comayzing

[comayzing]

The year of truth

Yesterday was my birthday, I turned 42. My theme for 2017 is #theyearoftruth and I chose this theme in the fall for personal reasons, before I knew just how topical truth would be this year. I chose the theme of truth as a way of reminding myself to stay true, to confront dishonesty in myself and others, and to do what is right. Funny that the first gentle reminder for me is that truth is both a personal and a public condition. Truth is an “ideal or fundamental reality apart from and transcending perceived experience”. This is quite powerful, no? An ideal apart from perception; not only apart from, but transcending: going beyond, outdoing. By definition, the opposite of transcending is to fail or lose, to surrender, fall behind, be inferior. Truth transcends. It really is “out there”. The truth is what it is regardless of how convincing yet cloudy perception can be. The truth is undisturbed by selectivity, false equivalencies, “alternative facts”, “true, according to _______” claims. Truth is bulletproof and rhetoric-proof and above the law; it cannot be owned or controlled. Perception may be accurate or inaccurate but is susceptible to manipulation, alteration, and damage. Truth stands apart. The truth will not go gently into that good night. In fact, it will not go at all. My perception is as follows. I believe that this ban and this wall and all of these bureaucratic hostilities and this painful cowardice exuding from most of our governmental leadership (wherever they fall on the political spectrum) is wrong. I believe that this president is wrong about so many things, but worse than that, that he is actually a hollow shell. He is a Trojan horse filled with a cabal of power-hungry, hateful, self-serving, opportunistic people who actually do intend to sack the city, as it were. I believe that their actions will damage us, are damaging us. I believe that the risks faced by those who oppose this cancerous council go beyond the derision of hateful words on a screen, and involve more than the protest of condescending retort or regurgitated tweet/meme/gif, or even posts like this. Look back on history for prior examples. Men and women of their ilk have inflicted pain in many ways on their opponents and sold it to the compliant or the silent as solution. They have imprisoned and killed, robbed of possessions and liberty, and physically enslaved. These horrors are not dead for many and are not beyond the realm of possibility for those who think they are immune. Whether you share my beliefs or not, I do not believe that we are beyond hope, because the truth is out there. The truth is that the founding principles documented for this country oppose this type of “leadership”. Read them. Read the Declaration of Independence right now and tell me that it doesn’t sound similar to the outcry about the liberties this president is taking (pun intended) without the consent of the governed. And, no, the votes of approximately 25% of the voting-eligible people do not equal “the consent of the governed”. It doesn’t even equal consent to all his actions of those who voted for him. It would be good for all of us to remember that, to start with. Yes, the European men who wrote these documents held slaves and were likely not concerned in the least with women, or any other culture or belief system besides their own. We must acknowledge this. However, what they wrote is a living, developing ideal that we are working on (admittedly sometimes with a real crap level of effort), rather than an unwavering reality that just “was” the minute it landed on the parchment. History demonstrates this truth regardless of what those who perceive that there was a “great” that we must go back to insist upon. No, sir, the Declaration and the Constitution are not in the “done” pile. The life, liberty and pursuit of happiness insisted upon in the Declaration are not achieved for all. We still have work to do. Yes, there are issues we debate. However, healthy debate and compromise cannot be replaced by assertion and subjugation. Even the Declaration makes a statement, concedes to conditions by which the statement must be supported, then provides the supporting points for the statement. Now it seems, this cabal and their bombastic, embarrassing, ego-obese distraction wish to step back and demolish what we have built so far in fulfilling our ideals. They claim they will repair a nation that has been “damaged” by “un-American” “invaders” (foreign and domestic, physical and ideological) who have corrupted it. What they actually represent is the reversal of the very slow process of ideal fulfillment which is still far from reached. They see its trajectory and are desperate to dismantle it and remake it to match their own selfish, stunted, violent perception of what they want America to be. There is nothing great about the fiction they are selling. That all being said, words have a finite set of purposes and abilities. By posting these for you to read if you so chose, I hoped for thoughtful consideration but I do not presume that the words are beyond scrutiny, or that they alone do the work. My action is to love and protect. My empathy should not be mistaken for compliance or lack of rage. My dissent is not a whine or whimper or borne out of some innate weakness. Being humane and recognizing the humanity in others may require vulnerability, but that demands courage. The opportunity this country has come to represent and provide for some must not be completely shuttered by the fearful mongering of privilege by a few myopic yet powerful people. Leaving this land better than we found it is our charge. Refugees are welcome here. Inclusion is the future. All are created equal. Autonomy and equality will come to pass. This is America and I do not consent to anyone or anything that aims to warp or dismantle it.

[comayzing]

Do it (again).

What if time doesn't happen at all in the order we think it does? What if memories are just separate scenes from a story and what you remember isn't so much past events stored in chronological order as it is a jumbled up catalogue of related events? What you're doing now could be a precursor to that thing you think already happened. Your mind fills in the gaps to make it cohesive but its really not what it seems at all.

[comayzing]

Every universe, our own included, begins in conversation.

Michael Chabon

from The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay.