I struggle with the idea of fighting to create a future I believe in. I know that not everyone shares the same ideas and values that I have. This is shown to me daily through each and every media platform. But some people do have at least an overlapping share of the same ideas and values. But they’re not all interested in doing the work and not all those that are have the same level of privilege that I have. So I often wonder how best to proceed.

For instance, despite the so- called “democratization” of the Internet where everybody that desires a platform has the ability to have one, some people have to work much harder to be heard. To often they have work harder,  write better, and justify the hell out of everything through research and citation.  I just get to write stuff and be heard, albeit by a small number of people.  But they are people who matter in that they also have privilege to use.

A lot of what I write here I view as nonsense or just outloud thinking of things that amuse me. At least of the things I dare mention out loud because someone is always looking to use something against someone. I have been writing a bit more beyond the trivial recently to document a journey that I am on and to perhaps inspire a few people in an era where inspiration seems necessary. Some of this are bits and pieces of a love letter to a country I took an oath to defend, and to certain ideas of equality and freedom in which I will always believe.

Princess cards she sends me with her regards
Barroom eyes shine vacancy, to see her you gotta look hard
Wounded deep in battle, I stand stuffed like some soldier undaunted
To her Cheshire smile, I’ll stand on file, she’s all I ever wanted
But you let your blue walls get in the way of these facts
Honey, get your carpetbaggers off my back
You wouldn’t even give me time to cover my tracks
You said, “Here’s your mirror and your ball and jacks”
But they’re not what I came for, and I’m sure you see that too

“For You,” Bruce Springsteen

I know there are people that like the new direction we are headed. I don’t. I never will. The price of freedom is learning put up with people different than you and finding out they aren’t so different after all. When it works, it is not a bad system, and it is a glorious place. For a lot of people it hasn’t worked. Ever. Except maybe for lucky few individuals. Women, people of color,  Native Americans, the LGBTQ communities, and any group out of fashion in a given moment in history, have never been shown full equality. Those failures only make it worth saving, not blowing it up into a patriarchal white supremacist’s wet dream.

I’ve worked with a lot of people whose politics are polar opposite mine. But I’ve generally been able to believe they were good people trying to good work within a different framework of belief. Some of these people showing up in DC might as well be arriving from distant galaxy for all the commonality of belief in America we share. The oath I took as a soldier was to the Constitution, it still holds. As does my belief that we can never give up. I can never give up.

“The Land of Hope and Dreams,” Bruce Springsteen

We simply can’t give up.

Rick Blaine: Don’t you sometimes wonder if it’s worth all this? I mean, what you’re fighting for.

Victor Lazlo: We might as well question why we breathe. If we stop breathing, we’ll die. If we stop fighting our enemies, the world will die.

Rick Blaine: What of it? Then it’ll be out of its misery.

Victor Lazlo:  You know how you sound, Monsieur Blaine? Like a man who’s trying to convince himself……of something he doesn’t believe in his heart. Each of us has a destiny. For good, or for evil.

-Casablanca, 1942.