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I’d like to take a turn from national political discourse today.

To my good fortune, I belong to a fellowship populated with some of the most peaceful folks one could meet.  I eagerly read their daily posts on Facebook.

One women often will post delightful pictures of roses.  Sometimes there might be a simple saying.  The pictures themselves give me a calm breeze.

Another lady has found invigoration by hiking to various destinations in Pennsylvania.   She has organized a few intrepid hikers to join her.   I always anticipate the pictures that accompany her travels.  A recent road trip down south yielded excellent pictures of the eclipse.

Yet another gal encourages reiki and yoga and some Buddhists messages.   What is not to like about that missive greeting my day.  One more women is a healer, using her skills with crystals, tarot, and infinite possibilities to bring uplifting messages to her followers.

Lest you think I leave men out, they are just as represented.   Several urge gratitude messages.  Others encourage a simpler approach to life.   More encourage turning life’s difficulties into learning and growing experiences.

I am also lucky enough to follow a blog about the Power of Possibilities.   Each day, a few times a day, inspirational comments and stories are inspiring.   Curiously, they are not sappy.   They remind me to be better today.

Interspersed between rants of the right and screams from the left and all the name calling and vitriol, are these redemptive calming messages and thoughts.   I am glad they are there!

Since the spark of Charlottesville, nearly every day there were stories of how much hate exists in the United States.  Civil discussions that allow the debate of public discourse can only be good for us all.

Let me take a stab at establishing proportions.  According to the BBC, there are 5000 members of the KKK in our country.  The Southern Poverty Law Center estimates that since 9/11 there have been 337 marches a year.  The FBI estimates that there are between 6000 and 23000 white supremacists in the country.

For the purpose of this post, we will assume there are ten times the highest FBI estimate to include sympathisers totaling 230,000 people.  An enormous exaggeration.

Dividing that inflated number by the population of the United States, as determined by Worldometers, to be 326,820,000 yields the percentage of white supremacists at .07% of the population.  They are insignificant with expanded assumptions.   Why all the attention?

As odious as their message, it still does not deny them their free speech.  Actually, let them speak more.  Their horrific ideas wither in the light of day.   Let them talk, talk, and talk some more.  Their speech will trend to a minuscule percentage of the population..

The media, however, raises the profile by covering these creeps 24/7.  They vastly exaggerate them and their message.   The media finds good ratings in proposing that we are a country riddled with hate toward one another.

No we are not.

The hate machines are in full force.   Hollywood actors cannot speak out against political correctness lest they be denied casting.  Valerie flame (former CIA agent) is on fundsharing attempting to raise enough money to buy such a significant percent of Twitter so she can shut down Trumps account.  Guest speakers to universities are denied access because there may be too dangerous protests to control violence.

Here is the best.  An ESPN commentator was slated to cover an opening day football game in Virginia.   ESPN moved him to a game with a lower profile.   His name is Robert Lee.   He is an Asian American.   But apparently his name may trigger some members of the population.   This should be a practical joke but it is true.

Still the media and the “Hate Machine” want other purifications.  Business leaders on Trumps council resign because they want to accommodate, and not alienate, their customers by having an opinion.  There is no upside for these business leaders by failing to be completely outraged, and showing their displeasure to inadequate condemnations required.

The machine grinds on.   We are racists if we do not feel guilt.   We need to feel a special brand of guilt.  One legislature in Illinois wants white folks to give up their homes to victims of systemic racism.

The white supremacists hold horrible views.  Their numbers are so insignificant.  They should be protested against.

They are also ridiculous in trying to legitimize their ideas.  The media should not give  them more import than those puny number of Americans deserve.

The Russians put Trump in the white house.  Congress, almost unanimously, voted to apply sanctions with not a whiff of proof.

Even if hacked, and they disclosed the inner workings of the Democratic National Committee, would that have made voters less able to make a choice?

Because Trump dared to express the truth that white supremacist are odious AND antifa thinks physical violence is justified, he is being called a racists, nazi sympathizer, and a white supremacist.

There is no evidence of any kind showing that Trump is a nazi, nazi-sympathizer, white supremacist, or member of the KKK.  A fool, an imbecile, an opportunist, maybe.

But with all of his obvious and egregious faults, why accuse him of being something he isn’t?

What will future generations think of us?  We take away monuments in the dead of the night.  We spit on the graves of our ancestors in the light of day.

The usual suspects: Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, Jefferson Davis have got to be removed.  Now, not only monuments to the Confederacy or Generals or s

lavery are slated to be removed.  They are statues remembering the sacrifices and suffering of ordinary soldiers.

Common men in the South had no preference for slavery.  They owned no slaves.  Instead, his earnings were reduced because they had to compete with slave labor.  When the call went out to defend his country, he took the patriotic bait, as men always do.  More than a quarter of a million men died on the Confederate side.

Vandals, and legislators of all stripes, have moved on to other historical figures.   In my city of Philadelphia, a former no nonsense police chief and mayor from the 1970/80s, Frank Rizzo’s statue has been spray painted.   Statues of Christopher Columbus are being deemed worthy of standing.  Even William Penn is in peril.  He not only hoodwinked the Native Americans, he also owned slaves.  All the while establishing a Quaker prescience.

George Washington…what an abhorrent figure.  He owned 317 slaves.  Didn’t he know that slavery was bad?   Jefferson, too.  And Madison.  And Monroe.  Jackson.  Van Buren.  Tyler.  Harrison.  Polk.  Johnson.  And even Ulysses S. Grant.   What a bunch of idiots!

Incidentally, Robert E. Lee emancipated his slaves ten years before the civil war.

We are so much wiser…so much smarter…so much better now.

And while we are rooting out all symbols of slavery, take the cranes and the dynamite to those slave built monuments in Europe and North Africa as well.  The Pyramids in Egypt.  The Parthenon and the Acropolis in Greece.  The Colosseum in Italy

Why stop there?  What about the Kabba in Mecca, the Taj Mahal in India, the Mayan Pyramids, the Great Wall of China, and Angkor Wat?  And what about the works of Plato, Aristotle, Archimedes, Sun Tzu, Dante, and Virgil.  Who brought them beverages?  Who cleaned their houses?  Surely their books-monuments to these dumbbells-should be burned.

Let’s get a little closer to home.  What about the Bible and the Koran?  Horrific stories peppered with slaves of every sort.

All vestiges of the evil past should be razed to the ground.  We will rid the world of every trace of slavery once and for all.  And live in the perfection that we – all knowing, never erring – deserve.  For now, finally, after so many centuries, we have reached some peak of moral and intellectual superiority.  We know truth.

Now we know that yesterday’s figures were traitors and terrorists.  Yesterday’s great thinkers were morons.  What will future generations think of our hubris…the intolerance…the gall…of people who judge their fathers and grandfathers so harshly and so earnestly believe they are smarter and better than the 10,000 generations that preceded them.

“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered.  And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute.  History has stopped.  Nothing exists except an endless present in which the party is always right.”

George Orwell, 1984

 

 

Truly, I am more flawed than most.  I try to be a good man in society, at peace with my fellows, and in harmony with the energy around us.

I want to realize the second half of life.   At 57, it might be optimistic to call  a “second half”.  Health issues need be sorted and managed.   Choosing a few, of many, opportunities to volunteer is grounding. The duality of helping to do good or so to feel good I accept.

Volunteering feels redemptive.

The opposite of love is not hate…it is apathy.   In the main, that is me to my adult children. I have delusions around relations with them.   Somewhere, under shrouds of mistakes, down below and hidden, I believe a few small positive influences are worth a memory.

I am aware.  Other divorces have occurred.   Some of us pretend this is fair.

Father’s day is a dread.  The U.S. Open is an awful alarm clock.  Three texts arrive.  I am glad for the texts. Nothing from the remaining three.   Pitifully, a scrap of contact is precious and cherished.   They regard me less, little, and not at all.

Weddings pass with no invites.

Each Christmas, I secure cards and gifts.  Eleven years of cards and gifts, for each, accumulate in the attic.   Sizes and styles change.  The packages stay preserved with hope of being given.

Guided by friends, professionals, and a fellowship, reluctantly the eleven years of gifts are given to families with needs.  The cards I keep.  My children are not forgotten.

Time passing catalogs self-evident truths.  It is debilitating to be disregarded.   I do not know how to get things better.  Common wisdom whispers to abandon what cannot be changed.  Penance does not allows absolve.  Unevenly, ending anguish and to be healthy, I acknowledge and creep to move on.

Volunteering keeps the body and the mind busy.  The elderly and dispossessed  have needs.  Mission work and the Food Bank are useful.

Gratefully, a second chance with children is now visible.  Fostering, adoption, coaching, teaching, or family are all welcome.  Calmer, perhaps wiser, surely kinder, more humble, and sounder prepares for a good start.   I have the time to be present.  An opportunity to be better is a much appreciated gift .   The best gift.

It will be nothing less than a miracle if I am able to set up this blog and get it going.   I am slowly figuring things out and will do my best to begin communicating.

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