Backbone

Many lifeforms on our planet do not have a rigid spine.

Jellyfish are a type.

So are insects that are hard on the outside but soft in the middle.

Broadly, lifeforms without spines are called invertebrates.

Strangely, we as a people have decided that we prefer our elected leaders to be spineless insects.

Collectively, politicians do not have spines.

No backbone.

They look like you and me but for one crucial difference.

They have to be given cover to react.

You won't find a politician rushing into harm's way.

Like cockroaches, they won't scurry about if the lights are on.

That is, unless the herd, everyone else, is also rushing in to save the day.

The politician can always be counted on last.

Politicians are not leaders.

Politicians' morals are bendable.

Politicians can be said to be afraid of their own constituents, who put them into office.

They are malleable.

They blow with the wind.

To stand upon a principle of morality, of justice, they have to have a shield behind which they can take cover.

It's just about damn impossible to find a politician who will stand up by themselves for principle, even if it's in our Constitution.

Two or more standing together, yes.

As long as standing together serves an immediate purpose.

Our ideal of a congressman and senator is a fiction that makes a good story.

The bold individual representing the constituent doing our work for us so we don't have to be there in the boring halls of the legislature.

But the reality is indeed something entirely different.

This past week, something or someone handed out backbones to our legislative branch of the federal government.

Like lifeless puppets, one moment, suddenly, the Blue Fairy came through the window and made them real boys and girls.

Was it the President and his double-dog dare, "You can't bring me to justice; I can do anything I want," that gifted them with a backbone?

Were there high crimes we don't know about yet?

Was it a tiny spark of duty they pledged to uphold to protect us, the people, and our document, the Constitution of the United States of America?

You never see 100 percent of anything these days.

But this week, 421 congressmen and women, 100 senators, male and female, agreed that the whistleblower should be heard.

That was a disturbance in the Force.

Something shifted.

Something fell off the shelf.

Something lit a watchfire on the mountain peak of Rohan.

Politicians are not used to having a backbone.

Don't expect them to be comfortable with it for long.

Like toddlers learning how to walk, they will stand, stumble, and fall…

But they will get up again.

It's something unpredictable.

Those of us on the front lines calling for help to defend our Republic have looked behind us and have lamented that there is no cavalry coming to save us.

No Hail Mary.

No plot twist.

We were doomed to a no-win outcome for justice.

Yet when the world seems darkest, and please trust me as one who can speak about life after a fall, life always finds a way.

Even jellyfish can rise together under a common cause.

Life versus darkness.

Justice versus injustice.

Truth versus deception.

Corruption, tyrants, and criminals all have a blind spot.

You see, darkness cannot see into the light.

Darkness assumes the motivations of the light are the same as theirs.

We who live in the light know that is not true.

We do not seek profit, power, or wealth when we do right.

We do right because it is right.

We don't need thanks when we extend our compassion and our love to help others.

That is where the darkness of man's soul always makes its fatal error.

Tyrants can be counted on like clockwork to be evil.

Good men and women can't be counted on to stand for goodness every time.

Just like this President, it can be counted upon to impeach itself.

Do right.

Drop hate.

Lift hope.

Show your backbone.

The world will be better for it.

Peace

Daniel J Frey aka Toby

Impossible

Steve Martin said once that it was impossible to put a Cadillac up your nose.

There are impossibilities.

You can't build a stairway to the moon.

There is no way to stop time.

I will never be an Olympic athlete.

Impossibilities are limits.

Limits define the extent of expectations.

Humanity has and continues to impose limits on itself.

What it believes to be impossible.

We can't provide housing for free.

We can't educate those people.

We can't feed you unless you work for it.

We can't provide for your safety because that would limit our access to guns.

The Constitution can't be changed.

You are not equal to me.

Those people are lazy.

I'm a winner, you're a loser.

A good portion of humanity believes that the world is set in stone.

Or it should be.

Belief in the power of the impossible means shelter from reality for too many of us.

If equal rights are impossible, why even try?

If the 2nd Amendment can't be changed, just shut up and bury the dead.

If a President won't sign a bill, why would we want to talk about that?

Belief in the impossible allows the shallow-minded evil of low expectations and high personal interest to hide behind a straw man.

It is the foundation of nihilism.

Nihilism rejects the value of your life and mine.

It is the Bible from which the sociopath preaches.

Incidentally, that's a bit of irony because the nihilist rejects all religious and moral principles.

From its conception, the idea of nihilism was created as an intellectual canard.

It is a dull instrument used to smash the ties that bind humanity together.

Like a plow forced into the solid ground of society, it turns over the soil of compassion and destroys trust.

Nihilism is the acid that is thrown onto hope.

Nihilism is the friend of the tyrant.

That tyrant is only limited by their access to power.

Not all of us know a dictator personally, but we do have a relative or friend who believes it's impossible to make change.

Isn't there always someone who says that's impossible, why would you bother, don't waste your time, you can't do that?

Why do these people in our lives want to set a limit on the possible?

Who are they?

What is it they want?

They want you and me to live in fear.

They are your brother and sister, your friend, your parent, your relative, your pastor, priest, Rabi, police, congressman, senator, and President.

Fear is used by tyrants to manage expectations.

Fear is used to keep the possible from happening.

There are a lot of people selling fear these days, aren't there?

There are a lot of people throwing a rope around expectations and trying to pull it back in.

Trying to keep things from changing.

They can feel the world tipping up onto its side and all the pieces on the chessboard of life falling out of place.

They like order their order.

They don't want to share a lunch counter with a person with brown skin.

They don't want to buy a cake from a Gay baker.

They don't want strangers coming to their country.

They don't want you to have a home and a hot meal.

Their god told them that the world was only for them and not for all of us.

We're upsetting the apple cart.

We need to sit down because we're rocking the boat of their expectations.

Some of these people are so angry that they will kill us because we believe in the possible.

Their belief in fear is that deep.

Their oneness with hate knows no limit.

Can the ocean keep from rushing to the shore? 

It's just impossible.

Can you stop justice from exposing the evil plots of mankind?

It's just impossible.

Can you stop the Brotherhood of Man from filling our hearts with hope? It's just impossible.

That sentiment you hear in our country echoes down that street where a guy is being beaten.

That sound you hear is when voices shout for the re-establishment of our democracy.

That sound you hear is the feet marching for our human right to exist free from fear.

We are the ones to take up the challenge to make the impossible possible.

Don't say no, say yes, I can.

Do right.

Peace

Daniel J Frey aka Toby

Fallen

Seeing evil and stopping evil.

Most of us can recognize an act of cruelty as wrong.

However, some people don't see cruelty as wrong.

These people have desires.

These desires must be fulfilled no matter the cost.

No matter the cost to their community, their friendships, or their family.

Psychology has defined them as sociopaths.

Their desires, their passions, and their pure lust must be gratified regardless of who they hurt.

One such person caught in a web of evil was I.

I was in a bad place of my own doing when evil entered my home.

I had lost touch with myself, a phrase that aptly describes the situation. Still, it doesn't accurately capture the reality.

I had lost touch with the world.

I had become isolated.

I had convinced myself that I did not deserve love.

An empathic spiral.

Day after day, the weight of other people's fears and especially their anger washed over me like an unrelenting tide.

Many days, I couldn't catch my breath.

The anger of others would make me run.

People's emotions had, since the first day I could remember, struck fear in me.

In my early years, most of which I cannot remember because I lost my memory of my family when I was 17 due to a near-death experience.

What I do remember was the hands without a face hitting me till I bled.

I was told that my father was a rageaholic.

His physical and mental abuse was continuous.

But my tale is not about my father.

It's about how I was hanging onto my life by a thread and how that thread was cut by a sociopath.

I found myself running into oblivion because of my own fear of anger.

I believed I shouldn't be alive any longer.

I never forced myself to ask why a person was angry.

I had always assumed I was the cause of other people's anger.

To avoid angering them, I would never ask for clarification of their emotions.

I internalized others' pain and gave back humor.

My wife and I never argued.

But year after year, I receded, believing in error that she was angry with me.

Empathic personalities like my own are not magical.

We may be sensitive to emotion, but we're not mind-readers able to discern the origin of a feeling.

As in my case, my total lack of self-esteem always dictated to me that I was the cause.

So, in the last summer of what was going to be my life, I determined I was going to leave this wicked world.

Previously, a person came to live with us.

It was during that time that I came to find out through a four-year conversation that a 20-something sexual predator slept under our roof.

Their preferred victim were middle-aged housewives going through a rough divorce.

The graphic details of their constant exploits are so horrendous that this person would recount all their adventures on their own.

No prodding is needed.

They would drink a six-pack and tell the tale of sexual abuse.

Their bragging at first, I thought, was the talk of a blackout alcoholic drug abuser, which they also turned out to be.

That was until they provided me with proof of their exploits, which they had kept in a notebook.

Their reason for showing me their monster?

They thought that because I did not believe in a religion, it meant I was part of their club.

The club of the immoral.

The club of sociopaths who will do whatever is needed, right or wrong, to achieve their goal.

Because the sociopath, the psychopath, knows there are no eternal consequences to our actions here while we are alive.

There is no hell.

No heaven.

The sociopath's club credo is to lie about everything, and even that is a lie.

Their club members weave a web of deception that the sociopath believes no one can see through.

The club membership bylaws state that you can use people however you want.

This person allowed me into their mind, their reasoning, their wants, their desires, their lusts.

They falsely believed I was a monster like them.

I was the opposite.

I wanted to get away from this person.

I wanted to leave this world behind and all its evil.

I knew I didn't belong here.

It was at this moment that the beast, in pursuit of their orgasm, put their sights on a friend.

I told the beast repeatedly to leave my friend alone.

He couldn't, he wouldn't his lust had to be filled.

I didn't know that at that moment my future was sealed.

I put my plans into action to end my life.

To wander off into the Pacific Redwoods never to be seen again.

But then...

That friend read something in me and asked an important question.

How are you?

I told the truth.

I was leaving.

Then...

Then, that friend's voice, a single drop of human kindness, gave me pause in my dark journey to oblivion.

I stopped on the edge of forever and listened.

I had to...

It was the voice of love...

I fell.

I fell into the dark of night.

I fell.

When I hit bottom and realized I was not dead, I heard a voice call my name.

I turned and saw no one.

The voice came from inside me.

It said I was ready now to begin the good work.

To spread hope.

To put light onto the darkness.

To talk of love.

Unexpectantly, this crucible of self-hate I had lived through had gifted me.

I now had in my hand the sword of justice.

I had learned of evil, which had given me my armor.

I had fallen so that I could stand.

I was broken so I could be rebuilt.

If you have fallen, you can stand too.

It is not through our blessings that we are useful; it is through our trials and hardships that make us into who we are meant to be.

Our scars show where we have been.

Do right.

Peace

Daniel J Frey aka Toby

Season of Cruelty

Baseball for the year 2019 draws to a close.

Summer thinks about hanging it up till next year.

Grandma is no longer able to get out of the house.

A political party gives up being for all Americans.

The season of cruelty continues.

Human families come to our nation's door seeking comfort but 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 streets 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 holding 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.

We have to wait to be told what to think by our great 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 who 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 worst 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 who forget easily.

Seasons don't yell at first.

Seasons don't come in with a bang.

Seasons come in when a society opens its doors.

What can wander through the door and into the hearts and minds of 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 the moorings of humanity and compassion.

Those who thought their world was built upon a higher ground have fallen into despair.

They have found the water has risen all around them.

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.

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 a part of us.

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

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 once again.

We, as defenders of the faith, defenders of the Constitution, and 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.

And fight the fight against man's wilful ignorance.

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

Lest we forget.

Lest we forget our brothers and sisters.

Those who 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.

Daniel J Frey aka Toby

Party Planner

Do you let your crazy uncle plan Thanksgiving dinner?

Every family has one.

A crazy relative 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 simply tell each other that they are "that way."

The crazy, loud, opinioned relative sitting at the end of the table.

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

The dessert?

Do they get to plan any games?

Do they get to decide who sits where?

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

The wise answer should be no, they do not.

Allowing them any hand in the decision-making would make them the official party pooper.

The party pooper.

Every family has one.

Sometimes three...

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

No.

The sociopath has many faces.

They are both male and female.

And that face is always turned towards admiring themselves.

They know the difference between right and wrong, but they will do either to achieve what 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 also be power and wealth.

Power over the conversation at the dinner table or at the negotiation table, at lunch, in the car, in the board room, and in the bedroom.

Wealth is stolen out of the community and society or out of your wallet.

Sex is taken from individuals with low self-esteem who believe the physical contact means the other person cares about them, that it is love.

The sociopath cares only for themselves and their orgasm.

That's all they care about.

All they dream about.

They scheme and lie to achieve their goals.

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

They will let you down every time.

Because if it doesn't get them off, they'll lie their way out of it.

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 that 4 of them are sociopaths to one degree or another.

Regular sociopaths up to and including megalomaniacs.

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

That's why I know the intimate realities behind the mask that the sociopath hides behind.

Our nation has a sociopath right now as President.

It's taking a while for some of our other elected leaders, as well as the 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 others still refuse to acknowledge the problem, it remains a concern today.

Just as in our national discourse, the good people keep holding on to the hope that the evil person will change.

Good people are ingrained with the idea of redemption.

However, redemption works as a practice only if the person who needs redemption wants it.

Sociopaths see redemption as a weakness.

They don't care whether 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 sociopaths, of having a moral dilemma because they have no morals.

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

None.

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 there are 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 can't let them be President of a Nation.

You have to plan around them yourself.

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 mouthful of first-hand experience right now.

Try not to choke.

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

Peace

Daniel J Frey aka Toby

Barstool Knowledge

Washington never told a lie.

Twinkies can never spoil.

You must wait 24 hours before reporting 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 shares an experience and a round-robin follows, with everyone else saying how their experience tops the previous one.

Barstool knowledge starts out reasonably innocent.

A white lie that metamorphs as it's told from one barstool to the next until a worm becomes a fire-breathing dragon.

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 the sky-God would become angry.

I don't see the sky-God.

That's correct, but he can see you.

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

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

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

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

When the uncle tells that racist joke, 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.

Our fear.

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 encounter with an individual, and we will likely view similar people as jerks as well.

Barstool knowledge.

None of it is valid.

It gives comfort to ignorance.

It pads the truth and 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.

Speaking of barstool knowledge...

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

If you are not familiar, the President used direct quotes from fascist leaders of WWII Germany to say he was the chosen one and 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, U.S. citizens aren't paying his tariffs, did I say he said he was Jesus to the Jews and that was all in three days?

The President indeed demonstrated his barstool knowledge of theology, specifically regarding Judaism, as well as his professed love of Christianity.

He's a 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, shaped by their perception of the world and how it exists 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 that allows the individual to survive in an adverse world.

However, sociopaths are not conducive to a stable government, a stable economy, and 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 and consume it alone.

The world is their shrimp buffet, for one.

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 that the house is on fire and call for help.

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

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

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

How deep?

Have you ever tried to persuade someone to abandon their religion?

It's that deep.

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

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

These sociopaths only want to turn the table over and take everything for themselves.

Peace is not an option.

We've got to stop allowing relatives or friends to tell racial jokes.

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

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

They're rocks on the path of brotherhood.

Step lively past them.

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

Here's some real knowledge to drop.

Love expects more of everyone every day.

Tell the uncle to pass the potatoes, act civil, or leave the table.

Peace.

Daniel J Frey aka Toby

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, and Orwell speak from their experience of those who would deny Liberty to others.

The other being you and I.

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 to 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 Earth to put our principles of freedom to the test.

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, and one ethnicity?

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

Could we overcome?

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, and 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, or 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.

We demand our freedom.

The freedom-loving people of the world admired us.

In the hearts of some nations, a bond of friendship and 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 that the door be shut.

There's no more room.

No more room?

The ignorant are consistent in their narrow beliefs and perspectives.

Freedom has arms as wide as the universe.

Liberty encompasses all of time.

Justice is forever.

Love will always demand more.

As people who believe in love, we 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 that believes that might make right.

It is the voice of the self-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 has 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 to a death sentence.

The forces of good, 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

Daniel J Frey aka Toby

Lost on Purpose

An old pair of shoes was left behind.

A broken umbrella was 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 is always talking about how great their family is. 

The clerk at the grocery store asks 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 whom we once loved, we now can no longer 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 commercial organizations segregate us, allowing us to do business only with those like us. 

Political charities, we give our support 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, to discriminate who can enter and who cannot.

Lost on purpose. 

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

They desire the riches of 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 from responsibility to their fellow man. 

They hate you and me.

We represent the other. 

The taker.

They only see a limited world. 

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 intentionally is unlikely to be persuaded to reclaim it.

Their religion is the hatred of mankind.

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 happy hating.

They are happy hating you and me.

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 put up bank on hate.

A long time ago, in a decade not too far away... 

The Republican party employed the Southern Strategy during Nixon's election. It was an invitation to a free lunch given to all those segregationists and racists still burrowed into the 'Olde Democratic Party.'

You see, the old racists had their largest membership in the Democratic Party before the Civil Rights movement of the 60s.

They had been there since the Civil War.

Johnson made the racists uncomfortable in the party when he signed the bill ending segregation.

Segregation was the ideal of being separate but equal.

Whites and nonwhites would not share, but they would have 'equal access.'

That never happened, that equal access thing.

Blacks and all nonwhites were discriminated against.

The racists accepted the invitation in a common cause with the business conservatives of the GOP, whom they mutually enjoyed their discrimination against brown people and women.

Then and now, racists 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 since the end of the Civil War, 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 embrace it.

Just like when the Emperor told Luke to embrace the dark side.

The belief that America is racist conservative, not liberal. 

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

It is remarkable how self-fulfilling this worldview is of conservatives and hate. 

The darkness they have created for themselves and their adoption of this worldview, which involves hating the stranger, blinds them to the message of love. 

Because of this blind hate, they can't see the writing on the wall.

The sack they wear on their heads forces them to rebreathe 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 their strength, they are right.

They can't hear someone like me say that racist 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 the 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 on 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 overcome… 

Today. 

Peace 

Daniel J Frey aka Toby

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 initial appeal.

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 the 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 on social media to draw attention.

They stir the pot and 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?

Do they only think about how much money and power they can pile up?

Often, the political fringe will trip up a given society.

It will cause the 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 politic.

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 increase their following.

They're not there for the children.

They're not there for the dogs and cats.

They're not there for the poor.

They're not there for the person who has done their 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 hungry, clothe the naked, and give comfort to those who despair.

No.

No, they are there only for themselves.

Right or left self-interest does not discriminate who they ask for money.

On the contrary, self-interest is an equal opportunist parasite 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 only he can change the movement of time and restore the glorious White past.

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

The fringe.

However, remember that the fringe is not the broad weave of American society.

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

The fringe, all fringe, wants you and me 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.

He'll still want that payment of $19.99 each month.

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

Let the voices of intolerance, racism, and hate be 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 people together, not separate them.

We are here to love, not to hate.

Peace

Daniel J Frey aka Toby

Gone

Standing on the corner waiting for the ice cream man.

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

LPs, 45s, CDs, 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…

Vanished...

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

A shell in which individuals 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 awakened from its dream of ideals.

A dream that reassured its people that everything would be okay.

Everyone was going to have justice.

No one was above the law of the land.

No one was above the law...

Like a dream, as the hours and days pass, that dream becomes increasingly harder to recall.

Email, texts, news, social media, entertainment, sports, school, job, and lifestyle —none of these aspects of our daily experiences speak to a healthy 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 American 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.

Understand how, when someone tries to tell you their dream, we don't really listen to what they are saying?

Dreams require individuals and society to strive every day to reach for the dream of a better tomorrow.

Dreams require you and me to march against giants.

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

Like a dream, those American ideals 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 strive for good work that will provide us with a fulfilling 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 align with the truth revealed by this President, his administration, and his believers.

This President demonstrates the truth that ignorance never goes away.

The truth is one political movement, conservatives, courted that ignorant vote and have no intention of letting that vote go.

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

Ain't going to happen.

We ain't going to convince ignorant racist Americans they should just give up everything they know to be true and join us.

That's absurd!

We need to take that dime in our hand that 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 for everyone.

They won't get on the Freedom Train.

This means we shouldn't be waiting for them to decide if they want to join us; we need to move forward.

We have to realize that we are not going to get the racists 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 Block Party has to move location because our angry old neighbors are upset that our party attracts the wrong kind of people.

We have to be content with what we have.

We need to get along to that better world.

That doesn't mean we won't hold an open seat at our Block Party in case hell freezes over, but it also means we need to be realistic that some people hate us.

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.

You can't dream of a better world; you've 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 clear that this President and this administration are willing to fight for their ideal world.

Will the good people of these United States fight for theirs?

Who will win out?

Injustice or justice?

It will depend upon you and me.

Peace

Daniel J Frey aka Toby

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.

You're in my way.

Why are those rules there anyway?

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

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.

Nobody knows what I've been through.

Laws are there not to restrict just you.

Rules were not created to cramp just your desires.

Rules of behavior are not in place as a form of punishment.

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

The 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 in the life we live now.

No one has a right to that life except the person 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, you cut them off because you were in a hurry, that they do not have the right to take vengeance on you and take your life.

Because you were being an asshole, shitting everywhere you went.

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 to prevent you from ruining someone else's life by blindly ignoring your own self-interest and stepping off the curb into oncoming traffic.

They run you down in the crosswalk because you deserve to die.

After all, you were in their way... don't you know how important they are as compared to you?

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

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 all of us.

We, the People.

Laws provide a foundation of protection from the misdeeds of others.

It's the grease in the machinery.

Without that grease, the gears of life will grind and tear us all apart.

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

The vultures.

The Nihilists.

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 was 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 hollowed out the American heart.

The wound 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, grappling with a law 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, children, 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

Daniel J Frey aka Toby

Not Me

When I see an elderly woman stumble and fall.

When I see a man standing on the corner, lost.

When I see a girl disobey the traffic laws.

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

I say not me.

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

When I hear a young person's song, it beats 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 is without fault.

We committed our faults freely.

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 our hearts and minds wide.

None of us is without fault.

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

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

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

Money launderers, sex traffickers, pedophiles, tax frauds, and sexual predators, as long as they serve a political party, are exempt from justice.

Obvious crimes committed by officials of this government along our borders go uninvestigated and are not stopped, as private enterprise profits off the imprisonment of children and adults.

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

What is it that these guardians of vice are protecting?

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 a jury over any of these apparent crimes?

Their fellow thieves, rapists, murderers.

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?

They can't break free and are resigned to the fact that nothing can be done, so they do nothing?

Shame only on those humans who can still feel it.

Apparently, many people no longer understand the meaning of love.

The definition has been lost.

The definition is that your reputation and how you will be remembered are built upon how you treat other people.

For evil or good.

Of course, many don't care how they are remembered and don't give a shit about the consequences of their actions.

Yet here we find our nation, the U.S.A's Gold Standard is now to grovel and fetch for the carnal pleasure of hate?

Is that where our society has planted its flag 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, our American society, don't tolerate child rapists is now too difficult for us to prosecute?

The apparent moral bankruptcy of our two political powers, my conservative brothers and sisters standing for power at any cost, and my liberal brothers and sisters sitting spineless, afraid to rock the boat, is overwhelming.

I feel rage.

I understand the neglect of spirit.

Yet...

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

I see the man lost because of fear.

I taste the fear of change.

I stand.

I shout and fight against the silence.

I will never be silent.

Peace.

Daniel J Frey aka Toby

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 once 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, and in your home be stopped from 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.

Welcome to the battle.

As long as we are still 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, such as 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.

One leader.

One follower.

The impossible struggle.

It is the act itself, the struggle against impossible odds, where victory is achieved by love.

Evil cannot win unless good does nothing.

Brotherhood is a relationship.

And just like any relationship, effective communication is essential.

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 pay for your seat on the Freedom Train.

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 day 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 self-hate.

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

That single drop joins with other drops to form fellowships, communities, and 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 who are adrift in the waters.

It rushes past the obstacles to man's own 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 sparkling light and love.

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

Peace.

Daniel J Frey aka Toby

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 will kill all you love.

Death makes you run away with all that you love.

Death haunts your every step towards freedom's 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 come 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 nation's doorstep; it is not a nation dedicated to life.

It is not a community.

It is a society that has lost its purpose.

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.

The credo to love the stranger.

This nation we live in has forgotten its credo.

This nation has forsaken its honor.

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

Our nation's 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 divine 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.

That is not the American ideal.

After the tears…

You don't have to be an empath to know that a baby girl clinging 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.

We allowed them to have power at our discretion.

Not some mythical monster.

Not some alien from another planet.

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

It stops.

It stops now.

It stops today.

We know what the correct answer is.

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

The idea of Love came into the world and immediately set heart against heart.

Those who follow love cannot also support blind human hate.

True Love will separate a man from a woman.

True Love will divide the parent from the child.

True 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.

Stones of hate are not passed out to feed the hungry in a nation that proclaims it believes in the Golden Rule.

Each and every death of anyone in our nation's 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.

Either you get yourself straight, or the world will get busy on your ass.

After the tears…

Peace

Daniel J Frey aka Toby

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.

We can all lose our connections.

Connections to the world around us, our community, to our family and friends, to ourselves.

Regret.

Regret for our actions reminds us that we have harmed someone 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 between those 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 believe that becoming an adult is about doing adult things.

If they believe that a 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.

A loser.

Most adults don't move far from their own adolescent brains.

A parallel example is How well do you draw?

Most of us stopped drawing sometime as we entered 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, drawing, like any other skill, has to be exercised to keep in shape.

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

We humans can adapt.

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

We can grow.

Growth can only begin once you love yourself.

The foundation.

First, we all need to forgive ourselves.

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

A universal chain to break is racism.

Most aspects of racism are learned.

The roots are passed down genetically like cancer; its darkness stops the growth of the individual.

Racism stops the growth of the community.

But this is nothing new.

Racists are not ignorant of which 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.

Give the other side a chance.

Ain't going to happen.

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

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

We aren't even human beings in their eyes.

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 rather 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 ourselves.

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 we encourage those who are reluctant to get involved.

We grow by standing together, holding to the 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 lives and our community that we are happy.

We are a happy bunch.

We grow…

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

The seed that casts 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…

But nothing in this universe will break a racists belief.

Regret will 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

Daniel J Frey aka Toby

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 crossroads, 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, summer had turned and fallen into 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 man.

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

Tactics were developed on both sides of the question of who would be a 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 their God.

Tactics…

I used to be an Orderly back in the day.

I worked at a suburban hospital in Cleveland, Ohio.

Brentwood Hospital.

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 or our pulse.

Our nation has a heartbeat, a pulse.

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

Or to listen to it.

To measure it.

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

It has an irregular pulse.

A blockage…

You won't get a genuine sense of 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 its bones, to feel that 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 hear 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…

They make them uncomfortable...

Tactics…?

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

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

Mostly, the left advocates making things work better.

Yes, I know, some 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.

Kill the libtards.

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

Change versus genocide.

Is that really a tactic?

Is that really where the GOP and Republicans, along with their supporters, are pitching their tents?

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 how we can do better.

Harris talks about immigration and fairness.

Buttigieg promotes better voting rights protections.

These are all political tactics aimed at appealing to 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 those Democrats into military prison camps.

Diport all the immigrants, legal and illegal.

There is, 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, and 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 sentiment and rhetoric to be promoted in social media.

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

But hold on…

Attacking fearful people will not help them overcome their fear; it will only make them worse.

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

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

Our nation's leaders and its people should have come together and worked to heal the nation's mind and spirit.

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

They let God sort them out, and he/she/it 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 artery.

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

We need to dream again together.

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.

Daniel J Frey aka Toby

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.

People's 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 number of angry people around me 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 favorite.

That mask was developed to survive physical violence.

When you're raised in a home where violence, mainly random bi-polar 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 from you could send him into an angry fit.

It could sometimes 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.

Look into its empty eyes for a while.

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, in 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 that 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 a genuine concern.

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 his kids to a bloody pulp.

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 require the extra mile, extra effort, and more willpower 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 human 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.

Free Lunch

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 is 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 understand that their problem is not outside of themselves?

It's inside.

It's them.

They are the creators of their doom.

Like an addict, they blame everyone but themselves for why they are at 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 are only effective in 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 and your eyes, and awaken from your nightmare.

See that you are surrounded by a golden light.

That darkness that you are afraid of?

You only had your eyes shut.

Peace.

Daniel J Frey aka Toby

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, and 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'd 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 soul.

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 White 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 shit.

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

This division, sewn 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 investor'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 and 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 that whips up rage, hate, anger.

There can be no peace without honesty.

One day, a man took some friends fishing.

While out on that lake, a storm came up.

The people in the boat became afraid.

They began to blame each other for even considering they could venture 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 because 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 side's fault.

How could we be to blame, "Aren't we better sailors than them?"

Then, the boat's owner, the adult at the wheel, 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

Daniel J Frey aka Toby

Grounded

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

As the world becomes smaller with 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, and the injustice have 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, why is there still 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 in 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 all men are born free.

He has always been free.

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

They who oppose this Natural Freedom are tyrants.

Broadly defined, it is referred to as the tyranny of men.

These individuals and organizations are not friends of humanity; they 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 threads of humanity are made of many fibers.

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 the idea of freedom, remember?

A bold proposition, given the history of the world.

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

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

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

Freedom is only granted at the price of membership and is reserved for those within the organization's power structure.

The American experiment aims to determine if enough people can overcome their past and their myths 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, America 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 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 White Apartheid.

Make no mistake about it; the fear of a future Brown 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 their own, with little regard for the people they encountered along the way.

Those tens of millions of more people…

It turns out that, numbers-wise, the White population is a racial minority.

Fact.

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

But that's a digression.

Another discussion.

Back to the boil on our necks.

This President perpetuates a false narrative that many Americans believe, allowing him to shield himself from personal scrutiny as he accumulates 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 becoming increasingly 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 to 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 freedom's door.

Peace.

Daniel J Frey aka Toby

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 expectations did not match Reality.

Most of us believe the stories told to us by those in authority over us during our early years, such as our parents and caregivers.

These stories we naturally believe to be true.

Why would our parents lie to us?

An example is that 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 curveball, and instead of a career with a 9-to-5 job, we end up with an hourly wage at a fast food joint.

When we were told we would grow up to have a career and dream about 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 witnesses 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, for the first time in history, we can have both the truth and lies delivered into our hands and minds instantly.

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

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

He helped usher in the communication age.

People like Buckminster Fuller recognized that the desktop computer would be the most revolutionary force to unite all aspects of humanity on 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 like an adult.

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

Campbell observed that the world over had lost those cultural traditions that previously told children, 'Now you are no longer a child, now you are an adult.'

Our modern society…

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

Children, conversely, are primarily concerned with their own happiness and welfare and are often 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 tenet 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 adults to behave in public 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 adults.

Be responsible for your community welfare.

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 80s.

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 who demonstrate that they are still children.

These representatives of ours whine, they stomp their feet, they cry out, and 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 have come into conflict with the Reality of which is more critical, their self-interests or the Constitution?

They resent having to serve the Constitution and not solely themselves.

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

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

Indulged throughout his life, never told he was wrong by those who 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 timeout.

Peace

Daniel J Frey aka Toby