I wrote this blog seven years ago about the time that Trump assumed the office of the President of the United States of America. As I stumbled across it again, I could not help feeling that nothing has changed in this country. Therefore I am posting this blog again in the futile hope that one voter might read it and change his or her mind.
January 21, 2017
Many of you have no doubt heard the tone poem by Carl Orff titled Carmina Burana. One of the famous parts of this musical piece is taken from a poem called “O Fortuna.” It is a Medieval Latin poem written early in the 13th century. I started thinking about it today as Trump became the 45th President of the United States of America. I have never much believed in fate, preferring to think that we are masters of our own destiny and fate be dammed. But as the inexorable reality of the inauguration kept intruding on my existence, I was forced back to the conclusion that perhaps fortune does rule the world. (To listen click here O Fortuna)
Like the moon you are changeable,
ever waxing and waning;
hateful life first oppresses and then soothes as fancy takes it;
poverty and power it melts them like ice.
I loathe this greedy narcissist. I loathe his values. I loathe his words. He represents everything I hate in myself and in humanity. We keep trying to destroy the racism and fear and prejudice that we are brought up with but fate impels us to confront a world that seems to thrive on such iniquities. My relatives, my friends, my co-workers —- they voted for this reprobate and now exult in his coronation. I stand impotently on the sidelines questioning (as many Jews in the Holocaust questioned) why God has deserted us. Have we committed some grave sin worthy of the future that fate now seems to have assigned us?
Trying against
Fate – monstrous and empty,
you whirling wheel,
you are malevolent,
well-being is vain and always fades to nothing,
shadowed and veiled you plague me too;
now through the game I bring my bare back to your villainy.
My good intentions. My desire to be tolerant and virtuous. My goal to treat others with compassion and kindness all seem to melt in the face of a Fate that decries a monster who will now rule over us. I hear the voices that say “give him a chance.” I wonder what chance they want. A chance to create more greed. A chance to create more racism. A chance to create more sexism. Have we not enough bigotry in this country? Have we not enough inhumanity towards others? We created the Atom bomb. We created the Hydrogen Bomb. We created weapons of biological and chemical warfare that can destroy millions. We take no heed whether they kill children or innocents. We are now all guilty in our incessant warfare. The only thing that counts is creating more efficient means of murdering people.
Fate is against me in health and virtue,
driven on and weighted down,
always enslaved.
So at this hour without delay pluck the vibrating strings;
since Fate strikes down the strong man,
everyone weep with me!
I wake up disbelieving that I live in this reality. I joke that I am in Wonderland and whatever one believes is the reality that exists. But I did not believe in this reality. I have done everything that I thought I could to help make the world a better place. I thought my friends and family and neighbors wanted the same world that I wanted. It seems clear now that we did not share the same reality.
I curse the fate that has brought our nation to this point. I curse the people that voted for this Frankenstein. I curse the party that nominated this abomination. Deep inside, I wonder what I did to contribute to this horror. Does my own hate somehow create the fate that I seek to escape from?
Abraham, John, Robert and Martin all dead — killed by that coward called fate. But let us not forget Jimmie Lee Jackson and Clyde Kennard and Juliette Hampton Morgan and James Reeb and Jonathan Myrick Daniels and Viola Gregg Liuzzo and Vernon Dahmer and Oneal Moore and George Lee and Harriet and Harry Moore. They also were martyrs. They also died fighting fate.
Do not believe that the good die young. The good die pregnant with a dream for a better world.
Time for Questions:
So what is left? Nihilism? Apathy? Hate? Bitterness? Resistance? Fight? Hope? Will a dream for a better America arise from the ashes of despair?
Life is just beginning.
“I will permit no man to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him.” — Booker T. Washington
Suffice it to say, I am awestruck by the reply from ChatGPT. She/he might just eliminate the need for many experts including pundits like me, psychiatrists, doctors, lawyers, professors, sociologists, psychologists and even you. I am scratching my head as to what I can add about the subject that ChatGPT did not provide you. I can tell you a story though that ChatGPT cannot concerning a major non-closure in my own life. One episode among many that has left me with regrets. I can also tell you that it is not always easy to get closure on incomplete episodes. Many things can get in the way. Perhaps the primary barriers either being the unwillingness of one party to try or to reciprocate an effort and of course our own egos.
few years later, I decided to reach out to him again. You can guess his reaction. He was angry and insulting. I decided to drop my effort. Over the years, we have had some interactions by phone or email but nothing that has substantially reinvigorated our former friendship. I am not sure whether he feels any loss, but I can honestly say that I miss him. He had many good qualities and there were many times that we spent together that I fondly remember. I have been the one over the past few years to try to reach out, but my efforts have gone nowhere. At this point, I have decided that “people change” and that he is not the person that he once was. This is a good excuse or rationale for my letting go and forgetting him. You can no doubt pick many holes in my logic.
I could point out that few things worth having ever come easy. The problem is that too many of us grow up today with the fantasy that as the song in My Fair Lady goes, “With a little bit of luck, you can have it all.” I grew up with a phrase that was popular in my neighborhood that went “He got the breaks.” This meant basically that he/she got what they got cause they got lucky. They did not have to work hard. They did not have to practice. They did not have to study. They simply had to get the “Breaks.” It took me years to realize the fallacy in thinking that luck has much to do with what one gets in life. Two of my now favorites quotes are:
A life without closures will be a life not really lived well. The more closures we can accomplish, the more satisfying our lives will be. Perhaps only a life lived with closures can be a life lived without regrets. We will all have regrets in our lives. Our incomplete episodes are links in a chain that we forge as we go through life. A key question is “how long do we want our chain to be?” The more effort we make to complete these episodes, the shorter our chain will be, and I think the happier our lives will be. Look at the incomplete episodes in your life today. Which ones still cause you heartache and regrets. Is it too late to do anything about them? Would it be worth the effort? What would it cost you to try?
Two thousand years ago, the Roman Empire started its decline after having been the greatest empire that the world had yet seen. Many historians point to the decadence of the Roman Empire during its decline. “Decadence” is defined by the Oxford On-Line Dictionary as, “Moral or cultural decline as characterized by excessive indulgence in pleasure or luxury.” The Romans had their “Bread and Circuses.” The Oxford Dictionary defines “Bread and Circuses” as, “A diet of entertainment or political policies on which the masses are fed to keep them happy and docile.” For many, football and politics are the bread and circuses or our American Empire. I think the rot and decay in America today goes much deeper than that. Here is my list of some of the decadence that I see in the USA today:
I have another T-Shirt where I list the “No Exceptions” groups that somehow seem to be conveniently overlooked by many Cultural Christians. The major fallacy that many Christians seem to observe is to define their neighbors as either someone in their own church or in their own social group. When Jesus included the Samaritans who were an outcast group at the time as his neighbors, this should have made it clear that you must go beyond your tribe or friends to include other nations, other ethnicities, other religions, and other people with different beliefs as your neighbor.
Aging Capriciously 