freedom of speech | The Direction of Intention

So Here It Is [David’s blog on saturday morning smack-dab]

Posted on September 20, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

Well, you’ve cracked the sky, scrapers fill the air
But will you keep on building higher
‘Til there’s no more room up there
Will you make us laugh, will you make us cry?
Will you tell us when to live, will you tell us when to die?

I know we’ve come a long way
We’re changing day to day
But tell me, where do the children play?

~ Cat Stevens, Where Do The Children Play

Kerri regularly tells me to “gear down.” She’s asking me to simplify my thoughts so they are more accessible. It’s the reason I nodded knowingly when I read this in Thom Hartmann’s newsletter:

“The reason we’re at a pivotal moment in America is because most people don’t know how to answer this question: “How do you know when you’re really no longer living in a democracy?”

He makes a great point. Even though we have tanks rolling down civilian streets, masked thugs plucking people without warrant or due process, concentration camps popping up in swamps, the collapse of checks-and-balances, the intentional scrubbing of our history, an all-out assault on diversity and civil rights, a Supreme Court regularly ruling against the Constitution in support of a single man consolidating power… “Up until the last few days, most Americans didn’t think we’d lost our freedoms or are about to.”

He continues: “But everybody knows Jimmy Kimmel. So the new understanding is: ‘You know you don’t live in a free country any more when comedians can no longer criticize the president.‘”

So, here it is. Geared down so all can understand. We don’t live in a free country anymore. We can either mumble our way into autocracy or we can open our mouths and regain our freedoms. As Stephen Colbert said, “We’re all Jimmy Kimmel now.”

read Kerri’s blogpost about FREE SPEECH

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Filed under: smack-dab | Tagged: artistry, CAt Stevens, comedians, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, democracy, free country, freedom of speech, freedoms, jimmy kimmel, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, stephen colbert, story, studio melange, the melange, Thom Hartmann, Where Do the Children Play | 1 Comment »

Black and White [David’s blog on KS Friday]

Posted on September 19, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

“Despair is a narcotic. It lulls the mind into indifference.” ~ Charlie Chaplin

It turns out that there are some things that are black or white. For instance, we either have free speech or we don’t. We either have the protections of due process and habeas corpus or we don’t. We either adhere to the Constitution or we don’t. We either have a free press or we don’t. We either champion the truth or we don’t.

We either have a democracy or we don’t.

Right now, in this moment, where all of the above are concerned, we don’t.

I’m still shaking my head at the 90 million voters who did not turn out to vote in the last election. Were they indifferent? There is certainly enough despair to go around given the sucking of wealth from the many into the hands of the few. We either exercise our power in democracy by voting or we don’t.

The system is either built for all of us or it is tilted toward the privileged few. And that seems to be the line of discord in our short history, the rope that we perpetually tug in our incessant internal war: who do we mean when we say, “We the people”? It either includes all of us in the promise or it doesn’t.

We either protect the dream or we don’t.

Lately, in a mass capitulation of courage by corporate America, the legal profession, universities…we’ve learned that despair is not the only narcotic that lulls the mind into indifference. Profit might be mightier than despair in producing indifference. We’re literally seeing our nation sell its soul. It’s become abundantly clear what is valued and what is not.

Democracy, for the morbidly wealthy, seems no match for private gain. It’s up to the rest of us to wake up, shake off indifference and loudly remind the gluttonous few that fascism has no place in a democratic republic, that our rights and protected freedoms are not for sale or to be used as leverage for the corporate merger.

We either protect the dream now or we lose it. We’re standing at the line. All of us. It makes no difference if you are on the blue team or the red. The orchestrated collapse of our democracy, the loss of protected freedoms, of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, the erasure of our nation of laws and not men…applies equally to all of us.

It turns out that somethings are not black or white, they are black and white.