Grape vines too are showing new energy in this spring of what we hope is the first of the year of post pandemic life.
A new political reality appears to be budding as well.
Words and pictures exposed to light. A space of notions, impressions and breezes. Text and photography by Tom.
Grape vines too are showing new energy in this spring of what we hope is the first of the year of post pandemic life.
A new political reality appears to be budding as well.
In the hard work before us is scouring the service branches and police departments. It will be tough, but right wing insurrectionists, racists and those lacking the intellect to reject the Q fantasy have no place in uniform.
The Defense Department* has leadership now to undertake a long overdue flushing of racists and the imposition of new standards. I had run-ins with Pentagon bureaucratic resistance and intentional blindness when I reported on racism including the armed services. The present mood, and the dawn of a new administration could/should prompt appropriate improvement.
Racist cops and sheriff deputies have been the bane of almost every American city and county perhaps forever. No, not all police and sheriff deputies are trouble, most are public servants, doing hard work, risking their lives while being horribly underpaid. It is unfortunate however most departments have the knuckleheads who, for whatever reason, dwell in misguided notions and suffer the lack of training and education that purges the simplemindedness of white supremacy and/or overt macho recklessness and fanaticism.
an old story
I cut my reporting teeth in the mid 60's in a midwestern factory town where cops routinely beat Black arrestees, because they could. When I moved to the state capitol and covered a metropolitan police beat it became rapidly obvious that despite efforts to integrate the department, racist cops were protected by the thin blue line of departmental loyalty. It is part of the American story, and there is much progress to make.
The continuing investigations of the Capitol insurrection are likely to lead to a deserved focus on cops and troops who hate. We may finally get the enhanced employment evaluation and behavioral training so long overdue. Refine the police.
rooting out the rebels?
We'll know soon enough if the House and Senate are likely to press their resident seditionists. I'd censure or toss out any who voted against certifying the vote. There are certifiable screwballs serving in the House and they pose a danger to integrity and decorum. The nation needs a Congress that can legislate and see a nation larger than parochial or political intellectual limitations. The common good should be the objective.
Competent people with American values, personal honesty and decency are in charge now and that change alone gives us hope. With the shameful retreat of the leading candidate for worse US President, we can return to more down to earth and more satisfying matters.
The frame above features at least three newbies. They are protected in the rookery where the public views from a curated vantage with docents on hand.
Reigning bulls are in the early days of mating season. Humans need not be on their mind. They are massive and powerful. A zoom lens is the way to approach.
“We hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.” Preamble to the Declaration of Independence.
An observation-the men who signed the declaration were certainly not feminists and some of them were lukewarm to God, personally, though there She/He is, in the first sentence of the first act to declare a free nation.
From the beginning this nation has abided people of faith and those who eschew it. Isn't that how it should be? Tolerant. Though in our more enlightened self, we've come to recognize the sins of our founding.
We would be more free, more just, and better in all ways if we would have started differently with native citizens and their beliefs, and if we had not permitted Africans to be made slaves.
At a time, and in a world that was cruel and classist, imperfect though we were, we sought a more perfect union.
No one is required to practice a faith, but the freedom to exercise a belief is essential to a free society. It is a principle this nation was built upon.
A droll and dear friend, a retired Judge, who presided over the process of American justice and who is a student of philosophy, tells people he is a Frisbeterian. He says when a Frisbeterian passes, their soul goes into a frisbee stuck on a roof some place.
From the beginning we've had divisions but despite the differences, our Providential parent was put at the foundation.
The constitution, the very bones of our republic, is signed under the sentence
“...the 17th of September in the year of our Lord, one thousand seven hundred eighty seven….”
This is not an exposition on belief, faith or religion. This is to serve as an understanding that an active allegiance to a Divine power is a keystone to our system of government and it has implications as to how we are as a nation.
My use of the word God in this post is code for the sacred beliefs of all, however it is said or left unspoken, imagined, known, practiced or worshipped. It is the human equivalence of an understanding of the Divine intelligence to which humans have fidelity and devotion.
There is, nor ever was, a unanimity. While Europeans came to these shores for religious freedom, they had different ideas.
Puritans who made Massachusetts Bay their home set up religious communities based on their view of the Bible. They were, however, not friendly to anyone who had a different view.
At the same time Rhode Island was established for the very purpose of religious freedom. In fact Rhode Island welcomed everyone, faith or no faith and it didn’t matter. Quakers and Jews, who had a hard time elsewhere, were free to practice faith as they wished. People with my judge friend's sense of whimsey would not have burned at a stake in Rhode Island.
Coexistence, cooperation, and mutual respect, work.
Bringing this back to the premise, the nation has been built by diversity of people and beliefs, indeed! But always there was a central principle; what we do, how we live, how we treat each other is based on the idea we live in accordance with how God would expect. “…one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” We swear to tell the truth, “so help us God.” The oath of office is sworn on a Bible.
a kind of secular sacredness
Over the centuries, the common center of our experiment in democratic republic has been the power we know by many names, according to varied faiths and beliefs.
We have become more diverse, multi-cultural and our understanding has more flavor and a diversity of accents.
While people have been free not to practice a faith, we all have lived according to our constitutional belief in the source of faith, and the even more ancient texts that are at the core of the belief of the major religious groups.
Jews, Christians and Muslims share the Ten Commandments that are the foundation of law and principles of behavior. Freedom, justice, equality, divinely ordained if you will, for believers and those who are not. Everyone is to be treated the same.
So how are we doing? What happened to our Divine guardian in the last four years or so? Or in the last 50 years? Did someone mug him/her? Did God get fed up with us?
Or, have we abandoned the nexus of our nation? Do we merely purport the faith? Do we walk the talk or merely talk it?
Even those who are agnostic or who claim to be atheist are free to think as such, thanks to our faith in government and the founding document that propounds the importance of living a good life by the measure of a higher standard than merely the doings of we human bipeds.
As a nation do we put those values first? Or have we turned "God" into an ideological or political tool?
I heard a good preacher say, "God is not swayed by our rhetoric or political speechifying?" The principle of strength upon which we premise our right to be a nation, and the guide for the manner in which we will live, has to do with a higher order of things, a power that is just and that knows our intentions.
a nation endowed
A people who call down a God of the ages, who invoke that divine claim, who swear allegiance, and who promise to navigate by virtues of a holy benefaction must answer true- how are we going to rehabilitate? How are we going to bridge the divide? How do we find a truth or settle on fact?
Abraham Lincoln's Thanksgiving Proclamation is a start.
He suggested Americans do "humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience...and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it, as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes, to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and union."
Healing the wounds of the nation will be hard and challenging, but it is noble and honorable work. It is something every citizen can and should do.
In future posts we'll take a closer look.
In our previous age of division, Lincoln drew strength from the hymn Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory. There are lines in the second verse that push us to be honest about our commitment to truth and justice
"God has sounded for the trumpet that shall never call retreat and is sifting out all human hearts before the judgement seat..."
Truth matters. Justice will prevail. It is in the nations DNA.We are the agents.
Stay well. See you down the trail.