“Marie, as-tu entendu que quelqu’un s’appelle King ? Antoinette, Non. Qu’est-ce que la folie ? Il doit être un imbécile.”
“Marie, did you hear that someone is calling himself King? Antoinette! No! What Lunacy! He must be a fool!”
Un mème en mérite un autre. Celui qui rêve d’être roi est fou. One meme deserves another. Whoever dreams of being King is crazy.
A few days ago, the new president re-posted an image of a fictitious Time Magazine cover showing him in royal regalia and the title Long Live The King. This mock-up of the cover along with at least one other similar meme immediately got mocked. Typically, I avoid such visual cliches. I chortle once and I go on my way.
But this demanded a response, a broadside. So, In the spirit of the late 18th Century. This is it.
Saying things like, “Long Live Me” and “I’m Number One” displays a weak ego. We’ve been shown, repeatedly over the last eight years and particularly this previous month, the president is mentally ill and can not be trusted with any authority. His cruelty is an indication of how badly he was treated as a child. He is a broken man that can not be trusted.
To those that voted for him, please reconsider your decision and join the rest of us to stop the madness and cruelty. Our future can be much better than the one we’re plummeting into.
Every night before I go to sleep, I give my subconscious a suggestion. I’ll have a restful sleep and wake up in a positive mood. And I will dream and remember it. My fulminating subconscious is free to chose what it creates. Or, to create anything at all.
I had this dream a couple of days ago.
I drive to a a distant part of my city. It is an amalgam off many of the cities and towns I have lived in. Familiar but odd. I know my destination. But I hadn’t been there in decades. Time has transformed everything and nothing looks quite the same. Ghosts of the past hidden amongst the modern present and the construction detours of the future. I become frustrated, uneasy.
I find the street I am looking for. A stretch of two and three story businesses. built in the 1910s as the city had grown outwards. Once a vibrant suburb center for a suburb it transformed over time. In the 1970s the area had been revitalized with the old buildings given a good cleaning and fresh paint. But, now, this fondly remembered place is aging, wearing out.
Once, the side streets were lined by prosperous middle-class homes and manicured lawns. Now nondescript businesses have sprouted. Amongst the blank facades a checkerboard of threadbare yards with ragged bushes and sagging trees dot the neighborhood. The place is weary.
I leave Main Street looking for parking. There wasn’t any. Parked cars line the streets for blocks. Some houses have become asphalt lots with restricted parking. Detours resulting from construction and street repairs turn the once ordered streets into a maze. Directing me further and further from Main Street.
Time reflects the confusion I’m experiencing. Dream time is fluid and, like my subconscious, unruly, chaotic. At the start it was a mild summer mid-morning with an half-hour drive ahead. But when I’m parking, it is muggy late afternoon, an orange sun is setting behind urban silhouettes. I’m several blocks from my goal. As I start to walk, evening and then night rapidly set in, quickly, unnaturally. The forlorn streets became menacing. Street lamps came on, their sodium bulbs cast narrow cones of sulfurous light down into the dusty darkness.
I begin meeting people. First solitary walkers who avoid me as we approach. I become apprehensive and soon doing the same. I cross to the other side of the street. Main Street is lost but its glow above the shadows directs me.
As I head forward I become more disoriented. It seems that I am always just a couple blocks away but, it seems much further. More strangers appear, coming and going from shadowy houses and parking lots. Faint yellow light drifts from screened windows, open to let breezes remove the day’s stale air and heat. Here and there, figures sit on porches and steps, cooling off, talking quietly. They watch me walk by with slightly averted eyes. Not following me, but following me.
As I walk, people begin to approach me. Tentatively at first, then more directly as the street grows brighter. They appear disturbed, showing signs of emotional stress and, often, physical fragmentation. This frightens me. I feel threatened.
I try to avoid them but contact is inevitable. My first impression is being confronted by anxious, demanding people, creating bursts of emotional interference. They crowd my inner and outer space. I slowly become accustomed to this jarring reality I begin to hear what they are saying. I hear offers to help me find where I am go. I see awkward gestures to help.
These people are damaged. In their eyes I see vulnerable souls, desperate children reaching out from within a storm of doubt, fear, isolation, and loneliness. I attempt to treat them with respect and patience as I let them lead me through a shifting maze. Dark hallways, echoing chambers, and mind boggling collisions of architectures and decorations. Sometimes indoors and then out, under an ever changing night sky. Always the glow of the lights of my destination are just beyond the buildings that surround me.
When I look through windows or distant doorways and clearly see where I want to go. But I never get there. I begin to try to escape from my guides. They genuinely, desperately want to help. I realize they are desperate for company, for recognition and human warmth. They are saturated with a sadness distilled from years of abuse and neglect, of guilt and hopelessness. I feel my empathy growing and a sadness of my own.
But, I have a destination and purpose that I can no longer remember. I begin trying to escape their emotional clinging to me. I’m losings myself in their chaos.
My new plan is to call my wife and have her come and rescue me. She will return me to the orderly loving world I’d just come from. I had lost my phone in the mayhem and began to frantically look for another, public or cell. By my mind is crumbling, my memory evaporating. I am becoming unfocused, hopeless.
The rest of my dream is of dashing from one place to another. My plan to call my wife turns into fog, intangible. I realize that I have no way to tell her how to find me. I want to call her and tell her I love her. I didn’t think I’m going make it home.
I wake up, laying in my warm bed. Distinct memories rerun behind my eyelids. Understanding is building. As I fix my cat’s breakfast and my coffee I feel like I’ve experienced something what we all are going through.
As I’ve mentioned in earlier posts, I believe that each of us lives in our own unique universe and that we together, inhabit a shared multiverse of experiences. Everything I know is filtered through my physical self and interpreted using my imperfect recollections of the past. All of us are like that. We have similar but not exactly alike human experiences.
My dream is about me. It is about how the world looks to me. Everyone in it is my projection of myself onto to figures I’ve created to represent the people I observe in our shared experiences. I can only imagine what others are going through using my experiences, my history.
Our world is transforming. We try to remember the past, look through the devastation of the present, towards an uncertain future. In the process we risk losing our humanity. We are isolated. We struggle to reach out to others, to connect and build a coherent existence. Yet, the destruction and cruelty we are involved drives us deeper within ourselves. We attempt to comprehend what is going on and protect ourselves. This can further weaken our human connections. We are less able to reach out to others that need our love and caring.
We hug ourselves more tightly and can not reach out a helping hand.
My wife died 0ver 12 years ago. In my dream, I sought her presence and her warmth. I looked for her comfort in the dead past. I felt its promise in the presence.
I seems to me that if we are to survive these cruel times and keep our humanity alive we need to come to terms with the fear and confusion in our minds. We need to embrace those shadow figures in our minds and embrace, comfort them. We can become stronger. We can become more self-directed. We can rebuild our Main Streets by reaching out to each other knowing that they too have shadows and need acknowledgement and comfort.
About The Photograph Homelessness was implied in my dream. When I was about 25, I took a photo of an older man sheltering from the cold winter rain. He was sitting in a covered alley. Lost in his thoughts. To me he seemed to be enduring. I wondered what was thinking. He changed my life. I thought of my life and what it would be to loose everything. It’s been a permanent shadow in my memory, homelessness and being adrift in a indifferent world. Today, I remember that cold wet day and that man lost in his thoughts.
I’ve been watching the new administration stifle free speech. They are censoring government websites by deleting concepts and information. They are also exposing personal information of most Americans. It begs the question, what purpose does any government serve?
It depends on the type of government. In it’s simplest form, governments are responsible for organizing the efforts of its population for self-defense. Basically, they make sure there is food to eat. They supply water to drink. They also offer shelter to keep people out of the weather. In essence, some healthcare. After all, how can a people defend themselves if they are weak and sick? Or if they are disorganized and don’t have the resources for trade and war? Even if the government’s only purpose is to expand its power over its people and those of other governments.
At one end of the spectrum are totalitarian and authoritarian organizations that isolate their people from the machinery of governance. The people are pawns, resources, for the leaders and their followers. The people are at the mercy of the intent and goodwill of the leaders. Their destiny and well being are not theirs to decide.
On the other end of governance are democracies. These try to integrate the people into the core of governing. The goal is to show the will of the people. It should be done in a way that is most beneficial to all members of the nation. It’s not simply organizing, feeding, and sheltering. Democracies have the aim of ensuring that all citizens have an opportunity to reach their full potential.
Democracies believe in their people and the best that we can be. What be more stabilizing and protective? Each person knows that they are engaged in creating the future for themselves. They also create futures for those they care for. Everyone has the opportunity to be involved in their collective good.
What makes us feel that you belong? What makes us feel a commitment to a group? Or, what makes us ardent opponents? What makes us feel threatened and under attack. What makes us ask if life is fair or unfair?
Democracies collect and distribute information. This allows each of us to analyze our situations. Then, we can take part in addressing our concerns. We have the tools to navigate our lives and futures.
The current administration is intent on limiting what we know. It is vigorously hiding information about themselves while burying the information that we need to make our futures. The new administration is stealing our lives and futures.
An example of this is the destruction of government support for climate change action. The administration claims that climate change is not real. They also assert that we must “drill baby drill.” We know that it isn’t true. We see it all around us. We pay for it more each day with increasing costs in food, insurance, building materials, and taxes.
Who are we to believe? Them or our own lying eyes? (Mel Brooks, Blazing Saddles).
Next post in about a week; Climate change and what the verifiable facts tell is.
Events have moved ahead much faster than I anticipated. The coup we’re experiencing appeared far sooner than I thought it would. It’s not a sneak attack. The dust has been on the horizon for sometime. Trump and his followers have blitzed the American people, our friends and allies, and the rest of the world.
What follows are my immediate reactions to the current news as of 02/04/2025. I am observing the acts of our proto dictator. I am also watching Trump’s 2024 voters to see what they decide to do. Do they realize the grave situation we are in? Are they reconsidering their choices? Or are they choosing to follow the path of cruelty that Trump, Musk and his hateful minions are leading us? And, in turn, what are the rest of us going to do?
If we join and renounce Trump, we can unify with the rest of the world. Then it is possible to short circuit this disaster. This can reduce the misery that is now engulfing us. If not, we face growing violence and cruelty. It will rapidly spread from people of color and ostracized genders, to the rest of us. Thus making us complicit in the victimization of our friends and neighbors. And, eventually victimize ourselves. When will the transportation of Americans to foreign prisons like Guantanamo, Cuba start?
The question facing all of us is simple yet life-saving. Do we go along to get along, or, resist?
I’m re-evaluating my assumptions and actions.
I restarted my blog about a month ago. At that time, I promised to be bipartisan. I also promised not to engage in inflammatory rhetoric. I continue with this goal. I do not want to spread hate. My goal remains to ask questions that encourage a bipartisan union of action. When I use words that some will think are inflammatory or insulting it’s their choice to make them so. I use them in a precise, truthful, way. Truth requires accuracy.
Even in with my anger, I’m not trying to start a fight. I’m trying to start a truthful discussion. Such a conversation requires bare-bones honesty. It requires coming to terms with ourselves. If I can’t be truthful with myself, it’s impossible to be truthful with others.
If we choose to respond to my commentary and questions in the spirit of sharing, understanding, I welcome your connection.
I’m interested in how we Americans feel and think. I want to know what threatens and inspires us. I want to know what we think of our fellow Americans and why. I want to know who we listen to and trust; and why.
Something to think about. In the last 80 years, since the end of WWII, the world has turned away from tariffs. They now use them only occasionally as weapons to resist evil. At the same time, The world has formally embraced the idea of the sovereignty of national borders. During those 80 years, prosperity has spread while the world’s population has grown from 2.5 billion (1952) to 8.2 billion as of today1 . That’s an increase of approximately 5.6 billion human beings. An increase of 317%. This is after the longest period of sustained world peace and economic growth. Yes, there have been spasms of localized conflict between the great powers. Still, we have managed to avoid world-wide conflict. Until now.
Everything is now in jeopardy. The actions of a handful of aged male leaders (China, Iran, Israel, Korea, Russia, and USA) caused this situation. They have been aided and abetted by the global economic elites, individuals and companies.
What are they doing to cause this calamity? They are stirring up conflict. This affects the vast majority of us, who share the humble desires for peace, prosperity and a brighter futures. These Elites work to keep us ignorant through lies and hiding information. We are incapable of making informed decisions to solve our shared problems because of the Elites lies, misinformation, and censorship.
You and I are not natural enemies. We have differences, yes. But they can be resolved through sharing our humanity with each other. We live in a world of great change with new ideas, uncertainty and stress.
We can choose to make this a time of opportunity and renewal. Together we can reject the failed old ideas of spiteful old men. We can turn this chaos into a better world for all of us. If we continue divided, obeying the leader’s dog whistles, we are not thinking for ourselves. We will turn our world into a hell-space. We will condemn ourselves to perpetual slavery and war.
Please stay involved in our Democracy. We are deep into a time of tribulation and suffering. We are testing ourselves. Who are we? Are we worthy of our dreams?
I am not discouraged. I have to take frequent breaks from the news. My frustration fills me with anger and irrational thoughts. That is not helpful. Nor is it healthy. We are in this mess because we’ve become divided. To solve our problems we must come together.
Soon, I’ll drop another post about the nature of leadership and what Tariffs tell us about our leaders. Thank you for your time.
Coffee and Introspection, A Bracing Start To The Day
This morning1, I woke up thinking about Viktor Frankl’s book. His book, Man’s Search For Meaning2, written over 60 years ago, provides insight about the human condition. It’s wisdom is critical to our understanding of today’s events. Then informs now.
Frankl was an Austrian psychiatrist who was sent to the Nazi concentration camps in World War II. He tells of his experiences and what he learned. As a psychiatrist he had a keen awareness of the human condition. His book is a candid personal account of the brutality of these camps. More importantly, his training gave him two perspectives. One perspective came from his personal experiences. The other perspective came from being a trained doctor with insights into human behavior and feelings. His book explores how people react to brutality and the threat of death. It shows how they manage to find a reason to continue living. Frankl gave me the knowledge to start to compare then and now. I began to see similarities between the inmates experiences then and our experiences today.
I am not suggesting that most of us experience the brutality and hopelessness of a holocaust survivor. Although in our nation and around the world others do. Rather I woke up thinking about how our experiences in today’s world traumatize us. Whether we know it or not, the shadow of those prisoner’s struggle penetrates all of our minds today. No one is immune, prisoner and jailer are both enslaved by their experiences. Both are damaged and sickened by it.
The experiences of our parents come to us, filtered by our experiences with them. It is the same for them and earlier generations. Every generation has the opportunity to stop passing on this sickness and its damaging behaviors, into the future.
For example, as a child my mother was abused by her father. What I know from her is that he was an alcoholic and abusive. I know it was physical. I don’t know if it was sexual. From my own experiences with abusive people, I do know that psychological abuse always accompanies it. This leads results in traumas.
Abuse is an infectious illness. But it can be controlled and ultimately healed. I know this from my own personal experiences. When I was younger, I was selfish and unaware of how I affected others. I ignored the harm that I caused. As I’ve grown older, I’ve realized what I’ve done and now feel remorse. I have gained insight into what I feel and how others have similar feelings. I have developed a sense of empathy.
We all have the potential for empathy. We experience it naturally, when we feel embarrassment, guilt or remorse. We know we have harmed someone and caused them pain. We have formed an intimate emotional awareness of ourselves and how others experience us. This is an instance of walking in someone else’s shoes.
If we allow our empathy to grow, our awareness of our world expands. We become conscious of its emotional complexity. This can lead to a better understanding of what we feel and why we do what we do. We also learn to appreciate what others have experienced and why they act as they do. If we chose, we can see others more clearly, with fewer misconceptions and biases. It’s harder to turn someone into a “they” and abuse them. It is also possible to recognize and celebrate someone else’ successes, which encourages them.
We can develop the capacity to see our shared humanity and kinship. That is the healing each of us needs. In turn we help to heal those around us and those who follow.
Quite a lot to wake up too at the start of the day.
I started to ponder this while having my morning coffee. I considered how important my self-awareness has been to my growth as a person. What was needed for me to develop this awareness? It is my personal experiences and my curiosity about how others experience their lives.
For instance, I am fascinated with history, its events and the people involved. Being a Curious George I can’t help but ask questions. I project myself into the moment. What was it like in the Second World War? What did the survivors, military and civilian, think and feel? What were the forces shaping their daily lives, their concerns and challenges? What was considered normal, made them happy, laugh or cry? How had tens of millions of people around the world allow themselves to go to war? I want to know how it affected their futures and our present.
For some time, I’ve been asking the same questions about us. How did we get to where we are now? Viktor Frankl’s book provides his personal experiences and thoughtful analysis that can help us find our answers.
As the New Administration takes power, there are many signs that they are devoted to censoring our access to information. This results in the loss of our common knowledge. They have begun to blatantly censor information within our government. The attacks on scientific data, health, and climate change take away our free will. They also target Diversity-Equity-Inclusion and the privatization of the US Post Office. They are stealing our futures. They force us down paths that most of us, if given the opportunity, would consider cruel and destructive.
The last time Trump was in office he and his appointees campaigned against openness. Specific words like Climate Change were not permitted to be used in government reports and announcements. Giving the message that the issue of our collapsing environment and its causes were not to be discussed openly. In turn the awareness of this genuine threat to our lives was diminished, the urgency of our situation was defused. Without this knowledge we were left ignorant. Ignorance means not being aware of something. And without awareness, we can’t exercise our right to freewill. We can’t consider and act against the life-threatening conditions that menace us now.
Banning our use of words, ideas, and information stifles informed discussion. This denial restricts our free speech and action. It is one step towards the enslavement of our minds. What we don’t know will hurt us.
How can we trust someone who doesn’t trust us?
I started this post in November of 2024. Then set it aside because of a persistent writer’s block stemming from my loss of direction. I’d lost my purpose which undermined my self-worth. It was a part of the process of self-evaluation I’d been experiencing since Covid. First, I tore myself down. I challenged my assumptions and beliefs. Who was I? I demolished my self-esteem by recognizing the lies I have been telling myself for much of my life. I admitted I had harmed people while thinking I was doing good. I learned to see myself as others might’ve seen me. At my lowest point, where oddly, is where rebirth begins, I asked myself two primal questions. Who am I? What is the point of this absurd world? These are the questions that we repeatedly answer many times through our lives. Our experiences, feelings and actions pile up over time. And, if we hit a challenging period, we re-calibrate with this questions. Provided we are willing to ask them. If we don’t, the questions get buried and fester. The lies we tell ourselves continue to contaminate our feelings and actions.We continue to spread pain to ourselves and others. Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol is popular because it deals with this reality. ↩︎
I’m using my old copy, Man’s Search For Meaning: Viktor Frankl, Washington Square Publishing, 15th Edition, 1969. There has been a resurgence of interest in Frankl and his ideas. New and used copies are available in local bookstores and on the web. ↩︎
We are headed down the road to our futures. Are we following the lead of others or leading our-selves?
Over the last week, I have seen the new administration unleash a torrent of cruelty and degradation. The vast majority of Americans are threatened with loss of economic, health and social support. The infliction of each is intentional. It is a direct assault on each of us. The goal is to break our spirits and turn us against each other. It is dehumanizing. It is brutalizing. It is meant to condition us to accept cruelty casually delivered to others. It is intended to make us complicit and share responsibility for the atrocities being committed.
I’ve been reading Viktor Frankl’s book, Man’s Search For Meaning1. It is his autobiography. It details his experiences as a doctor and prisoner in the Nazi extermination camps of World War II. His training as a psychiatrist gave him the unique opportunity to experience camp terror. He faced it both as a victim and as a knowledgeable observer.
It is through his experiences that I have developed a perspective about our current situation. His message is that we can resist brutality and deprivation and stay a caring human being. We can lead ourselves even when someone blocks our way.
My takeaway from Frankl and others, is that we can prepare ourselves for the growing onslaught. We do not have to become fragmented. We can strengthen ourselves. We can understand and know who is the real source of our fears and pain.
We can assert our personal control. With courage and honesty, we can cultivate our own wisdom. We gain understanding through an honest appraisal of our selves. It is by choosing to understand our selves and how we can act as ourselves that we are liberated. We take back our self worth. We learn to appreciate our hardships and keep our dignity in the face of degradation. We do not yield. We endure and prevail.
As a reviewer in Wikipedia summarized,
Frankl observed that among the fellow inmates in the concentration camp, those who survived were able to connect with a purpose in life to feel positive about and who then immersed themselves in imagining that purpose in their own way, … According to Frankl, the way a prisoner imagined the future affected his longevity.
