Dear Man/Dear Woman: A Noteworthy Conversation … October 8th, 2016

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Woman: November, 1976. Forty years ago.

 

Man: That’s before you and I were born.

 

Woman: I know, but they do have history books. You might want to check one out sometime.

 

Man: Why? It’s just a bunch of older people doing the same dumb things we do with less cool clothes.

 

Woman: I assume you’re trying to be funny. Anyway, it was the November issue of Playboy Magazine in 1976, when Jimmy Carter, running for President, made a statement. Everybody was very upset that he did an interview with Playboy. But the admission he made rang out all across the country, reverberating with everything from respect to ridicule.

 

Man: Wait a second–I think I remember this. Something about his heart, and lust.

 

Woman: Yes. When he was asked if he had ever cheated on Rosalynn, he said no, but he had “lusted in his heart.”

 

Man: Where did he get that?

 

Woman: It’s something Jesus said. The quote is, “He that looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery in his heart.”

 

Man: That sounds a little “prudey.”

 

Woman: That’s the way you might take it, but it’s not like that–especially with what’s happened in the last 24 hours, with Donald Trump’s comments about women.

 

Man: Absolutely ugly and distasteful.

 

Woman: That’s not what I’m talking about. The real problem is that equality between the sexes cannot be achieved as long as men see a woman and think “lust” and women are grateful for that, or even proud to be show horses.

 

Man: But there has to be an attraction between the sexes.

 

Woman: Yes, but a man can’t look on a woman just to lust after her and think we’re going to progress the race. It is a setup for inconsideration, abuse, violence, rape and even murder.

 

Man: I see. Because if his intentions are rejected, then he feels that she’s failed to fulfill her part of the bargain by being available.

 

Woman: Exactly. So you see, the problem is not what Donald Trump says, but the way we try to isolate it off and pretend he’s the only one who feels this way, by insisting that men have only one thing on their minds.

 

Man: And therefore, women have one thing on their minds–to try to fulfill that mental image of “sexy” so as to gain importance and worth.

 

Woman: So the key here is, how can we look on each other as people, knowing that in the process, every once in a while some passion and lust will rise up, but it will be based on a mutual understanding.

 

Man: It’s funny–most people would listen to what Jesus said and think he was a tight-assed religionist. But really, he was a humanist trying to get the male and female to honor one another without demanding the initiation of physical intimacy.

 

Woman: You hit it right on the head. So my prayer is that through this discussion about Donald Trump, we’ll get to the real root cause of inequality.

 

Man: Let me guess–until men know that the greatest way to welcome a woman is to include her emotionally, spiritually and mentally, we will continue to have flagrant outbursts from jerks who misuse women to prove their virility.

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Populie: We Support the Troops… September 17, 2014

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The greatest courtesy I can offer to any of my readers is to attempt to provide a non-prejudiced format of information which is vacant of opinion. (Of course, this is basically impossible to do since I am a mortal, and love to hear the sound of my own voice.) But let me attempt to be more faithful with today’s populie.

In the first one hundred years of our existence as a nation–1776 to 1876–our young, fledgling experiment was involved in nineteen years of war. In other words, 19% of the time we were sending young men off to die in some sort of escapade “for freedom.”

In the next one hundred years–from 1876 to 1976–we were involved in seventeen years of war. 17%. A drop.

From 1976 to 2001, a span of twenty-five years, we took three of those to be involved in war, placing us in a descending 12%.

But from 2001 to present–thirteen years–we have been involved in eleven years of war. An astounding 86% spike.

This increase in blood, guts, aggression and interference has caused us to develop several national policies, quietly, to sustain this burdensome effort. Among them is the popular notion that the military is honorable and should be given special consideration, and the hypocritical populie of “we support the troops.”

Entertainment loves it because even though they tout themselves to be liberals who want to preserve the turtle doves in some park, they have never met a movie that does not require a gun.

Religion favors this populie because it gives us something to pray for, allowing us to feel we’re transforming the world one bullet at a time.

And of course, politicians not only rattle their sabers, but occasionally brandish them to warn infidels and heathen of the power of our nation, while stirring the blood of the voters in their favor.

Do you really want to support the troops? Then get real instead of putting on a phony patriotism and a theatrical appreciation for our men and women who serve. Here’s how you can support the troops:

1. Stop starting wars that have nothing to do with us.

If we really believe we’re a Christian nation, we should only attack if we’re attacked. Period. I will guarantee you that soldiers would be satisfied to be “at readiness” instead of in peril.

2. If you find yourself in the position of starting a war which is considered to be necessary, then institute the draft.

Don’t go to your volunteer army or your reserves and ask them to take on innumerable tours of duty because you don’t want to bother the elite young people of our country. I will tell you, if George W. Bush had instituted the draft in 2003, the Iraq War would not have lasted more than four years, and if it had, there would have been protesters in the street, just as there were in 1970 regarding Vietnam.

3. Take care of the obvious needs of our veterans, granting them the dignity of acclimating back into society without being impoverished second-class citizens.

Don’t tell me you support the troops and then fail to notice that we are not taking care of their medical needs or helping them get off the street–homeless ex-soldiers.

I do not like a charade. Since we have come across the same situation we had in the Civil War, in which our weaponry has outgrown our medical ability to take care of the human body, we might want to slow up the carnage so we don’t have so many combatants trying to move around without limbs and hampered by severe brain injuries.

The United States has decided it’s the Roman Empire, and just as the Romans did, we are beginning to over-extend ourselves under the guise of being the “muscle men of the world”–to eventually be taken down by our version of Vandals from Germany, whom I am sure the Romans also considered to be terrorists.

I support the troops with all my heart–so much so that I work for peace, I challenge avarice and I question my government when it tries to excite the populace by waving the flag over the next conflict.

 

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Ford Every Stream … August 12, 2012

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His name was Gerald Ford. He was a great American. I define that distinction as any politician who is able to escape the bonds of the party line to do what is really right for the country.

He became President of our nation after Richard Nixon resigned in disgrace. He took over a country preoccupied with Watergate, sick to death of the remnants of Viet Nam and cynical about anyone who would ever campaign for a vote.

He had some remarkable achievements.

Gerald Ford, official Presidential photo. Français : Gerald Ford, premier portrait officiel du Président américain, (1974). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

First–he pardoned Nixon. The last thing in the world the United States needed was to put a former President on trial for felony charges. It was also a bold move because he attacked someone from his own party and told him he was guilty and in need of absolution.He was President when we finally dislodged ourselves from Indochina and the Viet Nam war. He managed to rally the spirit of our country for the celebration of a beautiful bicentennial in 1976–only fourteen months after the removal of Nixon. He was married to a woman named Betty, who was very honest about her weaknesses, and the clinic she began (Betty Ford Clinic) is still a symbol for rehabilitation for those who find themselves trapped in some form of addiction.

He did one remarkable thing that we must always honor him for and hopefully, learn from ourselves. He kept things from getting worse.

Sometimes we forget that the only path available to us is to make a courageous stand and keep things from getting worse.

I am America. The reason I say that is that my story parallels what has happened in this country during the past four years. In 2008, I had a very expensive house on a lake in Tennessee, escalating in value at what should have been considered an alarming rate. There was no reason for ME to be alarmed–after all, I was getting rich. I was living beyond my means, utilizing an abundance of credit cards to fund the fantasy. I was involved with many vanity projects in the sense that I was throwing money into efforts to substantiate their importance and confirm their value.

I had recently lost eighty-five pounds, landing at my new fighting weight and felt proud. I had health insurance, which allowed me to go to the doctor four times a year, where I was able to confirm my present status of unhealthiness. And then suddenly, like millions of other Americans, it was all gone.

I sit here four years later without my house, without credit cards, having lost no additional weight (though I have continued to try) and devoid of any cash to pursue vanity. I also do not have health insurance, so my present physical well-being is an intriguing mixture of the remains of my medical history mingled with my faith in God.

People would say that I am worse off than I was in 2008. They would be wrong.

My life now is vacant of deception, worry, misrepresentation and I have been present while all the bubbles have been burst. What is left to me is the ability to understand that I have taken this journey with the rest of my countrymen and have come out the other end praising God that it wasn’t worse.

It has legitimized my efforts. It has made what I pursue realistic instead of fantastic. Now, every day I have the honor of writing this essay for the Internet which you are now reading, I put out a weekly letter of fellowship weekly to several hundred pastors across the country and I interact with hundreds of people face-to-face, sharing my heart and listening to theirs.

It is clean, pure of heart and it is real. When I reach into my wallet, the contents of that leather pouch is mine and not partially owned by Bank of America.

So as we determine the future of our lives and our country, let me present to you to four questions that really confirm progress.

1. What has really taken place? In my case, I went from being a puffed-up poet funded by credit, to a traveling artisan who presses flesh and interacts in a human way with human beings.

2. Is it anything of what I expected? Once again, I return to myself. Life is never what we expect, but occasionally is gracious enough to allow some of our ideas to be included. In other words, there have been many surprises but the greatest gift to me over the past four years has been the ability to energize my own mission.

3. What have I learned? Volumes. First of all, I learned that you can maintain your weight and still become healthier by increasing exercise and improving the quality of your nutrition. I learned that merely writing something is not the same as blessing the world around you. I learned that simplicity is powerful when it’s paid for and within your abilities.

4. What can I use going forward? I can use everything that does not demand that I become presumptuous. That is the problem with our country. We are a presumptuous lot. We presume superiority, we presume finance, we presume spirituality and we presume manifest destiny. All of these things are available to us but they do require our humble involvement.

I now know in my life what works and what doesn’t. The only question that remains is, will I pursue the functioning parts or habitually insist on chasing evaporated dreams?

We can learn a lot from Gerald Ford. Although he was never elected to the Presidency and failed to gain the office in the 1976 election, he stepped in a gap and kept things from getting worse.

For after all, in the case of a gun shot wound, the first step to healing is to stop the bleeding. I don’t know about you–this past four years has helped me to stop the bleeding.

I am grateful.

 

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