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Invisible

May 20, 2023 by

You said I was transparent, invisible to you

Yet I was right there, standing in front of you

Even my tears fractured light, making rainbows as they fell

You said I had no meaning to you

But when you needed something, you always called

Now when you sit alone at night you automatically scroll to me

In the morning I see the random texts you send

I listen to the love songs you send at midnight, I weep

It was always me, my unconditional acceptance of your flaws

I was what terrified you, what made you furious

It was me, just who I was that panicked you, made you run

That I never demanded anything of you

Not once did I ask you to see me in the light

Never did I say to you, I am here, I am always here

But here you are again, after days and nights of deathly quiet

A silence brought on by your fear and your terrible

You can only say that you need something of me

I am still standing; I crawled up from invisible

Though truly I was obscured even from myself for a time

Made my way through the emptiness you left behind

Thought I was above it and beyond your reach, finally

But love conquers invisible, conquers tears

Love makes stupid choices when you want answers to ‘why?’

Why did you leave you me with only the memory of Invisible?

20-May-2023

Filed Under: Poetry Tagged With: , ,

When

May 14, 2023 by

THUMP..^..^..^..^..^..^..^..^

THUmp..^..^..^..^..^..^

Thump..^..^..^..^..^

..^..^..^..^……………………………………. ……                        4,900,000,000

That is the number of children’s heartbeats lost in Uvalde. Just the children.

Heartbeats at the Covenant School in Tennessee their parents will never hear again:                                4,620,000,000

Heartbeats in Oklahoma, teenagers killed by a sex offender who was able to purchase a gun:                  4,200,000,000

Heartbeats of the MSU students murdered by a person who shouldn’t been allowed to buy a gun:            3,867,500,000

Lest we forget, another Texas murder of the nine-year-old with his family, another heartbeat stopped:     2,240,000,000

Then there is the sixteen-year-old at an Orlando park at Easter, a heart stopped:                                       1,995,000,000

Finally, the heartbeat stopped in Allen with his mother and father, two years old:                                       2,450,000,000

This is just a taste of how little we care for our children, how terrible and tragic this nation truly is. We are not numb; we are traumatized. We think this is the price of freedom. Those of us who believe the loss of even one child is one too many are afraid of offending those who hold up the 2nd as if it were holier than the Bible.

Do you want the Heartbeat math? I am more than happy to provide it.

The life span of the average man is 73 years.

The life span of the average woman is 77 years.

The average number of heartbeats in a year is 35,000,000

For every year not lived, that is 35,000,000, that person’s heart did not beat. For every year stolen from a child by guns, that child lost the opportunity to grow up and chase dreams. For every year stolen, parents, grandparents, and siblings must live with the trauma of the lost heartbeat of the missing child forever.

Victims are not only those who lose their lives. Victims are all those who remain behind, whose hearts continue to beat. Whose souls scream in the night, “Why?” Victims are those who demand answers from those who are indifferent to their pain. Victims live with the loss of their loved ones and must endure the endless empty place at the table. Victims bury their dead in small caskets, stare endlessly at the last pictures and ask, “Why them? Why not me?”

We are a nation of victims. Some of us have survived to tell the tale. Every time a thoughtless person in power sends another “Thoughts and Prayers” to the victims of another mass shooting, the survivors wonder when it will end. Then we retreat into our cocoon of trauma to heal ourselves because we still suffer and feel the bullets ripping into our bodies. No matter how tough we are on the outside, we still know what the latest victims felt as they died. We still remember the prayers we prayed. We still remember our parents, children, and siblings and their rage at what happened to us. We still know, and we are helpless in the face of it.

When will it be too much even for them?

24,272,500,000

That is the number of stilled heartbeats for just the small number of children I picked out. There are so many more in this year alone.

There have been 219 Mass Shootings in 2023

There have been 97 children under the age of eleven killed.

There have been 558 teenagers between the ages of 12 and 17 killed.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. It gets so much worse; murders and suicides are in the thousands. When do we stand up and say no more?

Gun Violence Archive

Filed Under: Guns & Violence, Society Tagged With: , , , , ,

Death’s Texture

February 22, 2023 by

Loss is something we all face across the years of our life. The circle of life includes the end stage, Death, and we can do nothing to avoid it. We all face Death; it is profound and life-changing for many of us. Death forces us to examine our own lives every single time someone we know dies, whether that person is a casual acquaintance or dearly beloved. Whoever the dead is, we are touched somehow; we look inward despite ourselves.

Death has a texture. Sometimes it is smooth, even comforting. The Death of a loved one after a long illness can be velvet or a long breath released into the night. We are glad for them; they no longer feel pain, and they are no longer suffering. We feel all of this even as we mourn their loss and wonder about the hole in our spirit where they dwelled.

Sudden and unexpected Death leaves you shaken and raw from the inside out. This is the texture of burlap, scratchy and sometimes unyielding; breathing is sometimes forgotten between tears and screams to unhearing ears. Our mourning comes later, after anger and desolation.

As we get older ourselves, we expect Death. We have seen it, some of us more than others. We have buried parents, siblings, friends and even spouses. We have attended the funerals of loved ones and friends. We sent prayers and condolences and too often wondered why them and not us.

We whisper to God a brief prayer to care for those we love. Then we ask again, why them?

Death is the texture of maelstroms and frigid nights, with endless whys.

I am not afraid of Death; I lost that fear many years ago. I am outraged today at the texture and randomness of Death’s choices. I lost another friend this week, someone I have known for nearly fifty years. When I learned of his passing, I felt like silk ropes were choking me. My spirit excised from my body to watch another small piece of me fly even as I couldn’t breathe.

It is strange to run through rapid fire the emotions of sadness, pity, loss, and guilt. Yes, guilt. That peculiar sense of why am I still standing while my friends die around me. My friends who lived normal, even pedestrian lives, while I lived anything but that. Why are my friends dying?

There are no answers to these questions. Mourning includes the questions. Each of us approaches Death and life differently. Death has a particular texture, a feel that cannot be easily defined. Each death must be felt in its own time and given its place in our spirit so that we can mourn as we will, not as others expect of us. No one can tell us the ‘right’ way to mourn a friend’s or loved one’s passing, any more than they can tell us the texture of Death as we feel it.

Filed Under: Random Thoughts Tagged With: , , , ,

The Rabbit Hole

January 31, 2023 by

“Alice: Really, now you ask me, I don’t think— Mad Hatter: Then you shouldn’t talk.”

Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland

During times of great upheaval, we look for something to balance us, anything that will provide us with ballast in what feels like a storm. It is a rare thing to find, rarer still to find that steadying hand or even that strong arm to give us a feeling that someone else is standing near, lending strength, and will not let us stumble or fall flat on our face.

Too often, what we find instead are those we once believed had our backs are the first to run, the first to hightail it for the door. Then we sit in the center of chaos, wondering how we will sort through brokenness and shattered dreams to make a new life. Too often, the first response is to lash out; we want to know why. Why did you do this? Why did you run? Why did you hurt me? Why didn’t you stay? Why aren’t you here? Oddly, the answer isn’t going to help us fix what is broken or rebuild the life we thought we wanted. The answer is often worse than not knowing.

Within all the chaos, we have meltdowns, and people want to know why; what is wrong with us. They want to offer their best advice during our weakest moments. Instead of listening to us, to what we need, they slide in with their best recommendations to cure what ails us. It really is fascinating how closely linked our pain is to our expectations and how rare it is for others to understand we have them. This is especially true for those of us who spend much of our time alone. When we venture out, it is with our very public face, one we show to keep others at arm’s length and out of our personal world.

When we sit in moments of silence, it is sometimes obvious to us that what we wanted wasn’t for us. If it were, we wouldn’t have had to fight so hard to keep it. I think this is true of nearly every part of our life, from childhood to old age. Those transient things are there to teach us, and no matter how badly we wish they were ours forever, and ever, and a day; they are just lessons in life. So sometimes, we weep, wail, and rattle the bars; then, we move on to the next thing that hopefully will be better for the lessons we have learned. Yet still, we look back and wonder what we did wrong, why we weren’t good enough when we gave all we had, opened ourselves and made ourselves vulnerable to a world that terrified us.

Mad Hatter: “I know a thing or two about liking people, and in time, after much chocolate and cream cake, ‘like’ turns into ‘what was his name again?'”     

 Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland

Filed Under: Personal Notes, Random Thoughts Tagged With: , , , , ,

Dancing, It’s You

January 21, 2023 by

It’s you again

I thought we were done

You forgot to say it was over

After months, I stopped waiting to hear the words

For weeks I begged for why

You only got angry for my asking

Preferring the silence of disdain

Knowing you could hurt me more this way

Yet here you are

Wrapping yourself around my heart

Disturbing my peace

Winding through my nights

Pulling me from my isolation

As if I have nothing better

Nothing to occupy my time

It’s you again, damn

You said you were gone

Out of here, like fog burning off in sunlight

No matter, the fact is you were gone, finally

You chose to leave without word of your going

Yet here you are again, drifting in as you do

It’s you again, damn

I will have to do a better job

Strengthen my fortifications

Keep you locked away with the rest of my demons

I am not yet ready to dance with you

Not in my dreams or any other times

You said we were done

I wish my heart remembered

21-January-2023

Filed Under: Poetry Tagged With: , , , , ,

Not Feeling It

December 26, 2022 by

We all have those days when we simply want to stay in bed, pull the covers up and hope that the world will pass by quickly. Everyone has those days. Most of us don’t give in; we put our feet on the floor and get on with it, whatever it is. We know better than to give in to the inclination to hide from the world, no matter how much we wish for a day without the noise. We roll out from our cocoon of safety and plaster on an acceptable look of interest, even a smile, at the appropriate times throughout the day. We hide behind our walls of social acceptability and apologize to others for our moments of snappishness while inside, we howl and wail.

Smile, you are so much prettier when you smile.

Really? Maybe I don’t want to smile. Maybe, just maybe, I don’t feel like smiling. Perhaps I have not one thing to smile about, and I don’t care if you think I am pretty or not. Maybe I stopped caring when the man I loved left without looking backward to see if I was standing or if his action had finally knocked me off my feet. Feasibly, the truth is the world has convinced me that pretty doesn’t do a damned thing for me, and your demand is just another powerplay that I no longer give a damn about.

Stop being such a bitch.

What this really means is stop speaking up for yourself; stop speaking your mind. My question is, haven’t I earned this? The people who demand I stop being a “bitch” are telling me to be quiet and accept their direction, their guidance, and ultimately their demands for compliance. Even more than the desire to shut down challenge is the desire to shut down questions. Stop being a bitch means stop questioning authority, stop questioning accepted knowledge, stop questioning social norms, and stop asking questions. Finally, it means to stop being more intelligent than those around you and refusing to dim your light to make them feel better.

Why don’t you lose weight? Maybe you’d get a man if you did.

Well, maybe I would; then again, given I don’t smile and I am a bitch probably I wouldn’t. Has anyone considered the words coming out of their mouths when they say this to a person? A billion-dollar industry is trying to convince us our imperfection is an insult to the world. Every time we pick up a magazine, we see airbrushed models with ‘perfect’ bodies and faces draped in clothing that will never be made in our size, ensuring our egos will be bruised, and we will constantly question our value. Hell, even our friends and family get in on the size 10 or go home free for all. As far as I can see, it is a barrage of mean, with little value other than making the other person feel good about themselves. How about this instead, if a man sees ME, he will like me or not for all that I am. A man who sees ME will see beyond my imperfections to my heart, spirit, intellect, and all I am and will be intrigued. All the micro-aggressions about my imperfections will disappear, and maybe they will start seeing others as human too.

You should wear make-up, color your hair, and cover your scars/tattoos.

It would be best if you minded your business. All these people with thoughts on how others should ‘look’ really do try my patience. It is no wonder I have retreated further and further into my introversion over the years. Yes, my hair is nearly all gray now. I stopped coloring it almost three years ago during COVID. I am sixty-five years old and have earned that silver for the love of all that is holy. I am not trying to fool anyone into believing I am ten years younger. As for the rest, why? That is an honest question, why should I wake in the morning to don make-up that does not make me feel better about myself, so others are comfortable with my public face? My one concession, I have tattooed eyeliner; it saves me time. As for the rest of my tattoos, why does anyone need to express an opinion? First, I love my art; second, some of my art covers scars that I found far more offensive; finally, all of my art tells the story of my life. I have tattoos to help me heal, but it is, frankly, no one’s business. Why do people believe they can judge and speak their judgment? All I can say is mind your business, walk in my shoes, spend even a week in my life and then talk to me or just shut the fuck right up.

Talking to God, your way or mine.

Most of us talk to something, whether it is God, the Great Spirit, our Journal or something else. I do a little of all of that. I am admittedly not very good at any of it by common standards. Indeed, I am irreverent and do not approach discussions with God the way most who profess Christianity believe I should. I have been this way most of my adult life; while I believe God exists, I am not a great believer in Christianity as it is presented today by the White Evangelical Church. I don’t think God cares if we abase ourselves to speak to him, I think he cares that we speak to him at all, that we have a relationship and come with our hearts open, even when we are afraid, or angry, or hurt. I speak to God, I also pray. These are separate things and possibly misunderstood by many. When I pray, I do so in private; I pray for those I love, I pray for those who need prayer, who need healing, who need to be lifted up. I pray for patience and grace for myself because I do not have much of these things. I greatly resent those who would tell me how to speak to God or pray; you do it your way, and I will do it mine. Thus far, God has not sent a lightning bolt to smite me for my irreverence.

Some days it is hard to put both feet on the floor and start another day. It would be so much easier if people were kinder and just minded their business.

Filed Under: Random Thoughts, Women Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Dear God X

December 22, 2022 by

Dear God, in the interest of not repeating myself and railing at you about the dead children and lunatics with guns, I skipped Uvalde. To not step on toes, you know, those over-the-top ones who claim to speak in the name of your Son, I also skipped Dodd and the devastation it has wrought across this nation on women and girls. I have kept my peace about some of the lunatics still inhabiting positions of power across this nation and wielding it to destroy the lives of those who are different. Haven’t we seen this before? You remember Germany, Russia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Rwanda, Cambodia, Darfur, and the first Ukraine, just in the last century. When we add the Slave Trade and North American Natives, God, we are not doing a very good job down here left to our own devices.

Dear God, how do you not look down and at least nudge folk a little tiny bit in the right direction? I have to ask, are you asleep or simply disinterested? Do you see what is happening, not just here but across the world, with the general movement toward the more ugly, hateful, and terrible that humanity brings to the table given even the slightest opportunity to show its ass. Do you see and say to yourself, “well, let’s just see how far they will go before I smite a few of them back onto the right and righteous path.”

Dear God, I know you must be busy though I am not certain about what these days other than the thousands showing up on your doorstep every day. Aren’t you just a bit weary of all the dead children? I know their parents would have preferred to keep them here, raise them up and watch whom they would become. Do you plan this to determine the worthiness of this world? Do you count the hairs upon the heads of the elders and the children who lay dead by violence and think, “Damned Shame that happened again.”

Dear God, we are led by charlatans, imposters, and Cons, many suited up every Sunday and professing to speak in your name from pulpits of mega-churches across the land. The things they say in your name should make your head swim; indeed, your greatest angel dances gleefully in Hell with all your inattention as he leads the faithless towards even worse malevolent acts every day. With each mass murder, as the bodies lie bleeding, unrecognizable from the destruction of the bullets shot from weapons meant for battlefields, these pretenders offer up “thoughts and prayers,” I can only wonder to whom; surely it can’t be you or your son.

 

Dear God, in a couple of days, we will celebrate the birth of your Son. For the believers, this is a day of great celebration. Many no longer believe because of the great evil done in your name. You have seemingly turned your back and left the world to its own ways; what could possibly go wrong? God, look through the eyes of those of us who still have a smidgen of hope, and see what we see:

  • A Black Man was recently stopped and harassed by the police in Michigan for looking at a White woman ‘wrong.’
  • Congress had to fight to pass a bill to respect marriage for Americans, whether Gay or Interracial, in America. Even in 2022, some people still believe others do not share the same rights as White Heterosexuals. Last I checked, God, you did not say a Blessed thing about Homosexuality; this bastardization of Leviticus is all in the filthy minds of White Male Preachers. I know you didn’t say a damned thing about the color of one’s skin being a deciding factor in love.
  • A few weeks ago, a nightclub was shot up because of its clientele; the worst part was that families were there to support friends and family members.
  • Across the nation, antisemitic rhetoric is on the rise leading to real threats to communities and places of worship. Remember the Camps across Europe and the millions who died because they, too, were Jews, it seems we are seeing this again, but now it is here in this country, this land of the free.
  • A young Black Man is shot in the street, walking to the grocery store, nothing more. The White Man who does this vicious and ugly act of violence isn’t charged with attempted murder or a Hate Crime. He is charged with Assault; you know God, they don’t want to overcharge this 56-year-old white man with the obvious crime, just in case.

Dear God, this is just the tip of the iceberg; come on, you count the hairs on my head, but you can’t count the intent of these murderers. You know all of this, as it happens, don’t you? You see the fuckery down here, and you know it is getting worse by the day. We have members of Congress armed and dangerous, bragging they wouldn’t have lost if they had planned the recent insurrection. We have wars inside our nation perpetrated on those who don’t look or pray the ‘right’ way. Every small step we took forward in the last one hundred years is being lost, stripped away by a small minority, and they do it under your banner. People are so afraid, and that fear is turning into hatred; soon, God, we will be a nation at war again, though it will be far worse this time, and the body count will be yours.

Dear God, it is time for you to act. Nothing big and flashy, but something. I am tired, and so are others. I worry about my friends visiting me. I worry my friends and those I love will eventually have to choose sides and will have to leave me behind simply because I don’t look like them. I don’t blame them; I hurt for them and for me. Dear God, it is time for you to step into this mess you have allowed to fester, it isn’t going to self-correct, and these monsters of self-righteousness believe they have you on their side in their hate and fear.

Dear God, I still have hope. There remain so many good people doing so much good in this world. There are still so many acts of kindness every single day. So much compassion, in this broken world. Don’t you hear the voices raised begging you to shine a light, send warmth to those in need, send healing to those hurting and broken?

Dear God, we are not yet entirely broken, but it is time to show yourself and remind those who speak in your name of the truth and the power of love.

Filed Under: Series: Dear God Tagged With: , , , ,

Reminders

December 13, 2022 by

I do not remember the feel of your skin

I have forgotten the weight of your arm thrown across me

I cannot recall the sense of you behind me as I wake

The rain though makes me look for you

The wind blows memories of laughter

The cold makes me long for your warmth at my back

The dark sky makes me remember nights of tequila and stories

The emptiness of your side of the bed is sometimes too much for me

I long to beg for answers that you have refused to give

Your cruel indifference should release me, should let me go

Instead, it holds me captive inside my pain and confusion

I create my own stories for your desertion

Maybe they are worse than the truth, but maybe they are not

I do not remember the feel of your skin against mine

This is only one of the lies I repeat to myself hoping to heal

I remember everything, even as I know you had forgotten

Forgotten before you had ever left

12-Dec-2022

Filed Under: Poetry Tagged With: , , ,

Backward

July 2, 2022 by

I have been hearing the rumbling of how the Supreme Court has ‘let us down’ or ‘failed us.’ I am not let down; I am not disappointed, and I am not surprised. Why would anyone be any of these things by this Court? When you consider the circumstances of how this court came to be, why in the world would anyone think they have been failed by this SCOTUS? They are exactly who we all knew they would be.

Truth be told, if you are an Independent or a Democrat and didn’t vote or vote for a Republican Congressional or Senate candidate during the Obama years, you are part of the problem. You own this outcome; SCOTUS did precisely what they were set up to do, what the GOP has been planning and promising their base since the PRO-LIFE movement became a thing. Mitch McConnell stacked the bench expertly, and Democrats are so fecking weak-willed they didn’t fight back; they haven’t fought dirty, and this is the outcome.

We now live in a nation where 51.1% of the population cannot claim body autonomy. They cannot abort the fetus of their rapist. Cannot access life-saving health care. Cannot choose what is best for their lives or the lives of their born children. All because strangers who have no genuine vested interest have determined their ‘faith’ and ‘religion’ demand compliance to their biblical interpretations. Not science, not medicine, but religious submission. Thou shalt not kill; unless it is with a gun and you are already a living and breathing child of someone who loves you, then by any God you worship, all bets are off.

With the fall of Roe, Justice Thomas has made clear he has his eyes on other precedents. Those of us who follow the Court and the terrifying super conservatives that sit on the bench for life, we know where they want to go. If you aren’t one of those, let me give you a quick view of his words:

“in its rationale, the court’s majority found that a right to abortion was not a form of “liberty” protected by the due process clause of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution — as the Court had said in Roe.”

Thomas, considered to be the most conservative of the conservative majority, went on to say in his concurring opinion the following:

“For that reason, in future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell,”

If you don’t know the three referenced cases, they are:

Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965), by a vote of 7-2, the Court established the ‘right to privacy’ of married couples to use birth control. This ruling struck down the Connecticut law prohibiting its use. The primary argument in favor is the Fourteenth Amendment’s due process clause. Justice Arthur Goldberg wrote a concurring opinion where the Ninth Amendment was also used to support the majority opinion.

Griswold laid the foundation for everything else.

Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U.S. 438 (1972), extended the right to birth control to unmarried couples.

Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003), the Court ruled that the ‘right to privacy,’ even though not explicitly enumerated, was reaffirmed based on precedence. Lawrence ruled that criminal punishment for those who commit sodomy (any form of same-gender sexual activity) is unconstitutional.

Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S. 644 (2015), the final case in the target area, granted the right of same-sex couples to marry. The Courts ruled based on both Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the fourteenth Amendment that all adults had the right to marry whoever they wished to marry, opening the door in all 50 states for Same-Sex Marriage without restrictions. As with Roe, the Court cited Griswold in the Majority Opinion.

One other case lands squarely in the realm of the fourteenth and Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967). This landmark decision not only overturned the convictions of Richard and Mildred Loving, but it went further in a unanimous decision striking down Virginia’s anti-miscegenation laws and ending all race-based marriage laws nationally.

Of course, we know why Justice Thomas didn’t touch Loving in his sweeping view of what should be undone. Ginny Thomas, his seditionist White Wife, would suddenly no longer be his wife; his marriage would be illegal. He could no longer claim membership in that special and rarefied place he currently occupies because, despite his many accomplishments, his seditionist White Wife provides him a certain gloss he would not otherwise have.

The reality of this SCOTUS is that they are set to become the very first in history to strip rights away rather than expand them. They are the Dream Team of the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation, the country’s two most powerful conservative ‘think tanks.’ The confirmation of Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, all appointed during the Trump administration, gave the Court a Conservative Super Majority. Each lied during their confirmation hearings. None were the Best or Brightest, but each came with one recommendation; they were prepared to roll back all the Due Process and Equal Protection precedents and more. Consider other rights you and I enjoy today that potentially could be entirely stripped from us in the future:

Voting, we are seeing this already, state by state. The difference is now we will not have a court to turn to that will uphold our rights.

Access to Jobs, Education, Housing: all part of Civil Rights. This Court is prepared to strip hard-fought rights and turn back the clock. Make no mistake; whether you are a Woman, Black, Brown or part of any currently protected community, you are at risk.

Freedom from Religion: already the first of these have been decided by this Court. Kennedy V. Bremerton School District, 21-418 (2022), decided in favor of Kennedy. A coach who had been put on administrative leave for holding Christian prayer circles on the 50-yard line at school football games and ‘forcing’ team members to participate. This SCOTUS decided his Free Exercise and Free Speech of the First Amendment had been violated.

The other ruling that furthers the erosion of the Separation of Church and State, foundational to our Democratic Republic, is Anderson et al. v. Town of Durham, which built on a 2020 ruling in a Montana case. In both cases, public money is now available to fund private religious education from K-12. In Justice Sotomayor’s words from her dissent:

“Today, the court leads us to a place where separation of church and state becomes a constitutional violation.”

The list is long, and these Conservative Justices are salivating, calling out for cases that will allow them to achieve the goals of their masters. Listen to them as they speak at various engagements. Read their writings as they encourage new cases to be filed and make their way to their docket. They want these cases; they want to legislate from the bench. They know they can get away with it because they know Congress is powerless to stop them. They know the Democrats are feckless, disorganized and will soon lose what little power they hold. They know the people, that is, you and I, will not vote for what is vital to our long-term good instead, we will bitch and moan about whether gas prices are too high, whether we ‘like’ Joe Biden today, whether we are getting everything we want today, and whether our life is going well today. We, the people, are focused on our immediate gratification, which is why the minority governs us rather than the majority.

I have heard people say they are annoyed by President Biden saying in his speeches, “Vote, Vote, Vote.” Let me reiterate his statement, if you want to change the dynamics and see a change in this nation, hand this President an absolute majority in the Senate and House, and VOTE in November.

Filed Under: Op Ed Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Murder, Mayhem and a Reckoning

May 29, 2022 by

Do you know how things change? When enough people say enough. When the pain is bad enough, all the small differences finally melt away, and people find common ground and say to each other, “this shall not pass.” Things change when good people no longer turn away.

That is how things change.

We are currently a nation ruled by a vocal, heretic minority. They are mean-spirited, illiberal, unprincipled, power-hungry, and terrified. They are also violent and growing more so by the day.

When we, the majority, stop being weak-willed and selfish, when we the majority, become the genuine ‘Big Tent’ rather than the fractious, tribal-focused standard-bearers of our own self-interests that we are today, things change. When the majority stop infighting, stop name-calling and demanding absolute adherence to bullshit standards, that is when things will finally begin to change.

We, the majority, are always screaming bloody murder about one thing or another, the problem is it is usually directed at our own rather than those who are against us. Still, we can’t even put together a ‘true’ timeline of the crucial milestones, and how to define our messages of hope and victories. Nope, we only care about history if it suits our own beleaguered agenda, and losses that prove our point. We would rather attack our own President and those on our side, just to make a point. We would rather stand with the enemy, or stay at home because we didn’t get all we wanted then whine when we lose it all. 

The messaging is winning the day because those in the middle, the majority, don’t know how to confront the stridency of the Right or the Left and we are weary of both. Just some of the foolish things I have been confronted with since Buffalo:

  • Mass Shootings are due to a mental health crisis in America.
    • Oh, okay then. We are the only country in the world with crazy folk. So the solution to this crisis for the G.O.P. is to strip funding from Mental Health and put guns in the hands of the Mentally Challenged. Well, you know, that makes perfect sense to little ole me.

      Morals in America?

  • Mass Shootings are because parents are too lenient, children aren’t disciplined at home, there is a moral crisis with prayer being denied in school, Christianity is under attack, and schools have a leftist agenda.
    • Ummm, oh, okay. That might explain that whole Baptist thing with the entire conference sweeping decades of sexual abuse under the carpet, right? Or maybe it is the decades of proof that whooping your child with a belt doesn’t really do any good; it only makes the child resent you and grow more aggressive? The whole prayer in school? Yeah, you can still pray till your knees turn into a bloody pulp; you simply cannot force others do so in compliance with your selected faith. Despite your instance otherwise, America was not designed or intended to be a theocracy; it is not a Christian Nation; rather, it is a Democratic Republic with a citizenry that is a majority Christian, though this is rapidly changing.
    • I had to take this one separately because the entire issue of public schools and public school teachers having a Leftist agenda is both ignorant and insulting. Teaching true history, real science, accurate sex education, real social studies, and real political science all at the right time during a young person’s maturation cycle is not Leftist; it is called EDUCATION and Preparation. This education is vital for young people; it prepares them for the world they are entering; they are entitled to it, and your fears and bullshit stand in their way of becoming fully empowered and enabled adults.
  • It is our Constitutional Right to own Guns; we are a free nation because of this Right.
    • I think this might be one of my favorites. This one is close to an all-time high in the ignorance category. I can only shake my head at how truly myopic this sounds; these folks should get out of their Faux Hole more often. There are fourteen (14) countries that rank higher than the United States of American on World Population Review, Freest Countries. Guns make us free? This is by far one of the most asinine things I have read. Guns do not make us free; they force us to live in fear, our streets run with blood, and our schools are places of terror rather than learning.

There were so many more that I would spend the next week documenting them all and likely not even scratch the surface. Everything from the trite comparison between guns and cars to the regular refrain of “the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” There is always a piece of me that wants to slap the holy hell out of these fools with their talking points that seem to slip between their lips with such ease; they run from the truth, staring them in the face, dead people calling them from the grave demanding answers for their failures.

We, the majority, are the only ones who can give our dead the answers they deserve. We can do this thing that we have failed to do for so long. President Lyndon B. Johnson and his Congress did it in 1968 by passing and signing the Gun Control Act of 1968, driven primarily by the assassination of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King. The act prohibited mail-order sales of rifles and shotguns; it also banned most felons, known drug users and those found to be mentally incompetent from purchasing or owning guns.

“If guns are to be kept out of the hands of the criminal, out of the hands of the insane, and out of the hands of the irresponsible, then we just must have licensing. If the criminal with a gun is to be tracked down quickly, then we must have registration in this country. The voices that blocked these safeguards were not the voices of an aroused nation. They were the voices of a powerful lobby, a gun lobby, that has prevailed for the moment in an election year. But the key to effective crime control remains, in my judgment, effective gun control. And those of us who are really concerned about crime just must—somehow, someday—make our voices felt. We must continue to work for the day when Americans can get the full protection that every American citizen is entitled to and deserves-the kind of protection that most civilized nations have long ago adopted. We have been through a great deal of anguish these last few months and these last few years—too much anguish to forget so quickly.”

Lyndon B. Johnson, Oct 22, 1968 upon signing the Gun Control Act

In 1993, the Brady Handgun Violence and Prevention Act updated the Gun Control Act of 1968. This amendment was a direct result of the attempted assassination of then-President Ronald Reagan. The Brady Act added Background checks and created a list of prohibited individuals:

  1. is under indictment for, or has been convicted in any court of, a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year;
  2. is a fugitive from justice;
  3. is an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance (as defined in section 102 of the Controlled Substances Act (21 U.S.C. 802));
  4. has been adjudicated as a mental defective or has been committed to any mental institution;
  5. who, being an alien (a bunch of set-asides on this one I am not going to list);
  6. has been convicted in any court of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence.

What should we want? Where should we go from here? Honestly, we should stop with talking points to make all the crazy and fringe folks happy. We shouldn’t be taking all the noise into account; instead, we should be talking about reasonable solutions that make sense for the problems facing us today. I am a survivor of gun violence; many of my family members are gun owners and hunters. I argue with them about this issue because we talk over each other instead of listening carefully to each other. They sometimes forget I carry the trauma of gun violence every day of my life. I believe in my heart there is a common ground; if reasonable people talk with each other, there is a solution to what we face today on this issue. Here are my thoughts on the subject of Gun Safety and the incremental steps toward a safer Nation for all of us:

  • Raise the age limit to 25 for all gun purchases.
    • Exception: Honorable discharge from any branch of the military.
  • National Background Check database, with a minimum 24-hour waiting period.
    • Shut down internet purchases with the direct-to-home shipment. Must be shipped to a local handling agent who can validate I.D. and license.
  • Enact Red Flag Guidelines federally. This would trickle down to the state level, with states able to add to them, creating more effective solutions for their state. Federal Guidelines should simply provide minimums.
  • Safe Storage Laws this is critical to prevent the ongoing child accidents we see so often in the news. At a minimum, households with guns should have liability insurance against accidents.

For me, that is ground zero.

Today, in Uvalde, Texas, nineteen (19) babies are being memorialized, and two (2) teachers are being remembered. In Buffalo, NY, they are still burying their dead.

Buffalo May 14, 2022
Uvalde May 24, 2022

Today, we still don’t have the heart to do something. If not now, when?

Filed Under: Guns & Violence, Op Ed Tagged With: , , , , , ,
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