My thoughts on Morality, Reverence, and Free Speech

It's sad to realize that sometimes freedom of speech is not freedom. Sometimes it represents oppression and hopelessness. Sometimes it protects the ugliest of human expression, and emboldens those that use it to their advantage, and we are forced to stand in dismay. 

Apparently you cannot reconcile freedom of speech with moral character, for in a really truly democratic society moral character should not have to be defended at all.  So, we create laws to protect morality, so we believe, but we end up having a protection that violates what we created it for in the first place. Thus, laws are flawed. Thus, laws are used and interpreted depending on motives. Thus, laws are used and manipulated by moneyed interests. Thus, laws should never be used as absolutes. Absolutes create lack of freedom.

There are no absolutes in any law. But, when law and morality are used together you have hope for a just system. Not perfect in any manner, but overall well serving to the community.  This, I believe, is what we thought we had. Clearly, we are waking up, delirious, from a bad dream.

One day, after a Trump supporting murderer kills journalists, in what most likely was an action brought about by our president, I drove by a gun shop that had a huge Trump flag posted on the entire right wall of their store. I live in the north in a very liberal town. This was the day after the shooting.  

The first amendment, the law, protects this owners right to be an asshole on a day when he should be flying the American flag at half mast, to represent reverence for life. Instead, he, what I must assume is a white male, sticks the middle finger to the American flag, to the American Constitution, all in the name of defiance against reverence.  There is nothing honorable or patriotic about what's happening to this country right now. I know what patriotism is, and this is spitting in it's face.  No freedom.

This would have never happened prior to this administration. The boldness and defiance of right wing conservatism is fed by this administration and we shall all suffer for it. All in the name of a freedom I do not recognize. Freedom of speech that will protect the ugliness that will come. And it will come, make no mistake.  Will we be left prostate? 

The price of protecting freedom of speech sometimes is a loss of moral character,  and those who don't have moral character know that well.  They use it to their advantage. We are coming to terms with the fact that we cannot police moral character.  Matter of fact, many police squash your freedom of speech because you fear that your life will be in danger.  You must suppress your freedom to survive. This is the frightening reality for a very large portion of the population. This is tyranny which squashes freedom.

We felt this country was founded on the principle of moral character, only to discover that history is not that kind.  We are still grappling with what that means. It will prove our greatest struggle.  I am aware as never before that I do not trust my fellow human anymore.  This is a travesty of spirit.

I clearly don't have all the answers. But, I do know, for myself, this is the most important fight ahead of us. How do you define our moral character without religious zealots deciding for us? How do we define freedom FROM religion?  After all, this clearly was the intention of our founders. Separation of church and state. That is at stake now.

 Law and religion are very similar. Thus, religion is flawed. Thus, religion should never be used as absolute. There are no absolutes in any religion.  Religion has not gained our trust. Religion has, throughout time, represented oppression more often than it has stood against oppression.  This is important now because religious zealots want to change law to represent their beliefs. If you truly study history you will realize this mission is in direct conflict with what created our constitution in the first place.  We did fight England for our independence, but we also decided who we were going to be going forward as a nation. Considering separating our laws from the church was no small consideration.  I have to believe it was one of the most important parts of who we were desirous to become.

I am not an atheist. You can believe in God, and faith, and still  have the highest moral character, while questioning what place it has in government and law. For me, I believe my country was founded on protecting and valuing my freedom of choice.  My responsibility to my country is to validate this by my moral character. Religion, where I use it or not, is part of my choice, not to be regulated or mixed with my country's responsibility to protect my choice.  This is the America I believe in, the America we all deserve to value and protect, with the ultmost reverence and dignity.  Trump represents everything we are not.   

How can I celebrate Father's Day?

I'm a father, and a damn good one.  Some of that comes from having a screwed up family life.  My father was 18 when I was born and never in my life.  I met him for the first time about 10 years ago.  For a while things went pretty well.  What I learned from this past 10 years, biology does not make a father or parent.  I was an adult, so he viewed my life as set, and he could just be my distant friend, absolved of any responsibly.

While it didn't work out as I had hoped, my appreciation for a man who was not biologically related to me, by family standards was my step-grandfather, treated me from day one as his child.  It's probably why I adored him so much as a child, even though we would have a very turbulent ending to our relationship and I never saw him again before he died, he was the only stability for me in a wildly stressful childhood.  The man above is my biological father.  Pictures are deceiving.

So, when father's day came I had mixed feeling like I do at every holiday.  I don't like holiday's as they bring up how displaced I felt at holiday gatherings.  Being a father now has helped as I just make every holiday about my child and my responsibility to him to be my best.  I know I do too much, and I worry his life will be too easy because I'm so damn afraid he will experience anything awful.  That's something I'm working on, with difficulty.

Writing and reading have been my meditation for the past 10 years, which coincides with meeting my biological father for the first time....hum....

So, today, I chose to try my best to thank the man above for his DNA, and possibly steering me into who I am because of his absence.  My mom, who was mentally ill for the majority of her adult life died in January and this man had to know because his daughter see's my posts.  I didn't receive a "sorry"text, a postcard, a call, nothing.  That's just another example of his absolved responsibility.

Speculation, gambling, and investing redefined

We find the United States of America in a conflux of repeating many aspects of our historical past.  While 19th century race, slavery, and gender inequality is my focus, I have recently been thinking about the founding of our country in more detail to make sense of our present.

This book is worthy of a read on our history of speculation and gambling from the early founding of our country to the present.  Speculation: A History of the fine line between gambling and investing by Stuart Banner.

In America:  Reflections on the birth of the United States by Gordon S. Wood, Wood asks important questions about our founders and how they obtained wealth.  "Because earning interest from loans was considered more genteel than most other moneymaking activities..."p.164. This practice had no political prejudge, federalist, southern planters, merchants..it did not matter.  This was an income source that required no real honest work.  We rarely hear of this and assume money was made by land  acquisition.  Reading Wood's book and Banner's book together would make for some great insights.

It seems, today, we see moneymaking activities of the same nature being not only used to extremes, but rewarded as a great accolade.  The crash of 2008 is a prime example of risk being taken to abhorrable degrees of moral conduct, for greed, with our country's sovereignty as collateral.  I truly believe this was the first step in degrading our value as a nation of advocacy and humanism to greed and self service.  I have always believed we were more of a country that opened itself to assist than to exclude.  That is no longer who we are and we have lost our way.

We have spent many, many years valuing money as a representation of identity, taking capitalism to it's worst extreme.  And now we are at the conflux of whether that will remain or whether we choose another path.  A path that is super scary to those who have lived in a unwritten philosophy of white male dominance without really understanding what that has meant.  For some it's just how it's always been so don't rock the boat.  Sorry, but the boat is shaking violently.

All of our founders where speculators, slave owners, male dominant overseers of land, money, and human beings.  We can admire their fortitude, but we shouldn't forget their faults.  They can still remain heroes, yet human heroes with great flaws.  It would have been very hard then to fight the status quo, but we are exactly in the same situation, being forced to choose a path with greater knowledge of past mistakes at our table.  We must believe in our fortitude.

Whether we like it our not, we have always been looked upon as charitable, even though in comparison we are the youth amongst older, more experienced countries.  We have a ripple effect.  We close our borders, the world responds.  We clamp down on how we treat the poor, the gender non-conforming, the incarceration of predominantly black poor minor crimes, and the world watches and emulates.  Former President Barack Obama was, in my view, very conservative fiscally, but equally very liberal socially.  He was the first President to ever give a speech on LGBT rights.  EVER!  And, if you listen to this speech from 2010, I believe, he gave this speech as if it were just an everyday right thing to do.  It was who we were, or at minimum who we should become!!  I adore him for that, even if I disagreed with some of his decisions, he had my heart because he clearly showed the world who we were and it was a powerful compassionate world view that was admired by the world.  He reached his hand out in peace to so many.  For this, I have no doubt.

That is gone.  We may be able to get it back, but it's appearing to be a very difficult struggle which is depressing.  The suicide rate amongst the trans community is over 40%, the national average is between 1 and 2%.  40 frigging percent!!!!!!  When you do something as simple as say a business can discriminate against someone because of their identity, you devalue "the person".  When you are prejudge you see people as "it's", not humans.  This has got to go from the world!  When you believe no one should be protected because of their identity, you are saying you are more valuable as a human being.  That is vile, pure and simple, and just not true.  You are not more valuable if you are married.  You are not more valuable if you are white.  You are not more valuable if you are a Christian.  You are not more valuable if you are straight.  Stop it!!!

You can make money and value the person.  You can make money and show dignity in how you treat your workers, your assistants, etc.  No one becomes greater by stomping others down, yet we constantly reward those who do.  If we can figure out how to stop that in small ways the ripple will spread and we will have won so much more than money can buy.  Sorry...I'm a dreamer in capabilities that are endless.  Dreams can come true if we share the same overall dream, which I truly believe resides in everyone's heart.  Let's speculate in philanthropic human compassion, let's invest in community, then we will all be worth the gamble.

And you thought this was a post about finance, ha!

Ambiguous History: Pride + Shame = TRUTH

History books have told us that Columbus discovered America, that Manifest Destiny was desirable means to an end, and the Civil War was about state's rights.  Today we are at a crossroad where we can no longer justify the past vision of our history.  This is creating anxiety, anger, and denial from those who still cling to this old view.  They so want to believe it was conceived in righteousness and purity.  The desire for this belief isn't wrong, accepting the fact we have been deceived is the answer. How we embrace this new horizon of truth and discovery, bringing everyone along for the ride, is the question we must ask ourselves.

Correcting a path, balancing power, and repairing wrongs is the blueprint.  The details have to be worked out along the way.  Uncertainty is a word we must accept as our collective reality for a very long time.  The response to uncertainty is the difficulty, especially when pride is so dominant in our culture.  Pride is a beast unless humility is its counter balance.

Do we, as a nation, have the ability to do this?  That question will be answered very soon.  We are on a collision course with our future destiny.  Literally, these are the best of times, these are the worst of times! It was the best of times, it was the worst of times

I truly believe we have recently embraced the worst of times in handing our country over to people who have taken advantage of our vulnerability and indecision.  We have the capacity to turn the ship if we so choose.

I'm just like all of you, trying to do my best, and learn.  Here are my suggestions, please give me yours.

The options, if you choice to take them:
     READ!  Find voices that are speaking truths and presenting options.  If you feel my views speak to you, I would be happy to give recommendations on many subject levels.  I'm well read across many genres and will let you know if I don't have an answer.  I'm pretty good at finding those that do.  I'm an eternal student of history, philosophy, politics, and life.  But, it's easy these days to find anything on-line.  That is both good and bad.  It's up to you to decide where your heart lies.

    Go to the library, lectures and book signing events!  Remember, news articles are the main source of information, be it on-line, or by subscription, BUT the majority of news is soundbites.  Very little depth of information is given, thus one sidedness/black and white presentation is easiest.  This is old and antiquated!  With a bit of research you can dig deep for truths, and many times the truth is mucky and hard to distinguish the more you dig.  But, today, dig you must!  It's much easier to sit in your comfy chair and tune out.  Please, don't.  We need you!  Even if it's for 30 minutes on the weekend.

    Support intelligence!!  We are at a very high intellectual time.  Yes, we are!  There are more in-depth books, articles, pamphlets, websites, historians, philosophers, etc., producing amazing work than ever before.  THIS is why there is a backlash against critical thought.  There has been no greater time for scholars to question and obtain access to documents and research more easily than ever before.  My philanthropy, what I can afford, goes to supporting these people in every way I can.  They hold our prosperity in their hands and it's a HUGE responsibility.

    DISCUSS!  This is tough in this current climate!  I would say, pick your battles carefully, matter of fact, try to remember that just because someone says or believes something it doesn't mean it is true.  This is the hardest for me.  It's not my job to give them truth, it's my job to present questions that will make them evaluate their decisions and believes.  The best way is through example, which is the hardest because it takes loads of valuable time.  This last one here, is my most difficult learning.  I have a very hard time with this!

    Politicians say what they think you want to here!  Demand they tell you the truth or go away.  Educate yourself on topics and face off with them.  We must demand more from our taxpayer dollars.

Lastly, be passionate about what you believe in!  Yes!  Make sure you are versed in why you believe it without relying on religious dogma.  You can be very religious, but "the bible" is not an answer and it's not critical thinking AND you can still believe in it's value without using it as an answer to a discussion.

I know....preachy...can't help it 1. I have passionate beliefs
                                                  2. I descend from several ministers😄😎😎😙


     

James Baldwin's words are sickles of justice, inescapable truths profoundly stated in Historical scars of the past

Scream his name from the rooftops!  He IS that important!  His words are sickles of justice, inescapable truths profoundly stated in historical scars of the past.

Unnameable Objects, Unspeakable Crimes

"I have often wondered, and it is not a pleasant wonder, just what white Americans talk about with one another.  I wonder this because they do not, after all, seem to find very much to say to me, and I concluded long ago that they found the color of my skin inhibitory.  This color seems to operate as a most disagreeable mirror, and a great deal of one's energy is expended in reassuring white Americans that they do not see what they see.  This is utterly futile, of course, since they do see what they see.  And what they see is an appallingly oppressive and bloody history, known all over the world.  What they see is a disastrous, continuing, present, condition which menaces them, and for which they bear an inescapable responsibility.  But since, in the main, they appear to lack the energy to change this condition, they would rather not be reminded of it.  Does this mean that, in their conversations with one another, they merely make reassuring sounds?  It scarcely seems possible, and yet, on the other hand, it seems all too likely.
Whatever they bring to one another, it is certainly not freedom from guilt.
The guilt remains, more deeply rooted, more securely lodged, than the oldest of old trees; and it can be unutterably exhausting to deal with people who, with a really dazzling ingenuity, a tireless agility, are perpetually defending themselves against charges which one has not made.  One does not have to make them.  The record is there for all to read.  It resounds all over the world.  It might as well be written in the sky."
James Baldwin

I cannot read this enough.  It is emblazoned in my heart to be responsible for this history to be rewritten for the future, yet not ever forgotten.  That is the only way to heal and honor the past.

The Free and the Brave