Season of Cruelty

Baseball for the year 2019 draws to a close.

Summer thinks about hanging on all year round.

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

A political party gives up being for all Americans.

The season of cruelty continues.

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

A natural disaster.

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

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

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

The poor are given poisoned water.

The season of cruelty continues.

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

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

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

Children in America are locked in cages.

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

Children in America are shot to death in their classrooms.

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

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

The season of cruelty continues.

The President tells us everything he says is a joke.

The season of cruelty continues.

Every season has its end.

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

They will go away.

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

Seasons are soft lessons for hard heads.

For those that forget easily.

Seasons don't yell at first.

Seasons don't come in with a bang.

Seasons come in when a society opens its door.

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

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

It has been a rising tide of hate.

A tide filled with ignorance.

A tide awash with selfishness.

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

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

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

Seasons teach lessons.

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

However, a lesson should be learned.

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

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

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

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

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

This tyrant will not be in power forever.

But there will undoubtedly be others like him.

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

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

We must faithfully do right.

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

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

Lest we forget.

Lest we forget our brothers and sisters.

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

Freedom.

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

It is the reason for the season.

Peace.

DFrey

Party Planner

Do you allow your crazy Uncle to plan Thanksgiving dinner?

Every family has one.

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

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

They don't discuss it.

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

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

The dessert?

Do they get to plan any games?

Do they get to decide who sits where?

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

The wise answer should be no, they do not.

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

The party pooper.

Every family has one.

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

Psychology defines them as sociopaths.

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

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

No.

The sociopath has many faces.

And that face is always turned towards admiring themselves.

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

They see no difference between good and evil.

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

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

It can be power and wealth too.

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

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

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

The sociopath cares only for themselves and their orgasm.

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

They will let you down every time.

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

They will be the party pooper.

They will spoil your event.

They will spoil your nation.

They will spoil your life.

They will destroy your party.

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

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

Our nation has one right now as President.

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

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

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

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

Good people are ingrained with the idea of redemption.

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

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

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

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

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

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

You can't have them give the blessing.

They can't give a toast.

You can't have them set the table.

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

You can't let them plan for the future.

You, yourself, have to plan around them.

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

Take it for what it is worth.

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

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

Don't choke.

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

Peace

DFrey

Barstool Knowledge

Washington never told a lie.

Twinkies can never spoil.

You have to wait 24 hours before you can report a person missing.

Buddha was fat.

Adam and Eve ate an apple.

Jesus was born on December 25.

Obama is from Kenya.

Barstool knowledge.

The things that people tell each other while consuming their drugs of choice.

Barstool knowledge is defined by another term, one-upmanship.

That lame practice in a conversation where one person states an experience and a round-robin follows of everyone else saying how their experience tops the previous.

Barstool knowledge starts out reasonably innocent.

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

It's been a fact of human society since one monkey sat on a branch next to another.

When one monkey said that the sky God told them that they had to give them half their food or God would become angry.

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

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

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

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

When the uncle tells that racist joke and everyone chuckles but is really embarrassed.

The party guest exclaims their story is a joke, but everyone knows it is true.

Barstool knowledge.

Psychology informs us it's because it feeds our expectations.

Our prejudice.

Our individual experience.

But our individual experience does not necessarily mean it conforms to reality.

We meet one jerk, and because there is this inherent need in humans to categorize, we label everyone similar to that one person as a jerk.

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

Barstool knowledge.

None of it is valid.

It gives comfort to ignorance.

It pads the truth, keeps reality out of our minds.

It sponges away our responsibility to others as well as to ourselves.

Barstool knowledge is an adolescent mind preferring a lie to the truth.

A preference for fantasy, the way we wish the world should be, the world should be under our control, there to please us, not as it really is.

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

At least not until this past week.

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

If you are not familiar, the President used direct quotes from fascist leaders of WWII Germany to say he is the chosen one, that Jews are not loyal to our democracy.

He also said he was the second coming of Christ, he was in fact, Jesus, the economy is the greatest ever, we have great background checks, climate change is a hoax, Putin played Obama, the President wants world peace, his tariffs aren't being paid by U.S. citizens, did I say he said he was Jesus to the Jews and that was all in a three day period?

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

Sociopath.

I said, sociopath.

I have had and continue to have direct experience with a sociopath.

Now you do too if you are residing in this Republic under this President.

They live in a world created in their own minds about their perception of the world and how it is there for them alone.

Their reality is in their mind and has nothing to do with the group's experience with reality.

At its core, sociopathy is a self-defense mechanism allowing the individual to survive in an adverse world.

However, sociopaths are not conducive to a stable government, a stable economy, stable relationships, both personal and impersonal.

You can never pin a sociopath down to the truth they are experts at moving their own goalposts.

It is also conclusive that sociopaths attract other sociopaths.

That's why all those people with barstool knowledge are so drawn and attracted to their messiah.

Sociopaths at their core cannot and will not ever share.

Like Homer Simpson at the buffet table, they will take the whole tray of fried shrimp with them back to their table.

The world is their actual oyster.

The only thing that will ever stop a sociopath and their followers is a consequence.

Something or someone has to draw a line in the sand and say stop.

They will not do it on their own.

They will not recognize the house is on fire.

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

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

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

How deep?

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

It's that deep.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here's some real knowledge to drop.

Love expects more of every one of us every day.

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

Peace.

DFrey

Liberty

They who can give up essential Liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither Liberty nor safety.

Better to die fighting for freedom than be a prisoner all the days of your life.

Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.

If Liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.

Liberty and justice for all.

The thread that binds our civil society together is being pulled thin once again.

Benjamin Franklin, Bob Marley, Lincoln, Orwell speak from their experience of those who would deny Liberty to others.

The other being you and I.

At the foundation of the idea that all men are free is found in the expression of Liberty.

For all its failings, our democracy has agreed upon a belief in the inalienable rights of its citizens and in the people of the world to their right of Liberty and justice.

Patriots known and unknown, in the halls of congress, in the halls of tenements have fought the good fight against the ignorance of the selfish.

We were the first nation on the earth to agree to put to the test our principles of freedom.

The Great American Experiment.

Could we the people form a government for the people and not to the benefit of one person, one party, one corporation, one religion, one ethnicity?

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

Could we over come?

No country in the world had declared for itself a challenge like this before.

No king, no prince, no czar, no queen, no business leader, no religious leader, declared that the average man had the right to independence.

Independence of thought, of congregation, of vote, of movement, of association, of speech, of press, of religion, of petition of grievance to your government.

As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, "Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed."

Liberty and justice for all.

The freedom-loving people of the world admired us.

In the hearts of some nations, a bond of friendship of kinship was recognized.

France gave this nation a gift an emblem of what the American people stood for in the world.

Freedom.

Americans fought with themselves for freedom.

They fought in the world for freedom.

They welcomed all those who came to their shore seeking freedom.

What better emblem than Liberty to stand with her torch held up high so that all could see the open door to that land high upon the hill of human ideals.

Even when the foundations were laid for the statue, the grinding teeth of the selfish demanded the door be shut.

There's no more room.

No more room?

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

Freedom has arms as wide as the universe.

Liberty encompasses all of time.

Justice is forever.

Love will always demand more.

We, as a people who believe in love, can do more than one thing at a time.

Freedom is not just for you, freedom asks you to extend that same freedom to everyone.

Liberty is not just for America; it is for every nation on the globe.

Justice is not just for one race; it is for all genders, creeds, and colors.

To think, to express that this ideal should go away strikes at the core of who we are as a people.

It is the exact opposite of those who believe in humanity.

It is the voice of hate.

It is the cruelty of selfishness.

It is the criminal mind who believes in might makes right.

It is the voice of the ignorant.

The hateful seem to have a short memory.

They act as if they have come upon some brand new idea that none of us have ever heard before.

They boldly stand before us and proclaim hate and selfishness as a cure for all the problems in the world.

As if none of us haven't heard it all before and have rejected it.

Each and every generation has rejected hate because of where it leads.

Hate leads any society that fosters it and gives it a place to live a death sentence.

The forces of good are taken as being weak will rise up and wash away the ugliness of hate.

This President and his sponsors and supporters little realize the sand upon which they stand.

Ask history where are all the tyrants now?

Where are their statues?

Where are their people?

How are they remembered?

Now ask where the leaders who promoted the general welfare are?

Who pushed for freedom?

Who demanded Liberty and justice for all?

Where are their people?

We're still here.

Peace

DFrey

Lost on Purpose

An old pair of shoes left behind.

A broken umbrella put under a bench.

Chewed gum stuck on a pole.

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

We left things behind because we wanted to.

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

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

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

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

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

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

People can be left behind too.

We leave them on purpose.

They have become an annoyance, to be avoided.

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

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

We use institutions of varying sizes to mitigate our responsibilities.

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

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

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

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

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

Lost on purpose.

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

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

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

A belief that strength at any cost is right.

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

They hate you and me.

We represent the other.

The taker.

They only see limitations.

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

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

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

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

They have made a life choice.

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

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

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

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

They're are happy hating.

Our President is happy helping them hate.

Hate has brought him power.

Hate has delivered him respect.

Hate fills his bank accounts with wealth.

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

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

The Republican Party continues to bank on hate.

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

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

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

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

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

The belief that America is conservative, not liberal.

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

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

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

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

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

They can't hear the voices in the street.

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

Through strength, they are right.

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

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

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

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

The darkness of the soul has a very short memory.

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

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

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

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

It doesn't hear the chant…

Do something.

We are not afraid.

We shall over come…

Today.

Peace

DFrey

Fringe

Carpets.

Carpets have a fringe.

A fancy decorative edge.

A flash, a glint there to catch the eye.

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

The center of the carpet is where you stand.

The fringe has an appeal in the beginning.

Look what I have bought into.

But it soon gets old.

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

What was once a feature is now a distraction.

It catches the dirt.

You can't get it clean.

Its only purpose was to draw attention.

Maybe I spent too much?

The broad weave of the carpet does the real work.

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

The fringe can't do that.

Now the fringe has tripped you up once too often.

It's time to trim the fringe back.

Maybe cut it off entirely.

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

It no longer serves two purposes.

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

It can do the real work.

Fringe.

Political movements.

Movements have their fancy edges also.

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

They stir the pot, get people talking.

But do they put feet into motion?

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

Or do they only think of themselves?

Often the political fringe will trip up a given society.

Will cause self-destruction of the individual.

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

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

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

They're not there for the children.

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

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

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

No.

No, they are there only for themselves.

Right or left self-interest does not discriminate.

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

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

The hardcore racist gets taken advantage of too.

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

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

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

The fringe.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We are all here to embrace not pull apart.

We are here to bring together, not separate.

We are here to love not to hate.

Peace

DFrey

Gone

Standing on the corner waiting for the ice cream man.

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

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

S&H Green Stamps.

Manual typewriters.

White only counters.

Single-sex public restrooms.

50 cent coffee.

Stockings.

Compassion.

Charity.

Civic courage.

Responsibility.

Leadership.

Consequences.

Justice.

Reason.

Common ground.

United States.

Gone…

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

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

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

America has awoken out of its dream.

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

Everyone was going to have justice.

No one was above the law of the land.

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

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

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

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

Where did they go?

Who took it?

Who is responsible?

We are.

You and me together.

We did it.

We destroyed the dream.

Dreams do not vanish on their own.

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

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

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

Dreams require you and me to march against giants.

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

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

The mind can bend time and space.

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

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

We want to be free of living in fear.

We want hope.

We need a new American dream.

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

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

That truth is the ignorant never went away.

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

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

Ain't going to happen.

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

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

They won't get on the freedom train.

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

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

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

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

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

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

They don't like the people at our party.

We all need to do the right thing right now.

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

You do the right thing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Will the good people fight for theirs?

Who will win out?

Injustice or justice?

It will depend upon you and I.

Peace

DFrey

Rules

Signs.

No Fishing.

Don't Walk.

Stop.

Yield.

Bio Hazard.

Caution.

Yield.

Do not kill.

What is your reaction to rules?

Do you cherry pick what you believe applies to you?

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

I'm late.

Why are those rules there anyways?

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

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

What are rules good for?

Many of us perceive rules as restricting us.

Laws restrict our freedom.

Buckle up.

The seatbelt is uncomfortable.

Don't text and drive.

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

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

Somebody put up that sign to stick it to me.

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

Nobody can tell me no.

Laws are there not to restrict just you.

Rules of behavior are not there as punishment.

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

That biggest rule of all, do not kill.

It's there to protect you from being killed.

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

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

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

Your belief stops at the point of your nose.

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

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

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

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

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

Rules are there to protect you.

It's stopping other people from harming you.

It's about saving you.

To keep us all safe.

It's not just about you.

It's about us.

We the people.

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

It's the grease in the machinery.

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

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

The vultures.

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

The smell of racism was evident in the air.

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

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

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

That principle?

From many one.

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

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

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

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

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

How long are we going to ignore our own stink?

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

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

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

The grease.

The sign.

The law.

The rule.

Through love, all things are possible.

Peace

DFrey

Not Me

When I see an elderly woman stumble and fall.

When I see a man stand on the corner lost.

When I see a girl disobey the traffic laws.

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

I say not me.

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

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

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

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

I say not me.

When I feel the desperate pleas for justice.

When I feel the passion of anger against violence.

When I feel the burning rage of neglect.

When I feel the fear of those, who hate.

I say not me.

Not me?

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

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

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

Our faults can blind us or open our eyes.

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

None of us are without fault.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Shame is only for humans who can still feel it.

Apparently, many do not know the meaning of love.

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

To grovel and fetch for the carnal pleasure of hate?

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

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

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

I feel the rage of neglect.

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

I see the man lost because of fear.

I stand.

I will never be silent.

Peace.

DFrey

Challenge The Impossible

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

Will a grain of sand stop a flood?

Does a single battle win a war?

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

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

Will you own only one pair of shoes?

One pair of pants?

One pair of socks?

One love?

Impossible…

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

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

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

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

How much time does it take to heal the broken?

To bring hope to the hopeless?

To love the loveless?

To break the illusion?

To care?

Impossible…

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

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

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

It is a conflict that will have no end.

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

The struggle.

The impossible struggle will not be over in a day.

Or a week.

Or a year.

Or a lifetime.

Or solved by one candidate.

The impossible struggle…

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

Evil cannot win unless good does nothing.

Brotherhood is a relationship.

And just like any relationship you need to communicate.

You need to give flowers.

You need to share meals.

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

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

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

You get up each day and struggle.

You go through your day and struggle.

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

The haters will not stop hating.

Neither will Love stop loving.

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

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

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

Those drops turn into a river.

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

It broadens and picks up those in lifeboats.

It rescues those that are adrift in the waters.

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

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

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

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

Peace.

DFrey

After the Tears

The unexpected shock.

The eyes strain to see life.

The heart leaps into the throat.

After the tears…

An old photo of a happy day.

The hand of a baby daughter in yours.

Eyes that look up and see you for what you are.

After the tears…

Death wants to kill all you love.

Death makes you run with all that you love.

Death haunts your every step towards freedoms precious light.

After the tears…

With the flood all around.

With your baby holding tight to daddy's strength.

With all you have, it wasn't enough.

After the tears…

No one heard.

No one saw.

No one cared.

After the tears…

After the tears comes the rolling thunder of justice.

A people should not tolerate the conditions of physical, and a type of mental enslavement.

In our nation, minds and hearts are captured by an ideology that allows mothers, fathers, and their children to die in dark waters at a nations doorstep is not a nation.

It is not a community.

It is a society that is sick.

A sickness that has been allowed to fester way beyond its expiration date.

This nation we live in has always understood what the right thing to do is.

Even other nations have been able to read our credo and have understood that Liberty with her torch held high is there to welcome the weak, the fearful, those without hope, the tired, the sick, the forgotten.

This nation we live in has forgotten its credo.

This nation has forsaken its honor.

This nation has abandoned human decency, compassion in favor of a short-lived political power.

Our nations mind is set against itself.

Through the roar of political lions, through the ripping apart of safety in neighborhoods, through callous disregard, lives are lost because it serves the ideal of retribution.

They deserve what they get because they are not like me.

Because they are not like me…

Not like me…

That's right.

That is not like us.

After the tears…

You don't have to be an empath to know that a baby girl clutching to her daddy's back who drowns with him as he sought freedom is wrong.

It's evil.

It's an evil perpetrated by men and women in power in our nation.

Not some mythical monster.

Not some alien from another planet.

Men and women, humans, who cannot see the individual only the inside of their closed hearts.

It stops.

It stops now.

It stops today.

We know what the right answer is.

We've all learned it once upon a time in America.

Love comes into the world and will set heart against heart.

Those that follow love cannot also support a blind human heart.

Love will separate a man from a woman.

Love will divide the parent from the child.

Love will demand that a nation do the right thing every time.

Every time!

Love asks more of us each and every day till the day we pass from the Earth.

A nation that practices love doesn't allow babies crying for a crust of bread to die.

Each and every death of anyone in our nations custody and those seeking refuge is further evidence of the cancer on America's soul.

I'll keep saying it, I'll keep asking it, I'll keep demanding it, I'll keep standing.

I'll never be silent…

After the tears will come the rolling thunder of justice.

After the tears…

Peace

DFrey

A Tree

It is understandable why you can't hear the song of a tree.

What is not understandable is why you can't hear the pain you create.

All of us can lose our connections.

Connections to our community, to our family and friends, to ourselves.

Regret.

Regret for our actions reminds us that we have harmed a person who we care about.

We don't want to be the "bad" person.

The person who acts and doesn't care who they harm.

Especially our friends and family.

Where do we draw the line of who we include in our group and those we exclude?

On a playground, children make fun of how a classmate is dressed.

Maybe they came to school that day in their pajamas.

Adolescents wear adult activities like merit badges on their sleeves.

If they believe that person over there hasn't consumed alcohol, hasn't smoked, hasn't had sex, they become the judge jury and executioner condemning that person as an outcast.

Adults don't move far from their own adolescent brains.

An example is how well do you draw?

Most of us stopped drawing some time as we enter into high school.

If you picked up a pencil and were asked to draw a cow, you would render at the very same level as when you last attempted to draw.

However, it turns out that drawing as is many aspects of life is a skill.

If you practiced your art for a few weeks, you would improve.

We humans can adapt.

We are not relegated to stay in a self-imposed past.

We can grow.

We can grow, and the fundamental idea is if we want to grow.

Growth can only begin once you love yourself.

We all need to forgive ourselves.

We need to break the chain of our own making that constrains our true self.

A chain to break is racism.

Most aspects of racism are learned.

Passed down genetically like cancer its darkness stops the growth of the individual.

Racism stops the growth of the community of the nation.

But this is nothing new.

Racists are not ignorant of what side of the line they stand on.

They like where they are at.

They know they don't like you.

Every aspect of their lives informs them from their community to the God they worship that they are doing the right thing.

So how are you going to convince them otherwise?

Do you think telling them they need to grow will change their minds?

Do you think asking them to quiet their minds and listen to the song of trees will allow them to feel regret?

…

…

Ain't going to happen folks.

Ain't going to happen that way for sure.

It's like standing out before a mountain and trying to call it down with your voice.

Humans don't work that way.

You're not going to convince a racially motivated person to vote for you because you say change is right for them.

The people who support the President are not concerned with who they harm.

We are not part of their group, part of their America.

They don't want to come together.

They don't want to move to the city.

They don't want to be told they are wrong.

They would instead burn down the forest than allow for the possibility that they could be wrong.

They can't hear us.

They really honestly can't hear us…

What do we do?

What can we do?

We grow…

We grow our selves.

We grow and become bigger and stronger than hate.

We grow our community, one day, one person at a time.

We grow our organizations, we reach for our brothers and sisters and encourage those that are reluctant to get involved that their fear is the soil in which their sprout must break through.

We grow by standing together, holding to truth and the fair application of justice for all.

We grow a smile

A smile that's more powerful and does more good than any rhetoric could do.

We demonstrate through the actions of our life, of our community that we are happy.

We grow…

Happy to have a family of every race, color, and gender, young and old.

The seed that cast itself upon the hard ground will never grow.

Hardened hearts…

Hardened ears…

Will never know the joy of that first green burst of a new life.

Time wears away the mountain…

Regret may whisper into the hardened ears as they witness the happiness they refused to join.

From the hard, lonely places of the world, new ears will grow.

They will ask…

What is that sound?

We will answer…

Love.

Peace

DFrey

Tactics

Let us listen to the sound.

Let us let the future worry about itself.

Let us take the time to be in the now.

Now.

Silence the mind…

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

Liberty and freedom faced a test of resolution.

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

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

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

Searing fear, coupled with divine instruction informed one side.

Fervent ideals bonded with modern practicality informed the other side.

The divide grew.

Freedom was only for the White.

Freedom was for all men.

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

Two camps.

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

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

Words versus action.

Words versus violence.

Violence versus violence.

War.

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

The defeated side never accepted the outcome.

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

Tactics…

I use to be an Orderly back in the day.

I worked at a suburban hospital in Cleveland, Ohio.

I learned how to take a pulse.

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

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

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

Our nation has a heartbeat, a pulse.

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

Or to listen to it.

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

It has an irregular pulse.

A blockage…

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

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

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

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

It takes a little time.

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

One who wants our world to do better…

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

Tactics…?

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

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

Mostly the left advocates making things work better.

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

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

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

We the libtards.

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

Change versus death sentences.

Is that really a tactic?

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

That's the flag they want to follow?

Tactics…

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

Beto talks about LGBTQ equality.

Sanders tactic is to promote democratic socialism.

Biden cheerleads about we can do better.

Harris talks about immigration and fairness.

Buttigieg promotes better voting rights protections.

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

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

I'll get it done.

Tactics…

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

Put all them Democrats into military prison camps.

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

Our Republic is on the verge of another heart attack.

We need a doctor…

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

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

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

But hold on…

The fearful are not to be attacked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

We're on the verge of a cardiac malfunction…

We need a stent put in to open our compassion.

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

We need a steady diet of hope.

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

These are good sound tactics.

Silence the mind…

Listen to the people.

Drop hate lift hope.

Peace.

DFrey

Masks

Most of us try to put our best face forward, but that face may not be our real selves.

I wear a mask.

It is a mask that I have put together to protect myself.

I suffer from too much empathy.

Too much empathy is a type of handicap in this world.

Peoples emotions can flood into me.

The first mask I use to deflect emotions that can flood over me is to hum to myself.

If the anger increases, I'll sing a random song softly to myself.

At other times I put on the mask of humor.

My best shield, my preferred boundary.

I have used that mask ever since I can remember.

It's my oldest and favored.

That mask was developed to survive violence.

When you're raised in a home where violence, mainly random violence occurs, it turns out to be a good thing to keep your empathy at a frosty level of awareness.

Dad could switch on violent anger at the drop of a hat.

He could be laughing and joking at one moment, but one unpredictable remark or action could send him into an angry fit.

It sometimes it could be defused with a well-placed piece of observational humor.

Sometimes it could not, and the bloody beatings would follow.

I still do not do well around anger.

I don't run away.

I don't hide.

I've learned to face it.

The darkness of man…

However, uneasy it makes me.

Just like a monster in a nightmare, I have found that if you stare into the face of anger, you will see its source.

Tonight around the world, our nation, in our homes we are facing a nightmare.

The source material of this nightmare has been crafted from our own shared experience.

There are issues we as a people have not addressed because we are fearful.

Fear is a force.

Fear, if not confronted, will grow into a monster called anger.

The beast called anger stalks the streets of the American consciousness.

Anger leads to hate…

The fear in the world and our nation is real.

Many want to hide from the truth.

It is more fearful to look into the source of the anger than it is to project that anger at the innocent.

I'm sure my father had a problem that made him angry.

But like most humans, instead of addressing the problem head on it was easier to beat to a bloody pulp his kids.

They offered no resistance.

So you're saying most problems don't offer significant resistance?

No, the complete opposite.

That's why problems are a problem because they resist ordinary human effort.

Most problems take the extra mile, the extra effort, more will power than the average person is willing to expend to resolve.

The biggest problem we have in this Republic is "Race."

A nation founded on freedom yet kept slaves.

That is, by definition, hypocrisy.

A Constitution that says all men are free yet these over here are not.

The duality of mind…

To be human, by definition means you can keep two thoughts in your head that are in exact opposition to each other.

Military intelligence.

Crash landing.

Jumbo shrimp.

Masks…

The war between the States never ended.

The battle to free men's hearts continues today.

Many wear the mask of civility, but in their hearts, they don't believe that all men are equal.

Behind these masks, a dark ocean of anger has swelled.

The finger of blame pointed at the innocent.

Scapegoats.

When the real source is never examined.

Where does this anger come from?

How do you tell a person they believe in a false God?

How do you tell a person they swallow a false story about themselves?

How do you help a person to understand that their problem is not outside of themselves?

It's inside.

It's them.

Like an addict, they blame everyone but themselves for why they are on death's door.

The racist needs someone else to blame because to face the nightmare that they are to blame for their life is too much to bear.

Generation after generation scapegoat and blame their object of resentment never once looking into their own hearts, minds, and actions that they are the source of their unhappiness.

Masks…

Masks only work for the short term.

No mask will save you from the beating.

The only way to save yourself is with the truth.

Be kind to yourself.

You are deserving of love.

Open your heart, your eyes and awaken from your night terror.

See that you are surrounded by a golden light.

That darkness that you are afraid of?

You only had your eyes shut.

Peace.

DFrey

Stronger Together

One day you may find that person you love, and they will love you back.

Stronger together.

That time when you were on top of a ladder, and that friend held tight at the bottom until your work was done.

Stronger together.

When your mother kept you home because you were sick.

Stronger together.

That night when you got a flat tire and called for help.

Stronger together.

One night, it was late, a mother and a father got a call that their son was in an accident.

The nurse couldn't tell them what was wrong until they showed up at the emergency room.

Once they got to the hospital, the nurse could answer their questions.

Their son had been drinking, he had run a red light and struck a utility pole.

No one else was hurt.

The father could have come down hard on his son and told him never to darken his door again.

The mother could have screamed and yelled and demanded why her son could make her life so miserable.

They both could have made the actions of their son about themselves.

However, their son was no longer a boy he was a man.

He bore the responsibility of a man.

Of an adult.

They came to his bedside and told their son that together they'll find the answers.

Together they can weather the storm.

Together they are stronger.

A storm of another kind has found its way into the heart of America.

A storm of the mind.

A dissolution of the conscious.

A thunder of misplaced rage.

A flood of half-truths mixed with a hailstorm of outright lies.

A belief that has been cultivated by activists and opportunists of a kind of American Apartheid.

A division between them and us.

Right and left.

Good and evil.

A propaganda that your absence of economic security is because the other has taken your fair share.

The other is responsible for all your problems.

I'm here to say that's a load of horse manure.

It may grow roses, but it's hard to swallow.

This division, sewed by these opportunists pushes the buttons of the disenfranchised.

You tell a generational factory worker their job is now gone because those union people asked for too many benefits when the truth is the owner of the company whose God is profit moved the company to maximize their board's profit share.

It has been the same damn story for all of human history.

The rich and powerful, the few, continue to pit the poor, the majority, against each other.

Consequently, the majority never hold those responsible for life's misery accountable.

The powerful know they must keep the people segregated, divided, to maintain their hold on the reins of power.

Otherwise, a true democracy might break out…

They know we are stronger together.

Stronger together.

The wind is howling outside.

For that matter, the wind is howling in a lot of homes across America too.

That wind is saying we don't need those people.

That wind says we can do it by ourselves.

That wind which whips up rage, hate, anger.

There can be no peace without honesty.

One day a man took some friends out to go fishing.

While out on that lake, a storm came up.

The people in the boat became afraid.

They started to blame each other for even thinking they could go out into the unknown.

Their fear turned to rage.

Some wanted to turn back, they were afraid of the unknown.

The others wanted to get to the other side of the lake, they were afraid of where they had come from.

Both sides blamed each other for they both believed there was no hope.

They began to fight each other.

They saw the worst in each other.

The storm was going to send them to the bottom of the sea, and it was the other sides fault.

How could we be to blame?

Then the owner of the boat, the adult, told the wind to be silent.

The rage stopped.

The boat owner told his friends, don't you see you're all in the same boat together.

Your fear is our fear.

Your hope is our hope.

Your love is our love.

We are stronger together.

Peace

DFrey

Grounded

Our President is a boil on humanities neck, but he's not the only one.

As the world becomes smaller as information, both real and false can be had in an instant.

The veil that was the American dream has been lifted.

It is not a pretty picture.

Like the reveal of Dorian Gray's portrait, all of the hatred, the crime, the bigotry, the injustice has left us with a gruesome portrayal of what America has been hiding from.

Through our own personal experience, all of us, no matter where we come from, try to put our best face forward.

Even though we may have a load in our pants most of us most of the time want to be perceived as good people.

However, if we were perfect, how come there is fraud?

Racism?

Rape?

Child molestation?

Murder?

Somebody is committing these crimes against humanity.

The lifting of the veil that had previously covered the American way of life is only the most recent curtain-raising by history.

This underbelly of our society has been there since before the Pilgrims landed.

This is a significant point to understand.

We all like to believe in a good story.

There are many good stories at the heart of any society.

The core story that founded this nation in 1776 was that man is free.

He has all ways been free.

Anyone including any organization which includes governments and religions who try to abridge that natural order, this inalienable right, is a tyrant.

They that oppose this Natural Freedom are tyrants.

Broadly defining, it is called the tyranny of men.

These people, these organizations are not a friend of humanity who oppose freedom.

Yet even though there have been those who hate others freedom and will burn and kill to prevent those freedoms, these people are also a part of the fabric of humanity.

The treads of humanity are made of many threads.

Most are common.

Some shine brilliantly.

While sadly, many are dull.

And some threads are just plain evil.

But all of them are part of the quilt of humanity.

Our nation was founded upon an idea of freedom, remember?

A bold proposition, given the history of the world.

Could a people reconcile the social and ideological war that has been going on between those who believe in freedom and those that do not?

All of the previous institutions of the world, no matter the people or the region, did not believe wholly in the innate freedom of man.

The power of institutions of governments of religions is to control, to segregate.

Freedom is only given with the price of membership and only to those within the power structure of the organization.

The American experiment is to determine if enough people could overcome their story, their myth, and embrace the concept of freedom for all.

Could all the threads come together and form a nation?

Could they drop their racism?

Could they drop their segregation?

Could they drop their story?

Could they drop their hate?

And pick up hope?

From the inception of that proposition of freedom for all, and including to this very hour, American and Americans have been at odds with their history and traditions.

And for those that have been at odds, those that feed and prosper from the old beliefs of segregation, division, hate and racism they have been looking for their personal savior to come and destroy their enemies and set them up as Kings of the Earth.

Their prayers were answered when the Trump ascended to the Presidency.

Those racists knew a great day had arrived.

This President would usher in a new world.

This President and his followers believe they are the beginning of a new American brand of Apartheid.

Make no mistake about it the fear of the future of America by many Americans is genuine.

They see the demographic shift, and they are terrified.

Like dogs under the table being fed scraps of meat, people like the current President nurture the fear that white people are doomed as a race.

Don't start nothing won't be nothing.

Right now right today we are at the bookend of the story started by European greed.

If the Aristocracy of Europe didn't want to lose their White identity, they should have stayed home.

It's ironic, and I understand very few actually get irony but here goes…

It's ironic because the European Aristocracy believed that the White race was dominant.

Their arrogance allowed them to freely explore the world and claim it as theirs with little regard for the peoples they found along the way.

Those tens of millions of more people…

It turns out that numbers wise, population, that whites are a racial minority.

Fact.

It's also been perplexing to me how a minority got control of a majority, and that majority didn't conclusively tell this minority to go sit down and stop rocking the boat.

But that's a digression.

Another discussion.

Back to the boil on our necks.

This President feeds a false narrative that many Americans believe so that he can shield himself from personal inspection as he gains financial wealth.

He's not a patriot.

He's not there for the majority.

He's there for a minority.

He's in office for the one.

Himself.

It's getting to be really, really obvious.

The only way to get rid of a boil is with a lance.

The actual substance of the argument must be pierced.

And in our case, the lance of truth must pierce the prejudice of tyranny.

The veil has been lifted, and our way is clear to see.

We must be grounded in the knowledge that freedom and justice are for all.

We're going to try and save as much of the quilt of America as we can.

But that lance can be used for more than lancing old boils.

It can be used as a needle to sew new bright threads of compassion, truth, and honor into the fabric of our nation.

Do not suffer fools.

Drop hate and pick up hope.

Shine the light of truth before freedoms door.

Peace.

DFrey

Baby Teeth

The world is growing up.

Living has a way of creating a set of expectations.

When you are a child, you think you will have your teeth forever.

Then one day one of them comes loose and soon they are all falling out.

Your expectation did not match Reality.

Most of us believe in the stories told by those in authority over us individually in our early years our parents, our caretakers tell us.

These stories we naturally believe to be true.

Why would our parents lie to us?

An example is someday you will have a job.

Most of us get some level of education, and from there, we make choices and pursue a career.

Life sometimes throws us a curve ball, and instead of a career with a 9 to 5 job, we get an hourly wage at a fast food joint.

When, we were told we would grow up to have a career, and we dreamed what that career would be the difference between Reality and our dream can be strikingly different can it not?

Right now, you and I are living in a time of change.

We are witness to what I'm calling a clash of expectations.

Each of us expected our lives and the world to work one way only to be confronted with something very different.

That difference is Reality.

This clash of expectations today occurs because we for the first time in history can have the truth as well as lies delivered into our hands and into our minds instantly.

Steve Jobs wanted to put the power of the computer into everyone's hands.

He saw it as a way of incorporating, of blending together, of merging the human race in a specific manner to embrace the harmony of humanity through knowledge.

He helped usher in the communication age.

People like Buckminster Fuller saw that the desktop computer was going to be the most revolutionary power to pull all aspects of humanity onto a critical path of knowledge.

For the very first time in human history, humanity would be able to know information instantly.

Unfiltered.

Joseph Campbell, on the other hand, saw a canyon opening up in humanity's future.

As Arthur C. Clarke put it, humanity was coming to its own childhood's end.

It was going to lose its baby teeth.

Campbell rightly witnessed the end of humanity's transitional traditions.

When I was a child, I thought like a child, and when I became an adult, I thought as an adult.

Childish things are to be put away when we become adults.

Campbell saw that the world over had lost those cultural traditions which told the child previously that now you are no longer a child, now you are an adult.

Our modern society…

As the adult, you are responsible for the common good of the whole.

Children conversely are only concerned with their own happiness, their own welfare, and are selfish.

Previously in the West, this time of transition from childhood to adulthood was called the age of responsibility.

When a person reached the age of eight or thereabouts, the child was recognized by the adults in the community as being able to understand the difference between right and wrong.

Being aware of that difference meant they could be held responsible for their actions not only for themselves but for the community.

They realized Joe was old enough to trust that he could take the cows down to the river for a drink and not leave them there to go off and play.

Responsibility…

The individual left behind their childhood and took on the role of the adult to support and defend the common good.

Our modern society has allowed that tenant of humanity, what it means to be a human and an adult to drift away, much like Wilson the soccer ball did in the film Castaway.

Today we allow 40-year-old grown children to act out in public precisely as if they were toddlers.

Somehow collectively, we are afraid to tell these adults to put away their toys, clean up their rooms, and behave like an adult.

There is obviously a whole host of issues that these childish expectations from these immature adults can come into conflict with Reality.

I deserve a trophy!

I will marry Prince Charming!

I will have the perfect career!

I'm always right, you're always wrong!

You can't make me!

I'm winning you're not!

I'm better than you!

It's mine!

Children.

Children.

The Child/Adult can resist growing and being responsible for more than just their selfish interests well into their 80's.

However, one day, they will have to face Reality.

The truth.

We only get one chance at life, and sitting at the children's table living as a petulant child tyrant is a sad existence.

A sad existence for the child and the parents.

In America today, we find many people who we have previously elected to Office that demonstrate that they are still children.

These representatives of ours whine, they stomp their feet, they cry out, these Senators are throwing a tantrum because they refuse to do the chore that they were sent to elected Office to do.

Their expectations of power and prestige as a member of a representational government has come into conflict with the Reality of which is more critical their self-interests or the Constitution?

They resent that they must serve the Constitution and not solely themselves.

The Constitution which is written for We the people, not I the indulged child/adult.

At the head of our government currently sits a particular kind of a spoiled brat.

Indulged throughout his life, never told he was wrong by those that served his father, he believes himself to be his own law, his own justice, his own judge.

He has an expectation that his world cannot be challenged.

It's time that the adults in the room introduce this child President to Reality.

It's time to give him a time out.

Peace

DFrey

Broken

Broken is not a bad word.

It turns out that most of if not all things in our universe must first break to be useful.

When we break from the story, we tell ourselves about the world and our place in it we can then embrace the truth of life.

We become an instrument of the power of love.

Do you live behind a wall of your own creation and did you have help building it?

All the ism's out there in our world purposely put up rigid walls to keep people locked up.

The isms fill minds with half-truths and goad followers to attack and to deny all others as false.

Have you ever heard anyone say you can't trust so and so because they are ________ fill in the blank?

Compassion, honor, duty, truth all fall away in favor of the prejudice, the advocacy of the given ism.

The ism feeds the personal prejudice of the individual of the group to keep its followers from straying.

But more importantly, it feeds the need to maintain power and position that the followers of the ism are afraid they will lose if they don't fight back.

But what happens if you let your personal narrative of how you believe the world works fall away?

What happens if your world breaks?

Think about this sentence, billions of years ago a star exploded creating the elements you are made of.

Just reading that sentence could break a world view.

Only in the supernovae of a star, a star large enough that when it reached its end of days, it collapses on itself forcing together atoms.

These atoms that are broken and reforged in the massive explosion constitute the elements we find in our own solar system.

Think about it.

A Sun in the past had to die to give life to us today.

That is the truth.

You don't have to accept it as the truth.

However, the universe doesn't accept your personal story.

The universe neither accepts our sense of morality or asks for our permission to do the things it does.

The universe is.

It is up to each of us to discover it.

Discover its truth.

When we break from prejudice and see the world as it is and not how we pretend it is the distance between you and the next person is just an arm's length away.

We all like to think of ourselves as being unique and special.

Unique yes on the outside but in the heart we are all the same.

Fear keeps us from doing what we are intended to do with our life.

Once broken we can hear the call of love.

Once broken we can see the need for love.

Once broken we can touch the world for the first time with compassion.

Break the walls of the ism.

No matter how small a person may believe they are love will give them both strength and courage to make a difference in this world.

A young woman Rosa Parks made a difference that day when she said to herself that the Jim Crow laws were unjust.

The unnamed people who march in our streets against the immigration policy of this president have moved the conscience of a nation.

The Parkland students, the parents of Sandy Hook, have moved others to stand against the ism of the merchants of death.

That person you saw who dropped a coin into a bucket made a difference in the world that day.

It's ironic that the smallest, what seems to be the ineffective, the broken are precisely the type of people that love uses to change the world.

Our world is broken.

Some of us have been tasked by love to bring the pieces back together again.

To heal.

To bring back hope.

The world will not be the same as it was.

The world will be better.

Peace.

DFrey

More Than A Feeling

America has a problem, and it appears to be us.

One step forward, two steps back.

That's right.

One step forward, two steps back.

The problem that America has did not arrive with the election of the current President.

No.

There has been a sickness at the center of the American heart that we, as a people, have ignored generation after generation.

Just like our physical health, the mental health of America is not what it can be.

There is obviously something broken in our will.

There is obviously something overheated in our choices.

There is obviously something falling apart at the center of our idea of Justice, of fairness, of the common good.

At least half of the population of our nation live in a world without hope.

I don't mean they can't live day by day but to tell you the truth that's just what I mean.

If all you are doing each day is just getting by, just living, lust living because you have lost hope for your future, you are living in a purgatory.

You are working hard each day but getting nowhere.

You feel your head slipping under the surface of the waters of life.

You are choking on the words of promises not kept by those entrusted with your vote.

On the other hand…

The condition of America's mental health is not held solely contingent upon the actions of others, we the people are also responsible for letting our conscious get distorted.

Loss of income, loss of job opportunities are a part of life.

They always have been.

Life ain't easy then you die…

There have been places and times in the past where economic opportunity failed the people of the world and created a fertile ground in which political opportunists and tyrants ransacked and destroyed nations.

They plunged their populations into wars, blaming others for their own financial and moral circumstance.

It's easy to say the devil made me do it, then it is to take personal responsibility for your own failing.

Your own demons.

Yet here in America we the people have always understood that the good of the many is extended to the few and to the one.

Our great American experiment is about a nation of many living together through thick and thin.

That our strength is we leave no one behind.

The rich, the poor, the healthy, the sick, the old, the young and all the colors of humanity working together to make a better nation, a better world, a better life for each other.

So here we are at this time and this place in America.

The times they are a changing yet again.

Today instantly, people can unite or divide over a single Tweet.

Words matter.

Words can make people swallow hate or words can lift them out of fear and give them hope.

Each of us has that responsibility to the nation and to each other.

We need to give each other hope.

What can hope be?

Hope can be if you become sick you can't lose your home.

Hope can come from not being afraid your child will be killed in their classroom.

Hope can be working hard and earning a living to pay your bills with a little extra left in your pocket.

Hope can be coming out of the shadows of racism, misogyny, sexual bias, and contributing without fear of economic and social retribution.

Hope can be an educational safety net that if your career opportunities change your new education is free.

None of these ideas to bring hope are new.

No, they are not.

They have been there since the foundations of this Republic.

We the People of the United States, in Order, to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.

All that means is we believe that hope belongs to everyone.

The more Justice, the more peace, the more security, the more universal good, the blessing of love and hope will be had by this generation and the generations to come.

Who doesn't want that?

Who would work against that?

Those that profit that feeds off of fear that's who.

Fear is power, and for those who either want control or want to retain it fear is the thing that is fed.

Fear can do a lot.

It can build walls.

It can start wars.

It can starve people.

It can stop dreams.

It can destroy compassion.

It can throw down honor.

It can drown duty.

Fear is the enemy of hope.

More than a feeling, hope is the foundation of America.

After all this time, after all the people who have fought for, died for and have stood for what this nation stands for, we are not the generation to turn its back.

No.

Let us each one of us ask of ourselves and of our neighbors to do better.

Not just for ourselves, but for all those generations yet to come.

Let us each in our way drop hate and lift up hope for all.

Peace

DFrey

Where Are The Strong

When the unexpected tragedy falls upon us, we ask where are the strong?

When the flood overwhelms our home, the water rises we ask where are the strong?

Long days at the bedside of our loved one wiping away the crust from their mouths we ask where are the strong?

A child cries in the night, alone, afraid, in the next room their mother is beaten she asks…

Where are the strong?

A man is stopped in the street because of the color of his skin, he's afraid, he's done nothing wrong, but a fear he's grown up with confuses his reason.

He's afraid.

He runs.

He's shot dead by the police.

We ask.

Where are the strong?

A mother and father are raped and killed, and their child runs out into the darkness away from their home.

They run, run, through the night until they collapse.

They find their way north.

North.

They follow the story they hear of a land where mercy and hope rain down freely.

They make their way through fear and terror only to be stopped at the border of America by people who forgot how to care, how to share, how to love.

Where are the strong?

Over here in Washington is an administration headed by a man who is familiar with corruption.

His familiarity with corruption comes from his own mouth.

He admires tough corrupt men.

They get things done.

He's been around "flippers" all his life…

This President doesn't see that the rules either before he became President or after apply to him.

Rules are for losers.

We who believe and follow the rules are a waste of flesh and blood.

Suckers.

Things to be taken advantage of.

This President and his defenders use the goodwill of those that follow the rules to hide their corruption.

One horrible lie after another rain out of the mouths of these people spinning a myth greedily gobbled up by the fearful.

On and on, day after day, they spit on the face of justice and laugh daring anyone to stop them.

Who can stop them?

We all ask, where are the strong?

Who among us will have the moral courage to stand and do right?

Who will realize that they must sacrifice their all to make a difference?

What we fight against is a dark sickness of man's soul that has eaten its own since the foundations of the world.

This evil, this corruption will not stop unless and until people of goodwill stand up against it and say no more, not today, not ever again.

There is no bargain with evil.

There can be no compromise with corruption.

You can't spin political partisanship enough to share a seat with fraud, graft, and malfeasance in office just so you can save your job.

Is that what's it's all boiled down too?

Saving your job?

Congress…?

Senate…?

You don't want to make waves you politicians because you might lose your job?

When Joe got his boat out and went up and down the flooded streets saving his neighbors, he was supposed to be at work that day.

When Alice took care of her mother dying of Alzheimer's, she missed that job interview.

When Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. marched in the streets, he didn't get to collect on his pension from the Baptist Church.

When Robert Kennedy was shot dead in LA, he didn't get the job he wanted as President of the United States.

The life you have the freedom you enjoy was built by hands, both great and small.

Each set of hands have set into place bricks of justice, of freedom, laid there by people just like you and me.

No different…

Rich and poor, old and young, laid there with the intent that freedom and justice for all makes a better world for us all.

No one, no one, not even the President of the United States, is above the law.

If we cannot hold a corrupt President responsible what does this government, what do our representatives, what does this country, these people stand for?

Is the Constitution just some kind of racket?

Is the Declaration of Independence just a come on for suckers?

Is Democracy a fraud?

No.

No, it is not.

We, the people of the United States cannot be extorted by this President.

We, as a people, do not have to do the heavy lifting alone.

No.

There is a whole nation of people, a majority that holds the truth of justice dear to them.

I've asked where are the strong?

We are the strong.

We're the people.

We are not afraid.

Love asks more.

Peace.DFrey