our empathy to stand side by side with those that have lost hope.

We all need a friend.

It's the human thing to do.

Empathy.

DFrey

Peace