When I was a wee child my godmother, Beesie, always gave me a new book for birthdays or Christmas or sometimes for no occasion. I happily anticipated these new additions to the “Happy Hollisters” or as I got older “Nancy Drew” or the “Cherry Ames” nurse books. I became an avid reader. I walked weekly to our local library to return a book and get or book. As a kid I read a lot of romances and learned about other countries and different ways people did the daily things I did or what kinds of things they ate.

I had to hit the dictionary to find out what a perch phaeton was or a pelisse. I read and read. I learned to be curious and to realize that not everyone in the world believed the same things I did or had the same kind of government. I read about Anne Frank and learned about how Hitler and the Nazis turned Germany into a killing machine and in the end cowardly killed himself. That led me to Elie Wiesel and other more dreadful accounts.

Reading lead me to reading and Beesie gave me the gifts of a lifetime. I give my grandchildren books. My granddaughter told me I always gave the best presents. I said I just gave them books. Her answer “precisely “.

Some Americans want to stop children from having the same amazing journeys I took and still take. They want to decide what books should be available for children to read. They want to decide for not just their own children but for every child what they should be able to read. They want to make sure that their kids and everyone else’s kids only have their version of history, of right and wrong. They want to define, for everyone, who deserves to be respected, what decisions they make about the way they live their lives, who they should love. In order to do that they need to make sure that facts, ideas, stories only reflect their own limited version of a proper way to think, believe and live.

What motivates this fear of knowledge? It seems that those who fear what’s in the books must be extremely insecure in their beliefs. Challenge to one’s beliefs allows each of us to clarify what we believe. Does it make sense? Reevaluate if necessary. It appears that the challenge is terrifying. Allowing a child to be exposed to alternative ideas might give them ideas. And that is apparently something book burners just can’t accept. Thinking cannot be tolerated. Blind acceptance is the only way.

A recent poll showed that the the members of the Donald cult would believe what he says over any other source. That must be one massive source of cognitive dissonance since the cult leader often contradicts himself in the same sentence. “Influencers”, which can be some kid making paper dolls, can say something and suddenly it’s a thing. However, if that person says something not approved, their lives can be totally upended, their safety threatened, their reputation sullied, all to punish them for simply having a notion that varies from the approved catechism.

The steady movement of this country toward unfreedom has been documented in multiple sources. Changes in the earth’s climate systems may be the most pressing item for the physical survival of humans but the survival of our mental, psychological, and emotional lives is perhaps in much more danger.

 There are facts, things that actually happened. Then there is analysis, what these facts might indicate. There can be legitimate ways of interpreting facts, but there cannot be “alternative facts”.

The twenty-four hour “news” cycle of cable television has conflated a plethora of talking head opinions with facts. Correction or retractions relegated to captions if addressed at all. Lies, knowingly repeated, excused as opinions, lies attributed to some unknown perhaps nonexistent other but nonetheless are allowed to spread and fulminate. So here we are, a country that is rapidly circumscribing rights, trying to hide its history, criminalizing ideas and embracing whatever madness that supports one’s personal notions. When something awful happens, mass murder, insurrections, one talking head or other will inevitably say “this is not who we are as a country.” Yes, it is who we are.  We don’t have to be, but for now we are choosing to be.

                 Back in the day there was a movie “High Noon” in which Gary Cooper as a sheriff has in his jail a most unpopular person. A rabble rouser garners support from the locals much as rabble rousers do. The man in question incited the locals to storm the jail and so the whole unruly bunch turn up at, you guessed it, noon, to insist that the prisoner in question be given to them for summary execution sans trial. Cooper stands alone in front of the group and after some dialog the crowd disperses, and the cowardly rabble rouser slinks off leaving the courageous sheriff stand alone.

There once was a time when we admired courage.

I found myself actually agreeing with George Will, a most disconcerting position, with a column he wrote about Zelensky. He extolled the man’s courage without which Ukraine would be a Russian satellite by now.

For many decades I have held Anwar Sadat as a personal hero. Knowing the extremely likely consequences of his rapprochement with Israel, he went ahead because he saw it the right thing to do. He was executed by a dissident for his courage.

Courage isn’t fearlessness. Courage is going ahead, despite the fear and likely consequences. Courage is facing fear and owning the consequences.

Today, we are inundated with myriad examples of disgusting cowardliness. Over worries about how their constituencies might react to one position or another, our chosen representatives refuse to do even the smallest helpful thing lest they might annoy someone or be the victim of a nasty tweet.

Piss ant cowards.

Kevin McCarthy is sniveling worm who would sell his soul just to be the Speaker of the House. That man has no principles or values he would not sacrifice just to get that title.

Cowards do not take responsibility for their situations but demand someone, anyone else be held accountable. Donald Trump, a consummate coward and bully, having lost an election and being unable to imagine the fault laid not in the stars but in himself, has spent the last couple of years spreading absurd and universally debunked conspiracy theories. If in fact the Democrats were even slightly as organized as such an endeavor would require, they would have every seat every where.

Everyone has seemed to clutch the manual of victimhood to their breasts, insisting that some individual or group is trying to hurt them. The ridiculous culmination of this trend is successful white men declaring themselves victims, apparently no longer always being at the front of the line taking the biggest potions is just not fair.

Wow.

We are inundated by “superhero “media in which hulking folks with some special power or another save the world from destruction. The reality is that unless and until we as individuals throw off the mental of victimhood and take ownership of our own lives, the reign of the cowards will continue.

We are currently being given a lesson every day in what a person with great courage does. Zelensky stands in the street and leads his people. We likewise are given a lesson in cowardliness as Putin hides in an undisclosed bunker ordering underprepared and under equipped citizens of Russia to rain havoc on Ukrainian civilians.

 After years of negative attacks on the Justice Department by the former mob boss of the MAGA cult and his fellow travelers, the questioners used the distrust they themselves created to suggest that that distrust was to somehow be laid at the feet of the FBI and Justice. It would be stunning but for the past years of constant anti-government rhetoric we’ve experienced.

            So, naturally, the above-mentioned hypothetical sex trafficker is leading the charge to defund the FBI because …I have no actual knowledge of why such a dangerous subversive idea has puked out of his head. My personal favorite conspiracy theory, which I am now inventing, is as follows: the only beneficiaries of such a mind-boggling notion are the gangs and cartels and those folks dressed up like pretend soldiers and threatening various and sundry. The uptick in carjackings reminds me of about a decade back when a friend of mine was mugged to get his phone or even further back when another friend described killing a random person when he was 11 or 12. What these things had in common was that the perpetrators were fulfilling a requirement for gang initiation.

            One might consider further who benefits from chaos in this country. The answer clearly those countries, Russia, China, North Korea, who have demonstrated an ongoing strategy disruption of our elections. It is well known that the Russian gangs are very active in this country, and the vast network of gangs have one effective enemy, the FBI and the Justice Department. Do these efforts to defund these agencies arise from some benefit. The question, “Who does it benefit?”, leads inexorably to a possible sad conclusion.

            Does the hypothetical sex trafficker perhaps have some benefit in mind? This is my personal favorite conspiracy theory.

 Making America Great again as a goal is antithetical to the ongoing effort by the group of House republicans to shut down the ability of the House to do its job by refusing even to allow votes on military spending or funding the entire government. What are they trying to accomplish? So far, their brinkmanship has seen the country’s credit rating diminished. If within a week, the House continues to demonstrate its malevolent efforts to undermine the United States government, the entire government will shut down. Paychecks won’t come for government workers and soldiers and their families won’t have enough funds to buy food or pay rent. Those same families will be unable access programs designed to help. Soldiers and “essential” personal will have to continue to work but unpaid. Federal parks, educational aid, childcare, school lunches and a whole lot more will be unavailable. Who will that serve? Only those who benefit from chaos and their fellow travelers.

            Even in the Senate the inability to appoint military personal is being blocked from unanimous consent by one Republican. For months that man has been the focus of a litany of condemnations, but every one of those appointments could have been done one at a time over all those months but the Democratic leader just wouldn’t let it happen. Finally, the Senate did hold a vote on three appointments to the Joint Chiefs of staff including the new chairman. It could and should have long been done but these Zaks would rather perpetrate a standoff. The right going Zaks and the left going Zaks face off and unlike in the story, these employees of you and me, while refusing to just get on with it, are preparing to immobilize the country and within a week apparently will allow the fellow travelers of the gangs, cartels, white supremesists, Russians, Chinese and all the other entities that desire the demise of this once respected country are simply going to shut it all down. Sadly, there is currently no way for us employers of this rag tag bunch to simply go on with the business of our lives. We put these people in their jobs and for unknown reasons refuse to fire them, a pox on both their houses.

            Will someone somewhere some media finally begin to ask the right questions. Who does it serve? What benefits are gained? Are these people simply misguided or plain ignorant? Or are they simply un-American trying to take this country to the brink of disaster.

We celebrate what is called “Independence Day “ every year and recently have added Juneteenth as a day of celebration.  Yet, rather than a gentle back slide to a time that never existed we are being catapulted several centuries back where some “ religious” leader or other determines what if any rights are meted out. Currently it’s the Roman Catholics who have a strangle hold on us since SCOTUS has six Catholic members.

It is long since that any “Christian” sect has bothered with what Jesus asked of us. Nowadays religious leaders send their acolytes off to ban books or pass laws that take away rights long held to be in place

Over the few days before and around Independence Day there were multiple incidents where folks exercising their right to assembly were murdered by other people exercising the only sacrosanct right,  The right to bear arms. Life, liberty pursuing happiness are out the window. No one in this country can simply enjoy any of those rights because no one is any longer safe anywhere. Bullets pierce walls and windows killing old and young in their homes. It is insanity to allow this kind of carnage. It’s madness to allow a small group of people to decide what books we can read or to re-write history to suit their preferences. We have watched proud little boys pretending to be patriots assaulting the capital, led by a sad version of a Don Juan or Don Corleone wannabe who is much more like Don Rickles flooding all and sundry with information likely to end lives and make everyone on the planet less safe.

We watch as the poor and huddled masses yearning to be free are bused from places, where apparently they are not wanted, to places vilified by the sender as dens of iniquity, where there are people who will in fact feed the hungry, clothe the naked, care for the sick and comfort the afflicted.      

The history of just the last century has shown that each time the nationalist sentiment rises to overwhelm more “liberal” ideas horrors occur. Communism and fascism led by people who had  a need to control others led to catastrophic wars. Israel is going down that path and it’s streets are sites of massive protests. When the tail wags the dog bad things happen.

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