We Are Not Afraid

“We are not afraid” is the best lyrics to the song “We Shall Overcome.

Dr. Martin Luther King added those lyrics.

Living in fear is no way to live.

The only people who want you to live in fear are bullies.

That’s how they keep their psychological power over you.

What might be?

Always what might be and not what it is.

The opposition to fear and hate did not go away on November 5th.

You and I are here.

The truth…

The truth is on our side.

History is on our side.

Reality is on our side.

Fear has always concocted bizarre fantasies to keep people afraid.

“There be monsters here” was written on the edge of maps to keep people from wandering away from the control of kings.

Freedom from predetermination created by the will of a self-appointed monarchy…

That’s what America is.

Again, there have always been people who prefer to be taken care of instead of living free of fear.

That’s part of the fabric of humanity.

It has always been up to the adults in the world to help those who can only see darkness.

How?

By holding up the truth of love.

It’s a difficult light for many of our brothers and sisters to see.

Love is not understood, or we wouldn’t have to keep fighting the good fight.

In a world of limited resources, the natural thing to do is not to share.

But it ain’t the 8th Century anymore.

We live in a land of abundance.

But we still have that monster on the back of too many telling them not to share.

Not to trust.

Keep to yourself.

Mind your business.

Love tells us our business is the welfare of our fellow man.

It’s a heavy lift.

I know this.

You know this.

But we are not afraid.

The foundation of this nation is based upon the proportion that all people are created equal.

Too many Americans have had a hard time believing in equality.

They are trapped in a vicious cycle of hate created by the bullies who have their ears and hearts.

We all just lived through a plague that took the lives of millions.

We all just lived through an economy that collapsed.

We all didn’t see that we had come through it, and the world got better.

Some see the world as half-empty.

Some see the world half full.

We who see the world full of light are now obliged to reach back and let that light shine into the dark places.

Let us reach out and touch the hearts and minds of our fellow Americans and let them see there is a better way to live than in fear.

Demonstrating we are not afraid, this light will kindle curiosity.

Curiosity has always broken the chains of fear.

What if.

What if my life could be better?

We are not afraid.

Peace

Daniel J. Frey aka Toby

Fear of Freedom

Fear of Freedom

A great number of our decisions are not really our own but are suggested to us from the outside; we have succeeded in persuading ourselves that it is we who have made the decision, whereas we have actually conformed with expectations of others, driven by the fear of isolation and by more direct threats to our life, freedom, and comfort.”

                                             – Erich Fromm, Escape From Freedom

Freedom is a burden to some folk.

Freedom means participation.

Participation means doing the work of freedom.

Many want the reward but are too busy with themselves to cultivate freedom.

This fear of freedom goes by another name.

The Silent Majority.

Have you wondered why there have been no voices condemning the hate that is propagated by Trump and his associates?

The voices that used to tell the anarchists to stay at the back of the room and not talk.

That sound of silence is manifested by those who erected a neon god.

That neon god tells them their fear is justified.

That neon god feeds their bias, which perpetuates the hate, that grows the paranoia that others are responsible for the life they have.

That neon god wants to be the next president.

He promises a narrow definition of freedom.

Only to those that worship at his feet telling him he is a man of consequence.

There are many kinds of people of consequence.

It is an absurd ego that says there is only one path to greatness.

Freedom is a burden.

Freedom it turns out is not free.

You can’t expect strawberries if you never plant them.

You can’t expect freedom if don’t speak up.

How can I speak up?

Vote.

Freedom’s ally is each of us who takes that trip to the voting booth and lets our voice be heard by making our mark next to the person we want to represent us.

Silence is not golden.

That’s a lie.

Silence is the cruel dictator who silences the voices of freedom.

Silences them one by one till there is none.

Freedom needs you.

Let freedom ring.

Toby aka Daniel J Frey

Stop Talking

Observation…

Why is it that our conservative brothers and sisters feel the need to tell us who they are constantly?

Telling us even if we already know…

They love America.

They are Christian.

They are heterosexual.

They are pro-second Amendment.

They are pro-life.

They are pro-billionaire.

They are pro-Putin.

They are pro-MAGA.

They are pro-Trump.

They are anti-immigrant.

They are anti-Islamic.

They are anti-brown people.

They are anti-gay.

They are anti-green.

I grew up in and around a very conservative far-right Christian family and friends, and I have first-hand experience being told over and over again as if I’m an idiot.

As if I’m an idiot who can’t remember you don’t like to drive in bad neighborhoods.

You don’t like to send your kids to schools that aren’t white.

You don’t like to live next to people who don’t go to your church.

Over and over and over again.

This is rant!

There is only so many times I can hear in 63 years on this planet that Jesus loves me and died for my sins.

I get it!

I understand the story.

I don’t need it repeated to me over and over as if I have no long term memory.

I saw Old Yeller once.

I don’t need to see it again.

I get it.

I get it you don’t like the change you see in the world.

I understand you don’t like to share.

You want everyone to know how important you are.

How you’re better than everyone else.

I know you think that it’s true.

Believe me, I know you think you are granted a special dispensation to rule the world because you’re white.

I can hear you.

Stop talking.

Listen…

Listen to what you sound like?

Listen to the venom.

Listen to the hate.

Listen to the driver in your life called anger.

Consider… instead of talking to me, start talking to yourself.

Start telling yourself you can be loved.

Start telling yourself you can be forgiven.

Start letting yourself just be.

Let go.

And then…

Come join us where the world is full of joy.

Where we don’t have to tell each other we already know.

Peace

Toby aka Daniel J. Frey

Changes

Since the beginning, humanity has used every ounce of strength in its imagination in wanting to believe that change doesn’t happen.

Cave paintings, scrolls, religion, books, plays, philosophy, photography, film, radio, TV, politics, and war all have espoused a belief that change shouldn’t and can’t happen.

Big problem, though…

The fundamental property of this universe we all live in is change.

Everything from galaxies to microbes all change.

Evolve or…

Die.

So, anyone or anything trying to stop change from happening is on the losing side of the universe.

Trying to stop change from happening just can’t win.

It’s called impossible.

Now, understandably, change is not always welcome.

None of us want to get old.

None of us want to lose the people, the things we love.

But their all going to change.

It’s human not to want things to change.

It’s fundamental to the origins of humanity to want things to be the same.

Repeatable.

Established.

Regular.

Predictable.

That way, we all can make plans and not have them ruined by a rainstorm stopping our picnic.

But… shit happens.

So, if you think about it, and it’s obvious not many people do, why do we invest our time, our money, our blood, sweat, and tears into ideas that try to prevent change?

Fear.

Fear is the spider at the center of the web.

Change represents unpredictable outcomes.

What if people are free?

What if people can marry who they want?

What if people can be who they are?

What if people want to be equal?

What if people want to be loved?

All these and more represent a community and the individual to take a chance that change will not affect their picnic.

Yeah, so it was okay to free black people from slavery as long as no one was inconvenienced.

It was all right to give women the right to vote because most women couldn’t be bothered.

It was fair to desegregate schools and communities because we weren’t going to fund those schools and communities after.

My point is that change, for better or worse, will continue to happen, but not as expected.

With change there will always be outcomes that are not predictable.

That’s what change is.

That’s why I’m trying to get the attention of my conservative brothers and sisters and help them put into perspective their fear of change.

When gays got the right to marry, did frogs rain out of the sky?

When blacks got to vote, there were no more white elected officials, right?

When women entered the workforce, no man was ever hired again, correct?

When change happens, will things be different?

Yes, they will be different.

And that’s the beauty of change.

Where once there was a dead, dry seed, once planted, from that seed grows a tree under which the children and the children’s children of the planter will live, love, and know peace.

Change is gonna come…

Peace

Daniel J. Frey aka Toby

We Help

What are you doing with your life?

There is only one thing we all have to do to fulfill the purpose of living.

You help.

A person is coming through the door you hold it open.

That man needs a meal you feed him.

That girl needs a new school book; you get it for her.

You help.

That woman is grieving; you sit and listen.

That young man needs a job; you hire them.

The old man at the store is lonely; you say hello.

You help.

If you’re not helping, you’re hurting.

If you’re not lifting up, you’re putting down.

If you’re not caring, you’re evil.

Life is about growing out of your comfortable shell and caring for those around you.

What does it take to make the blind see?

What does it take to make the deaf hear?

What does it take to make the heartless love?

The truth?

The truth is nothing.

There is nothing any of us alone can do to make the stubborn self-righteous, selfish person join the human race.

Nothing.

What we can do is join with the living, move forward to that bright community of love, and just in case…

We can keep that door open to freedom from fear.

That someday, in some way, the fearful, selfish person will open their minds and join us.

Until then…

We press forward.

We open doors.

We expand liberty, freedom, and justice for all.

We help.

Not just for those we love.

But also and more importantly, for those we don’t know.

Love has no limit.

The only limit that can be put on love is in our hearts and minds.

Cut loose, be free, and see what is possible when you pursue truth.

Peace

Daniel J. Frey aka Toby

True Believers

Racism is a religious movement.

Racism has no room for compromise.

This is why we stand and fight this enemy of humanity.

I was raised by racists.

My extended family growing up, were racists.

Family friends were all racists.

They ranged from the card-carrying openly hostile bigot to the meek and mild, “Go along to get along” varieties.

I am well versed in the lore, the belief, the practice of racists.

What they say openly to each other and what they say in private at the birthday party.

At the picnic.

At the seasonal Christmas gathering.

Racism is a religion.

It is born of religion.

Inherent in religion is the foundation of the believer versus those who do not believe.

It is there in black and white transcribed for all to see.

It’s challenging to introduce facts to those who only need to believe.

The fact that Jesus was a Jew.

His parents were Jews.

His followers were Jews.

The initial religious group was two Jewish cults that fought each other in a "true believer's" Thunder Dome.

Two cults enter only one cult emerged.

It can be reasoned that of all the world's beliefs, the Jewish faith and the Christian cult that was born out of it inherited an absolutist view of the world.

One God, one faith in opposition to a pantheon of deities and cultural traditions.

There can only be one God.

There can only be one people.

In a twist of irony, White Europeans believed they were the chosen people of the Christian God.

Somehow they didn’t comprehend that the Jewish book of faith they retconned was about the journey of the Jewish people’s faith.

The early Christians and to this day Christians maintain that the chosen people of God are people of the White race.

God has to be white because that’s how he's painted on the ceiling of the Vatican, right?

To tamper with the ordained order of the universe is to put yourself ahead of God almighty.

You have to be a Communist to believe that all people are equal.

There is no room for compromise.

So it is written, so it is so.

These believers in white supremacy cannot in good faith with their God allow for any deviation allowing Whites to be second class.

Again in a crazy piece of human irony, the white racist has pitted their minority world against the demographic of the whole world.

I still can’t understand how a minority population convinced themselves that they are superior to the rest of the world?

They still tell themselves this every day.

This is why we, the majority who stand for justice, who stand for freedom, who stand for what is right, are in a battle with this enemy of humanity.

Racists are like rocks in the stream of life.

They will not move.

They will not change.

Only the flow of life will eventually wear them away to sand.

We cannot and should not allow a group of people who do not want to join life to dictate how life should be.

Birds don’t wait for someone to allow them to fly.

We can’t wait for racists to allow us to be free.

There can be no negotiation with evil.

Peace

DFrey

Rules

Signs.

No Fishing.

Don't Walk.

Stop.

Yield.

Bio Hazard.

Caution.

Yield.

Do not kill.

What is your reaction to rules?

Do you cherry pick what you believe applies to you?

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

I'm late.

Why are those rules there anyways?

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

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

What are rules good for?

Many of us perceive rules as restricting us.

Laws restrict our freedom.

Buckle up.

The seatbelt is uncomfortable.

Don't text and drive.

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

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

Somebody put up that sign to stick it to me.

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

Nobody can tell me no.

Laws are there not to restrict just you.

Rules of behavior are not there as punishment.

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

That biggest rule of all, do not kill.

It's there to protect you from being killed.

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

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

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

Your belief stops at the point of your nose.

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

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

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

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

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

Rules are there to protect you.

It's stopping other people from harming you.

It's about saving you.

To keep us all safe.

It's not just about you.

It's about us.

We the people.

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

It's the grease in the machinery.

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

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

The vultures.

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

The smell of racism was evident in the air.

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

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

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

That principle?

From many one.

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

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

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

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

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

How long are we going to ignore our own stink?

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

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

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

The grease.

The sign.

The law.

The rule.

Through love, all things are possible.

Peace

DFrey

Challenge The Impossible

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

Will a grain of sand stop a flood?

Does a single battle win a war?

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

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

Will you own only one pair of shoes?

One pair of pants?

One pair of socks?

One love?

Impossible…

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

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

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

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

How much time does it take to heal the broken?

To bring hope to the hopeless?

To love the loveless?

To break the illusion?

To care?

Impossible…

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

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

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

It is a conflict that will have no end.

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

The struggle.

The impossible struggle will not be over in a day.

Or a week.

Or a year.

Or a lifetime.

Or solved by one candidate.

The impossible struggle…

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

Evil cannot win unless good does nothing.

Brotherhood is a relationship.

And just like any relationship you need to communicate.

You need to give flowers.

You need to share meals.

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

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

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

You get up each day and struggle.

You go through your day and struggle.

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

The haters will not stop hating.

Neither will Love stop loving.

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

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

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

Those drops turn into a river.

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

It broadens and picks up those in lifeboats.

It rescues those that are adrift in the waters.

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

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

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

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

Peace.

DFrey

After the Tears

The unexpected shock.

The eyes strain to see life.

The heart leaps into the throat.

After the tears…

An old photo of a happy day.

The hand of a baby daughter in yours.

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

After the tears…

Death wants to kill all you love.

Death makes you run with all that you love.

Death haunts your every step towards freedoms precious light.

After the tears…

With the flood all around.

With your baby holding tight to daddy's strength.

With all you have, it wasn't enough.

After the tears…

No one heard.

No one saw.

No one cared.

After the tears…

After the tears comes the rolling thunder of justice.

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

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

It is not a community.

It is a society that is sick.

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

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

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

This nation we live in has forgotten its credo.

This nation has forsaken its honor.

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

Our nations mind is set against itself.

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

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

Because they are not like me…

Not like me…

That's right.

That is not like us.

After the tears…

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

It's evil.

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

Not some mythical monster.

Not some alien from another planet.

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

It stops.

It stops now.

It stops today.

We know what the right answer is.

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

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

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

Love will separate a man from a woman.

Love will divide the parent from the child.

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

Every time!

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

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

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

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

I'll never be silent…

After the tears will come the rolling thunder of justice.

After the tears…

Peace

DFrey

A Tree

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

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

All of us can lose our connections.

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

Regret.

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

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

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

Especially our friends and family.

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

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

Maybe they came to school that day in their pajamas.

Adolescents wear adult activities like merit badges on their sleeves.

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

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

An example is how well do you draw?

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

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

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

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

We humans can adapt.

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

We can grow.

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

Growth can only begin once you love yourself.

We all need to forgive ourselves.

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

A chain to break is racism.

Most aspects of racism are learned.

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

Racism stops the growth of the community of the nation.

But this is nothing new.

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

They like where they are at.

They know they don't like you.

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

So how are you going to convince them otherwise?

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

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

…

…

Ain't going to happen folks.

Ain't going to happen that way for sure.

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

Humans don't work that way.

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

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

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

They don't want to come together.

They don't want to move to the city.

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

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

They can't hear us.

They really honestly can't hear us…

What do we do?

What can we do?

We grow…

We grow our selves.

We grow and become bigger and stronger than hate.

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

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

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

We grow a smile

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

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

We grow…

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

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

Hardened hearts…

Hardened ears…

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

Time wears away the mountain…

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

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

They will ask…

What is that sound?

We will answer…

Love.

Peace

DFrey

Tactics

Let us listen to the sound.

Let us let the future worry about itself.

Let us take the time to be in the now.

Now.

Silence the mind…

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

Liberty and freedom faced a test of resolution.

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

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

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

Searing fear, coupled with divine instruction informed one side.

Fervent ideals bonded with modern practicality informed the other side.

The divide grew.

Freedom was only for the White.

Freedom was for all men.

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

Two camps.

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

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

Words versus action.

Words versus violence.

Violence versus violence.

War.

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

The defeated side never accepted the outcome.

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

Tactics…

I use to be an Orderly back in the day.

I worked at a suburban hospital in Cleveland, Ohio.

I learned how to take a pulse.

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

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

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

Our nation has a heartbeat, a pulse.

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

Or to listen to it.

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

It has an irregular pulse.

A blockage…

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

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

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

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

It takes a little time.

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

One who wants our world to do better…

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

Tactics…?

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

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

Mostly the left advocates making things work better.

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

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

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

We the libtards.

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

Change versus death sentences.

Is that really a tactic?

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

That's the flag they want to follow?

Tactics…

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

Beto talks about LGBTQ equality.

Sanders tactic is to promote democratic socialism.

Biden cheerleads about we can do better.

Harris talks about immigration and fairness.

Buttigieg promotes better voting rights protections.

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

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

I'll get it done.

Tactics…

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

Put all them Democrats into military prison camps.

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

Our Republic is on the verge of another heart attack.

We need a doctor…

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

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

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

But hold on…

The fearful are not to be attacked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

We're on the verge of a cardiac malfunction…

We need a stent put in to open our compassion.

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

We need a steady diet of hope.

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

These are good sound tactics.

Silence the mind…

Listen to the people.

Drop hate lift hope.

Peace.

DFrey

Masks

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

I wear a mask.

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

I suffer from too much empathy.

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

Peoples emotions can flood into me.

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

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

At other times I put on the mask of humor.

My best shield, my preferred boundary.

I have used that mask ever since I can remember.

It's my oldest and favored.

That mask was developed to survive violence.

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

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

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

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

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

I still do not do well around anger.

I don't run away.

I don't hide.

I've learned to face it.

The darkness of man…

However, uneasy it makes me.

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

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

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

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

Fear is a force.

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

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

Anger leads to hate…

The fear in the world and our nation is real.

Many want to hide from the truth.

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

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

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

They offered no resistance.

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

No, the complete opposite.

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

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

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

A nation founded on freedom yet kept slaves.

That is, by definition, hypocrisy.

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

The duality of mind…

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

Military intelligence.

Crash landing.

Jumbo shrimp.

Masks…

The war between the States never ended.

The battle to free men's hearts continues today.

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

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

The finger of blame pointed at the innocent.

Scapegoats.

When the real source is never examined.

Where does this anger come from?

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

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

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

It's inside.

It's them.

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

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

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

Masks…

Masks only work for the short term.

No mask will save you from the beating.

The only way to save yourself is with the truth.

Be kind to yourself.

You are deserving of love.

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

See that you are surrounded by a golden light.

That darkness that you are afraid of?

You only had your eyes shut.

Peace.

DFrey

Stronger Together

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

Stronger together.

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

Stronger together.

When your mother kept you home because you were sick.

Stronger together.

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

Stronger together.

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

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

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

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

No one else was hurt.

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

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

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

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

He bore the responsibility of a man.

Of an adult.

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

Together they can weather the storm.

Together they are stronger.

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

A storm of the mind.

A dissolution of the conscious.

A thunder of misplaced rage.

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

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

A division between them and us.

Right and left.

Good and evil.

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

The other is responsible for all your problems.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Otherwise, a true democracy might break out…

They know we are stronger together.

Stronger together.

The wind is howling outside.

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

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

That wind says we can do it by ourselves.

That wind which whips up rage, hate, anger.

There can be no peace without honesty.

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

While out on that lake, a storm came up.

The people in the boat became afraid.

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

Their fear turned to rage.

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

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

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

They began to fight each other.

They saw the worst in each other.

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

How could we be to blame?

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

The rage stopped.

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

Your fear is our fear.

Your hope is our hope.

Your love is our love.

We are stronger together.

Peace

DFrey

Grounded

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

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

The veil that was the American dream has been lifted.

It is not a pretty picture.

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

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

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

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

Racism?

Rape?

Child molestation?

Murder?

Somebody is committing these crimes against humanity.

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

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

This is a significant point to understand.

We all like to believe in a good story.

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

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

He has all ways been free.

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

They that oppose this Natural Freedom are tyrants.

Broadly defining, it is called the tyranny of men.

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

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

The treads of humanity are made of many threads.

Most are common.

Some shine brilliantly.

While sadly, many are dull.

And some threads are just plain evil.

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

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

A bold proposition, given the history of the world.

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

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

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

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

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

Could all the threads come together and form a nation?

Could they drop their racism?

Could they drop their segregation?

Could they drop their story?

Could they drop their hate?

And pick up hope?

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

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

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

Those racists knew a great day had arrived.

This President would usher in a new world.

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

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

They see the demographic shift, and they are terrified.

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

Don't start nothing won't be nothing.

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

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

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

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

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

Those tens of millions of more people…

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

Fact.

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

But that's a digression.

Another discussion.

Back to the boil on our necks.

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

He's not a patriot.

He's not there for the majority.

He's there for a minority.

He's in office for the one.

Himself.

It's getting to be really, really obvious.

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

The actual substance of the argument must be pierced.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Do not suffer fools.

Drop hate and pick up hope.

Shine the light of truth before freedoms door.

Peace.

DFrey

Baby Teeth

The world is growing up.

Living has a way of creating a set of expectations.

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

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

Your expectation did not match Reality.

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

These stories we naturally believe to be true.

Why would our parents lie to us?

An example is someday you will have a job.

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

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

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

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

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

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

That difference is Reality.

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

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

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

He helped usher in the communication age.

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

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

Unfiltered.

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

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

It was going to lose its baby teeth.

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

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

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

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

Our modern society…

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

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

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

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

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

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

Responsibility…

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

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

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

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

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

I deserve a trophy!

I will marry Prince Charming!

I will have the perfect career!

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

You can't make me!

I'm winning you're not!

I'm better than you!

It's mine!

Children.

Children.

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

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

The truth.

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

A sad existence for the child and the parents.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He has an expectation that his world cannot be challenged.

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

It's time to give him a time out.

Peace

DFrey

Broken

Broken is not a bad word.

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

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

We become an instrument of the power of love.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What happens if your world breaks?

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

Just reading that sentence could break a world view.

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

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

Think about it.

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

That is the truth.

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

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

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

The universe is.

It is up to each of us to discover it.

Discover its truth.

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

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

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

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

Once broken we can hear the call of love.

Once broken we can see the need for love.

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

Break the walls of the ism.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Our world is broken.

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

To heal.

To bring back hope.

The world will not be the same as it was.

The world will be better.

Peace.

DFrey

More Than A Feeling

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

One step forward, two steps back.

That's right.

One step forward, two steps back.

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

No.

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

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

There is obviously something broken in our will.

There is obviously something overheated in our choices.

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

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

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

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

You are working hard each day but getting nowhere.

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

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

On the other hand…

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

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

They always have been.

Life ain't easy then you die…

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

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

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

Your own demons.

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

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

That our strength is we leave no one behind.

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

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

The times they are a changing yet again.

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

Words matter.

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

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

We need to give each other hope.

What can hope be?

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

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

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

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

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

None of these ideas to bring hope are new.

No, they are not.

They have been there since the foundations of this Republic.

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

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

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

Who doesn't want that?

Who would work against that?

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

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

Fear can do a lot.

It can build walls.

It can start wars.

It can starve people.

It can stop dreams.

It can destroy compassion.

It can throw down honor.

It can drown duty.

Fear is the enemy of hope.

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

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

No.

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

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

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

Peace

DFrey

Where Are The Strong

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

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

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

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

Where are the strong?

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

He's afraid.

He runs.

He's shot dead by the police.

We ask.

Where are the strong?

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

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

They find their way north.

North.

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

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

Where are the strong?

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

His familiarity with corruption comes from his own mouth.

He admires tough corrupt men.

They get things done.

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

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

Rules are for losers.

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

Suckers.

Things to be taken advantage of.

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

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

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

Who can stop them?

We all ask, where are the strong?

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

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

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

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

There is no bargain with evil.

There can be no compromise with corruption.

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

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

Saving your job?

Congress…?

Senate…?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No different…

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

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

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

Is the Constitution just some kind of racket?

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

Is Democracy a fraud?

No.

No, it is not.

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

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

No.

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

I've asked where are the strong?

We are the strong.

We're the people.

We are not afraid.

Love asks more.

Peace.DFrey

Right From Wrong

How can you know if you're in the right?

Many people past and present have and will go to their graves in the belief they are right.

Over 620,000 Confederate soldiers died for the cause of the South during the American Civil War.

They believed they were in the right.

1,773,700 plus German soldiers died during World War One.

They believed they were in the right.

Then the German people still believed they were in the right and the rest of the world was wrong and for a second time they went to war with the world and over 4.3 million soldiers were killed and over 500,000 civilians were killed.

They got the message they were wrong.

3 million North Korean soldiers died for their cause.

They believed they were in the right.

1.1 million North Vietnamese soldiers died for their belief.

They believed they were in the right.

This doesn't count the tens of millions of non-believers killed by these true believers during these conflicts who murdered the other under the assumption that there can only be one truth.

We today can see who was on the wrong side and who was on the right side during those conflicts.

But why didn't the people during those wars see the writing on the wall?

Why couldn't they see they were wrong in the first place?

There are big questions of right and wrong, but also there are everyday interactions, conflicts, issues that need answers.

How do you know you're in the right?

How many of us are willing to kill for a belief?

In our nation, many believe that they have the right to own guns and to kill whom they want when they want for their own reasons.

No one can stop them from killing not even the Constitution they believe.

We have subtler folks who casually discriminate based upon race.

Discrimination is a kind of casual death sentence upon the victim who is never given a real chance to thrive.

Greed drives many to gather and amass wealth through fraudulent business's, charities, religions.

Greed instructs the follower that the innocent are sheep, and you are the shearer.

Take from the stupid they'll never miss it.

Does at any time taking from the poor to make oneself rich ever raise a flag of morality for some?

Does a type of social, economic racism allow the person to convince themselves that this other kind of person doesn't deserve to be happy?

I'm of the mind that you either like humanity or you don't.

You're either willing to lend a hand or are of the mind that life is a party and it's there for your taking.

I'm also of the mind given our current time we live in that this split between those that are aware and support versus those that don't care about the common good is around 60/40.

I'm being an optimist and think that based upon the current polls demonstrating 40% of our citizens support our current President, and 60% don't.

That ratio can be reasonably applied to every issue that comes up today.

There are 40% of the nation who want children locked up.

There are 40% who want to discriminate against brown people.

There are 40% who don't want women to have equal pay.

There are 40% who would be happy with a dictator as long as that dictator favored them and oppressed the 60%.

There are 40% who want no restrictions on their right to kill with guns.

There are 40% who don't want the LGBTQ+ community to exist, let alone have equal rights.

There are 40% who don't want abortions for any reason.

There are 40% who believe that the rich and corporations like them.

There are 40% who don't believe Man can change the climate.

There are 40% who don't want to share, food, neighborhoods, the street, the sidewalk, waiting in line, your right to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

It's really a sad thing to think about.

How could so many be so willing to destroy so much and yet still believe they are in the right?

What blinds people to pain?

What makes people deaf to the sound of sorrow?

What makes people ignore the crippling predatory power of poverty?

What takes away a person's ability to feel the anguish of hopelessness in another?

Is it as simple as, "At least it's not me."

How did generations, these generations that share this nation with us turn their hearts and minds away from love?

What put up the walls?

What burned down the truth of the common good?

What ground up common decency?

How did respect become hate?

Why did so many stop dreaming?

Why did so many of us stop dreaming of a better world?

They stopped dreaming…

So many have swallowed the pill of bitterness and now spew rank hatred in their wake.

Why?

How can a person believe that hatred, discrimination, intolerance, selfishness is standing on the side of right?

Of goodness?

Of compassion?

Of honor?

Of duty?

Personally, I'm gobsmacked.

America and please psychologists tell me if I'm wrong, but America has a personality disorder.

An example is the "Opioid" problem.

Yes, a corporation and doctors got together and made money off their product.

They are sociopaths for sure.

However, there is another problem that is more disturbing than corporate greed and the willingness to throw their customers into the morgue.

It's called personal responsibility.

Vast swaths of the Midwest have seen and are living in the aftermath of losing heavy industry and manufacturing to other countries via corporate boards lust for their ever-growing profit monster.

Unemployment, economic downturns, even depressions of the past meant everyone had to work harder.

Tough times made a tough people.

Can do spirit.

It didn't mean that they threw morality, society, self respect , belief in the rule of law out the window and went from no job to heroin addict overnight.

Historically speaking, if you're out of work, you became an alcoholic.

But opioids?

Heroine?

How is that doing right?

What makes one say I am different from the rest of these losers, I'm not an addict, I got this under control, I'm in the right?

I need this to get my life straight?

This personality disorder that America has did not develop on its own.

No.

No.

People do bad things when you take away their dreams.

When people can't dream, it means they are depressed.

Suicidal.

When dreams become nightmares, some people strike out in fear and anger.

There is something we as a nation needs to know, something we all need to hear.

We can dream again.

We must, and it is our duty to dream again.

We don't have to believe we need to tear up and burn down what we have to make a clean start of it again.

No.

You don't set your house on fire because you need a new pillow.

Some of us need to calm down.

Open our eyes.

Our minds.

Our hearts.

Understand that the first principle of being right is to believe in truth.

Even if that truth reveals that we are in the wrong.

There is and only has been one truth in all of human history.

Not your truth or my truth but one great universal truth that has united us from birth to death.

Wisdom comes from compassion.

It's why a man a long time ago said, "What parent would give their child a rock if they are hungry?"

Too many fellow Americans believe they are in the right and are handing out rocks to the rest of us to suck on.

That's got to change.

Love means doing more, not less.

Love asks more of each of us every day.

Reach out to that brother and sister and give them some of your courage.

Lift that box off their heads called fear.

Push away the night terrors created by their fear.

Ask them to join in a new dream.

Peace

DFrey

Fundamental

The times they are changing.

The people on top have gone through many name changes in history.

A moving target is hard to hit.

For a very long time, they were called Bandits.

Then Master.

Then King.

Then Aristocracy.

Then the Man.

Then the Ownership Class.

They have had a few things in common over the past 10,000 years.

The ownership class does not like to share.

The ownership class does not like public education.

The ownership class does not like the Public period.

The times they are changing.

In the past history 400 years ago, the fear that struck at the heart of the Aristocracy was Moveable type.

Moveable type meant that anything which was said on any given day, on that same day, it could be printed and read by thousands.

The King's in the past were not afraid of the public learning of their thievery in time for the public to do anything about it.

The Master's controlled the narrative about themselves masterfully.

The public couldn't understand the motivations of the wealthy because we were poor.

Not just poor in the pocketbook, but also poorly educated, poorly understood politics, poorly endowed with brains that were equal to the rich.

Moveable type allowed for the almost live rendition of fact to the general public.

It took many social and political revolutions, the American revolution being one of them before the Aristocracy got control of the narrative again.

You can point to the American Civil war as being one of the turning points in history where a War of the Aristocracy was committed to further the power and control of industry.

The First World War was a war between the Aristocracy of Europe.

Each and every war since then has been about control of corporate power over resources and who ultimately sat on industry boards in control of the planets natural wealth.

The Man in control of the "Business" gave money to politicians who wrote the laws, who then made the world favorable once again to the Aristocrat.

Dissent was easily destroyed through media, narratives casting doubt upon public institutions were firmly once again ingrained in the public perception.

Can't trust the government…

Freedom had the drapes pulled, and the public didn't see it coming.

The ownership class is good at its own public relations you have to give them that.

However, an immigrant to America had an idea from watching Star Trek.

Steve Jobs wanted to own and operate a company that built and supplied the computer that was in control of the starship Enterprise.

Today over 2.1 billion smartphones and growing are in the hands of the public.

This is causing yet again a fundamental shift of power to which the Aristocrat is once again in jeopardy.

The Ownership class is throwing the kitchen sink at the truth, trying to stop the information age.

At least those aware enough to see that their yacht is on fire.

The Masters are losing control of the narrative.

Each and every day, countless millions can see and hear how their neighbor fell off their skateboard and broke their tailbone.

They can see and hear what their government representative has said about cooperating with an enemy of their country.

They can see and hear the owner of an airplane company say, "…oops we made a mistake people died, our bad."

They can see and hear how current day Aristocrats tell women what they can and can't have in their bodies.

The narrative is no longer in control of the invisible corrupt.

We are witness to a transition in history, just like the time of the invention of the Moveable type.

Our world is changing.

It will change fundamentally.

The genie is out of the bottle.

No amount of alternative narrative can prevent the truth from being revealed.

The sight of a man running away shot in the back by police.

A Sex Trafficker is sitting with your senator, your president's family.

A teacher is choking a student.

A teen is shooting a store clerk in the face.

Men in the street are carrying tiki torches chanting slogans of Nazis.

The sight of a melted north pole.

This power that has been given to us in the palm of our hands is an instrument for a fundamental change of our world, of our society.

For the first time in human history, those that feed and profit from fear can no longer hide.

What happens next?

The times they are changing…

Peace

DFrey