Doing the right thing is never the wrong thing.

TED LASSO

I thought this was a humorous choice given the last couple of posts this week. I do not always get happy feedback from my friends when I choose to opine about the state of our country. I will not burden you with the varied responses, but they are not as well received as the ones where I concentrate on personal or professional topics. Once I venture into the world of politics, I offend some people (which is never my intention.)

I write about our political issues because they are the most dangerous I have lived through in my lifetime. I bring their attention to the forefront, because this nation is teetering on the brink of fascism. I talk about it because raised awareness is critical to overcoming this intense threat to our democracy.

Most of the people I know are not watching the televised hearings from the Jan 6 committee. Perhaps they catch a headline here or a short byte there, but I would bet that no more than about 8 people I know personally are watching, or have watched, any of the full hearings.

In the last hearing, Jamie Raskin quoted Abraham Lincoln, “No transatlantic military giant could ever crush us as a nation even with all the fortunes in the world. But if downfall ever comes to America, we ourselves would be its author and finisher.” This was true and almost happened in Lincoln’s era and Lincoln lost his life for exactly that reason.

The Chairman of the Committee, Bennie Thompson, opened with his statement, “We settle our differences at the ballot box.” We may not always appreciate the results, but we have always relied on fair elections to settle controversial topics and that is what makes America amazing. 

What I choose to write and share with others is presumably controversial. I am aware of this. As a patriot who adores my country, I feel an unsworn oath (excepting the Pledge of Allegiance that I swore every day for years) to defend the Constitution of the United States of America, because without it being defended by honest patriots like myself, we will most certainly plunge into an era of darkness from which we may never recover.

I wish there were nothing of consequence to opine about politically and that the United States was progressing swimmingly. I wish that we were in a neutral position where both parties were behaving in accord with the laws of our nation. But sadly that is not the case.

To Ted Lasso’s point… Doing the right thing is never the wrong thing. If I am opting to speak out about the massive injustice that is looming over our nation and point out where, how and why it is happening, you may choose to send me notes telling me to love my neighbor and to be more tolerant and understanding, and I am still going to point to the issues that threaten to destroy us because they must be recognized and dealt with immediately. As a black belt, I am trained to assess danger as early as possible. Once recognized, danger must be met with action of some sort or another. Either direct conflict or evasion. But most certainly not with complacency. 

Happy Friday!

Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism.

GEORGE WASHINGTON

On this Presidents’ Day, I invite you to look at the world through the looking glass. 

The colonization of the New World was anything but appropriate.

European imperialism was the order of the day, to the horrific devastation of the indigenous peoples of this continent. Europeans landed and started building without any regard for ownership or prior claim. Imagine if aliens landed in your hometown today and started usurping your property and your home with zero regard for your rights. If they encountered objections they would rape, enslave or kill those who spoke up.

After a couple hundred years of the European expansion into the New World, the citizens of these (relatively) new European colonies were feeling terribly taken advantage of. Imagine that. Your ancestors stole this land and the accompanying resources and after several generations had grown and died while expanding their population (who would continue to explore and steal and rape and kill the indigenous peoples), eventually their ancestors were feeling burdened because of the amount of their goods and money was being taken away by the royalty in Europe who funded the expedition of their ancestors as well as the growth of the communities. That is like the employees of Google rising up one day and deciding that they no longer felt that Google should own their segments of businesses in the Alphabet companies and regardless of whether Google funded and created the opportunity, those employees are going to decide to take it for their own. Principally because they felt entitled and secondly because they felt the foreign sovereign rule was abusive in countless ways.

So what makes a terrorist?

Someone who uses violence to invoke terror to cause others to feel fear (terror) and flee.

Washington knows that the British army has occupied the city of Boston. He wants to strike at the British, but his generals—including General Charles Lee, with whom he served in the French and Indian War—caution him against attacking too soon. Washington reluctantly agrees to wait. In the meantime, the weather becomes very cold, and the soldiers begin to freeze and starve to death. Despite the cold weather, Washington sends Henry Knox (another young, talented soldier) on a mission to recover British cannons from the abandoned Fort Ticonderoga. Washington desperately needs these cannons, since his army is running low on gunpowder. In Boston, the British troops are commanded by the aristocratic General William Howe, a mediocre commander rumored to be too “soft” for his job.

After Knox returns from Fort Ticonderoga with the cannons, Washington develops a plan to occupy Dorchester Heights, the region just outside of Boston. In only one night, he and his men occupy the Heights,  build strong fortifications and start to shoot cannon balls onto the Boston citizens below. (Is this not an act of terror?)  The British, realizing that their position in Boston is now insecure, have no choice but to pull out of Boston and sail to New York. This victory provides a major boost for the American troops, some of whom agree to reenlist in the army for all of 1776.

Flash forward. George Washington is the Father of our Country. I make no statement as to whether this is good or bad, because things are neither good nor bad, they just “are.” This is the “isness” of things.

My point is that history is written by the victors. So, when the “Father of our Country” tells us to Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism,” given who he was and why he said it, what lesson do you glean from today’s aphorism?

Come back through the looking glass now and enjoy your “President’s Day,” and do not forget one of my absolute heroes, Abraham Lincoln, the Republican President I admire most. Contemplate that his winning margin was so narrow that he had to sneak into Washington D.C. because there were snipers waiting to kill him as he came to town… and consider that after Lincoln defeated William Seward in the Republican primary race, Lincoln appointed him Secretary of State. Seward thought he would operate Lincoln like a puppet, but soon discovered that was not in the books. His folly, Seward’s Folly, got us Alaska as a territory.

John Wilkes Booth had originally planned to kidnap Lincoln, and recruited conspirators, including Lewis Powell, to help him. Having found no opportunity to abduct the president, on April 14, 1865, Booth assigned Powell to assassinate Seward, with George Atzerodt to kill Vice President Johnson and himself to kill Lincoln, which would slay the three senior members of the Executive Branch. Accordingly, another member of the conspiracy, David Herold, led Powell to the Seward home on horseback and was responsible for holding Powell’s horse while he committed the attack. Seward had been hurt in an accident some days before, and Powell gained entry to the home on the excuse he was delivering medicine to the injured man, but was stopped at the top of the stairs by Seward’s son Frederick, who insisted Powell give him the medicine. Powell instead attempted to fire on Frederick and beat him over the head with the barrel of his gun when it misfired. Powell burst through the door, threw Fanny Seward (Seward’s daughter) to one side, jumped on the bed, and stabbed William Seward in the face and neck five times. A soldier assigned to guard and nurse the secretary, Private George F. Robinson, jumped on Powell, forcing him from the bed. Private Robinson and Augustus Henry Seward, another of Seward’s sons, were also injured in their struggle with the would-be assassin. Ultimately, Powell fled, stabbing a messenger, Emerick Hansell, as he went, only to find that Herold, panicked by the screams from the house, had left with both horses. Seward was at first thought dead, but revived enough to instruct Robinson to send for the police and lock the house until they arrived. Lincoln, of course was assassinated at Ford’s Theater.

Our history is fraught with violence. Most of us have grown up in peace time, so this feels very foreign. But it is all very real.

Happy President’s Day!

https://youtu.be/fBzujsdaqAw/

Decades ago, I wrote a treatment for a film that felt very much like a Twilight Zone. In that story, a plantation owner awakens to discover that reality has shifted 180º and that the comfortable bed that they fell asleep in the night before is now some sparse straw in the barn and they are awakened by a whip striking them, and people screaming at them for not being up and working.

It was the whole black/white reversal. As I shared the idea with some trusted colleagues, I received the predictable lectures about how this is too controversial and will not get an audience that warrants the budget… and that it will only amplify the controversy rather than shedding an insight for those who are so plainly tone deaf.

In searching for a quote to serve for Juneteenth, I found this one by Lincoln that reflected exactly what I had been thinking… It is easy to be tone deaf if you have absolutely zero concept of what that experience were truly like.

In social media and the news you hear blacks and whites speaking about how the whole historical significance of slavery is overplayed and needs to be forgotten. They say the same thing about the holocaust.

History is recorded by the victors and is not always accurate, but the truth about the horrors of slavery could not be more real, nor more poignant. 

And so it has always crossed my mind that if life were truly equitable, then those who are so actively and ignorantly downplaying the horrors of events from the past, should have their Twilight Zone moment of waking up to the harsh reality of what they are so flippantly dismissing as irrelevant. If they could wake up to the sting of a whip repeatedly striking them and their master screaming at them, while they are at the same time, harboring the horrible fear of what has happened or may happen to their family members, then perhaps when they are released from a couple days of this Twilight Zone, they may instead find compassion in their hearts and see a common understanding that they were so clearly lacking prior to living it for themselves.

Apparently Lincoln was way ahead of me on this thought. As visionary as he was, he did not invent the Twilight Zone, even if the concept was floating through his mind. It took Rod Serling to do that more than 100 years later. 

I was pleased to see Biden sign the bill to make this a national holiday. Only with continued dialogue can we hope to educate future generations as to the absolute evil of slavery and in the course, hopefully prevent it from continuing. 

For those who spurn this holiday and see the whole thing as irrelevant to contemporary times… I hope that life delivers them to an alternate reality in which they are given a chance to experience the horror first person. As extreme as that is, it may be the only option that will stifle some of the needless continuous hatred that is fueling the division in our nation and may thereby enable us to find new common ground that is not instantly divided by an unwillingness to release prejudices that hang on generation after generation.

Happy Juneteenth.

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The book has been written over a couple of years of climbing a mountain in the darkness in order to be atop for the sunrise. Photos from those journeys accompany the beautifully illustrated aphorisms, whose content spark each of the philosophical discussions.

Knowing that something is the right thing to do, in the face of hugely unpopular public perception, is an eventuality that not only faces all politicians, it also impacts each of us in the smallest of circumstances.

When Lincoln was elected, he was not a strong abolitionist. His wife was more inclined in that direction, though a majority of her family was siding on the side of the South. The moral quandaries that he faced in taking office with the country fracturing and the seceding states starting their process of raising a militia and readying for battle are more than almost any world leader has tried to solve. 

Yet, in his firm determination to hold the Union together at all costs, he was steadfast in his perspective that the laws of the Constitution of the United States must be observed and upheld, as was the oath he swore when taking the office of President of the United States.

With far more pressure on him to acquiesce to the South and allow their continued economy of slavery to prevail, he saw that the long term options he was facing necessitated the objectives of abolishing slavery and setting our nation on a new course of action. A decision whose impact is still reverberating more than 145 years later.

When we are confronted in our daily lives with decisions that have a moral quandary attached, we are instantly positioned at a crossroad in which our options are significantly impacted by a choice between doing the right thing or doing the popular thing.

In that moment, I believe we explore both sides of our personality. One side knows very clearly what is the right thing to do. There may be a moral issue, or legal issue or ethical issue at hand. Those kinds of issues usually have a right and a wrong component.

But in that moment, the fear of doing the wrong thing suddenly rears its ugly head and looms over us like a black cloud trying to obliterate the sunshine. In our heart, we know the right thing is what we want to do but in our gut, lies that impending fear that if you make the wrong choice, the repercussions are going to be severe.

These events happen in personal decisions that only affect ourselves, and continue up the decision chain to interpersonal relationships, group dynamics and of course, as with Lincoln, continue in their progression all the way to the top of the World Stage.

I do not believe there is always a clear and cut decision. I think each circumstance enables us to find our way to wrestle with the internal quandary. I personally try my very best to make these decisions to make only one person happy with me.  My reflection in the mirror. If I can look myself in the eye, and know I did the right thing, regardless of how unpopular that choice was, then I know I am on the road I want to be on, regardless of outcome. I do not think it is always the easy option. But I have found it is the only option that I am able to live with on a day by day basis.

I am currently waiting in line for Shot #2. Happy Friday!!!

Could you imagine being a slave, having another human being owning you? Having the ability to rape your wife, shackle your children, beat you when they have had too much to drink or they are just feeling ornery? I don’t think any of us could even conceive of what being a slave would be like.

In 1863, during the American Civil War, Pres. Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared more than three million slaves living in the Confederate states to be free. More than two years would pass, however, before the news reached African Americans living in Texas. It was not until Union soldiers arrived in Galveston, Texas, on June 19, 1865, that the state’s residents finally learned that slavery had been abolished. The former slaves immediately began to celebrate with prayer, feasting, song, and dance.

Abraham Lincoln is one of the most quotable luminaries of all time. I could send an entire month’s worth of his thoughts and not even begin to drain the reservoir. He was truly one of the most conscientious and sentient presidents ever.

He was noted for saying, “Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.” But I love him for statements like, “My dream is of a place and a time where America will once again be seen as the last best hope of earth.”

I have seen my share of videos cycling through social media with African American thought leaders like Morgan Freeman expressing why they do not think there needs to be a black history month. And I understand his perspective on that and I respect it, but I also believe that a nation of intolerant people are served by positive reinforcement that only through our unity will we ultimately reemerge as the great nation we have been in the past.

Having a clause in the constitution that says that all men are created equal is a value to be cherished. Living up to that value proves to be exhausting at times, especially when people on opposite sides of the conflicts behave in the manner as to illuminate the huge divide they feel between them.

Can you imagine what it must have felt like in Texas when the union troops arrived to announce that slavery was over? Every bit the same as being liberated from a concentration camp In Auschwitz.

Human beings can be both tender and caring as well as vile and hateful. It is incumbent upon us to spread the light, the knowledge, the understanding that ultimately makes America the last best hope on earth as Abraham Lincoln had projected.

Happy Juneteenth??❤️??

QUESTION OF THE DAY: Do you think you could really imagine what it would be like to be a slave?

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The assertion that ‘all men are created equal’ was of no practical use effecting our separation from Great Britain, and it was placed in the Declaration not for that, but for future use.