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

Horse Sense

Common sense ain't common. – Will Rogers

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

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

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

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

We are not born with common sense.

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

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

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

Common sense is must be learned from a teacher.

A big part of common sense is ethics.

Being able to discriminate between right and wrong.

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

Doing right is common sense.

Do no harm to yourself or others.

Common sense.

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

Do unto others before they do unto you.

You can do anything as long as you win.

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

The argument being anything that maintains power is good.

It's called politics.

But politics is the opposite of common sense.

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

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

It's common sense not to steal.

It's common sense not to kill.

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

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

It's common sense that everyone is equal.

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

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

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

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

These people in power are the leaders of business.

The leaders of governments.

The leaders of religion.

The leaders in our circles of family and friends.

Tyrants come in many shapes and forms.

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

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

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

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

That common-sense spread to the French in 1789.

1833 saw the end of slavery in England.

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

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

Today we still are dealing with a senseless human society.

We still have a mixed bag of nuts myself included.

Highlights, lowlights, and every kind in-between.

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

Common sense is a muscle.

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

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

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

Doing right, doing good never harms anything or anyone.

Separating families at the border causes harm.

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

Not allowing people to vote causes harm.

Holding back military aid for a political favor causes harm.

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

Peace

DFrey

Fear

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

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

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

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

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

That woman has no right to dress like that.

School isn't for me.

I bought a gun today.

That's the wrong side of town.

Who does he think he is?

I can't get a better job.

Men don't have any rights anymore.

Where am I going to go to the bathroom now?

You can't be equal to me.

My mother is dying.

I have died inside.

Where is hope?

Fear.

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

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

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

Some fear is good for us.

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

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

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

Fear of the dark.

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

However, too many fears create anxiety about the possible.

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

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

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

Life is the oppressor.

None of us are getting out of it alive.

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

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

If you are hungry, you must say so.

Too many Americans are afraid.

They are afraid of the change in demographics.

Translated, white people are afraid of becoming a minority.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fear.

What can we do about fear?

The best approach is to provide support to the fearful.

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

A nightlight of truth.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Drop hate.

Be hope.

Peace

DFrey

Ethic

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

― Elie Wiesel

Our shared identity as Americans is in jeopardy.

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

The devil at the wheel is racism.

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

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

The anger, the fear settled upon a scapegoat.

Black people.

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

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

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

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

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

Ethics.

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

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

People must be fair.

Must be tolerant.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Labor unions failed the people.

Congress failed the people.

Government agencies failed the people.

Banks failed the people.

Manufacturing, industry, corporations failed the people.

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

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

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

With some help from Russian organized crime...

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

A nation that has turned its back on intellect.

A nation that ignores the moral character of its leaders.

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

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

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

That's where we are as a society.

Half the nation believes the other half has no ethics.

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

One is right.

One is wrong.

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

Witness the conservatives in Congress and the nation.

The times they are changing.

The world will not stop for you or for me.

By nature, the universe changes.

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

It is a fact that the universe is in flux.

What is not in flux are ethical standards.

The time to do right is always now.

Our American experiment is rapidly concluding.

It is arriving at a result asked by the founders.

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

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

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

Tipping points.

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

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

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

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

We are living through change.

From darkness comes light.

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

Never stop to confront evil.

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

Peace

DFrey

Moral

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

― Mark Twain

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

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

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

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

Sociopathy.

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

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

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

Politics, by definition, is amoral.

Religion, by definition, is moral.

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

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

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

Both conservative and liberal circles.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why does a religious order protect child molesters?

Why does a news organization give equal time to propagandists?

Sociopathy.

Sociopathy has dominated our world since time began.

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

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

It is the cancer on the soul of humanity.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Peace would mean cooperation.

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

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

Remember…

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

The ends justify the means.

However, this time, something is different.

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

This exploitation is not just local but the world over.

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

The sociopaths means of grooming the victim.

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

You'll be painted as a conspiracy believer.

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

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

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

We can call out injustice.

We can call out their insincerity.

We can call out their corruption.

We can call out their abuse of our collective goodwill.

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

We together can make the dream reality.

A true brotherhood of man.

Peace

DFrey

Opportunity

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

– Dr. Martin Luther King

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

Isolation.

Isolation of mind.

Isolation of action.

Isolation of opportunity.

Opportunity comes in two equal but distinct ways.

First, is there an opportunity?

Is there the possibility of employment in my community?

Will I be hired?

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

A happier life?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now our manufacturing corridors are empty.

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

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

Greed.

The second type of opportunity is one of personal discovery.

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

What do I want to do with my life?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Opportunity is a two-way street.

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

All anyone asks is for the opportunity to succeed.

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

We continue to limit access to opportunity to minority communities.

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

This prejudice extends to everyone who is not white.

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

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

Today is Thanksgiving 2019.

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

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

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

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

Their economic future.

When light casts its brilliance, darkness is created.

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

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

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

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

We can become the opportunity to build a better world.

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

Peace.

DFrey

Timid

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

Why do we fear to be wrong?

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

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

Prejudice.

Prejudice is a kind of temerity of the timid.

Lazy minds.

Prejudice is making judgments without truth or real evidence.

Do you see the link I'm talking about?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You don't want to look at the pile.

You know you have to go buy soap.

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

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

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

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

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

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

PESN

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

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

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

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

Welcome to the Jungle baby!

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

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

Boyscouts.

The Deep State.

Never Trumpers.

Adams is right.

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

It destroyed Reconstruction.

It denied the Equal Rights Amendment.

It shut the door on Gay rights.

It has allowed racism to flourish.

It has grown white nationalism.

It has promoted economic disparity between the rich and poor.

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

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

Is it too late to do anything about it?

Let us dare to read.

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

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

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

And write…

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

Write to that friend that has lost their hope.

Write and be that hope.

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

You are a star in a gathering host.

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

It always the time to do right.

Peace

DFrey

What Country

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

We have grown up in a culture of freedom.

A freedom that allows us to pursue our own happiness.

But that freedom does not come without a responsibility.

That responsibility comes asking us what country do you want to live in?

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

Of principals.

Of morals.

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

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

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

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

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

What has happened?

What has happened to our country?

What country is this?

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

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

Nothing can be done, everyone, everything is corrupt, so what does it matter as long as I'm left alone.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What country do you want to live in?

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

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

They know the weakness of its citizens.

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

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

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

A tyranny both foreign and domestic.

What country do you want to live in?

The time is now to do right.

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

Don't tell your neighbor to hope by themselves.

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

Be the hope.

Cancel out the evil of nihilism.

Be the hope.

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

Peace

DFrey

Judgment Day

We hold these truths to be beyond question.

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

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

This nation was founded on those truths.

Those truths of our Republic are real then and now.

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

Too many rely upon urban legend.

Too many rely upon personal myth.

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

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

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

That prejudice doesn't exclusively mean racial.

No.

It also includes those who like to sew quilts.

Those who like to fix up old cars.

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

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

That's a no brainer.

They like what each other says.

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

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

Why?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Everything is corrupt.

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

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

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

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

Somehow two concepts got lumped together.

Change equals corruption.

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

Freeing the slaves was a corruption.

Giving women and blacks the right to vote was corruption.

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

Black and white people marrying was a corruption.

Welfare is a corruption.

School lunches are a corruption.

Prayer out of school was a corruption.

Allowing gays to marry was a corruption.

Having a black President was a corruption.

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

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

Change equals corruption.

And anyone wanting change is corrupt too.

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

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

No!

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

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

Judgment day…

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

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

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

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

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

The nature of the universe is based on one truth.

Everything changes.

Peace

DFrey

Rule of Law

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

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

Most of the kids understand.

A few take that rule and write it in stone.

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

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

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

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

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

The heart is soft.

The letter is hard.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Neither is helpful.

Neither has a grasp on reality.

Neither helps moves humanity towards a better day.

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

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

Each can learn a lot from each other.

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

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

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

Who is the law for?

Who is the law against?

Who does the law work for?

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

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

They believe that the Constitution is in error.

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

My question is, what happened to law and order?

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

The laws that the administration is to enforce.

The laws that the judiciary is to adjudicate.

How can they defend injustice?

How can they support criminality?

How can political tyranny within a party be justified?

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

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

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

Case in point...

Secretary and Ambassador John Bolton.

Has a point of view.

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

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

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

Is he okay with this?

Has he been corrupted also?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Conservatives, liberals.

Tortoise and rabbits.

Slow, fast.

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

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

They need each other more than they know.

Conservatives in our nation have a fever.

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

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

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

We have to let them know we have their backs.

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

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

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

Reconcile and find truth together.

That's how democracy heals.

That's how freedom rings.

That's how justice sings.

That's how hope works.

Be the hope.

Peace

DFrey

Costs of Freedom

The rain comes down.

The refrigerator is empty.

Nothing in the cupboard but crackers.

Standing at the window, the grey sky barely moves.

Silence in this box on a hill.

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

I could go out?

But I'd get wet.

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

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

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

Maybe things will change in a little while.

I'll read to pass the time.

Celebrity news, no…

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

Children being killed.

Parents in terror.

Legislators looking for truth where it may lead.

Legislators playing games with the Constitution.

Tyrants and their disciples thumb their noses at justice.

Fall and spring may never come back in my lifetime…

Is it still raining outside?

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

I'm hungry.

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

Maybe way in the back?

Nothing.

I drink a glass of water.

I check back at the window.

The rain falls…

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

I go to the bathroom.

I brush my teeth.

Thunder shakes the room.

It's gotten worse outside.

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

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

What are you going to do?

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

It's in me.

It's within my power to change the weather.

To better my life and my community.

What's kept me inside.

Fear.

Fear of the unknown.

Fear of failure.

Fear of being uncomfortable with the truth.

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

Fear of beginning again.

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

I pull it open without hesitation.

The rain falls, and falls, and falls…

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

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

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

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

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

Drop hate.

Lift hope.

Peace

DFrey

To Fight For My Neighbor

Who is my brother?

Who is my sister?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fear is the enemy of free people.

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

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

Fear will break apart the strongest alliance.

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

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

To fight for my neighbor.

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

The self, the ego governs our actions.

It dictates to us to preserve ourselves at all costs.

Compassion is learned.

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

I was hungry, and you fed me.

I was lost, and you found me.

I was under attack, and you defended me.

I was sick, and you cared for me.

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

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

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

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

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

I drive defensively because your life is meaningful too.

Agreed upon norms of society.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To fight for my neighbor.

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

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

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

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

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

Pick up that light and fight for your neighbor.

Peace

DFrey

Justice Now

Justice now.

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

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

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

Time doesn't wait for any of us.

Time doesn't wait for those who are afraid.

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

They need to check themselves now.

Justice now.

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

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

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

Telling justice to wait is justice denied.

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

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

Today I said politics is an amoral belief system.

Politics, at its roots, is sociopathic.

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

To keep power.

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

The world through social media has broken bubbles of isolation.

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

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

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

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

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

What we see in Washington is the reality.

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

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

What is at the heart of this all?

It is simply nihilism.

Nothing matters.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Justice now.

This country is built upon the ideal of freedom.

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

You simply have to say no!

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

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

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

Grounding them.

Telling them, they need to treat other people better.

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

Now.

Now is always the right time to do right.

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

Justice now.

Justice now.

Justice now.

Peace

DFrey

Defiance

Give me liberty or give me death.

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

There comes a time when silence is betrayal.

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

Defiance.

A word.

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

The defiant.

Heroes of truth.

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

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

Defiance.

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

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

He stood defiant to our traditions.

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

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

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

His retort?

So what…

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

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

Damn the defiant.

This President is not playing political games.

He is not a chess master.

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

He's highly capable of acting reasonably.

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

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

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

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

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

You are known by the company you keep.

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

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

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

Speaker Nancy Pelosi recognized that this President would impeach himself.

How could she know that?

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

They can't stop on their own.

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

Someone has to be…

Defiant.

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

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

This isn't political.

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

They will stand their ground also in defiance.

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

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

You're ignorant, unjust, traitors...

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

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

Peace

DFrey

*Wikipedia.com