Sunday Garden Therapy

Enjoy these Sunday afternoon garden shots.

Debt Currency

There is an elephant in our country’s room.

Radical extremism has long played a pertinent role in US history. Since the inception of this country, radical extremists have been an inconvenience to the status quo.  We can easily point to the radical extremism clearly declaring the need for independence in 1776,  “That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government…” 

But calling it radical extremism makes it scary.

We can call it revolutionary.  Revolutionary like the labor movement of the late 19^th century and early 20^th century when tireless efforts brought awareness to hazardous work conditions and made advances like establishing Labor Day to honor workers.  The unfortunate correlation in the early 1900s between immigrant populations and poor labor conditions meant that organizing against big companies required a lot of momentum. People must have been pushed to their limits of acceptability, opened to their ultimate vulnerability and attempted to stand resiliently.  This resilience translated into another kind of revolutionary thought to those under fire for poor work conditions.

Anarchists. The labor movement only made so many advances for the rights of workers, wealth equity, living standards, and the movement had a tangential arm of extreme radicalism.  Anarchists were pushed to their edge concluding the only appropriate response to the subversion of workers were schemes of mass vandalism.  Vandalism has not proven to destroy systems, and vandalism proved to isolate workers rights sympathizers further alienating the anarchists.

The Red Scare. In the 1920s, the folk heroes of Sacco and Vanzetti served as the quintessential message to anarchists in the US - that justice will not be blind for immigrants choosing the wrong associates.  Intense national political repression in our country followed the outcries from the organized workers.  The message became clear across the country: either you were for US or you were against US and if you were for US, you assimilated so you weren’t called a ‘commie.’

US history weaves a fabric of oppositional forces threaded together with the common bond of protecting inexorable rights.   But when it comes to admitting injustices perpetrated on others whether it be calling immigrants illegal, or breaking treaties with native tribes, or turning hoses and setting bombs off on people, our country is painfully resistant to acknowledging any form of a dishonorable past.

Consider why Christopher Columbus and the true origins of Thanksgiving are now fabled tales of glory in American society?  Consider how those in power continuously challenge our limits of acceptability regarding human rights violations?

The elephant in our country’s room, is us… all of us.  Its time that we acknowledge that we are all, in fact, in this together and that we are all responsible for shaping the society in which we live.  Its time that we acknowledge our current paradigm of determining that certain demographics are less than, is not working out in our society’s best interest.  Its time that we redefine our limits of acceptability for the way we can and will treat one another.

Its going to take the radical extremism of compassion, open minds and collaboration to once and for all stand up and declare that we are ALL equal and there is NO such thing as less than.  

Archived Article from 2010 on Don't Ask Don't Tell

I've been reading through my past op-ed pieces and found this one and felt it an appropriate post following pride weekend around the world...

With all the recent buzz about DADT, a sampling of marines were surveyed as to whether there would be an issue with openly gay active duty soldiers within their ranks.  I am offended that a survey like this was even administered. What if that survey, instead, questioned whether there would be an issue with openly Italian active duty soldiers, or Jewish, or whatever. Imagine don’t ask don’t tell was about religion instead of sexuality. But now that I say that out loud it doesn’t seem like we’re heading too far from that anyway. According to the survey, the majority of marines reported that having openly gay soldiers in their ranks would affect morale and would be negative overall for the force. Is it reasonable to think that because we are willing to question the legitimacy of gays in the military that we will soon be questioning the legitimacy of Muslims and those that practice Islam in the military?

There is something so arbitrary about excluding people from military service based on specific non-physical attributes.  My theory is if people willingly submit themselves to such a lifestyle, willingly strip their physical identities – hair and clothes -  for the uniformity of soldier solidarity, and willingly take oaths of fidelity and integrity to the cause of furthering the American agenda, then it doesn’t really matter what color, race, creed, ethnicity or sexual orientation this military force is comprised.  They’re all given the mission to hold the course of our American world superpower epoch.  And at this point, with massive rifts looming over the path forward for domestic governance, WikiLeaks airing out dirty foreign policy laundry, and economy-destabilizing wars in progress, I think those who hold strong to the notion that American colors don’t run should also want to fortify our military coffers with as many able bodied persons as possible.