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

Fringe

Carpets.

Carpets have a fringe.

A fancy decorative edge.

A flash, a glint there to catch the eye.

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

The center of the carpet is where you stand.

The fringe has an appeal in the beginning.

Look what I have bought into.

But it soon gets old.

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

What was once a feature is now a distraction.

It catches the dirt.

You can't get it clean.

Its only purpose was to draw attention.

Maybe I spent too much?

The broad weave of the carpet does the real work.

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

The fringe can't do that.

Now the fringe has tripped you up once too often.

It's time to trim the fringe back.

Maybe cut it off entirely.

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

It no longer serves two purposes.

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

It can do the real work.

Fringe.

Political movements.

Movements have their fancy edges also.

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

They stir the pot, get people talking.

But do they put feet into motion?

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

Or do they only think of themselves?

Often the political fringe will trip up a given society.

Will cause self-destruction of the individual.

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

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

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

They're not there for the children.

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

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

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

No.

No, they are there only for themselves.

Right or left self-interest does not discriminate.

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

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

The hardcore racist gets taken advantage of too.

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

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

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

The fringe.

But remember the fringe is not the broad weave of the American society.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We are all here to embrace not pull apart.

We are here to bring together, not separate.

We are here to love not to hate.

Peace

DFrey

Gone

Standing on the corner waiting for the ice cream man.

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

LP's, 45's, CD's, cassette tapes, VHS, Super 8.

S&H Green Stamps.

Manual typewriters.

White only counters.

Single-sex public restrooms.

50 cent coffee.

Stockings.

Compassion.

Charity.

Civic courage.

Responsibility.

Leadership.

Consequences.

Justice.

Reason.

Common ground.

United States.

Gone…

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

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

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

America has awoken out of its dream.

A dream that told its people that everything was going to be okay.

Everyone was going to have justice.

No one was above the law of the land.

Like a dream as the hours and days go by that dream becomes harder and harder to remember.

Email, texts, news, social media, entertainment, sports, school, job, lifestyle all of which is a part of all of our daily experience in none of it does it speak to Community.

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

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

Where did they go?

Who took it?

Who is responsible?

We are.

You and me together.

We did it.

We destroyed the dream.

Dreams do not vanish on their own.

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

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

Dreams require the individual the society to reach and strive every day for a better tomorrow.

Dreams require you and me to march against giants.

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

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

The mind can bend time and space.

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

We want good work that will provide us a good life.

We want to be free of living in fear.

We want hope.

We need a new American dream.

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

This new dream should follow the truth that has been revealed by this President and his administration.

That truth is the ignorant never went away.

The truth is one political party courted that vote and has no intention of letting that vote go.

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

Ain't going to happen.

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

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

They won't get on the freedom train.

Which means we shouldn't be waiting on them to decide if they want to join us, we need to get on down the line.

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

They want the food fight and want to turn over the table of the brotherhood of man.

Our party has to move because the angry old neighbors are upset our party has the wrong kind of people at it.

We have to be happy with what we have and move along to that better world.

Doesn't mean we won't hold open a seat in case hell freezes over but it also means we need to be realistic that some people prefer to be gone.

They don't like the people at our party.

We all need to do the right thing right now.

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

You do the right thing.

Worrying about Monday morning quarterbacks in the face of presidential corruption and criminality is ridiculously childish.

It's like a child saying they won't clean their room because mommy will expect me to keep my room clean.

If you don't step out of your house, you'll never get to where you want to go.

You can't dream the world better you got to make it better with your own hands.

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

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

It's obvious this President and this administration are willing to fight for their view of the world.

Will the good people fight for theirs?

Who will win out?

Injustice or justice?

It will depend upon you and I.

Peace

DFrey

Rules

Signs.

No Fishing.

Don't Walk.

Stop.

Yield.

Bio Hazard.

Caution.

Yield.

Do not kill.

What is your reaction to rules?

Do you cherry pick what you believe applies to you?

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

I'm late.

Why are those rules there anyways?

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

Be friendly to a stranger as you would want a stranger to be generous with you.

What are rules good for?

Many of us perceive rules as restricting us.

Laws restrict our freedom.

Buckle up.

The seatbelt is uncomfortable.

Don't text and drive.

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

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

Somebody put up that sign to stick it to me.

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

Nobody can tell me no.

Laws are there not to restrict just you.

Rules of behavior are not there as punishment.

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

That biggest rule of all, do not kill.

It's there to protect you from being killed.

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

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

No one has a right to that life other than the person who is living it.

Your belief stops at the point of your nose.

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

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

The, don't walk sign, is there so that you don't ruin somebody else's life when you blindly ignore your own self-interest and step off the curb into oncoming traffic and they run you down in the crosswalk.

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

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

Rules are there to protect you.

It's stopping other people from harming you.

It's about saving you.

To keep us all safe.

It's not just about you.

It's about us.

We the people.

Laws provide a foundation of protection from the miss deeds of others.

It's the grease in the machinery.

Without that grease, the gears of life will grind and tear each other apart.

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

The vultures.

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

The smell of racism was evident in the air.

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

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

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

That principle?

From many one.

The wound that has become rotted on the American heart, which has never been cleaned since the Civil War.

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

Here we are today in the first half of the 21st-century wrestling with a law that was established in 1776.

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

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

How long are we going to ignore our own stink?

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

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

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

The grease.

The sign.

The law.

The rule.

Through love, all things are possible.

Peace

DFrey

Not Me

When I see an elderly woman stumble and fall.

When I see a man stand on the corner lost.

When I see a girl disobey the traffic laws.

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

I say not me.

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

When I hear a young person's song beat my ears.

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

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

I say not me.

When I feel the desperate pleas for justice.

When I feel the passion of anger against violence.

When I feel the burning rage of neglect.

When I feel the fear of those, who hate.

I say not me.

Not me?

None of us are without fault committed by us freely in our lives.

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

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

Our faults can blind us or open our eyes.

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

None of us are without fault.

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

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

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

Money launder's, sex trafficker's, pedophiles, tax frauds, sexual predators as long as they serve a political party is exempt from justice.

Obvious crimes committed by officials of this government along our borders go un-investigated, are not stopped as private enterprise profits off the imprisonment of children?

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

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

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

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

Shame is only for humans who can still feel it.

Apparently, many do not know the meaning of love.

By that which I treat the least of the lives found in this world, I will be known.

To grovel and fetch for the carnal pleasure of hate?

Is that where our society has landed here in the 21st Century?

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

The apparent moral bankruptcy of our two political powers, the one graft, and power at any cost, the other spineless, is overwhelming.

I feel the rage of neglect.

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

I see the man lost because of fear.

I stand.

I will never be silent.

Peace.

DFrey

Challenge The Impossible

Can a single drop of rain, wear down a mountain?

Will a grain of sand stop a flood?

Does a single battle win a war?

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

How about painting your house just one time during its life?

Will you own only one pair of shoes?

One pair of pants?

One pair of socks?

One love?

Impossible…

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

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

When will the day arrive when tyrants in the world, in your neighborhood, in your home stop destroying lives?

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

How much time does it take to heal the broken?

To bring hope to the hopeless?

To love the loveless?

To break the illusion?

To care?

Impossible…

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

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

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

It is a conflict that will have no end.

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

The struggle.

The impossible struggle will not be over in a day.

Or a week.

Or a year.

Or a lifetime.

Or solved by one candidate.

The impossible struggle…

It is the act itself, the struggle, against impossible odds, which is the victory for love.

Evil cannot win unless good does nothing.

Brotherhood is a relationship.

And just like any relationship you need to communicate.

You need to give flowers.

You need to share meals.

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

Dropping a coin in a charity bucket doesn't get the world to the promised land.

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

You get up each day and struggle.

You go through your day and struggle.

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

The haters will not stop hating.

Neither will Love stop loving.

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

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

That single drop joins other drops and forms fellowships, communities, organizations.

Those drops turn into a river.

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

It broadens and picks up those in lifeboats.

It rescues those that are adrift in the waters.

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

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

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

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

Peace.

DFrey

Tactics

Let us listen to the sound.

Let us let the future worry about itself.

Let us take the time to be in the now.

Now.

Silence the mind…

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

Liberty and freedom faced a test of resolution.

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

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

Like finding frost on the lawn, overnight the Summer had turned and fell into the Fall.

Searing fear, coupled with divine instruction informed one side.

Fervent ideals bonded with modern practicality informed the other side.

The divide grew.

Freedom was only for the White.

Freedom was for all men.

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

Two camps.

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

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

Words versus action.

Words versus violence.

Violence versus violence.

War.

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

The defeated side never accepted the outcome.

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

Tactics…

I use to be an Orderly back in the day.

I worked at a suburban hospital in Cleveland, Ohio.

I learned how to take a pulse.

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

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

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

Our nation has a heartbeat, a pulse.

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

Or to listen to it.

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

It has an irregular pulse.

A blockage…

You won't get an honest feel for it through your local news.

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

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

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

It takes a little time.

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

One who wants our world to do better…

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

Tactics…?

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

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

Mostly the left advocates making things work better.

Yes, I know, there are those that use violent, angry foul language against this President.

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

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

We the libtards.

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

Change versus death sentences.

Is that really a tactic?

Is that really where the GOP and Republicans and their supporters are pitching their tents around?

That's the flag they want to follow?

Tactics…

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

Beto talks about LGBTQ equality.

Sanders tactic is to promote democratic socialism.

Biden cheerleads about we can do better.

Harris talks about immigration and fairness.

Buttigieg promotes better voting rights protections.

These are all political tactics to approach the voter's potential for Reason.

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

I'll get it done.

Tactics…

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

Put all them Democrats into military prison camps.

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

Our Republic is on the verge of another heart attack.

We need a doctor…

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

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

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

But hold on…

The fearful are not to be attacked.

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

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

Our nations leaders and its people should have come together and work to heal the mind and spirit of this nation.

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

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

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

We're on the verge of a cardiac malfunction…

We need a stent put in to open our compassion.

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

We need a steady diet of hope.

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

These are good sound tactics.

Silence the mind…

Listen to the people.

Drop hate lift hope.

Peace.

DFrey