A New Hope

Discussing Star Wars and politics may seem alien.

The failure of Star Wars episodes 7, 8, and 9, along with their diminishing box office and fan hatred, share a common underpinning with half of American voters supporting Trump.

How's that?

In a time far, far away, the business of show business was about being a factory of Hope.

Movies are our modern-day way of telling collective tales.

Good stories have a template.

Best sellers have a template.

And the biggest seller of all time is stories that deliver Hope.

No one is getting out of this life alive, and we all know it.

Stories of Hope ease the pain of life and the foreknowledge of one's own death.

They bring a smile.

A tear.

A thump in the chest that says you did well.

They put asses in seats that sell tickets over and over again.

Hope.

The original Star Wars trilogy started off with a subtitle, A New Hope.

Hope.

Before episodes 7, 8, and 9 lit up the silver screen, there was Hope for a new start.

After episodes 7, 8, and 9, Hope didn't show up.

Just like our politics for the past 40 years, promises were made but were never fulfilled.

American society has made a lot of promises to itself.

But like so much of our society today, it's based on hype and not substance.

Special effects, but no story.

Grandiose plot twists without ever having earned it.

Characters that serve no purpose.

People are not that dumb.

They expect and deserve the respect that the time they devote will see a return on their investment.

In episodes 7, 8, and 9, the producers made promises that they had no intention of fulfilling.

They had another agenda.

Their agenda was not about giving Hope but about personal enrichment and the enshrinement of power.

The suits had forgotten what put butter on their bread.

Making their fans happy.

Giving Hope.

Yet Hope arrives unexpectedly from places and sources not looked for.

Hope came in the face of a puppet.

The child.

The child restored lost faith.

It knew its limits.

It knew what the starving Star Wars fan needed.

Not promises.

We needed Hope.

We need to see the bad guy get punished.

We need to see the good guy win.

We need character development that will make our dreams and desires manifest.

Hollywood is a dream factory for the heart.

Washington is a dream factory for the People.

You can't separate the people from their hearts; they're one and the same.

Stories have a beginning, middle, and end.

We are all raised as children to know this.

This template has been around for at least 10,000 years.

We want to see the good triumph and the evil defeated.

It doesn't happen as often as it should in real life.

This is why we turn to our entertainment to express the ideals that we hold dear.

Hope.

Hope is best if you want a return on your investment in film.

Hope is the best bet for anyone who wants to lead a people.

Peace

Daniel J Frey aka Toby

Rescue

You can't save a drowning person if they believe they can swim.

A person's confidence in their belief provides protection from self-doubt.

The enemy of any belief is doubt.

This is why belief is fortified through a structure of rituals.

You daily repeat a ritual to remind yourself of your commitment to your belief.

Any doubt means you have slipped up.

You left the belief; the belief did not leave you.

A daily affirmation, a daily repeating of sacred words, enshrines the structure of belief in your daily ritual.

Consequently, generally speaking, most beliefs do not lose any followers.

They live, worship, and believe within the protection of like-minded practitioners.

Racism is a belief.

Racism is a belief.

People live, worship, and believe alongside their fellow practitioners that the white race is solely responsible for the history of this world.

Racism does not lose many followers.

Racists use words of discrimination against the race, gender, and sexual orientation that they know are not as important as they are.

The believers in white apartheid have no doubt in their correctness.

Their faith has been given to them by their Bible, which is the word of God.

God created Adam, and he was white.

Moses white.

Jesus white.

The devil... Black.

Racists' belief tells them that the Bible is the story of the white race fighting against the forces of evil led by dark-skinned people.

They have no doubt.

You can't save a racist when they know that white equals power.

There is no doubt.

For centuries upon centuries, racism has been fed and grown in wealthy homes and poor.

It is a structure that gives comfort against the harsh realities of life.

Some of us liberals believe we can rescue the racist.

But like a person drowning in a river, if the lifeguard is not careful, they too will be pulled down to the bottom and die.

Racists can't hear us call them back to shore.

Racists can't see that too many people have died.

Racists feel it in their hearts and minds that they are right and we are wrong.

Half this country voted for racism in November of 2020.

Half this country voted for the protection of the Confederacy.

Half this country voted for the separation of immigrant children from their asylum-seeking families.

Half of this country voted for discrimination against women and gays.

They don't want to be rescued because the water they're swimming in is fine.

They see no danger.

They don't see the dark water rising.

They don't feel the riptide pulling them down.

You can't tell a person they're wrong when they believe they are right.

Racism is a belief.

These senators and congresspeople are defending the white power structure in America.

They are willing to burn the Constitution to keep that structure in place.

This is what we who believe in the Constitution's heart are fighting against.

We genuinely believe in the words that all people are created equal.

So what do we do?

We listen to wise words on how to travel together to the beloved community.

We resist evil.

We make friends across the divide.

We defeat injustice that makes victims of both the target and the actor.

We suffer hate with dignity and grace.

We love, not hate.

We know that the universe bends towards justice every time.

Every time.

That's what we will do.

Peace

Daniel J Frey aka Toby

To Feed Evil

The comfort food of evil is fear.

There are three types of people in this world, with a varying degree of mixture between the types.

There are evil people.

There are good people.

There are those in the middle who are neither.

The majority of people throughout our collective history are those who pack the middle way.

Their primary goal is to be left alone.

To be insulated from the hot and cold weather of life.

Their choice is not to choose.

To maintain this choice, they have to believe in fear.

Evil is happy to provide the fear on which the fearful feed.

In America, this food is equal.

The founders of this nation were afraid to make everyone free and equal.

The fear was fed upon and made black people 3/5's of a human.

The fear was fueled when states declared they did not have to obey the federal government.

The fear was fueled during the Civil War, which was fought to unite a nation but ultimately failed to quell the fear of equality.

The table of fear was now set after the failure of Reconstruction.

Reconstruction was that brief time when black people were given equal rights.

But the terror stalked the streets in white hoods, in whispers of protect your white women.

Hope was burned away by flaming crosses.

Middle America fed.

Middle America was comforted by its fear of the other.

Those people who live on the bad side of town are different from me, they told themselves.

We're different, we're good, we're blessed by God.

We humans like to feel superior.

We like to feel we are doing better than others.

The fear-mongers know this.

The fear-mongers who profit from feeding the racial fears of this nation gather to themselves great wealth and power.

These fear-mongers are not just in government, in industry, in boardrooms, but they're in your home.

In your circle of friends.

They keep the heart of racism beating.

Once upon a time, the home of the racist in America was the Democratic Party.

But once President Kennedy and President Johnson pushed for the Voting Rights Act, the Dixiecrats felt uncomfortable with the main course set out by these progressive liberals.

They did not like where the nation was going.

The racists wanted the old bone they had been chewing on since Reconstruction.

Nixon and his election team saw an opportunity. 

They called upon the racists to leave the Democrats and come over to the Republican whites-only picnic.

Since Nixon, that's where the racists of America find their daily bread at the table of the Republican Party.

Trump did not create the menu that feeds fear in our nation.

He is the latest head waiter to take advantage of racial hate and hunger in our country.

Racism, at its heart, wants us to believe that other people are to blame for why we don't have nice things.

Racism is a way of deflecting personal responsibility for the problems we face.

Blame the other guy.

I can't be to blame for why jobs moved away.

I can't be blamed for the decline in wages.

I can't be bothered to vote.

I can't be evil, can I?

The Republican Party is happy to feed the fears of Americans.

It's the easy thing to do.

It's hard to get people to do the right thing.

How easy is it to floss your teeth every day?

Get enough steps in?

Read a book?

Talk to a friend?

Doing good is not easy because if it were, everyone would do it.

So here we are in a plague that is killing thousands every day.

Half the nation believes in the racism of Trump.

But more than half don't!

Got to keep your eyes on the prize.

If it were easy to get to the Brotherhood of Man, all of us would be there already.

Peace

Daniel J Frey aka Toby

To Be Blind

No morning.

No night.

No afternoon sun.

No fog in the trees.

No rainbow in the dew.

No leaves saying goodbye.

No ocean waves.

No fields of grain.

No light on.

To be blind.

Tears not seen.

Despair not seen.

Dreams broken, not seen.

Hearts emptied, not seen.

Innocence is not seen.

Love lost.

Not seen.

To be blind.

Fear.

Fear put out the eyes.

Fear killed compassion.

Fear revoked equality.

Fear drove the heart of evil into the Republican Party.

Their fear grew in a sheltered darkness.

Fear.

Racism was and continues to be used by the GOP to maintain power.

65% of eligible voters voted in the 2020 presidential election.

79 million people voted for Biden.

73 million people voted for Trump.

73 million people shut their eyes.

73 million people closed their minds to the truth that Trump represents.

73 million people agreed that white privilege trumps the American ideal of equality.

73 million people agree that immigrants, black and brown people, women, gays, and liberals are not welcome in their vision of what America is supposed to be.

To be blind.

To be blind.

When we shut our eyes to our brother's plight, we shut off the possibility of our own happiness.

When we turn our backs on injustice, that same prejudice will rebound upon us.

When we refuse to do the right thing, we become small, something that place and time will forget.

Neglect.

To blind oneself on purpose leaves oneself vulnerable to falling off a cliff.

You can't see the future coming.

Americans are afraid.

Fear blinds people.

Blind people are easily led by those with a dark destination.

Fear.

This is why we must keep the watchfires burning.

This is why we must stand in the door with the lamp of truth held high.

This is why we will keep a seat open on the freedom train.

But this train is moving out.

We all have a place to go, and it's called the future.

This old world is not slowing down for any party or anyone.

Drop hate, be hope.

Peace

Daniel J Frey aka Toby

Possible

The rain falls.

The rain falls and gets everyone wet.

A yellow glow of light in a window tells you mom is still awake.

Drawings on the refrigerator.

A young man waiting in a car for a girl to come out.

My test results.

Possible.

Dad is angry.

Where is the money coming from this week?

He's on the wrong side of town.

God is angry.

God is silent.

Possible.

Will they care?

Will they listen?

Will they feel the things that I feel?

Possible.

The comfort that darkness brings is that it covers us up, so we don't have to be responsible.

We can't see the way things are.

We only see what we imagine.

The irresponsibility of comfort.

That's one of the discomforting realities of life in America.

Comfort shortens vision, curtails possibilities, and deadens responsibilities.

This past election, only slightly more than half of Americans were made uncomfortable.

Seventy million people were comfortable with darkness.

They were comfortable with the way things are, resentful, fearful of the way things could be.

Their comfort stopped them short in their journey of life.

They have stopped asking themselves what is possible.

None of us likes to admit when we are wrong.

It makes us uncomfortable.

Too many of us rely upon our own ego, which tells us that we can never be wrong.

We don't look at ourselves in the mirror and ask, "Who is that?"

We find ourselves at odds with the universe.

Impossible?

Justice is impossible.

Freedom is impossible.

Equality is impossible.

Love is impossible.

At the core of this impossible view of life, we will always find fear.

Fear of being wrong.

Fear of being right.

Fear of allowing ourselves to be happy.

Fear of being who we are.

Fear of sharing.

There are no magical words to stop this fear.

No magical incantation or phrase will turn our lives from darkness and seek the light.

For those of us who live in the light, all we can do is keep the door open.

Redemption is always possible.

It is as it has always been.

The world turns, and a new day comes.

The world stops for no people, no person, no government office.

Life lives; it does not bury itself alive.

We all want love and happiness. 

I know I'm not the only one…

Peace

Daniel J Frey aka Toby

Home

Home is where you are, not where you're going to be.

Where are you today?

Are you on your way to work?

On your way to the refrigerator?

On your way to despair?

To hope?

Everyone is seeking meaning.

Meaning of life.

Meaning to sadness.

Meaning to circumstance.

Home is where you are.

What does that mean?

Ideas are given power by the people who believe them to be true.

The idea of home, for many, is an external dwelling.

A place where four walls come together under one roof.

Yet whether you own a home or want a home, you can only rent that home.

All of our lives are a trek from one home to another.

We don't own it.

We are only caretakers.

The current occupant.

Renters.

Life.

Home is where you are, which means you are home.

You are home already, right now, this very second.

Where you are, so is your home.

You are the precious dwelling of the infinite.

Your life is the meaning of home.

Wherever you are, there will also be life.

Where are you going?

If you are looking for happiness, a home outside of yourself, what are you looking for?

Unless and until you are happy within yourself, you will never find contentment outside of yourself.

Life is the journey, not the destination.

Life is now.

Life is in you now.

Your life is in your home, which is you.

But our lives are not tied to the ground.

All of our lives are mobile.

Each person is in their own recreational vehicle, traversing the world.

Each is gaining experience and building a collection of memories.

A scrapbook.

Where are you taking your home?

What is your destination?

Are you ignoring the signs on the road?

Are you drowning out the sounds in the streets calling for justice?

Have you pulled the curtains so that you don't have to see children caged?

Have you put up a fence to keep the neighbors off of your property?

If you have, you have forgotten you're a renter like the rest of us.

You're a renter.

We are all given only so much time in this world.

It is up to each of us to do our best with the time we have.

Not to waste our home.

Our life.

Our time.

Our responsibility to each other.

Our love.

On November 3, we have a responsibility to ourselves and our neighbors.

Vote to save our democracy.

Vote to save your home.

Vote for peace.

Vote for love over hate.

Peace

Daniel J Frey aka Toby

Masks of Hate

Slave Masters.

The Church.

The Klan.

The Anarchists.

The Nihilists.

The Fascists.

The Neo-Nazis.

The Skinheads.

The White Supremacist.

The Proud Boys.

The Boogaloo.

Pepe the Frog.

Q-Anon.

The history of the masks of hate.

The masks of hate that people wear.

People, yes, people wear these masks for a reason they believe in.

People wear masks of hate to cover their fear.

A fear planted into their spirits by people they trusted.

A fear of a world they do not want to see come into existence.

People fear a world where everyone is equal.

Because in an authentic sense of fear, equality means personal responsibility.

If everyone is equal, there is no one to blame when things go wrong except for yourself.

When life doesn't turn out the way you expect it, who is to blame?

Whole societies, whole industries, and whole religions base their existence on blaming the other.

The other guy, the other stranger, the other foreigner, the other unrighteous asshole.

Scapegoats.

A person, a people, to blame for why we don't have nice things.

I certainly can't be to blame because God is on my side.

I'm not the asshole.

My friends believe the same way; we can't be wrong.

My parents wouldn't lie to me.

Masks of hate.

And who maintains these masks of hate?

Who has built empires of wealth on the destruction caused by these masks?

People with wealth and power.

Ever try to take a bone away from a hungry dog?

A hungry dog will bite your hand.

It will let you die so it can have just one last chew on its bone.

It won't listen to reason.

Its only concern is that the bone belongs to it.

The bone is believed to be the dog's only means of survival.

If the dog hasn't learned how to share, trying to take a bone away from it will bloody your hand.

People wear all kinds of masks.

The mask of hate covers the fear of reprisal.

That inevitable future that is coming, we can all see it now.

A brotherhood of man where blacks and whites live together.

They judge each other by the content of their character, not the color of their skin.

People have a fear of this future becoming real.

They imagine the same horrors that they allowed to happen to black and brown people to be reciprocated.

They are fighting for a false way of life.

Just like that dog fighting for that last piece of gristle on a bone.

So, as we prepare to vote out the White House's chief hater and creep, keep in mind the prize.

A world where children are no longer taught to wear masks.

A world where children can be who they are.

Free, living in truth and justice for all.

Peace.

Daniel J Frey aka Toby

Wait

The sun at dawn.

That coffee in the pot.

A red light.

Wait.

In line for a meal.

In line for a job.

In line to vote.

Wait.

To be seen.

To be recognized.

To be respected.

Wait.

Freedom.

Equality.

Justice.

Peace.

Wait.

It's easy to sit back and not do anything when you have everything.

It's easy to dismiss the tears, the fears, the anguish of people not like you.

It's easy to live in fear of change.

It's easy not to see, not to hear, not to feel when doing so means sharing this world.

It's easy to do nothing.

It's easy to tell others to wait when you are in power.

It's easy to wait.

Wait.

Why should we wait?

This nation of ours has wrestled and fought over the timetable of freedom that it laid down in its foundational documents.

It has fought every step of the way to allow those words of freedom to ring true.

All are created equal...

You would think that a People whose credo is freedom for all would be cheerful and grant this to be true.

Yet here we are today in the first part of the 21st century in America, and a good 40% of Americans do not agree with the Constitution.

My freedom is more important than your freedom.

If you have to have freedom, I'll do away with my freedom before I allow you any of mine.

My power is sanctified; I will not share my abundance with you, the takers.

It's bizarre that a People who declare themselves defenders of liberty and justice only mean themselves.

No one else need apply.

Wait?

No, we ain't waiting anymore.

The Freedom Train is pulling out of the station.

We've got a few more weeks until this election, and we're moving on.

Freedom won't wait.

Freedom, like a falling rain, will change with the season.

In the Winter, it will fall like snow, slow and beautiful.

During the Spring, it was long and drenching.

In the summer, hot and fast, the thunder rolls across the hills and echoes in the valleys.

There is no need to wait.

Everyone has a ticket to get on the Freedom Train.

It's up to each of us to get on board or not.

To get your ticket punched, all you have to do is vote.

Don't wait.

Vote.

Peace

Daniel J Frey aka Toby

The People

Who are we?

Important.

Forgotten.

On the street.

In the home.

Running a business.

Retired.

Able to leap buildings.

Fallen.

On the corner.

Behind the scenes.

Top floor.

Out the back door.

Who are we?

Driving.

Riding.

Marching.

Humiliated.

Fighting back.

Alone.

Together.

Who are we?

We are a people who can trace our origins through an ancestry that believes in freedom.

We are a people bound together in a struggle against our fellow humans who fear freedom.

A preference to live in the dark in both mind, spirit, and heart.

We are a people who stand on the right side of history.

A history governed by the simplest idea yet the most powerful in the whole of the universe.

Love one another as you would want to be loved.

If you are sick, you are taken care of.

If you are lost, you are looked for.

If you are afraid, you are protected.

This is the overriding idea behind the Constitution of the United States of America.

That a government of the people, by the people, and for the people would stand for justice.

Not just for themselves but for everyone.

Together, the People would secure the fundamental rights of freedom, prosperity, and happiness. 

We all might rise together to form that more perfect union of love.

Who are we?

We are the children of freedom’s light.

Peace.

Daniel J Frey aka Toby

Racism

Racism is a belief.

It is founded on a biblical principle in Western society.

More specifically, in the evangelical interpretation of what the followers believe is the divine word of God.

The following is the foundation of White racism in America: The Bible.

The Old Testament, taken from the Jewish faith, the Torah, was plagiarized by Christians.

After centuries of debate and internal genocide of its followers, Catholic Christianity introduced its Bible in the late 1500s.

Pissing off the Protestants in England who, in the early 1600s, introduced their King James Bible.

The King James Bible is the official racist text for racism, not the ungodly Catholic one.

The King James Bible.

The word of their White God.

The Bible is the literal, actual truth.

So Yahweh, Jehovah, God laid down the rules for a Bronze Age society, which was for the Jewish people.

The word of God is a guideline for everyday living.

Everything has a place and a place for everything.

Each person is born into a set of circumstances that God has prescribed for their life.

To wish for and to want anything better for your life is a sin against the will of God.

A poor person wants to have money.

Sin.

A woman who does not want to be beaten by her husband.

Sin.

A slave wanting freedom.

Sin.

To change your life is to declare the will of God is in error.

Which is a sin.

Punishable by death.

We are not to 'want more' than what we are given.

This is why in the Charles Dickens tale of Oliver Twist, when the orphan boy Oliver asks for 'more' gruel, he is seen as a sinner.

He is depraved, going against the will of God.

No matter if he is hungry, starving, or wanting more than what God has given you, it is evil.

So, the Protestants took the holy text of another culture.

People copied it word for word, gave some sizzle to some of the text, and presented it as their own holy book told to them by their White God.

This is the origin of the Old Testament in both the Catholic and Protestant Bibles.

Not the New Testament, which is a collection of letters written to the members of the early Christian Church some 150 to 300 years after the death of Jesus.

But that's for another day...

Racism.

Racism is a belief.

To paraphrase Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the most racist hour in America is that hour in church every Sunday.

The second most racist time is the hour that proceeds in Sunday school. 

I was raised Evangelical, a Quaker.

I can affirm what Dr. King has said.

The tenets, the foundations of racism, are taught in our protestant, evangelical houses of worship to the faithful as the foundation of society.

White makes right.

More than once, I listened to the following tale from the pew.

Noah built a boat.

He and all the animals, including his family, his sons, and their wives, rode out the storm.

When the land was dry, Noah was thirsty and decided to make wine.

He planted the seeds, grew the grapes, made himself some new wine, got drunk, and passed out.

While he was passed out, his sons performed some unnatural acts upon the sleeping Noah.

God got upset.

He visited a curse upon the three sons of Noah.

Upon Ham, he cursed him for being black.

That's why we have black people today.

Their blackness is an outward sign of their inherited sin.

That is why black people are considered lesser in the eyes of God than white people.

Dogs will have a better chance on judgment day than a black.

Do you understand the problem?

Racism is a belief.

It's a religion.

White religious people are defending their faith in God and the order of the universe when they are standing up for racism.

To present any kind of rational argument before a racist is useless.

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

Give up drinking

Give up drugs?

Unless they see their problem, it's impossible to elicit a change in mind and heart.

Once a person is a racist, their fate is set in granite tablets.

Like weeds in a garden, racists will always be with us.

But we don't have to let the weeds take over the garden of humanity.

We can keep racism in check.

We, the people, have that ability.

That power.

Because together, we are stronger than any Bronze Age story.

Together, we have the power to demonstrate a better way of life.

A life where harmony makes the very stones sing.

As night is to day, the light of justice, of freedom for all, must rule our lives.

Why?

Because love is easier to live with than hate.

There is a philosophical idea that we need opposites to understand what is right.

As night is to day.

As hot is to cold.

The beauty of life is to see the wonder, the miracle of the diversity of humanity.

All want the same things.

Life, liberty, freedom, and love.

Love asks more, never less.

Add love, and find hope.

Peace

Daniel J Frey aka Toby

Say Her Name

Breonna Taylor's death and subsequent charging only of the officer who shot into other apartments and not the two who did and who shot her and killed her is a blatant cover-up.  

Covering for bullies.  

Covering for racism. 

Covering for a white apartheid that says one race gets justice while everyone else doesn't.  

Racism is not something that will smoothly go away.

No one answer will empty the hate of racists. 

Racism is a belief, and like any belief, it has its promoters and followers.  

It's priests, and it's laypeople.

It's policing of policy.

Ultimately, we will never get a leopard to willingly change its own spots.  

Ain't going to happen.  

Which is why we move forward, why we march, why we shout, why we talk, why we listen.  

Why do we work together?

Why do we get into good trouble? 

We believe in justice for all, which will lead us to that better world where the brotherhood of man awaits us.

Justice is not just for the opposed but also a freeing of the mind and soul of the oppressor. 

Justice comes in ways we do not always expect.  

Yet justice will always answer for those who ring the bell of freedom.  

Peace.

Daniel J Frey aka Toby

Hello?

The media has a collective cognitive disorder.

The media reports news and then forgets what information they said.

When the Pandemic first struck America, all news sources put up CDC charts of the potential total number of deaths over time.

Does anyone remember those charts?

When you looked past a year, those numbers mounted up to 500,000 to a million dead.

Every day, you can hear the media wince about why this President acts the way he does.

Why does he lie and act the way he does?

Why?

Why?

They seem to forget that they tell us one week he's a sociopathic, malignant narcissist liar, and the following week it's totally forgotten.

Why does he keep lying?

Why does he have trouble with facts?

Why doesn't he remember what he said?

I'll acknowledge that the media are providing a kind of service to the nation.

Not everyone is up to date on every turn of current events.

These media people have busy lives; they can't be expected to keep track of facts.

Current day fact: Those who enter a public building today have to be reminded that there is a plague killing a thousand-plus people every day, and they need to wear masks.

Some people, very human, may not realize it's still killing people.

They have to be reminded.

The average person is too busy to keep the facts of a worldwide plague at the forefront of their lives.

A plague...

So the news purveyors do a rehash, a gentle reminder to their consumers each day of what was on the previous day's menu.

Yet the media forgets what they say as soon as they say it.

Yet the media forgets what they say as soon as they say it.

Yet the media forgets what they say as soon as they say it.

The biggest one in the past year, which continues every day, is what the media said about the mortality rates for black and brown people.

After the first two months, studies of mortality rates demonstrated that black and brown people were more adversely affected by COVID.

Black and brown people died more often than white people.

It was said over and over and over again.

Then, by June, we start to get a set of silly questions out of our news hosts.

Why are the President's supporters not wearing masks?

Why is the President saying you don't have to wear a mask?

Why are the President's rallies requiring attendees not to wear a mask?

Why are guys and gals with red hats, white trucks, and Trump flags all refusing to wear masks in public?

These questions require a memory.

The news hosts told America that black and brown people die at a higher rate than white people.

These questions require deductive reasoning.

Being able to recognize that 2 + 2 = 4.

If our news hosts didn't do more than just read the news and look at what the red hats are saying to each other daily.

Conservative Americans posting to each other over social media shared this scientific data that COVID-19 kills blacks.

Let the celebration begin!

The news hosts ask, Why are people not wearing a mask?

The answer is racism.

Racism you fools.

The second the news media said blacks die at a higher rate than whites from COVID was the second that white apartheid America took off their masks.

It is why white racist Americans will not put their masks back on.

A side note, that's 37% - 40% of Americans, which is the current President's base.

Understand the simple math?

COVID became a plague that kills them, not us.

It kills brown people.

White racists want brown people dead.

It kills brown people...

This lack of cognition is genuinely an all-too-human response.

News flash!

Did you know that McDonald's has a new breakfast sandwich?

Did you see that rat running away with a slice of pizza today?

Did you know we landed on the moon?

Humans take in information at all speeds.

From instantly to not at all.

News organizations report the news, but they don't necessarily understand what they are saying.

They speak before they think.

They expose themselves as readers, not thinkers.

They drill into the middle of a story and are proud of the hole they made.

But they all have a problem with the bigger picture.

The bigger meaning of what happens in the world.

If problems could be solved by throwing a switch, it would have been done long ago.

Problems in any society are an ugly mixed-meat sandwich.

Everyone in their camp thinks they got the best sandwich.

Each camp is willing to go to war over the selection of meat and condiments.

What we all need is a bridge of information.

A conduit of truth.

A concierge of just the facts.

Just the facts.

The facts.

Some good people are keeping track, making connections, and doing the work of analysis of the facts.

How for every action, there is a reaction.

The leaping from headline to headline, screaming like Chicken Little that the sky is falling, will only make a nation weary.

Listen more.

2 + 2 = 4

Serve, We the People.

Facts.

Listen.

Peace

Daniel J Frey aka Toby

Truth Will Out

It starts with…

Ate a cookie before dinner.

Took a dollar from your mother's drawer.

Told the girl at school she was ugly.

Truth will out.

That day when you smoked a cigarette.

The time when you got drunk.

When you forgot your child's birthday.

Truth will out.

Speeding.

Ignoring.

Justifying.

Entitling.

Truth will out.

The reason why you lost your job.

The reason you can't say "I love you" is...

The reason why you don't care anymore.

Truth will out.

Truth is fact.

Fact is the truth.

The President lives in a world of his own lies.

An adolescent fantasy world where nothing matters but his own mortal satisfactions.

We are right to say, where are the strong, who can be trusted?

Truth will out.

The truth will out means the facts; the truth will be known.

The President lies, and these lies are killing us by the thousands every day.

This President's followers want the chaos; they want the deaths of those who want a world where everyone is equal.

Where everyone has justice.

This is a white man's world; all others need to die...

Everyone has it in their power to be the worst or the best they can be.

A bird doesn't say, Can I fly?

It flies.

No one is keeping them from flying with the rest of the flock.

Why do we believe that others are to blame?

Why do we choose to live in a fantasy instead of the truth?

Why does this President prefer his lies to facts?

Why do so many want to believe in the lies this President tells?

The answer has been blowing in the wind since the foundations of this Republic.

A system based upon racial inequality where the whiter you are, the more justice you reap.

The more you can hide the truth about yourself.

This is a fact in America.

Facts are stubborn things.

How do you change facts?

You change the conditions of the question.

You stand for justice.

You speak up for equality.

You march for good trouble.

You demonstrate through words and deeds that you live a life of compassion for all.

The lies are exposed.

They perish.

The truth lives.

And then it happens…

Follow truth; it will lead us all to the brotherhood of man.

Peace

Daniel J Frey aka Toby

Forgotten

Rural America and urban America, are they really different?

Both are underserved by their elected leaders.

Both suffer from the absence of economic investment.

Both see the absence of real jobs.

Both are forgotten by educational institutions.

Both lack 21st-century infrastructure.

Both have stagnated wages.

Both shop at the only store in town, the Dollar Store.

Both cash their checks at a Payday Loan.

Both have lost hope.

If they are both so alike, what keeps them from seeing each other's plight?

Racism.

Racism.

Racism.

I am white.

I was raised in the middle of white, racist, suburban, rural America.

Where everything, including God, is defined as the head of the white race.

The first question you ask is, Where is that person from?

What is their race?

A queer reality permeates the community of white America.

White Americans believe the thing that keeps them from being in the same economic boat as black and brown people is their whiteness.

Somehow, whiteness grants a boon, a step up, a benefit of the doubt.

A buffer keeping them from the bottom of society.

Given the right circumstances, the rich, the wealthy, the aristocrat, the ownership class will invite them to their cash orgy.

It's their 'whiteness' that grants superiority even in the face of their apparent poverty.

The poverty of ideas.

The poverty of faith.

Poverty of spirit

The poverty of honor.

The poverty of community.

The poverty of empathy.

The perverse fear of reverse discrimination is real.

If equality were somehow made real, it is firmly believed that black and brown America would take revenge on white America.

As it was told to me over and over by my racist relatives…

Universal health care is only for the niggers…

If I had a broken leg and a black guy had a broken leg, the black guy would be treated first, get their treatment for free, and I would be told to go elsewhere.

Socialism is communism is a plot of the coloreds to take over our America.

The idea that justice for all floats all boats is a fairy tale to racist America.

You are either on top or on the bottom.

This real fear keeps racist America from seeing its reality.

They have been forgotten, it's true.

They have been forgotten just as much as black and brown people have.

The problem is that it has been, and will ever be, the wealthy who ignore rural and urban America.

The wealthy have gone by other names: aristocrats, the rich, the ownership class.

However, they remain the bane of humanity.

The takers.

Racism continues to blind us to the simple truth of the wealthy's greed.

If only the plight of racism could be waved away overnight.

But it can't.

It is as much a fact as it is a belief in the human racist heart.

If we are to come together, somebody has to reach out a hand of compassion.

Somebody must be strong and say, Welcome, friend.

We hear you.

Let's work together.

Someone needs to say my table is open; come eat and be joyful.

That someone can be you.

You can be the bridge where the forgotten will meet.

You and I can be hope.

It begins today.

Now.

Peace

Daniel J Frey aka Toby

Sports

There is nothing like taking away the bottle from those who indulge in indifference to bring attention to what really matters.

Indifference is a kind of drug.

Indifference numbs our sense of responsibility.

It numbs our compassion.

It numbs our hope.

It blinds us to brutality.

It makes us deaf to the sounds of injustice.

It cripples our will to stand for what is right.

Sports is the novocaine injected into the jaw to keep you from feeling the pain in society.

Have you ever heard of sports called the Great Distraction?

A pastime?

What are we being distracted from?

What are we passing over?

The answer has always been to keep us happily gelded and not question why things are the way they are.

You give a child a toy and tell them to go play so you can do the thing you want to do.

You do this because you don't want to make the effort to engage with the child.

Boring!

You don't want to take responsibility because it's inconvenient.

You have better things to do.

You. You. You. You.

Distraction.

Sports play their part in our society.

In and of itself, it is not evil or good.

Except for that worldwide territorial organized crime online gambling thing...

The Fix is in...

It is a thing that can be enjoyed.

But ask yourself why this President and his supporters were so gung-ho to get sports back?

Distraction.

Today, right now, the NBA leads the way to stop the distractions.

They have the power of their members, as does the rest of sports, to focus the attention of a nation.

They have the power to break the stalemate of indifference.

They can address our broken police force.

They can be more than a distraction.

Distractions...

COVID came along and removed some of our distractions.

George Floyd's brutal death and the indifference of the officers who killed him burned into the hearts and minds of all those who saw the video.

Enough is enough.

Time and time again, the integrity of our police force has been demonstrated to be broken.

Broke.

When a thing has been repaired over and over again and still doesn't work?

Is it time to get a new thing?

Am I right?

Rethink what is possible.

Responsibly, our old, broken police forces should be set aside.

And in its place, a new force created.

A new force reimagined.

What it should be.

A clean slate.

Some things that broke can't be fixed; you have to get new ones.

This time, genuinely based on justice for all.

Our current police force will no longer be the de facto guardians of white supremacy.

To truly protect and serve all.

No longer should they see themselves as the Marshall in a lawless territory to be judge, jury, and executioners.

But to serve and protect a diverse modern society.

Some things that broke can't be fixed.

You have to get new.

Peace

Daniel J Frey aka Toby

How

How do we help the blind see?

How to help the deaf hear?

How do you help the numb feel?

Obligation.

How can I help?

How can I matter?

How can I walk the walk?

Compassion.

How to run?

How to reach?

How to be hope?

Love.

The acid that will dissolve any democracy is willful ignorance combined with intolerance.

Willful ignorance is defined as the choice to ignore reality.

A preference, a choice, not a mistake.

Willful ignorance is tied spiritually to entitlement.

I am owed, I deserve, I’m next in line, I will take at the expense of others.

Consequences are not for me.

Consequences are only for those who are unfit, unworthy, on the other side…

Willful ignorance, intolerance, and entitlement are walls of fear built by humans.

They are high, they are thick, they are not fragile.

Many have tried to attack these walls directly, but always with no effect.

You may win a battle, but not the war.

Not only will the individual rebuild these walls, but the community that they protect will assist.

People who live protected behind the walls of willful ignorance, intolerance, and entitlement are numb to voices in the streets.

They are numb to the images of despair.

They are numb to the feelings of loss.

How do you reach them?

Why would you want to reach them?

Really?

Why?

Haven’t they placed themselves above humanity?

Haven’t they walled themselves off from human kindness?

Haven’t they buried themselves in the dirt like the living dead?

Yes, they have.

Fear will always have the potential to make all of us do bad things.

For those who have been given much, much is expected.

If you know how to swim and someone is drowning, love says save that person.

If you know how to stand and someone has fallen, love says help them up.

If you know the truth and someone has lied, love says speak up.

Someone has to be the adult in the room.

We are not here to save those who are already safe.

If you are reading my words, more than likely, you are in the choir of hope.

To round out our choir, we need all the voices of the earth.

That’s why we care.

That’s why we fight.

That’s why we sing.

We are not afraid of the fight for justice.

We will stand outside the walls of willful ignorance, intolerance, and entitlement, calling to our brothers and sisters to join us in a beautiful land.

There is redemption

You can begin again.

A land where fear has its place.

A land where love leads the way.

Peace

Daniel J Frey aka Toby

Hope Again

To feel fear in laughter.

To know hate in singing.

To touch anger in a smile.

Despair in a smile.

Hopelessness in a glance.

To feel real pain when someone falls.

Your heart stops at the clash of loud sounds.

Bright lights burn.

Brilliant color stings.

Tears flow on your face; they do on mine.

Your joy is my joy.

Your fear is my fear.

Your hope mine.

Have you felt the thrill in a song?

Have you felt the melting of a heart?

Have you sung with the voices of the forest?

Do you converse with the steady mountains?

Does the sea speak of a better world?

Can you feel the individual's dreams, the group, and the city push you into giddy laughter?

Can you feel the loss of one life push you into darkness?

Do the waves of ignorance beat your mind?

Does silence crack your skull?

Being an empath does not give you clairvoyance.

You feel real pain, real pleasure from other people.

But those feelings don't tell you why?

Why are they afraid?

Why are they in love?

Why are they resentful?

Why are they angry?

Other people's emotions, especially for me, anger boils on my skin like acid.

I can see a lie before it's even told.

But a funny thing about being an empath?

You can't see your own fiction.

I had traveled a life, not knowing that the fourth wall of my personality did not exist.

I did not know my back door was wide open, letting in all the unregulated terrors of the human mind into my spirit.

That open back door swung so broadly that it let in all the fear, the darkness without boundaries.

Until I decided I couldn't take it any longer.

I had to leave.

Time to die.

But as I was going out the door, a voice caught me.

A voice that pierced the absolute darkness that filled my eyes.

A voice that called me back to the living.

A voice of hope.

Are you alright?

It's really late to discover at age 55 that you're an empath.

I've lived again these past 5 years and learned a lot about myself.

It explained a lot of the secret misery I kept.

The secret pain piled up.

But that voice of love asked me to live again.

To again begin.

And I meekly said I will try once more.

Once more, to help heal hearts and minds.

Once more for love.

This world can be a better place.

For all of us.

Try to see the world through the heart of another.

You will find you are also in that other person's heart.

They want what you want.

Peace

Daniel J Frey aka Toby

Listen

We, the people.

What did you hear?

These truths are self-evident.

What did you hear?

Created equal.

What did you hear?

Perfect Union.

What did you hear?

Establish justice.

What did you hear?

Promote the general welfare.

What did you hear?

Secure the Blessings of Liberty.

What did you hear?

I'll lay down even money you didn't hear what I heard.

Like the husband who only hears what he wants to hear.

Like the child who doesn't hear the word no.

Like the establishment employee who doesn't hear your problem.

Like the wait staff who don't hear your order.

Humans hear what they want to hear when they want to hear it.

Our beliefs color our communications.

If we believe in fairness, our ears are open to new directions.

If we believe in nothing, our ears are unfamiliar with the suffering of others.

If we believe in hate, we are deaf to tears.

A recurring theme I would like to elucidate is perspective.

The Constitution of the United States of America was not written for all of us.

It left out women.

It left out people of color.

It was a document about securing the rights and freedoms of white landowners who were standing against a generational white aristocracy who would take land in payment of taxes.

We, the people, took a while to be noticed.

We, the people, were the squeaky wheel on the shopping cart of democracy.

We, the people, read the Bill of Rights and asked, "Doesn't this apply to us, too?"

We kept on keeping on being in the ear of those who had already secured their freedom from oppression.

Funny how the oppressed, once granted freedom, will always find something they believe they are superior to.

Freedom is not willingly granted to anyone.

No.

And to keep our freedom, we have to make a good noise.

We have to form a choir to keep the music of freedom in our elected leaders' ears.

That's why we organize.

That's why we vote.

This is our duty not only to our past but to ourselves, alive here and now, and to those who will come after us.

Freedom is just a word if it's not followed by hard work.

If you can hear my voice and are comforted, then you are part of the choir.

If you hear a noise, it's a good thing.

It means you're not deaf yet.

Peace

Daniel J Frey aka Toby

Brotherhood of Man

Love will never ask you to subtract.

Divide.

Exclude.

Love asks all of us to add.

To multiply.

To include.

What side of the equation are you on?

Humans.

Humans are peculiar.

They can hold two contradictory thoughts in their minds at the same time.

Love your neighbor.

But not those people.

Feed the hungry.

Not them.

Care for the sick.

They deserve what they got.

Our lives matter.

Their lives don't.

COVID came along, and at first, there was a unity of mind.

Beat back the Grim Reaper.

But on the day when the media pointed out that black and brown communities got sick at a rate 2 to 4 times that of white communities…

The fight became their problem, not ours, in racist white America.

The pandemic was over!

I was raised in white, racist America.

I know what they say behind closed doors.

I know what they say at the dinner table.

The church.

At work.

They cannot imagine themselves as equal to a black or brown person.

They cannot imagine sharing their good fortune with a person of color.

They cannot imagine a community where all work towards a common good if black people are included.

They have cut themselves off from humanity.

Believing in a certainty passed down through the generations that white makes right.

The God is white.

Jesus is white.

How can we appeal to those who have locked their minds with the shackles of hate?

How do we get hearts to open to feel once again what it means to be human?

You can't do it.

Have you ever tried to move a blob of Jello with a needle?

You can't do it.

The individual can do a lot of poking, but the Jello won't budge.

What is needed is hands, many hands, a community, a society, a nation coming together with a purpose.

The purpose is to drop hate and lift hope.

The outcome is through all our efforts together, the mountain of racism has no chance.

We can lift that mountain out of its self-inflicted darkness.

A better world is our goal.

The journey requires all our effort today and tomorrow and every generation to come.

Won't you join me?

Love asks more of us every day of our lives till we lay ourselves down.

Peace

Daniel J Frey aka Toby

For Adults Only

Europe before the Second World War was not unified.

After the ravages of World War II, a community grew that wasn't there before.

Death and destruction poured over everyone, leaving no person unharmed.

War is hell.

Deep ethnic and aristocratic barriers remained after the First World War.

Europe didn't learn from its previous mistakes.

However, after the second fall, it did.

It learned about humanity.

It learned it needed community.

It learned it needed communication.

It left behind its childhood and became an adult.

It put away childish things.

The war matured European society.

This is not to say that there are no problems today.

Every child who becomes an adult, even a group of nations, will have its own personality disorders.

Its own childhood traumas.

It has its own unique set of problems, scars, and challenges.

But the event of the Second World War had an unexpected effect.

It matured the European Society.

They became adults.

A maturing of the mind occurs after a trauma.

Usually.

We learn from our mistakes.

Mistakes like war tend to do that.

Disaster and those who live after the war have their minds focused on what are the true priorities in life.

Priorities.

What is essential becomes paramount.

What is not essential is left behind.

The United States of America is an adolescent society.

It has never matured.

It's handicapped.

Its focus is on self, what I can get, not what I can do.

Extended terrible 3s.

It has never suffered bombs burning down its cities.

Millions of its men, women, and children killed for no good reason.

The city on the hill has been spared the apocalypse.

However…

2020 has drawn a line in the sand.

Time to put up or shut up.

COVID-19 has ridden into the streets of America on a pale horse.

This country will see death like it has never seen before.

The basic math is horrendous on what the casualties will be when this virus, which will finally go away in two to three years, goes away.

And what of the after?

Ignorance will be checked for a time.

A Community will arise.

People will talk about their shared experiences.

Their grief.

Their love.

Their hope.

Their shared sacrifice.

A new America will stand up.

Beat but wiser.

With maturity comes wisdom.

Maybe.

Maybe not.

Peace.

Daniel J Frey aka Toby