GreenMan Substack Podcast

Racism has been defeated in key battles in US history, but the war seemingly never ends.  The Civil War was a pre-action to Lincoln’s presidency, where the South believed Lincoln would free the enslaved people.  So Confederacy attacked first. The North eventually won and over 600,000 Americans died.  This was a gigantic backlash to the idea of expanding rights and freedoms to a minority group that had no rights in a nation that prided itself on the promise of such rights.

We outlawed slavery, but the backlash of lynchings, the KKK and Jim Crow laws were soon to follow.  Improvement, sure.  Freedom, technically, but still abject murderous sanctioned terror.   Then black leaders fought and died for Civil Rights and these laws more fully enfranchised black citizens. But we can’t leave out the racist Governors blocking school entrances and church bombings and Emmett Till.   Despite racism surviving to this day, barriers have been valiantly removed, however gradually.  Police violence has been addressed with body cams.  We move forward as a result of addressing racism. And yet racism goes underground to reemerge later with certain catalysts. More on that later.

We have progressed so dramatically since our inception that it is that it's no longer acceptable to use racist language and to discriminate.  And yet, the hatred and racism that have animated so much of our history remains, suppressed, waiting for opportunistic public figures to use this force to animate their purposes.

You can't say the N-word, so our former President uses dog-whistle statements to signal to his racist and closet-racist followers that he too doesn't want a black woman President. He uses stochastic terrorism instead of lynch mobs.

He created Birtherism,questioning Obama's citizenship all those years ago.  Because they can't say the N-word.  And he can't terrorize them with the KKK.  So he uses the only tool available, innuendo. 

He questions her identity.  He makes up this farce about her 'becoming' black.  Because he can't debate her on policy.   He doesn't have her breadth of experience or her Juris Doctorate degree.  So these are the tools he uses to manipulate the base into being angry and staying animated about the election.  Because this is what he does.  Because racism and grievance fuel his candidacy.

Interestingly, Trump seems to both stoke and provide an outlet for this racist energy.  He is the catalyst for racism as much as any leader we've had.  As much as David Duke.  At least Duke admitted he was a KKK member. 

Racism at times seems to be hanging by a thread and yet an agitator like Trump feeds it and its purveyors.   The neo-Nazis, the white supremacist gangs, the attack on the Capitol, Birtherism, the Central Park 5, Charlottesville, ‘stand back and stand by’: these are the bullet points of Trump's disgusting legacy of hate, his perpetuation of racist stereotypes and his using racism for notoriety and for the furtherance of his political goals.

He is the backlash to racial progress embodied.  He is the David Duke of our time, just dressed as PT Barnum.  His is the Neo-Confederacy and it is such a Lost Cause.  We will not go backward.  And yet racism dies hard.  Maybe because grievance dies hard.  What is it that keeps these resentments alive?  What makes people gather together against another group?  What makes them believe lies and misinformation?  What makes that enterprise entertaining and sustaining?  How is it that people gain identity by hating another group? Are these the vagaries of an atomized modernity with its technological trappings?

I keep saying we are progressing, and yet it appears racism isn't going anywhere.  Neither are sexism, homophobia or transphobia.

Conversely,Obama's inauguration and Presidency were among the major cultural moments of our history, regardless of the scorecard one might give his policies.  Profoundly, Obama became President of a nation where black men and women were once enslaved and owned.  Our culture changed that day, if in subtle ways. And yet those same seeds of progress were the impetus for a tremendous and destructive backlash that culminated in a Trump presidency and the violent attempt to overturn an election by a would-be dictator.

Soon, I believe we will have a female black president.  I wonder if this event, added to the Obama Presidency will start a process by which we clear this racist angst.  Will we become colorblind via exposure therapy, as it were?  Will she have an effective presidency and lead us to devalue our racism and sexism?  Will hearts and minds change?  Will she address the underlying economic issues that have people feeling vulnerable?

Or do these isms die hard because they hijack our Amygdala, which doesn't get enough exercise fighting bears and Neanderthals?  I can't say.  But I sadly see racism as a thread that stretches back to before our nation's inception and seems to always have more left on the spool, despite our best efforts.  And yet, we progress.

“A vote is a kind of prayer about the kind of world you want to live in,”  said Senator and Reverend Raphael Warnock.

With so much cynicism and disinformation, it's easy to want to sit out politics.  That's where this quote from Reverend Warnock finds us.  Teetering on the edge of a cliff.  The demagogic dreamweaver would have us believe we are in a nightmare that only he can wake us from.  And yet the opposite is true.  We have problems and a system that needs attention and revision.  But the fantasy that he peddles is barren.  Women have already lost bodily autonomy because of his bogus Supreme Court picks.  He would not honor our treaties and alliances.  His Project 2025 would dismantle our institutions.  His election would be the last.  He has said so himself.  We would no longer be free.  Can you believe we are even discussing this?

My vote, my prayer for the kind of world I want to live in, will be for the Harris Walz ticket, obviously.  I want to live in a world where a brown woman can be President.  Where her opponent doesn't make veiled racial slurs about her.  A world where our soldiers and their resting places are not dishonored for cheap commercials.

I want our nation to be that shining city on the hill, even if those who spoke of it as such have torn at its very foundations.

We are absolutely a beacon for the world.  And in saying so, I admit we have so much room for improvement in our treatment of other nations and their citizens and our own.  But we are the grand experiment.  What happens when people rule themselves?  What happens when we reject monarchy?  What happens when the promises of a nation's founding documents do not match up with its treatment of its inhabitants?  What happens when people-power overcomes hatred and freedom expands?

I'll tell you what happens.

A backlash of epic proportion. 

You and I are in the eye of that hurricane.

It seems like a regular election approaches, with two candidates that have competing visions.  Taxes, foreign policy, and all the boxers/briefs filigree of a typical election year.  Business as usual.  Both sides.  Doesn't affect me.  Coastal elites and all that Jazz.

But nothing could be further from the truth.  We have the most stark contrast since our revolution.  That choice was self-rule vs taxation without representation from a distant and stilted monarchy.  All give and no take.  And so our forefathers rebelled.  They could no longer stand the hypocrisy and risked everything and became David against the most mighty of Goliaths. 

For over a decade these brave men and women, shoeless and ill-equipped fought against the strongest military in the world.  And they prevailed against all odds.  They did this for us.  So that we could be free to choose the course of our nation and our lives within it.  So that we may taste freedom and autonomy on a scale never experienced in the world to that date.  So that we could later free enslaved people and enfranchise women to the point that one could be our next elected leader.  Just 250 years after our unlikely inception.

What a story and what a prayer they made when they chose sacrifice over conformity.  When they chose nobility over subjugation.  When they chose to embody the high ideals of the Enlightenment authors that informed their consciousnesses.  When they drew a line in the sand and said, "No more," and were willing to fight and die for it.  That was Patriotism.

And just 250 years later, we take this epic blessing on our lives for granted.  So many of us would piss it away in service of petty grievance and opportunism.  And this is the natural by-product of freedom: complacency, intellectual laziness, nihlism.  But so is re-awakening.

We have 2 choices.  We can wait until we are no longer free and reawaken.  We can create an underground resistance movement that battles the dictatorship for decades and hopefully, one day, reclaims power and re-establishes a democratic republic. 

Or we can wake up now and do whatever it takes to keep this nightmare scenario from taking place.  Luckily, we don't have to pick up arms against our brothers and sisters.  We don't have to hate anyone.  We don't have to ship off to a foreign shore to die in battle.  We just have to vote.

Just vote.  Maybe tell someone else to vote.  Tell them how it's a prayer for the kind of world they want to live in.  Tell them they matter and that their voice matters.  Tell them it's not too late.

I keep seeing political signs and Facebook posts saying, ‘We won’t go back.’  I say Amen to that.  But the fact that we have the luxury of looking in the rear view mirror at a 1 term Trump administration may be our saving grace, in the long run. 

Most autocrats win the election and then gradually consolidate power until that power is absolute.  Then they either go to war, start a reign of terror, or do both.  But we were spared some of the consolidating power part because Trump lost and his attempts to hold onto power via the January 6th riot on the Capitol, coupled with the fake electors schemes, didn’t work.

The most unlikely hero in US history, Mike Pence, stood up to the angry mob and the man who spurred them on.  The man who tried to have him killed.  The former President and convicted felon, Donald Trump. The Republican nominee for President in 2024.

So he left power, however unwillingly.  And we got a needed reprieve.  We had time for Congressional hearings and federal and state grand juries and charges and even some convictions.  And yet the current race is still neck and neck.  The Biden administration had a pretty good record and still we are hoping to barely beat back this fascist onslaught.  And if we do, it will be partly due to the break and the juxtaposition of a hopeful and positive message after a decade of manufactured division.

Donald Trump has dominated our culture for the last 10 years in a way no person has done in our nation’s history.  Even FDR with his 12 years in office and sweeping New Deal legislation, WW2 heroism and fireside chats didn’t reshape the culture as much, though he did shape our nation for the better.

After 10 years, I think most of us are as sick and tired of Trump as is possible.  But if he had won in 2020 or held onto power, we would not be in a position to do anything about it.  We’d be in a de facto dictatorship.  We’d be watching Trump consolidate power as he rationalized increasingly draconian punishments for his detractors.  But we got lucky.  He lost and his attempts to hold onto power were thwarted.  You’d think with a second opportunity, they will figure out how to do it right. And they just might.

So especially with VP Harris now leading the ticket, we see a vibrant alternative to this darkness.  We see how a bully acts when he doesn’t think he can win.  We hear his ramblings, his threats, fear-mongering.  And it just doesn’t land.  Because we’ve seen this act before.

Most nations in the throes of an attempted authoritarian takeover don’t get this window.  We get to revisit the question, thankfully.

We get to watch the bloom fade from Trump’s speeches.  We get to watch as a tyrant and a criminal mind keeps racking up more crimes, more hate speech, more calls to violence.  And it will never end until he is held accountable.  And other opportunists will pop up until they see him held to account.  Such is the desire for so many willing imbeciles to lick boots.  Such is the fascination with macho bread and circuses.  Such is the emptiness of late-stage capitalism and a taken-for-granted democracy.

Such is the hollow soullessness that sees no goal worth fighting for, sacrificing for.  Better to watch it all burn and warm one’s hands by the fire. 

But we get the chance to side-step all that.  Perhaps it is our institutions that saved us.  Maybe it’s those courageous Republicans who worked in the Trump administration and spoke up, who said no to the angry mob.  Those who got their own attorney and changed their testimony.  Those who tanked their own promising careers to co-chair the January 6th committee.  Because it was right.  Honorable.  American. 

I thank everyone who has been courageous in the face of fear and threats and actual violence.  And we’re not even there yet.  We haven’t won the popular vote yet.  We don’t have the electoral college votes yet.  We haven’t gotten past the certification hurdles that will inevitably arise.  But we have hope.  Because we are getting the opportunity to revisit the question, “Do we want to be a free people?”  We are lucky to be a still free people.  We take that status lightly at our own peril.

Often my focus in writing is about digging into an issue and finding the intellectual flaw that holds it together.   Usually ideas come in the form of insight where I get an ‘aha’ moment and I see the error of a particular stance or the misleading message from a propaganda network.  Other times I may be describing an experience with a person where I notice poor argumentation.

Fallacies, biases, manipulations, denial and other psychological phenomena are the nuts and bolts of misunderstanding and the distortion of reality.  This is the stuff of propaganda.  Most people who unwittingly spread propaganda don’t recognize it as such.  We are often unwittingly arguing, debating and believing distortions like these.  Most people are unaware that such tricks of the mind exist.  And those who know of them usually can’t spot them or catch themselves or others using them in a statement in real time.

So, in short, I’m saying everyone is full of s**t.  This raises deep and important questions:

How do we get tricked or trick ourselves?  Can we learn to think more clearly?

How can we recognize and decode and inoculate ourselves from propaganda?

Could we come to notice fallacious argumentation in ourselves and others?

How does a person reckon with the fluid and often faulty nature of perception?

How can we have a beginner's mind when we consider our stances and perceptions?

A simple answer must include vigilance and practice. We must remain always curious about our ideas and humble enough to recognize that we may have arrived at them by faulty means.

There is always more to a story than we can see.  That’s where a beginner's mind comes in.

We must view our collection of beliefs with a suspicious eye. We come to conclusions via a process with steps along the way.  Every step has potential pitfalls, where arguments that seem to make sense on the surface turn out to be faulty.  Especially those that elicit an emotional reaction in us.  Those presenting us ideas may have used poor but salacious argumentation, made leaps of faith, jumped to conclusions, used distorted thinking, presented fallacies in lieu of logic, and had hidden biases.  In a sea of data, our minds try to find answers, often using pattern recognition and mental shortcuts.  Predicting that the Mind will jump to these conclusions can make us more disciplined. 

And finally, with propaganda and advertisements as examples, let’s remember that we live in a world where not everyone is honest.  Not everyone has our needs in mind.  We are being manipulated by political parties, businesses, and other institutions with their own agendas.   We can begin with the stance that most public entities are selling us something.  They often package the information they want us to believe in the form of a narrative whose accuracy is less important than its efficacy. The narrative, the relatable story, makes the information manageable and palatable.   Our minds love a good story, especially one where we get to be the hero.   Stories that feel good sell products.  Stories that make us feel good about ourselves sell even more products, this is called humoring.  But stories that make us feel bad may rouse us into action, bypassing our logical mind to access our primitive amygdala.  This is where propaganda comes in.  Propaganda pushes our fear buttons so we are primed to look at others with suspicion.  Then we can find affiliation with others who are suspicious of other groups.  Then we feel good again.

This is how nations get divided and scapegoats get sent off to camps and worse.  The 20th Century was a cautionary tale; Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Imperial Japan, Communist Russia and other examples of propaganda leading to genocide abound.  Tens of millions died in WW2.  But the majority of that genocide took place within the borders of said nations.  Autocrats like Hitler turned a benevolent populace against a convenient scapegoat, via propaganda and 6 million Jews were massacred.

The process of propagandizing and amassing absolute power took years from Hitler’s election in 1932 until the bloody end of WW2 in 1945.

So while I love to discuss the talking points of the day, to speak up for my candidate of choice, I prefer a deeper focus.  Let’s look beneath the surface and explore the arguments themselves. Let’s decode them and notice who may be propagandizing us.  We must develop this ability before we share media or talking points that may be misleading.  Otherwise, we become a stooge, carrying water for a demagogue.

And finally, we must assess and be willing to renounce our affiliations.  We must recognize that we may have been unwittingly propagandized to the point of cult status.  This is where humility serves, for we are all prone to manipulation.  We are all vulnerable to the manipulations of those who seek to sway us to their agendas.

The only fighting chance we have is to arm ourselves with at least a passing familiarity with the tools of the propagandist.  Otherwise, we know not whom we serve.  The gruesome costs of ignorance are everywhere: Civil War Memorials, the still standing Death Camps in Europe.  And yet Anti-Semitism abounds, as does a sunny and absolutely falsifiable revisionist history about our Civil War, known colloquially as the Lost Cause.  Propagandists also want to rewrite history: even selling unwitting consumers on the idea that the Holocaust never happened.  How much easier will that be when all the survivors of the death camps are long dead?

Such is the slippery nature of perception.  We can be made to believe lies.  And these lies lead to stances, which lead to votes.  And those votes can and do empower autocrats to take more and more power.  And they never willingly give it back.

I love writing and sharing my insights and perceptions. If you enjoy this writing, would you please consider doing one or more of the following? Subscribe, like the article, share an article with friends or consider being a paid subscriber. It’s just $5 a month but it helps. Thanks 8)

We often criticize each other for wallowing in self-pity. The connotation is clearly negative. But is this fair? The idea crossed my mind yesterday that pity is a form of love. If I saw a hurt, sick or hungry animal, I would be overtaken with pity.

That pity would cause me to care for this animal in any way I could. Pity asks us to give grace. Not to ask if that animal worked hard enough to find food and water or to avoid cars. Pity asks us to give, to shepherd, to protect and to lift up someone or something in need.

Obviously, with self-pity, we don't want to use it as a defense against working, considering our part, taking responsibility, making amends etc. But perhaps we are sitting in self-pity because we are deserving of this form of self-love. Perhaps a s**t-storm of events has overtaken us. Maybe we don't know what to do. Maybe we are absolutely devastated to our core.

Maybe self-pity is destructive. I don't know better. I don't know if it might be helpful for a time and then becomes a crutch, a defense, a shield. Maybe it becomes part of our story and we need to move on from it and become empowered again.

However this shakes out, I want to look at everyone, including myself, anew. I don't know anyone's story, their suffering, their deficits and their blind spots. Maybe the tough love of telling someone to stop wallowing in self-pity is appropriate.

I don't have a slick answer, but a nagging voice inside is telling me that calling someone out for wallowing in self-pity feels like a robotic, checked-out kind of answer. A closed-heart kind of decree. A de facto rejection. A self-congratulatory typecasting of someone as lazy or playing the victim.

And we are all victims at times. I wonder how well we can move on from said victimhood when either we or others won't recognize this basic truth. Sometimes we are powerless. Or we were. We were hit by a car on the sidewalk. We were blindsided by the decision of another with power over us. Or multiple events affected us at once. And perhaps it’s a blend of things for which we were and were not responsible.

Admitting we have been victims means we are vulnerable to the vagaries of life. And for some, admitting that the homeless person on the street or the person looking back from the mirror is vulnerable means that they are not omnipotent. Not safe and not truly secure.

Death stalks us all. Poverty, illness, loss, and loneliness are a part of this life. I wonder if instead of criticizing the person for their self-pity, if we might join them. Give them an ear. Relate. Feel for them. For they are us. I hope we can be willing to love ourselves and accept our moments of victimhood, of frailty and of absolute bewilderment.

Perhaps too, we can look at moments when we caused harm to others, intentionally or otherwise. And can we be our brother's keeper without shaming them for self-pity? I wonder if our collective unwillingness to help those in need is rationalized by this rubber stamp of disapproval we place on self-pity. And further, if our unwillingness to see our own pitiable, wounded self perpetuates our rejection of those in need.

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I was playing my guitar the other day and randomly started playing the Star Spangled Banner, albeit poorly.  There was absolutely no Jimi Hendrix Woodstock version being channeled.  As an aside, playing other people's songs can be moving.  There's something about how it feels when a song comes out of me that makes it more personal and tangible.  I often feel enriched.  I first noticed this while playing Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen.  It was a song I didn't particularly like until I played it for someone who did.  And then for a moment, his words were my words. 

As I played the Star Spangled Banner I thought about how the song did rouse a patriotic spirit in me these days, in a way that I didn't feel very often before.  I suppose I didn't see the need before; there was nothing apparent to defend against.  That sense of security was false, but that’s a story for another day.

I never saw myself as patriotic: perhaps largely because of limiting social messages about what patriotism was.  Patriotism was apparently expressed in a few obvious ways. One was being a soldier, another, being conservative.  Or it was about symbolic gestures like saluting the flag or standing for the pledge.  I was never drawn to these specific choices so I assumed that meant I wasn’t patriotic. I was wrong.

And while I honor those choices, sometimes refusing to serve in an unjust war is patriotic.  Sometimes kneeling in protest of institutional racism is the patriotic choice.  Sometimes being liberal is patriotic.  Sometimes being patriotic means risking being ostracized and misunderstood.

When I was a Senior in High School I refused to stand for and recite the Pledge of Allegiance in Homeroom and was sent to the Principal's Office.  The homeroom teacher was a veteran and was offended by my protest.  He said that he fought for this country and that I must stand.  I said that he fought in that war so I didn't have to prove my fealty.

Because I was free.  And I was no hero, but I was brave enough to make him mad.  Because having to stand and pledge allegiance to a nation was what people do who are not free.

As I look back now, I see it.  There will always be people, well-meaning and otherwise, who are trying to take away our freedom.  Their pride may be dominating and blinding them.  It may be their fear or chauvinism.  Whatever it is, they think they're right.  They're the good guys.

Mr Caputo probably thought I was just a punk kid.  And I was.  But I was honoring that little voice inside that said this isn't right.  This isn't what we're about in America.  And I was right.  In a time where I was lost, depressed, losing interest in school and directionless, I still had my moments of clarity and bravery.  And sadly, I didn't see these as a way into myself, my mission, my voice and my path.  30 years later I'm just recognizing this and hoping they make a pill to let me live and be healthy to 150.

As I finished playing the Star Spangled Banner in my rudimentary way, I thought of the last line:

Oh say does that star spangled banner yet wave

O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave

I almost put a question mark on the end of that sentence...because it is a question.  Does it yet wave? Are we still free?  The flag, in this example, is the symbol of our freedom: the barometer, the indicator. Just like in wartime.  

And I thought to myself, if this is the land of the free and the home of the brave, what does it mean to be free?  And what does one do if one is brave?

Attacking our Capitol to try and overturn a free and fair election isn't brave.  Supporting a candidate that calls his detractors vermin and uses other words directly from long-dead genocidal dictators is not brave.  He would not bring about freedom.  He would mislead his foolhardy followers into doing his bidding like strongmen always do.  Like the Confederates did.

They always bring destruction and misery.  The 20th Century is a recent testament to the endless blood-lust of the soulless demagogue.  The usurper.  The authoritarian.  The false messiah.

This is the land of the free and the home of the brave,  if you can keep it, to paraphrase Benjamin Franklin.

For this guy, I'm gonna vote for those who didn't try to overturn the election and kill the Vice President.  Call me crazy. I think that’s by far the most patriotic choice. And while you’re free to disagree with me, if you agree, please consider being brave enough to challenge those who would vote the other way. Be willing to make people uncomfortable, including yourself.

Beware those that flatter your sensibilities. They’re usually selling you something: literally or figuratively.

Sit with that for a moment.

We love being flattered. We eat it up. We love being the good guy, the hero, the cowboy in the white hat. And we can be manipulated into making poor choices by those who would take advantage of us via the age-old technique of flattery.

Propaganda can influence us by presenting criminals that we can judge and bemoan. Downward comparison makes us feel better about ourselves as we sit in righteous indignation about how the world is going to hell in a hand-basket. We need to be suspicious when a narrative comes along that makes us also feel heroic. It’s usually a call-to-action. Certain dark corners of our media seem to constantly elicit righteous indignation about crime, drug use, non-traditional lifestyles and immigrants. They’ve got to convince you of the problem before they sell you the solution. More on that later.

“Diplomatic immunity.” The line spoken in a South African accent always comes into my mind when I think of the movie Lethal Weapon 2. The story was about an Apartheid South African Diplomat and the illegal drug trade. It was one of those movies that was entertaining and well acted. But in looking back, I surmise that it was successful at least in part because it flattered our sensibilities. Especially as conscientious citizens of a nation with its own ugly racial history, it’s easy to see why we collectively want to feel absolved. The bad guys were so cartoonishly evil, so easy to hate. And we, by extension, were so good because we were against racism. We got to live vicariously through the good characters in the movie. And as Americans, we had a faraway boogeyman to love to hate.

Movies like these seem to be a self-congratulatory effort to make oneself (or a whole nation) feel better about our complex history and our sense of collective guilt over slavery. Dances With Wolves is similarly manipulative: a convenient revision of our history concerning Native Americans. Another very self-congratulatory endeavor, much like the Lost Cause Narrative that has overtaken the actual history of our nation’s bloody Civil War.

We can be the hero, against slavery, noble, the good guy. Flattery deludes and pacifies.

Similarly, it goes without saying that we are all against the mistreatment of children. Every sane human wants to end sex trafficking, child labor, and child abuse of any kind. And yet conspiracies about rampant child sex trafficking and abuse have become mainstream in the last 5 years or so. These dramatic stories would lead many to believe that a burgeoning child slave trade and rampant child sex rings etc abound. Q Anon, Pizzagate and other fantastical and unfounded conspiracy theories have captured the attention of large swathes of our population. People believed that child slaves were being sent in furniture boxes from Wayfair, an online furniture company. These theories took place at the crossroads of a conspiracy-peddling fascist presidency and the Covid 19 outbreak and subsequent shutdown.

Millions of us were working from home, or out of work. We were home and bored amid an onslaught of messages about the shutdown, the vaccines, politicians and other public servants. Documentaries like ‘Plandemic’ had many believing that the covid virus and vaccines were all part of a Deep State plan to control the masses and curtail rights. It wouldn’t be long before many were told by the outgoing President himself that the 2020 election was stolen by the incoming President, Joe Biden. And there was a ‘documentary’ called ‘2000 Mules' that sold many people on this clearly falsifiable claim.

So it’s easy to see why some would believe what they saw, since there purveyors of such stories presented them as truth. But why did so many fall for this nonsense? Because the viewers were being flattered. They were the good guys. And only they could stop the villains. And the villains were everywhere! Politicians, big pharma and other big targets were easy to vilify as faceless entities bent on destruction and profit.

But it turns out that each of these conspiracies was debunked. Liberals weren’t drinking virgin blood. There was no secret DNC child slave trade or sex ring. The government didn’t intentionally release covid only to help the big pharma companies make billions. It was all disinformation in service of dividing our nation.

Why did they want us divided? To sow confusion and distrust of the government. To help usher in a Fascist would-be dictator in Donald Trump. And it’s working. And the conspiracies, collectively were like a trojan horse, willingly accepted and with similarly devastating results.

For more details about how so many were duped into conflating prostitution with the child sex trade, please read the following article. I found it very enlightening, especially since it agrees with the suspicions I held about these events.

THEINTERCEPT.COM

QAnon Was Born Out of the Sex Ad Moral Panic That Took Down Backpage.com

For years, the political establishment opportunistically railed against sex trafficking and ads on Backpage.com. Then came another conspiracy theory.

Sometimes the battle within mirrors the battle without.  And it doesn't have to be a battle, but sometimes it is.  Right now our nation is in a  battle: a war of ideas, a war on our capacity to make sense, to know what is true and who is who.

With so much at stake, it sounds hyperbolic but the mundane truth is that we have to choose what we stand for and who will lead us.  But deeper, we must decide who we are as a nation, at a core level.  Everything else radiates from this place.

As I look at one of our candidates I realize he epitomizes the act of using.  He uses women.  He uses workers.  He uses his followers.  He uses the system to self-deal.  He uses media and the economy.  He is the ultimate taker of things.  And we as a nation must be careful not only to stop him, but to not become him, even in seemingly small ways. 

Trumpism is anti-life and anti-love.  Anti-freedom and anti-truth.  And yet it's so alluring to so many.  If he is not the anti-Christ, there is no such thing.  And yet the ultimate cartoon foil of our ego and our shadow can and must serve a purpose.   The purpose, on a political level may be to show us the weaknesses and fault lines in our founding documents and our legal system.

The purpose on a soul level is for us to take a long, hard look at ourselves, to not flinch when we see little selfish baby Trumps in our own psyche.  To accept that when we hate him, we are usually projecting some amount of self-hatred: hatred about parts of us that we cannot accept or admit.  This is projection.

But we must see the ways in which we fall short and begin to love those parts.  We must unmask these shadows and hold them to account as we hold Him to account in our courts of law and at the ballot box.

Simply put, we must choose who we are and who we will be.  That reckoning can be daunting in the short run.  But we will come to realize that we are not a collection of our worst moments and lowest urges.  We are the stuff that's underneath that.  Just waiting to be unearthed and dusted off.

I wish everyone happy excavating.  Do so with kindness and a sober eye.  And yet we must firmly choose not to tolerate any unconscious malevolence, from within or without.  We must connect the dots.

It's easy for me to condemn Donald Trump as a user.  He is the most blatant and disgusting user there could be. But why does that irk me so?  Who have I used?  How have I used a system for my benefit?  Unpleasant questions to be sure.  I guess it's better than the self-congratulatory sleep that so many seek.

And if we come to the conclusion that we have fallen short, we're still here.  We still have time to stop bad behaviors and make better choices and tip the scales in the other direction.  Transformation is a process, not an incident.  Do we have the willingness to see?  If a situation is demanding courage, it's probably the right path.

I almost forgot to post my one-word dream last night. They can fade so fast from memory. I think I had been asking what to do about my many interests juxtaposed with my need to make money and provide value.

An answer came to me in the form of a word. That word, if it is one, was 'portrayer.' I saw the outlines of transparent letters of the word on a floral backdrop just before I awoke, That's often the message portal in my dreams. Whoever it is deposits the messages when I would seem most apt to receive and remember.

Lots of us portray our thoughts and feelings in different ways. But the message I got was that there was value in my ability to share my take on things. As if my job was to process information, distill it, uncover hidden truths. To help in the sense-making process.

I'm sure this is true of lots of people. Visual artists, singers, authors, political pundits and on and on. We help each other digest and organize the dense and scattered information that this world and culture present us. We help each other find meaning, purpose, reconnection and fascination in an alienating and sick society.

I was looking over at a new drummer last night who closed her eyes and just sat there entranced in our circle, clearly her first time. She was riveted and swaying as if she was receiving something she didn't know she needed. She left with the biggest smile. We have tremendous power over one another. We portray and accept portrayals to our delight and at our peril.

We help each other find our way to growth and to find discernment.

I know it was just a one-word answer, but I always appreciate the cryptic messages from my secret admirer. They make me feel connected to something or someone beyond my understanding.

It reminds me of the line from Jethro Tull in 'Skating Away on the Thin Ice of a New Day': "Looking for a sign that the universal mind has written you into the passion play."

I'll take this dream and the many others as just that sign. That new feeling of cosmically belonging is quite the buoy when seas get rough.

I wrote this 2 years ago at Thanksgiving.  It couldn’t possibly be more apropos right now as we gear up for the most important election in our history.

I'm fascinated by how we have had comedic news shows that lampoon the news for 50 years; about as long as I’ve been alive.  Since the news segment on Saturday Night Live, starting in the mid 70s, we've had jokes about the news presented to us in a newsroom format.

It may be more polished and obviously topical these days, but even then the comedy news was a place where we wrestled with the news of the day.  TV audiences were dealing with the impacts of seismic and cynical cultural events like Watergate, the OPEC Oil Crisis, and the attempt on Reagan's life. 

We may see this as comic relief, pure entertainment, but I say the comedy news played and still plays a serious cultural role.  We increasingly rely on a daily admixture of comedy and truth-telling from these outlets.  The Daily Show and some great copycat shows help us untangle and organize reality in a sea of mis-and dis-information.  They ask the deep moral questions, they help us see how, when and if the Emperor wears no clothes. Now the late night talk shows get in on the act too to great results.

In a time of fascism, racial violence and intentional political division, nothing could be more valuable than the spell-breaking capacity of comedy mixed with truth.  These outlets, like John Oliver's Last Week Tonight, take deep dives into the myriad issues of the day that affect all of us, and especially issues facing those less fortunate among us.  The truth is so under threat that our comedians had to erect a backstop against hate, misogyny, racism, demagoguery, innuendo, and the like.  To push back.  It's heroic, brilliant and purposeful.

I argue that within the 50 year timeline, these comedy news spoofs have gone from mostly kidding and a touch pointed truth to very thorough investigative journalism with a healthy dose of funny.  The cultural importance and value cannot be underestimated.  My absolute favorite was the Colbert Report, which starred Stephen Colbert as a parody amalgamation of Tucker Carlson, Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity.  This was stunning political theater and absolutely hilarious.  And it followed Jon Stewart's Daily Show, making the ultimate 1-2 punch.  We were so lucky.

And there are others, like Bill Maher, who has played a vital role in our nation's discourse for 30 years.  His 2 shows, Politically Incorrect and Real Time were pioneers in topical tv shows that were funny but willing to make people uncomfortable. 

Not Necessarily the News was a fun show on HBO when I was a kid.  It was a true news spoof with great writing and funny commercials.  It was a template for the modern shows I mentioned.  But it didn't have a point of view, per se.  It was for fun's sake.  A parody for more entertainment value.

So I am so thankful at the education I have gotten from tv and now Youtube.  I paid attention in school, but these outlets help me see the subtleties.  I believe comedy clarifies for us what is blurred by those who would hurry spurious arguments past our intellectual safeguards.

This is not easy work.  Being funny about the news of the day while also making it manageable, clear and accurate.  Being a moral filter, entertaining, artistic, informative and fair is a tall order.  These shows do it day in and day out.

This Thanksgiving I give thanks to all the tireless writers, investigators etc that put together these daily masterpieces of art, comedy, education and investigative journalism.  What an amazing combination of skills and knowledge.  And: it's funny.  Bravo!