equality | The Direction of Intention

Put It To Good Use [David’s blog on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on June 2, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

“Sanity is madness put to good uses, waking life is a dream controlled.” ~ George Santayana, The Elements of Poetry

I wish – oh, how I wish – we could awaken from this nightmare. Democracy dies by gaslight, by demonization, by unbridled lies, by a Me-Me-Me philosophy. By Republican insanity (inanity?): madness put to ill use. Cowardice two-stepping in a righteous cowboy costume.

Viktor Frankel wrote: “The more one forgets himself – by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love – the more human he is.” Could there be a better definition of sanity?

We are witness to a national nightmare. It is the tug of war of dueling realities. One, madness put to good use, is called Democracy. It is a dream meant to serve “liberty and justice for all”. To uplift. Equally.

The other reality is discriminatory, exploitation of the many for the profit of the few. It is madness put to toxic use. White nationalism in a self-righteous-wrapper. It is in-sanity. Un-hinged. Ab-normal. To abuse others for personal gain. In-humane.

We fly the flag upside down as a signal of distress. I imagined the bumper sticker was placed upside down to reinforce the point. Stay Weird. The current purveyors of authoritarian insanity intend to hammer us into compliance. To silence the voices of opposition (goodness). They attack judges while freeing criminals; they would have us believe that the rule of law is criminal so that the criminal might lawlessly rule. They would have us behave, stay quiet. Look down or bury our heads in the sand. Goosestep.

There has never been a better time – or more necessary time – to stay weird, to put our mad-ness to good use. To speak up. To act out. Surround and protect the judges: the last line of defense against the authoritarian takeover. To bellow to our AWOL Congress: WHERE ARE YOU? And to make sure they feel the impact of their inaction, their abdication of responsibility. Their betrayal of oath.

Our mythos is full of symbols like Paul Revere and The Boston Tea Party: people giving of themselves to serve a greater cause. The love of others. In our dream of democracy, we know exactly how to deal with an out-of-control wanna-be king. We fly the flag upside-down. We put lanterns in church steeples. We toss money-hoarding and unfair taxation into the harbor. There has never been a more important time to stay weird, to focus our madness and put it to good use – for each other.

read Kerri’s blogpost about STAYING WEIRD

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Filed under: Identity, Merely A Thought Monday, Possibility | Tagged: artistry, Boston Tea Party, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, democracy, dream, equality, exploitation, George Santayana, inhumane, insanity, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, liberty, madness, Paul Revere, responsibility, story, studio melange, symbol, the melange, Viktor Frankl | 3 Comments »

For All Humans [David’s blog on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on May 5, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

I read that Cinco de Mayo, in addition to being a celebration of Mexican heritage and culture, serves as a reminder of Mexican resistance and resilience in the face of adversity. That makes this Cinco de Mayo a uniquely potent and particularly relevant celebration. With Mexico demonized and under assault from this current administration, it is more important than ever to uplift and honor Mexican heritage. Honoring Mexico on this day serves as an act of resistance to the bully xenophobic Republican agenda.

It also serves as a reminder that this nation – in reality – is a celebration of many ethnicities. We are a cultural crossroads. That is precisely what makes America great. We need not go back to some imagined fantasy-past. Our strength in this democratic experiment is our capacity to reinvent ourselves, over and over again.

The bumper sticker reads, “Equality hurts no one.” Too true. Equality is the ideal, the guide star at the very center of the Declaration of Independence, the driving force behind our capacity to re-imagine ourselves. It is the promise that allows us to intend a nation comprised of many races and ethnicities, a people capable overcoming their small tribal imperatives to create a more perfect union. In the ideal, our differences are what unite us. Our differences are our strength. In our nation, as in nature, our diversity is – and always has been – our secret sauce. Our superpower. It is the unique source of our innovation and our capacity to adapt, change, and grow.

More importantly, equality-in-diversity is the magnetic north of our moral compass. It informs our national conscience. Human beings, regardless of race, gender, ethnicity or sexual orientation are afforded equal protection under the law. Equal rights. Human rights. An intention to foster equal opportunity for all. A celebration of humanity in all its rich multiplicity.

We can only hope that this current Republican attempt to scrub the nation of color, to force lock-step uniformity, is the last gasp of a dying white supremacy, the final whimper of Manifest Destiny. Change – real change – is always preceded by a frightened step backwards.

Today, more than ever, it is important to celebrate the resilience and resistance of Mexico, a day of triumph over a brutal suppressor. A day of recognition of the great spirit of Mexico, one of the many deep flowing currents of courage that forms the powerful river known as the United States of America, a nation of diversity that intends equity and inclusion – for all humans.

read Kerri’s blogpost about EQUALITY

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Filed under: Identity, Merely A Thought Monday, Uncategorized | Tagged: artistry, Cinco de Mayo, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, DEI, democracy, Diversity, equality, equity, humanity, inclusion, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, multiplicity, resilience, story, studio melange, the melange | 1 Comment »

Our National ABOUT Page [David’s blog on KS Friday]

Posted on May 2, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

This quote by Reynolds Price has been on my ABOUT page since I began blogging:

“A need to tell and hear stories is essential to us – second in necessity after nourishment and before love and shelter.”

Since I already know what I am about (mostly) I rarely visit my ABOUT page. I’d all but forgotten this quote was a constant presence on my blog. It is the flag I planted, as much for myself as for others, so I might always have a north star, a way to locate and find my way HOME. I carried it in my pocket long before I enshrined it on my site. I remember typing it into the little “about” box – it felt like a declaration.

Lately the quote has been poking at me. It wants further consideration. It has renewed relevance in our current circumstance.

The disparate bubbles that we occupy, MAGA and WOKE, are stories. Although the characters are different in the respective bubbles, the overriding story is the same: there is a threat to our way of life and the threat is the other bubble.

Although I believe the MAGA bubble is filled with dangerous fascism, they believe the WOKE bubble is socialism run amok. Occupants of both bubbles follow their news-of-the-day as if it was essential, true. Both narratives fuel the division. Both bubbles tell the tale of a heroic fight for good over an evil villain.

This is the third time in our history that these bubbles have formed; irreconcilable narratives housed under a greater umbrella-story, ironically called The United States of America. Robin Diangelo wrote the story of white supremacy requires black inferiority. Conversely, the struggle of equality-for-all is pitted against the story of white supremacy. It is nearly impossible to reconcile the combating sub-narratives: the Manifest Destiny story of god-given superiority (MAGA) with the All Men and Women Are Created Equal (WOKE) story. Our national narrative, our essential umbrella story, is of this struggle for identity: superiority for the few or equality for all. So, here we are.

A need to tell and hear stories is essential to us because stories are the glue that hold us together. Stories are essential because they define “belonging”. In a nation of immigrants, with a long history of bloody fighting over this question of belonging, what might it take for us to recognize that this fight is the greater story that defines us? It is the legacy we perpetuate in our grappling; it is the trace we leave in time. When will we see that the loss of freedom, the collapse of love and shelter is the cost of our shared narrative of seeming irreconcilable difference?

We’ve built our house on a volatile fault line.

However, there is a greater narrative available. It has been on our national ABOUT page since the beginning of our nation. It is our motto, our north star that will guide us HOME. It is printed on our currency. What might it take for us to rise above the bubbles and embrace the story at the center of our rhetorical ideal? What might we need to reconcile to live fully the nourishing story of e pluribus unum?

[this may be my favorite piece by Kerri. If you’re feeling angst or overwhelmed, do yourself a favor: take a short life-break, close your eyes and listen]

Kerri’s albums are available on iTunes and streaming on Pandora

read Kerri’s blogpost about TRACES IN THE SKY

The Storyteller emerges from the forest.
Lucy & The Waterfox
http://www.kerrianddavid.com

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Filed under: Identity, KS Friday, Story | Tagged: artistry, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, e pluribus unum, equality, fascism, freedom, identity, info bubbles, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, MAGA, Manifest Destiny, Robin DiAngelo, story, studio melange, the melange, white fragility, white supremacy, woke | 1 Comment »

Mutually [David’s blog on Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on April 30, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

“Objects are such only with respect to other objects, they are nodes where bridges meet. The world is a perspectival game, a play of mirrors that exist only as reflections of and in each other.” ~ Carlo Rovelli via The Marginalian, April 27, 2025

The tree stands beyond our back fence, its limbs spiral and twist, sculpted by time and the force of the winds roaring off the lake. Looking at her photograph, a silhouette against an evening blue sky, I remarked, “It’s a Jackson Pollock painting.” She looked again at her photograph through the lens of my remark, nodding.

Nature sculpts the tree that catches the photographer’s eye, her photograph invokes images of a drip painting. “…interaction is the fundamental reality of the universe, that there are no entities as such…”

We do ourselves a great disservice ignoring interconnection in service to our separation.

It’s human: we need to make sense of things so we compartmentalize. We object-ify, detaching tree from time and wind from photographer, assigning all to discrete little box-identities, placing emphasis on the noun rather than on the interplay, the intertwining verb. In our minds we stop the motion, sever interrelationship into distinct pieces, so that we might convince ourselves that we have a grasp on “reality”. In creating objective “reality” we blind ourselves to the greater mutuality.

Science dissected the world-body into parts which led to the smallest objective part, called a quantum, and discovered it’s a slippery devil, energy, that can only be described subjectively. It can only be known through its relationships. Mutuality.

I’ve yet to hear an adequate definition of the word “woke”. Maga world flings it liberally and with sharp derision to describe all manner of “progressive” ideals, yet stutters when asked what it means. It’s an umbrella term, a catch-all, like the grainy photograph of the Loch Ness monster, shaky proof of something to be feared but mostly unknown. In fox land, this Loch Ness monster is called “socialism”.

To Maga world I offer this definition of Woke: greater mutuality. Woke, like a quantum, cannot be objectified just as compassion cannot be fully defined. It can be experienced. It is an energy, connective tissue.

Woke flies the flag of equality. Woke understands that the suspension of due process for any single person is the suspension of due process for all people. Woke understands that prosperity reserved for the few means poverty for the many. Woke intends shared prosperity, an equal playing field, helping hands. “Float all boats” is a Woke ideology. Woke is not a hand-out, it is a help-up. A moral center – also known as mutuality – is Woke; we can be our brothers’ and sisters’ keeper or we can be their persecutor. Keeper or persecutor: both describe a kind of relationship.

Woke is what defines Maga just as Maga is now clarifying Woke. Maga desires separation. It strives for elevation above others; legislated privilege. Woke desires equality. It strives for a more perfect union: legislated inclusion. The promise of possibility.

We do ourselves a great disservice: we are neither red nor blue. We are not conservative nor progressive. We are not Woke or Maga. Those terms are boxes that ignore the fundamental truth of our – or any – nation. We are interconnected. We are a relationship.

Remove environmental protections and all of the air we breathe and the water we drink will be polluted. Remove election watchdogs and all of our elections will be corrupted. Remove a commitment to truth and lies will define us and pull us apart.

After all, Maga is a made-up-media term just as is Woke. They are boxes meant to give us an enemy, the illusion of separation.

Democracy is not a “thing”, an object. It is a movement, a quantum. We know it by our interactions as defined in our Constitution. We know it as a place where bridges meet. Where people from many places come together.

Whether Maga or Woke, we will feel the loss of democracy equally just as we feel the disintegration of our values, our shared narrative, our aspiration for justice-for-all; mutually.

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE TREE

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Filed under: Flawed Wednesday, Identity | Tagged: artistry, Carlo Rovelli, compassion, connective tissue, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, equality, interaction, interconnected, interplay, interrelated, intertwine, Jackson Pollock, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, mutuality, objectivity, quantum, relationship, story, studio melange, subject/object, The Marginalian, the melange, woke | 1 Comment »

The Line [David’s blog on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on April 14, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

I’ve decided that garden messages like “Be Kind” are actually sign posts marking the dividing line in these un-United States. There is – and always has been – a faction of the population that sincerely believes in equality. Kindness extends to everyone. Justice for all. There is – and always has been – a faction of the population that believes in racial superiority. Kindness is extended only to a select few. Justice for some.

The visibility of the dividing line has varied over our history depending on the faction in the power seat. When team equality-for-all is driving, the line fades. When team power-for-the-select-few is driving, the line blazes into visibility. Our short history is a tug-of-war with both sides trying to pull the other team over the line.

We are currently living in a time when the line is readily apparent, team white-male-superiority has the reins. Any mention of diversity is grounds for firing. DEI initiatives are being scrubbed from view. Segregation has been given a green light. Women’s rights are under attack. Tariffs are, of course, market manipulation to enrich the few while shifting of the tax burden onto the poorest citizens. Kindness is exclusively reserved for members of the country club.

It is, I suppose, one of the legacies of colonialism. Manifest Destiny. We are not alone in our tug-of-war but we are unique in wrapping it in ideals like “…with liberty and justice for all.” or “government of the people, by the people, for the people.” We are not alone in editing our full history but we are unique in our capacity to white-wash it as is currently the case. The Lost Cause narrative is alive and well.

This tug-of-war is the question at the heart of the experiment that is The United States of America. Can people of many races, ethnicities and religions, come together and form a society that protects the rights of all, equally, under the law? Can such a society be honest in telling of – and learning from – its full history? Can such a society extend kindness across difference to support a more perfect union? Can we actually strive for and achieve e plurbus unum?

Right now, the prevailing answer as articulated from the seat of power is “no”.

There is a different answer available on the streets.

In any case, it leaves me wondering what must happen for us as a nation to consider fully our history, to admit the truth of our tug-of-war in order to transcend it – so that we might fulfill the promise of our democracy that has the potential to enrich the lives of all the citizens, including citizens of the world.

Perhaps our current ugliness will crack open our denial and reveal the true nature of the discriminatory disease that continually ails us. Perhaps this is a step on the road to all-inclusive-kindness, power attained from giving rather than taking, serving rather than suppressing. In my idealism – and in my garden art – I can only hope so.

read Kerri’s blogpost about BE KIND

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Filed under: Identity, Merely A Thought Monday, Possibility | Tagged: artistry, colonialism, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, DEI, equality, equity, history, inclusion, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, kindness, Manifest Destiny, public service, service, story, studio melange, the melange | 1 Comment »

Choose A Side [David’s blog on KS Friday]

Posted on January 24, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

“It’s snowing in our yard!” I exclaimed.

“It’s snowing in our neighbor’s yard, too,” she smiled. True. The snow loves all yards equally.

Barney-the-piano’s most recent photo shoot revealed that he has only one remaining fragment of a white key. The facade has mostly fallen revealing no difference at all in the make up of the white or black keys. Barney grows more beautiful with age and humility. He reveals his truth as he travels toward his source.

Our nation’s history has mostly been a tug-of-war between those who feel equality should be like snow, available to everyone – and those who feel equality is a privilege reserved for the elite few. Evidently, reconciling twelve generations of slavery with a founding ideal that “All men are created equal” requires some serious struggle and, one would hope, soul searching. It is our history. It is the tension in our present moment.

After writing my post yesterday I decided, as part of my survive-the-next-four-years-strategy, I would find some of the unsung bright lights in our nation’s history. Some guiding stars. Maybe they might help us make sense of our present moment. I happily bumped into Frances Wright. A feminist and “freethinker”. She came to the United States in 1818. She was an abolitionist, a believer in equal rights for all people. She spoke her mind. She wrote, “Equality is the soul of liberty; there is, in fact, no liberty without it.”

A woman with the courage of her conviction. Just like the courage exhibited this week by Bishop Mariann Budde, speaking truth to power. Bright lights, both; connected across time by the side they chose in the tug-of-war.

As we witness the attempted strangling of DEI in the United States by those who reserve equality for the few, we are also witness to the abolishment of liberty for the many. There goes the baby with the bathwater!

In the example set by these two freethinkers, these powerful courageous women, I find hope. Our history is proof: the facade is slow to fall yet, with time and strong voices, freethinkers, it always does. And, when it falls, it reveals the layer beneath the thin white plastic: equality for all is the epicenter of the American dream: it is not the absence of difference, it is the celebration of difference in all its diverse beauty and flaws. Out of many, one.

And isn’t it the promise of our nation that we – all of us – every single one of us – enjoy the power to think freely. Isn’t it necessary to call out the injustices we see, pulling back on those who believe that equality is reserved for the privileged few?

Kerri’s albums are available on iTunes and streaming on Pandora

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE KEY

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Filed under: Edges, Heroes, Identity, KS Friday, Metaphor | Tagged: artistry, Bishop Mariann Budde, courage, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, equal rights, equality, Frances Wright, guiding stars, history, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, liberty, story, studio melange, the melange, unity | 1 Comment »

Wound Together [David’s blog on Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on November 27, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

In my mind it is a toss-up. Whether we are witnessing the collapse of our system or the reaffirmation of the system, doing exactly what it was designed to do.

We listened to an interview with Isabel Wilkerson. She said that through the lens of caste, this divisive time, maga and the election make perfect sense.

Perfect sense. Our system was designed and constructed along a distinct line of division, black and white. Initially, the division kept the indentured and the enslaved at each others’ throats so they didn’t turn their eyes and ire on the ruling class. The army protecting the elite was an ocean away. Division was – and is – protection. It’s the first chapter in the colonialist’s handbook. Divide the people. It’s discussed at length in our nation’s colonial legislative record.

And so, here we are again. The system is doing what it was designed to do. Amplifying the divide, keeping we-the-masses distracted by focusing our ire on each other instead of the burgeoning oligarchy currently salivating to exploit us and our cheap labor.

Systems are living things and will fight to the death when threatened. As Isabel Wilkerson suggested, this is the system reasserting itself. Unity threatens it.

It’s ironic, isn’t it? A true paradox. This caste divide works like dna strands, fibers wound and bound together by their opposition. The force that binds us is division. We are a fractal of disunity.

The strands:

The maga right spits the word “woke” but to date has failed completely to define what that means.

The progressive left spits the word, “ignorant” and has no doubt what that means. I am guilty of wielding this word.

The “woke” believe in equality and unity.

The maga right is hyper-protected against “woke” notions of equality and unity because their media has steeped their minds in the bogey-man-word, “socialism.” I am certain, just like the word “woke”, they have no idea what socialism means or how it is as distinct from equality as lived in a democratic society. I am also certain they don’t want to know what the word means.

It’s “woke” to know what words mean. It’s un-woke to obey without question.

The woke want to know. The un-woke do not care to know. The woke want to dissolve the caste system. The un-woke do not. The woke see societal gain in unity and equality. The un-woke see personal loss of privilege and power. Woke and un-woke wound together by the gravity of their division.

The flashpoints in our history – like the Civil War or the Civil Rights movement – happen when the people, the indentured and enslaved, begin to question the falseness of the division, when they dare to turn their eyes away from each other and turn their unified eyes toward the ruling caste, and begin asking questions. The flashpoints occur when we-the-people step toward the promise of a more perfect union.

The flashpoints are aptly named. Civil (adjective): relating to ordinary citizens and their concerns…Civil War. Civil Rights. Ordinary citizens attempting to challenge the gravity of their false-division. I wonder what historians will name our current flashpoint?

Systems are living things and will fight to the death when threatened.

Is the fascism fast approaching the death of the system? Or, is it the caste system, threatened by the actual promises of democracy, liberty and justice for all, reasserting itself? Or both?

The path toward the promise of our democracy begins with curiosity and questioning, an openness to ideas and others. It requires a populace dedicated to learning rather than book-banning and indoctrination. It facilitates opening eyes rather than closing hearts.

I look forward to the day that the un-woke awaken and see how completely they are being exploited, suppressed and taken for a fascist ride. Maybe then we can unite, turn our eyes and focus our ire where it belongs and, once and for all, turn the page on this hateful colonist’s game.

read Kerri’s blogpost about FIBERS

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Filed under: Flawed Wednesday, Identity, Perspective | Tagged: artistry, caste, civil, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, democracy, division, equality, ignorant, isabel Wilkerson, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, story, studio melange, system, the melange, unity, woke | 3 Comments »

What We Stand For [David’s blog on Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on November 6, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

“When you know what you stand for, you know what to fight for.” ~ Kamala Harris

We thought, as many of you did, that the fight over what we stand for was the election. As it turns out, the fight is in front of us.

Last night, in a fit of irony, the man who said that he would eliminate The Constitution won a free and fair election. He has promised that it will be our last. He will be, as promised, a dictator on day one.

I know what I stand for. I believe in democracy. I believe in decency. I believe in equality. He stands for none of these things.

We’ve just given the arsonist has the keys to the house.

The fight is in front of us.

“When we fight, we win.” ~ Kamala Harris

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE ELECTION

Filed under: Flawed Wednesday | Tagged: artistry, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, decency, democracy, dictator, equality, Kamala Harris, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, story, studio melange, the melange | 3 Comments »

The Guardrail [David’s blog on DR Thursday]

Posted on October 31, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

It’s a windy day and the chimes are singing to us. The wind is from the west so the temperatures are rising. We opened the windows. It feels as if the house is breathing, taking in the fresh air before the temperatures drop and the doors and windows are sealed against the cold.

I know that we are breathing. Kerri said that there’s nothing like a ride in an ambulance to give you perspective. She thought of our children. She thought of me. “Nothing else mattered,” she said. Each breath we take includes a sigh of relief.

Life can change in an instant.

We walked the rim trail. We sat on the edge of the Grand Canyon. It’s an awesome thing – especially for someone who is afraid of heights as I am – to sit on the edge without any guardrails. Full exposure. To me, it feels as if the canyon is pulling me over the edge. It’s disorienting. Of course, it is not pulling me, I know. The feeling, the fear, comes from inside of me.

I heard a powerful statement this week. With the supreme court’s jaw-dropping ruling on presidential immunity, with the Project 2025 plan ready to replace civil servants with those who will swear an oath of loyalty to the dictator-wanna-be, with a cabinet of sycophants and loyalists, there is only one guardrail left between our democracy and our nation being pulled into the abyss of fascism. The maga-clan isn’t even trying to mask their hatred, their authoritarian intention; it was on full display in Madison Square Garden.

The GOP has dissolved into a puddle of cowardice. Fearing it will lose a dollar, the business community and much of the media have tucked their tail, dropped their collective spine and are playing hear-no-evil-see-no-evil.

We are in the ambulance, now. What world will we leave our children?

The guardrail is us. You and me. Our vote. I suppose that is as it should be. A “Government of the people. by the people, for the people…” – a democracy in crisis – should necessarily depend upon the people to deliver it from the hands of an autocrat.

We are and should be the guardrail against tyranny.

It only takes a minute to read the full text of The Gettysburg Address. Lincoln’s final thought in his very concise address are as relevant today as they were the day he dedicated The Soldier’s National Cemetery, November 19, 1863:

“—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. ~ Abraham Lincoln

It is our turn. We are the guardrail. We are the generation that will determine whether or not our nation, “…conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal…can long endure.”

Vote as if our democracy depends on it – because it does.

Earth Interrupted I, 48″x53″ mixed media on canvas

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE GUARDRAIL

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Filed under: DR Thursday, Identity, Metaphor, Perspective | Tagged: Abraham Lincoln, artistry, autocrat, courage, cowardice, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, democracy, equality, freedom, GOP, Grand Canyon, guardrail, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, liberty, MAGA, story, studio melange, The Gettysburg Address, the melange, tyranny, vote | Leave a comment »

Simply Say, “Enough.” [David’s blog on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on September 2, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

She snapped. I watched it happen, the moment when there was no more room for tolerance, no more space for grace. Had she spoken she simply would have said, “Enough”.

You can’t make up this stuff.

A hot mic on the Access Hollywood bus should have ended it.

Being found liable for sexual assault (rape) by a jury of his peers should have ended it.

Being accused of sexual assault and misconduct by 25 women should have ended it.

His recent repost of repugnant tweets about Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris should end it. But it won’t. As a survivor of sexual abuse she’d had enough. She snapped.

Misogyny in the United States is not only alive and well, it is being celebrated by at least half of the voting population. The man-who-would-be-king has no bottom to his baseness. How is it possible that so many are so willing to follow him into the pigswill? How is it possible that this miscreant* is the person the red hats have chosen to emulate, to support, to uphold as an example for their children, as the standard bearer to lead them into the future?

In a recent interview James Carville warned that this miscreant “under-polls” meaning that the people who support him are ashamed to admit that they support him and his reprehensible views. So they hide their support. They mask their truth. I suppose being so ashamed of your beliefs that you lie to conceal them implies at least some small shred of self-awareness. A gutted morality. Or perhaps it is plain cowardice.

Misogyny: the hatred of, contempt for, or prejudice against women or girls. It is a form of sexism that can keep women at a lower social status than men, thus maintaining the social roles of patriarchy.

Running a campaign on hatred. Contempt. Amplifying prejudice and sexism. In other words, the miscreant and his hate-party are empty of vision and ethics. This paucity of heart and thought leaves them with no recourse but to demean others – as it seems their single goal is to maintain at-all-cost the rusty social roles of a collapsing patriarchy.

Strumming the strings of those who fear equality, whipping up a crowd terrified that they will come up short on an even playing field.

This is what I wanted to tell her when she snapped: drowning men push all others underwater to elevate themselves.

Those who support the miscreant, like the miscreant himself, are drowning. It’s easy to see: working to restrict voters, gerrymandering maps, desperate to change voter laws and procedures so they can tilt the outcome in their favor no matter the result of the election. The miscreant has proclaimed that, once in office, he will “fix things” so we need never vote again. It’s the statement of a sad little man and his party swallowing water, afraid to compete, afraid to say, “This is what we believe.” (see Project 2025 and the lengths they now go to disavow it). It betrays a fundamental disregard – and disdain – for the system they proclaim to protect. If they truly believed in our system of governance, if they truly believed in the values they purport to conserve, they’d not fear an even playing field. They’d defend it. They’d welcome it. They’d arrive at the table with a fierce dedication to protect the right of all citizens to freely vote. They would not tolerate so crude and base a man as their leader.

If his party will not hold him accountable or at least condemn him, if the law -as it seems – is incapable of holding him accountable, then the voters must. We need to end it.

Never mind the impeachments, the felony convictions, the dozens of indictments awaiting trial, the evidence-free claims and incessant whining of an election he lost, the violent attempt to stop the transfer of power…with the once-stiff spine of the republican party now a swampy puddle on the floor, it’s time for this nation to snap and say “Enough.”

His repulsive rhetoric is not locker room talk. His party’s “boys will be boys” excuse needs once-and-for-all to be swept into the dustbin of history with the miscreant and his privileged-hate-speak.

There is no excuse for misogyny. It’s way past time for the old boys to man up and learn to play on an even and equal playing field. American woman are not stupid. And that’s exactly what the old boys are afraid of.

*miscreant (noun): a person who behaves badly or in a way that breaks the law.

read Kerri’s blogpost about MISOGYNY