This kickass rock band from the UK got my attention in junior high when I first heard the track, “Love Ain’t No Stranger,” on the radio. I loved that song! It had a Led Zeppelin vibe, starting slow and mellow, the grovelly vocals of David Coverdale soulfully singing, “Who knows where the cold wind blows…” Very poetic and Robert Plant like. Then the song kicks into high gear with the heartfelt scream, “Love Ain’t No Stranger!” Think the dynamics of Zep’s “Ramble On.” I’ll link the video here:
I loved that song so much that I went out and bought the album, titled “Slide It In.” From the provocative album cover to even more provocative (and downright naughty) lyrics, it resonated with my pubescent, sexually-frustrated self at age 15. It came out in January 1984 when I was starting my second semester of Sophomore year in high school. I opened the album, put it on my stereo console and rocked out to the first three tracks, wearing out the grooves on “Slide It In,” “Slow and Easy” (with their highly-charged, sexual lyrics) and Stranger, their radio hit.
Slide It In album cover
I was a big fan! Never saw them in concert, though. Loved their videos on MTV. They toured the U.S. in 1984, opening, first, for Dio, and then for Quiet Riot.
They didn’t put out another album for three years!
Work began on the album as soon as they finished touring in early 1985, but it was recorded piece-meal by ever-changing band members and even some legendary session players, like guitarist Dann Huff (source: Wikipedia). The final pieces were recording Coverdale’s vocals, delayed because of sinus issues and required surgery, and piecing together a whole new lineup for the band. He enlisted Rudy Sarzo, from Quiet Riot, and Dio’s lead guitarist Vivian Campbell, who he’d met on the ‘84 U.S. tour, and Ozzy’s drummer Tommy Aldridge, who had previously auditioned for the WS gig.
This was a whole new Whitesnake. None of them performed on the 1987 album, but all appeared in the subsequent music videos. That was my introduction to Aldridge, who is known for his crazy, curly locks and soloing without sticks! By the time the new album was released, Mar. 1987, I was living in Tallahassee and I purchased it on cd. I then recorded the album on cassette tape to play in my brown Chevelle Malibu at high levels through aftermarket Pioneer speakers. I wore that goddamn tape OUT! I loved it and so did America’s youth as the album shot to #2 on Billboard’s chart. The videos for multiple singles were MTV favorites that year.
“Still of the Night,” to this day is the rockinest, most badass Whitesnake song of all time. It was a total Zeppelin ripoff, especially the Kasmiresque bridge that quiets to a near replica of “Black Dog” before exploding into a soaring Vivian Campbell solo! Gone were the blues undertones of say “Ramble On,” replaced with the harder Zeppelin-like riffs that laid the foundation for hard rock and heavy metal. Coverdale openly admits they were shooting for the new hard rock sound of bands like Bon Jovi that appealed to American youths. It appealed to me! I thought that album was epic. I loved the callback to classic Zeppelin!
It would be my last Whitesnake purchase, and only the second of their albums I ever owned. I couldn’t see how they could top what they had already done. And by 1987, I was getting into religious music (CCM, as it was termed) and groups like Petra, Whitecross, Whiteheart and The Allies were making rock albums that captured my full attention. A great example, complete with Zeppelin ripoffs, is The Allies’ “Long Way From Paradise” album.
So that’s my story. I figured a break from politics, racism and sports was in order.
The racist ideology that white men have a God-ordained right to power and control over people and land. It was the ideology of Europeans who sought to colonize the West, native peoples be damned! Pretty much how the story of North America, specifically our part, played out, right? Because God gave us that birthright, or right by being born white, right? Just ask the passengers aboard the Mayflower.
When they got lost and landed north of their destination, they didn’t feel too welcomed by the non-whites who already lived in the area we would later name Cape Cod. So once they landed, they conspired to produce the Mayflower Compact in 1620. America just celebrated the 400th Anniversary of this event in 2020. Why is that significant? Well, it was Manifest Destiny in full effect. The white Europeans had arrived!
"The ideology of Manifest Destiny inspired a variety of measures designed to remove or destroy the native population. US President James K. Polk (1845-1849) is the leader most associated with Manifest Destiny. Manifest Destiny inflamed sectional tensions over slavery, which ultimately led to the Civil War,” says The Khan Academy.
Interesting how you can draw a straight line from our domination of Native Americans to the institution of African slavery using that ideology as a guide. And how that same ideology persists today in American democracy all these centuries later.
WHITE BIRTHRIGHT
I’ve written here about white privilege a number of times, but my most elaborate explanation can be found here, “Understanding White Privilege.” But trying to explain this to uneducated white people is a lesson in futility! They get hung up on one word, privilege, and misunderstand that to mean family wealth or socio-economic status. I watched a video on the Troubled Waters YouTube channel the other day where the host, Reese Waters, talked to another black man about this problem. They agreed that the word “privilege” was the problem. We need a better word. I chose birthright.
I used it once already at the top of this post. It was the white man’s “God-given birthright” to take land that wasn’t theirs. Now, had they been of royal lineage, they would have had their own lands in Europe to claim as their BIRTHRIGHT. That’s how it works. Your birth into the right family, say the ruling class in Europe, would have given you this privilege. But the Puritans aboard the Mayflower TOOK this right as their own. It wasn’t really their privilege from birth. Yet, they believe GOD ordained it so. Again, Manifest Destiny wasn’t just the right of the wealthy, the ruling class. It was the birthright given to white Europeans BY THEIR DEITY! Thus, white birthright.
And as the Khan Academy pointed out, this ideology, or way of seeing the world, still permeates our government, our society. I discuss this and make it very personal in my post titled “Systemic Racism.” It’s just as real as Manifest Destiny and white birthright.
So the next time you’re in conversation with ignorant white folks, choose your words more carefully. Words matter. Understanding matters.
If you’re a white person reading this and you still don’t get it. Imagine that your European ancestors had been rounded up, shackled to the hulls of a slave ship and transported half a world away, lying in their own feces, only to be auctioned like hogs in a foreign land. If you can imagine being free in your homeland one minute and a slave in unfamiliar territory with a whip across your back for making eye contact with your captor-owner the next, MAYBE these ideas will begin to crystallize.
I knew we had a supremely racist country stained with a bigoted past whose foundation was laid on the backs of slaves. Even still, the presidential candidacy of an Illinois Senator in 2008 gave us hope. Barack Obama ran his campaign of hope on the slogan, “Yes We Can” and won the presidency as the nation’s first African American to hold that office. And if that weren’t a monumental step forward for America, he was successful and earned a second term. My pride in America, faith in her Constitution and hope for our future was at an all-time high.
But there was a severe backlash across the largely red states in this country. The innate racism, a systemic issue affecting the heart of our democracy and tearing at the fabric of our union, reared its ugly head in response to eight years under a black progressive president. A crescendo from white Amerikkka, especially in “the Heartland” and “Bible Belt,” the poorest and least educated of our neighbors, built into a red wave which overtook our democracy and became MAGA World and Trumpism (aka The Cult of Trump). An outcry from the lower and middle class, that started with The Tea Party movement a year into Obama rule, bolstered by neo-Nazi and Confederate-loving rednecks, grew into a roar of the alt-right until neo-conservatism was overtaken by fascism and a sense of false national pride. Like post-World War I Germans, Christian Nationalists cried for the fatherland and a new white messiah to save it from the hoard of brown immigrants (“vermin,” just like the Jews had been to Germans). There was also a rise in anti-semitism JUST LIKE in Germany and in 1920’s Amerikkka. Yes, the height of the Ku Klux Klan in the good ol’ US of A!
That backlash is what got us a pornstar-fucking, reality TV star and fake billionaire playboy as president in 2016. The alt-right MAGA cult was now the ruling class. We saw what it unleashed immediately. The Klan’s hoods came off. They marched, unhooded, through the streets of Charlottesville in 2017, leading to violence. They even stormed our fucking Capitol waving Nazi and Confederate flags in 2021! UN-REAL!
Racism reared its ugly head in a very real way. Thank you, MAGAts.
The nation barely survived COVID, racial unrest, growing economic disparity, culture warfare and recession during the Dark Years of 45 and MAGA rule. But we booted his impeached ass out of office and replaced him with another rich, white dude and career politician. We threw a bunch of his cult-loving insurrectionist traitors into prison. We thought we had moved on.
Enter Kamala Harris. She was thrust into the political spotlight in what “the cult” saw as another coup. It wasn’t. It was a necessity. The old, white patriarchy—yeah, the ones who brought us slavery, America’s original sin—needed to be dismantled. The bi-racial woman of color seemed just the person to do that…finally.
Only racist, white Amerikkka wasn’t ready. The only thing worse than an African-American male candidate, apparently, IS A FEMALE. Ask Hilary Clinton.
The misogyny in this vast Republic of 330 million is very deeply rooted. The Christian Nationalists, whose archaic views take a very narrow and fundamental view of the Bible, hold women in shackles very much like their extremist cousins in the Middle East. I prefer to call these American terrorists the Christian Taliban because of their extremist views on women and their desperate need for theocracy. There’s a reason June Cleaver archetypes were so popular in 1950’s American culture. From this worldview, women should “know their place.” Or as 1 Corinthians 14:34 instructs, “Let your women keep silence in the churches, for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law.” The shariah law of the Taliban demands it.
We saw the Harris/Walz campaign end Tuesday night in utter defeat. It wasn’t the first time a woman dared to shatter that last glass ceiling and begin to dismantle the patriarchy, propped up by centuries of white aristocracy (aka privilege). Hopefully, it won’t be the last. And her campaign of joy and hope, Obama at the forefront in the final month, fell on deaf ears.
But white Amerikkka spoke loudly. They said yes to a black male BUT HELL NO TO A WOMAN!
The first Trump administration rolled back women’s rights 50 years. White, Christian Amerikkka thought that didn’t go far enough. They want the Christian Taliban to roll them back 100 years to women’s suffrage, as outlined in their manifesto, Project 2025.
At least Hitler put his name to Mein Kampf and never distanced himself from his own playbook. Tim Walz tried to warn us. You don’t draw up a 900-page-plus playbook just to shelve it! You also don’t name its authors to your Presidential Transition Team, while publicly denying you even know these people. C’mon, mini Hitler, own up to your work! You are named more than 500 TIMES in its pages!
ITS MESSAGE: Women, know your place and keep silent!
Amerikkka shouted that from the top of the ballot box Tuesday.
This guy speaks truth. What do we really “own?” We are temporary, finite creatures on this planet. We have things we USE. He calls it a basic fact. Most people don’t get this. Can you take it with you?
Typically, for most folks, the biggest financial investments we make—homes and cars—are consumable commodities. They can be consumed, as in burnt up in flames, until they are gone. In accounting, we call them depreciating assets. Even homes that gain value over time will one day decay, become dilapidated to the point of falling in on themselves or get torn down. It will become a dump, a trash heap of debris. It’s a consumable commodity, a depreciating asset, that may serve a purpose in your life until the time you die. It won’t last forever, either. Even if you “pass it down,” the average lifespan of a home is three generations. Homes and treasured heirlooms have a limited lifespan. People who suffered through but survived Hurricane Ian understand the limited lifespan and value of THINGS, even precious things, irreplaceable things. Things that are consumable, though, and won’t go into eternity with you.
In moving back to this island among those survivors last year, that weighed heavy on my decision. I’m a minimalist and have lived that way since 2011. The six years leading up to that, I began deconstructing my sense of self, my faith and downsizing. In the year that followed I got divorced, downsizing even further and going deep into myself TO FIND ME! So that when I moved back amongst the living dead, one year and eight months after most of them LOST EVERYTHING, I believed I would be amongst like souls who had learned this valuable life lessons. Things hold no eternal value.
My girlfriend and I just went round-and-round on this very topic. The cremains of our parents do not hold their essence. The ashes of their mortal bodies do not keep them close to us in spirit. They are but a reminder of them, their essence and presence in our lives. Even less valuable things, like keepsakes from childhood, or our kids’ childhood, hold no real eternal value. They are mere pointers, physical reminders, of what we had, what once was. They stir our nostalgia and our fuzzy recollections.
I can remember our old 8mm home movie reels. Dad had a Bell + Howell movie projector and a movie screen that he’d setup in our basement and play for us early childhood memories. There I was on the movie screen at 3 years old playing football with my dad on the living room carpet, at 5 years old being walked down the street towards kindergarten by my 3 year old sister, or at 6 years old playing in the fall leaves at Broad Ripple Park (Northeast Indianapolis). I would watch those movies for years and it brought back wonderfully nostalgic feelings. But I didn’t travel back in time and become that 3 year old in an oversized football helmet. You can never go back. And now that the home movies are gone and I’m aging, those memories from long ago get fuzzier and more distant. Dad even had them digitized before the film totally deteriorated, but then he lost the disc. Unless digital copies exist somewhere in the cloud, those old movies are gone forever, lost to time. They were not eternal, either.
What’s my point? I’d give everything I have to have those digitized films back for antiquity. I’d love to hand them down to my adult daughters. I’d love to hear their laughter over me crying because I didn’t WANT to play football or wear that ridiculous helmet! I’d love to know that they could one day show their own children, should they have any. But they DO HAVE memories of our lives together. THAT will be my enduring legacy, the only thing of eternal value.
What do we really own? Our life on planet Earth is SO SHORT! We take none of the stuff with us, but as George Carlin put it, we spend so much of our lives worrying about our stuff and where we are going to store our stuff. It’s comical because it’s true. But it’s also sad. It shows us the ridiculous value we place in things and the ridiculous amount of time we spend working for and worrying about things. They are insignificant refuse meant for the garbage heap of time. Even our bodies are consumable. Mine will be burnt up in a crematory one day.
That’s not fatalism, but realism.
So where do you place value in your life? What are you working so hard for? Things that are eternal and priceless or consumable commodities, like creature comforts? Do you need them, like air and water, to survive? Then what are they really worth? What are you investing in of any significant value? Where are your priorities? What is the payoff?
I have been talking about humility a lot lately. I think that it has fallen on deaf ears, but it's something I've studied, before as a student of religion, as a leader of men on retreat weekends--I wrote about that here.
I've actually written quite a bit on this blog about Humility. But in the post, above, from March 2014, I'd just gotten out of a committed relationship and returned to Tallahassee to be with my girls full-time. In reading the post, it was very beautifully moving and emotional for me to read, but I just wish I had followed my own advice. Life just sometimes gets in the way. Circumstances and situations arise that take us out of our peace and we become reactive. We often react out of stress or anger or whatever, and we don't always choose humility.
But we always come back to it.
When I wrote that post in March 2014, my girls were 9 and 12. My oldest was about to become a teenager...and my biggest challenge. We went through some rough years while she was in high school and the three of us were living in their mother's townhouse. I remember the most heated exchange we ever had was one night when she was probably 17. She was in charge of dinner, but only as a result of not doing dishes the night before. That was my rule. If it's your night for dishes and you choose to put them off, they are expected to be washed and put away before dinner the next night. On this occasion, they were not. One thing led to another, and I let myself work up a load of steam before she triggered me and I flew off the handle, cussing and slamming a pot of sauce on the floor to make a point. It was an overreaction, to be sure. She left the house saying she couldn't live there with me anymore. Her's was a typical teenager overreaction, but I did not stop her. Before we went to bed that night, me in her bed and her at her best friend's house, we spoke by phone and each of us apologized for our overreactions and our part in creating the drama.
So even in our worst moment as parent-child, we came back to our senses and back to common ground. It takes humility to admit when you are wrong. So even if I didn't model it perfectly at all times, like I wrote that I would on this blog, I hope that they came away understanding that life principal. Being humble with people, especially those you love, can express to them how important they are to you. Like the last act of Jesus for his disciples, stooping down to wash their dusty, dirty feet. Humility that speaks love.
I've made so many mistakes in relationship, too many to count. But I still understand humility. Even when I don't show it, I always come back to it. In situations where I've been wronged, repeatedly, I still find a way back to humility. Even when I know that I was wronged, and I was right to call out the offender, I have humbled myself in order to preserve the relationship. It was a tough lesson that I learned from living with my Dad.
Dad grew up in a home where you had to PROVE you were right on any given topic. His surviving siblings will tell you stories of them taking dictionaries and thesauruses to the dinner table to "win" a debate with their father. They've all told the stories and bear the scars. In fact, James H. Doyle, my grandfather, was nicknamed "Preacher" in high school. No wonder where my Dad gets it. He's never wrong. And don't expect him to admit it, either. But when being "right" comes at the expense of those you love, by hurting them with your judgy nonsense, then what good is being right all the time? Where is the prize for that?
It used to infuriate me when my father would constantly argue with family members over things consequential--politics and religion--or inconsequential, like how to cook something properly. It was always HIS WAY OR THE HIGHWAY! There's only one right way (and perhaps there is for some things) and he's going to be sure to tell you what that is. He was an expert on things, just ask him. Well, no one was willing to bring a Bible, a law book, a medical journal, a dictionary or thesaurus because he'd even argue that THEY were wrong! He was always right.
There is no prize for always being right. Your ego can take the blow of being wrong once in awhile. You might serve the higher purpose of fostering relationship and peace in the home over being "right." But that would take humility. And so I would often challenge my dad, "Are you really wanting to be right on this? Or do you want to have relationship?" Because I could see him pushing away all of those he loved most dearly, over his ego and being right. Aren't those we love worthy of a little of our humility?
It takes humility to give second, third and fourth chances, but you are capable. I found I was until I hit my limit. After choosing relationship over being right a number of times, I had to stop and ask myself is this humility or is it foolishness. So I point blank asked my partner, when is it YOUR TURN to act humbly and choose US over your ego? Will you ever humble yourself and just say, "You know what? You're right. And I love you more than I love being 'right' all the time."
It's not always easy, but it's right.
That was my aim in 2014. Yes, I'm human and I fell short, but I do hope I imparted that lesson to my daughters. I feel that I failed to impart it to my partner. She just shat all over the idea, arguing with me until I gave up and left.
I have situational depression. It doesn’t make me suicidal. It just takes me to a bad headspace and holds me captive for a time. It doesn’t last, however, the depression usually fades just as quick as it rushes in. My best defense is to stay in the present. Like Eckhart Tolle preaches and even wrote in his book “The Power of NOW“ your problems that you perceive to exist in the present don’t really exist in the present moment. When you stop and look around, where are they? Simply put, in your mind. And I'm either looking back at something that has happened moments ago, weeks ago or years ago or I’m looking ahead to what I perceive will happen in the next moments, weeks, months or years. And the mystics and sages tell us that "to live in the past is depression, to live in the future is anxiety." That’s why Tolle preaches to stay in the now.
And I haven’t read his book. I have watched tons of his lectures online and I know this principal. It bears out. It is true. #TRUTH
My problems, whatever they are, do not exist in the present moment. At the present, I am breathing, I am alive, I am present and aware of my breath, my internal environment and my surroundings. Just taking that momentary inventory is enough to tell me, nothing is threatening me at this very moment. There is no black bear hovering over me ready to devour me. So why do I act as if there is??? That black bear, as fictional in this moment as my perceived problems, does not exist. I am not in imminent danger. Nothing is wrong right this second. It's only in my mind.
Where does worry and anxiety exist? Only in our minds. Where does my depression exist? Only in my mind. Well, don't we have control over our minds??? If not, who does? Who controls our present if not us?
That's the place where you discover that YOU ARE THE PROBLEM! It's not your circumstance, your situation or anyone else in your life. It's YOU! You got yourself into the predicament you are in, whether you caused it or not, you reacted to it. Who controls your reaction? Who regulates your emotions? YOU DO!
So if you come to that point of discovering, I AM THE PROBLEM! Then what are you going to do about it? Fix it or ignore it, hoping it passes?
Nothing in you will change unless you change it.
If you find yourself spiralling with worry, doubt, anxiety or depression. Stop and take stock of everything around you. Are you still breathing? Is the bear hovering and ready to devour? Then where is the perceived threat? Somewhere in your past? Somewhere in your future? Has your crystal ball EVER been that accurate? Or do things typically work themselves out?
I live on a barrier island that was wiped out just 25 months ago by Hurricane Ian. The survivors here remember the fear of death like it happened to them yesterday. They suffer PTSD, which is totally understandable. But Ian didn't happen to them yesterday. It's not going to happen tomorrow. Chances are, in their lifetime, they'll never face another devastating, life-altering storm like that.
So what "Ians" are we facing? Am I facing...right now or in the future? Probably none. Again, it was a once-in-a-lifetime storm that, fortunately, I did not go through. Can I sympathize with my neighbors here. YOU BETCHA! Is their PTSD real and rooted in a past traumatic event. ABSOLUTELY! But do they have to live in fear for the rest of their lifes. NO! That trauma lies in their past and only truly exists in their memories of that day 25 months ago.
Look, nothing that happened 25 months ago, 45 years ago or even an hour ago has to effect you right now, in the present! You can let it if you want to, but you have complete control. That's not to discount the lingering effects of trauma, PTSD or past experiences. But the reality is, they are no more a threat to you right now, in this moment, than the make believe black bear in my living room. It doesn't threaten you right now. The 18-feet of storm surge isn't taking your foundation out from under you RIGHT NOW! So why act as though it is?
BE PRESENT.
Don't let anxiety about future perceived problems or obstacles get in the way of your life today. Don't let current circumstances overwhelm you. They don't have power over you. Regulate your emotional reactions to whatever it is that's really going on, or just going on in your brain. That's where your control is, over your reaction to it. Why are you overreacting, or wasting any energy or brainpower whatsoever on something that MIGHT occur in the future, whether it's another major hurricane or a shortage of income? Whether it's a near-death car accident or a hangnail? Can you control either, or stop them from happening, with worry? NO! You're just taking precious years off your life. That's all worry does.
That's self-defeating. To continue down the path of worry and slowly killing yourself. Other living things in the animal kingdom don't do that!
What is threatening you right now? If you're not sliding across the median into oncoming traffic as you read this, why are you worrying about that accident that COULD happen but is not happening now? If the bear isn't standing in your living room ready to pounce, why are you acting as if he is, scared to make one false move. JUST BREATHE! Your problems only exist in your brain. Somehow, you'll find a way to pay that bill from your shrinking bank account, even if you have to "rob Peter to pay Paul." I've been there many times. I have the overdraft receipts to prove it. Those times of worry and doubt or doing without DIDN'T KILL ME!
I've even lived homeless for a time. Did it kill me? NO! I'm here writing about it. I actually thrived in that inhospitable, unsafe environment around drug addicts, perverts and the mentally unstable. We are animals built to survive. We don't need all the creature comforts we've come to enjoy, but we believe we need them to survive. We don't. We need air, water and something to eat. That's how animals survive in the wild. And they don't kill themselves early by worrying about it.
Why am I posting all this. I'm not preaching to anyone. This is my present reality. I'm sitting on my couch, in my living room (creature comforts that don't keep me alive) with this laptop on my lap, writing about where I am at. I've been struggling for weeks with situational depression. I put a video by Eckhart Tolle on the television, using the YouTube App on FireTV (more creature comforts that don't keep me breathing) and that's what led to this entire post. It was for me, primarily.
I am a student of this shit. I have gone deep many times to rediscover myself, who I am at my core. But I still struggle up here at the surface ALL THE DAMN TIME! I'm not perfect. But I do know who I AM. I just need to be reminded over and over and over...because I am human. I have tendancies. They don't always serve me well. But tapping back into SOURCE and finding myself in the deep, does help me to survive...sometimes on the daily. Often times, moment to moment, like Bob Wiley "baby steppin." Baby steps back to the present. Baby steps back to who I know that I AM. Seriously, I have to get that rudimentary.
Nothing in my present situation is killing me. There are no current threats to my life or safety in this present moment. Stay tuned.
I don't remember when I created this graphic, but I go back to it all the damn time!
This YouTuber really resonates with me, this video in particular. I've written here many times about Praise. I even sat down and for several months wrote a manuscript whose working title was "Man of Praise," because I thought that was my purpose on Earth. It was a well-written piece on Christian virtue, humility and worship. A book on being a man of faith. It was so inspiring to my ex-pastor's father-in-law, that the retired pastor wrote a forward for my book. It was nearly ready for publication. But then my world crumbled and I deconstructed my faith, much like Kristi Burke.
I'm dedicating this blog post to my two sisters, Heidi and Keely, who cling to their faith in God, the faith that we were raised in, and the belief that this "Heavenly Father" has our best interest in mind always. No judgment, but this is the religion of privilege. Look what Father God has DONE FOR ME! Yes, but what about babies who cannot survive outside the womb? Why did Omniscient, Almighty God "knit them together in their mother's womb" to begin with? He just needed another angel? What about children born to impoverished parents in abject poverty without clean water or enough food for their bellies? People all over the world are born into unimaginable suffering. Is "Abba" not concerned for their wellbeing? He clothes the "flowers of the field" and cares about the sparrow, but not these human beings He created?
This flawed theology is covered in Kristi's video. She takes offense at so many things in fundamental Christian theology, but omits the one thing that's always stuck in my crawl--blood atonement/human sacrifice. The most holy book ever written is replete with it. Humankind is meant to worship, but also to suffer. The original sin that He created and put on us, knowing we couldn't resist temptation, could only be removed with the blood of a "perfect" human being, Jesus, his son. This was foreshadowed in the story of Abraham and Isaac in the Judaic scriptures. Was that a literal command? "Abraham you cannot love me unless you kill your baby boy that I promised to give you, so that you could 'father my people?'" What kind of love or devotion is that? Kill your own child because your bloodthirsty deity demands it??? Sadistic AF!!! And barbaric...and not even an original idea. But I digress.
In the video she challenges other facets of the all-knowing, all-loving Daddy in the sky. She covers our purpose in Creation. She questions God's fragile ego that he needs constant praise and words of affirmation. She gets angry that it is coerced out of us for fear of damnation and the shame that evokes. Don't get me started, I grew up Catholic. SHAME IS REAL! (I may need a Brene Brown video after typing this! LOL!). This leads to mental health issues, like it did in me many years ago. Yeah, she covers that, too. The "white privilege" of American Christianity, which I've already touched on, she touches on in a roundabout way. I mean, from the beginning of Scripture, God chooses a select group of people, right? It creates the US v. THEM mentality that permeates society today! Why am I blessed (chosen, privileged) when so many other innocent children on the planet suffer? They weren't chosen, too? And that's LOVE??? She questions the idea of "free will," of God's "omnipotence," and inconsistencies in the Bible, like the slaughtering of women, children and animals because God's angry, impulsive and vengeful...and He didn't choose them!
I wholeheartedly believed this idea, at one time years ago, that my sole purpose on Earth was to praise this magnificent Being, who was so benevolent that he put me on Planet Earth and left me to my own devices. As Kristi begs the question, why does God need praise? Why does He require it? Why is suffering and eternal punishment the retribution for not getting on one's knee and bowing down to Him? Why is that so important to the Almighty Creator of heaven and Earth???
It seems like a wholly human idea that some dude millennia ago cooked up in his human brain. It doesn't make any sense. It never really did. But from an early age, I was brainwashed to believe it made perfect sense! I went to Mass every week in a church filled with the iconography of bloody, human sacrifice--from the crucifix hung above the altar, to the bleeding, pierced heart with a crown of thorns around it, but a golden crown on top in the stained glass! Were my parents and the Catholic church trying to scar me for LIFE?!?!?!
Shame was the message. "LOOK WHAT YOU MADE GOD DO!!!" "You should feel ASHAMED!" It was my sin, my fault, my flawed nature that caused all that iconography around me. I was five or six before the shame hit me. What kind of guilt is that to put on a small child? What kind of Joseph-Mary-and-Jesus kind of child abuse is THAT??? Not to mention all the actual child abuse that was going on behind the scenes!!! THANK GOD my parents got us out of that faith tradition before I BECAME A STATISTIC! As I wrote in my last post, A Faith Journey, I really wanted to become an altar boy. We left just before I was able. WHEW!!!
Once we got into Protestant versions of the faith, I was told I could have a "personal relationship" with this bloodthirsty, psychotic Being. GREAT!!! I was shamed and scared straight again, when I was shown some 70's, low-budget version of "Left Behind." If I didn't get baptised and right with God, despite already being "sealed" as a child of God from birth and my baptism in the Church, I was gonna deal with severe consequences here on Earth, being ruled by an evil AntiChrist! And if that didn't scare me straight, I'd suffer eternal damnation! Like I think they literally believed I could lose my salvation. But I said the prayer, I got sprinkled and dunked! I did "all the things!" Not good enough??? MORE SHAME and scare tactics. THANK YOU RELIGION for that!
But as I matured in my faith and bought into this idea that I had a "perfect Dad" up in heaven, I leaned ALL THE WAY INTO IT. Read my previous post, linked above, or just scroll down to the next headline. I WAS ALL-IN! But then something broke in me.
All that time in church, believing, doing all the things, like getting baptised a THIRD TIME (in the Holy Ghost, even!!!), and taking on all that shame and ritualistic abuse...and what did I have to show for it? NOTHING!!! I was a barren, wannabe dad with a worthless degree that I had hardly used in the 13 years I had it, I was used and abused by leaders in the church (by the Church, itself) for a dozen-plus years and I was exhausted! I tried to end my life in December of 2000. The weight of all that guilt, shame and responsibility (I was a leader in church and ministry for years) was just too much to bear. I wasn't happy in my marriage, in my life or in my chosen career. I wanted OUT!
Sad that the relationship I had fostered with this imaginary Being wasn't enough, didn't make me feel worthy or good enough, but only made me feel shame. I felt like the biggest phony and a miserable failure at everything, even my religion!
Like Krisi, I had to deconstruct everything I believed about the world, about life, about God, theology and religion. It all seemed so pointless. But deconstruct I did and came out the other side. I still have the scars to prove I went there...got the T-shirt. But what did I really gain other than trauma and emotional scarring? VERY LITTLE! I had the praise and adoration of my parents, but it left as soon as I left the church and divorced my wife. I had the praise and adoration of my fans inside the church and the ministries in which I was involved--Tres Dias, Vida Nueva, music...
I felt very used, abused and taken advantage of. Here's deeply committed Chris, playing drums for free in a church that pays many of it's musicians. Here's Chris, giving up time with his wife and two small children, to spend his Wednesday and Thursday nights in youth ministry or rehearsal, and then giving up half of his Sunday, and for what? That little bit of respect and adoration? For my parents approval???
That didn't fill my soul with anything of eternal value. I felt victimized by it all. No wonder I wanted to give up and say "WHAT'S THE POINT!"
Well, child of God, the point is that He loves you. He's proud of the victim you've made of yourself. Keep bowing down to Him and getting shit on by His people. Keep sacrificing what's most important, the investment in your adopted children, and keep giving freely of your time, gifts and talents. That makes Daddy God so happy.
FUCK. THAT!!!
Daddy God needs to find another sucker! DOYLE OUT!!!
And so the shame and abuse of the Church, at the hands of "God's chosen," drove me far away and made me question everything and deconstruct. It was catharsis. I found real healing--body, mind and soul cleansed of the BULLSHIT!
There's no reason to subscribe to any theology. The word itself means the STUDY OF GOD! It doesn't mean TRUTH. It means trying to make sense as a human being of things we will never fully understand. And faith is trusting in it with ZERO EVIDENCE! NO PROOF! Just believe and He will be happy with you. You'll have peace and rest ONE DAY...in eternity...down the road. Right now, though, just join in Christ's suffering and it will all be worth it. You have an eternity to bask in the reward for your good behavior. Don't expect shit here on Earth, in reality...just believe.
NOPE! Not good enough.
Faith and belief in goodness should change your life in the NOW! It should make a difference on Planet Earth. Not some bullshit bank account that you're building up equity in for the future, for eternity. We don't even know if that's real, if it exists! A wise person once quipped that religion is the "opiate of the people." Not unlike the Kool-Aid served by Jim Jones to his followers in Guyana, fundamental Christian theology is for the weak-minded who can't think, judge or discern for themselves. Just keep drinking the Kool-Aid. It tastes good. It will help you.
And this isn't to cast judgment on those who believe. I understand you. I WAS YOU! I'm just saying that I put reason and logic to it and it doesn't stand up to scientific scrutiny. In fact, it borders on the ABSURD! But you have to taste it and see for yourself. Maybe you like Kool-Aid. Who am I to stop you from drinking it. Freewill, right? Your choice. If it kills you, but you enjoyed the flavor, then that's on you. I don't pretend to have all the answers. I just know what I know. I don't pretend to know what's beyond, in the realm of the supernatural, in the supposed spiritual dimension that exists in the darkness (dark matter?) all around us. Scientists don't even know what dark matter is. They can't prove it anymore than they can prove what black holes do or how the Big Bang was activated. New discovery in recent years, thanks largely to James Webb Space Telescope, has the science community baffled and questioning everything.
QUESTIONS WON'T KILL YOU! They lead you to discovery.
Dan Barker said, “I was living a delusion.” He made this declaration on the Oprah Winfrey show as one of her guests back in 1984. He'd been a fundamentalist Christian preacher for 17 years before becoming an avowed athiest. That's what earned him a spot on Oprah's popular talk show.
When she questioned who was in charge during those 17 years of ministry and why he even believed back then in God. “The reason was my own personal psychological feeling that I was in touch with the higher mind I prayed every day I saw suppose answers to prayer.” I can relate to this, but let me go back to the beginning.
HOW IT STARTED
I was born into a Catholic household and baptised as an infant. I have godparents. I went to parochial schools and took Communion. I went to Confession. We left the church after mom and dad's "conversion," before I was able to become an alter boy or go through catechism and Confirmation. But I really wanted to, first, be an altar boy and ring the little bells during Mass and then to one day become a priest. I was so devout at a very early age (5 or 6), that my mom made me vestments because I liked to play like I was presiding over Mass in our basement "sanctuary." I'd feed my sister, Heidi, soda crackers, as Communion wafers, and grape juice, as Communion wine. I was deep into it.
That didn't change when we left the Catholic church and became Independent Baptists. I was again baptised--fully dunked this time as a pre-teen--and not only immersed myself in baptismal water, but also in Sunday School, VBS and youth group. My parents became high school youth group leaders, so that in 7th and 8th grade, I was hanging with the cooler, older kids.
That grew old and uncool by the time I reached high school. We returned to the Catholic church part-time so my folks could get the tuition discount at my parochial high school. I lost interest in my faith and going to church.
SELLING OUT
We moved to Tallahassee a week after my high school graduation and my parents found a new version of Christianity they liked better in a Charismatic, full Gospel church that believed in miracles and speaking in tongues and stuff like that. Again, I got baptised, dunked a second time, so that I began to call myself a CATHO-BAPTI-COSTAL!
I was baptised into a wide range of Christian orthodoxies. But that last one happened as I was reaching adulthood and seemed to help me make sense of life, so I bought in fully. I mean I "sold out to Christ" as they would say in the 1980's. I burnt all of my secular albums and tapes and immersed myself again in youth group and ministry. I became a youth leader, a men's leader, a drummer for the choir and various "praise teams." I bought in 100%.
I got married in that Charismatic church, where I'd met my wife and where I'd start my family in 2001. It played a very instrumental part in my life for over 18 years.
QUESTIONING THE NARROW INTERPRETATION
When I entered college to expand my intellect and my horizons, I decided to minor in religion. It interested me. Our assistant pastor was a professor of Old Testament Studies. He intrigued me, as a Bible-believing academic. I never enrolled in one of his classes, but I did take an elective called "Intro to New Testament." It was taught by a Jewish professor. Talk about opening my eyes to other ways to look at Jesus and his Gospel.
I'd say I grew up with a pretty narrow, fundamentalist interpretation of the Scriptures. I mean, my dad started reading Hal Lindsey and end times "prophets" like him. He took a very literal view of the Bible, and so did I.
College and life brought me to newer, broader understanding that wasn't so rigid or literal. Like, I understood science and the Big Bang Theory, so I already knew that Genesis was not a literal account of how our Universe began. I started trying to reconcile my long-held faith with scientific discovery. It was like trying to fit God into a non-religious context. It wasn't easy.
EMERGENCE
Back when I started this blog in 2005, I was raising two daughters and working closely with meteorologists who studied hurricanes and climate change. I had fully embraced science and was leaning heavily away from fundamentalism and my upbringing. I was extremely curious about the Universe and other, more liberal interpretations of the Bible and Christian theology. There was a growing, online community of Emergent Christians, who I joined on message boards and whose blogs I read (before podcasts became so popular). I wrote of The Emerging Ooze in May 2005.
That curiosity about differing views on Christianity led me to philosophers like Thomas Merton and Henri Nouwen, a gay Catholic priest. This was the spiritual path that led me to considering Eastern mysticism, where I found many parallels to the teachings of Jesus. I even read some outlandish ideas about Jesus as an Eastern Mystic, somehow inspired by the "three wise men," who were also "from the East." I considered how Jesus' teachings and healing ministry align well with the Gnostics of his time, that might be the desert dwellers he lived among during his "desert period."
LEAVING IT COMPLETELY BEHIND
After quitting the church where we got married and started a family five years earlier, we started a "home group" of sorts of about four or five families who were about the same place in their Christianity and faith journey. That didn't last long. We met a few months, sharing meals, conversation, prayer and taking up a communal offering that the host family was supposed to use to meet a need in the community.
We moved out-of-state to be near my family. We occasionally attended church with them or the church where my wife worked, a Lutheran church with a progressive, older pastor who loved Henri Nouwen. We had several conversations about faith and the church, but when the denomination split over the issue of "gay priests," I lost all respect for him, the denom, the faith...
I began questioning everything, even the existence of God.
I took aim at the heart of Christian orthodoxy--blood atonement. WHY IN THE HELL DID AN OMNIPOTENT GOD HAVE TO RESORT TO HUMAN SACRIFICE?!?! That practice predated Judaism by a long time. And you mean to tell me that an all-knowing deity couldn't come up with a better concept, a plan for humanity??
According to Google A.I., "Human sacrifice was practiced in many societies beginning in prehistoric times, but became less common in Africa, Europe, and Asia during the Iron Age. In the Americas, human sacrifice continued to be practiced until the European colonization of the Americas. Today, human sacrifice is extremely rare and is treated as murder by secular laws."
That made no sense to me...that an Iron Age practice was being carried out (human and/or animal) in Judaism until the time of Christ and that the Roman crucifixion of a convicted criminal was viewed as the "ultimate" human sacrifice, once and for all humankind.
God couldn't come up with a better way, a more humane and moral way to "save us?" He needed to rely on ancient practices dreamt up by mere mortals or "lesser gods?"
MY NEW AGE SPIRITUALITY
I use the term "New Age," sorta tongue in cheek. It was a dirty, demonic word in my parents' home. LOL! But the spiritual teachings of gurus like Eckhart Tolle and Mooji became more relevant to my faith journey. They blend a liberal view of Christian teaching with Eastern mysticism and other traditions to come up with a universal set of truths, like being good to others and loving oneself.
I no longer believe in the Biblical version of "Father God," a very patriarchal and archaic system of keeping people in check, namely women and minorities. If there is some deity out there, it possesses both feminine and masculine qualities and could give a shit what gender you identify with--as in maybe you are both, just like He/She/It. The Divine, as I see it, and you can find Jesus say the same in the Gospels, is WITHIN!
If you believe in created beings shaped in the image of their deity, then this isn't a totally demonic or foreign concept. Christians believe they are the "bride of Christ." They believe bride and bridegroom to be one. Therefore, I don't see how the idea that we all have the Divine, or are one with Source, is in any way heretical.
I try to tap into my "I AM energy" all the dang time. I find it deep in the core of who I AM. Or as Tolle, would say, "the essence of my being, the conscious mind."
This allows me the freedom to trust in scientific discovery. I don't have to fit God or theology into my belief in science. I don't have to limit a deity to dark matter. I don't necessarily believe in God, per se. Something existed before the Big Bang. We all came from SOMEWHERE! Maybe that's "the Source" as many gurus call it.
Popular astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson talks about “the god of the gaps,” referring to believers whose faith takes over where science leaves off. He sees that as a diminishing god and labels believers as ignorant “because the god of the gaps principal is like a philosophy of ignorance. Science is a philosophy of discovery.”
I'm all about discovery. That's what my faith journey is about--being curious and STAYING OPEN TO POSSIBILITIES!
You don't need a theology to learn to be a good human being. Tolle reminds us that we are, indeed, BEINGS AND NOT DOINGS! We live our lives like Human Doings most of the time. But you don't need to DO anything to be accepted as you are. No one has to shed blood for you to find goodness and morality.
As Barker puts it in the first video, up top, “There can be an objective scientific basis for morality outside of the supernatural outside religion based on the value of human life, based on the fact that life is preferable to non-life; making a hierarchy of value systems, which has nothing to do with receiving an edict written in stone from a God. I am free with the rational mind to determine a hierarchy of values which suits me fine...I have control of my own mind now.”
Like him, I look back on my prayer life and my "relationship with God," as a figment of my imagination. I created a cool, laid-back dad-god who I could converse with casually and who I could depend on to take care of me and look after me like a father. It was very convenient. I just couldn't understand his sense of fairness and justice, like when it came to disasters or death.
I was just watching the aftermath of Hurricane Helene the other day, and one victim who was spared thanked God for watching out for him, when the rest of his neighbors were drowned in a flood. Well, what about them? God just didn't care? He doesn't care about babies suffering and dying a horrible death? He didn't care about millions of Jews, his supposed people, being murdered or burned alive in the Holocaust? Too many inconsistencies in his form of justice...and in the Bible, for my taste.
Who was I really praying to or conversing with? Myself, I presume. It was a psychological construct meant to soothe my soul and help me make sense of this chaotic world that just randomly exploded into existence some 14 million years ago (or maybe not--the James Webb Space Telescope is casting doubt on our entire cosmic model). Like Barker, I had the best intentions. I was attempting to connect to the "higher mind" for my own betterment and the good of those around me.
I'm still trying to connect to that "Universal consciousness," as the gurus call it. That "higher mind" might just exist universally, on some vibrational frequency "out there," that most just haven't tapped into. I don't pretend to know.
These days, you'll find me just conversing with "the Universe." I'll be out on my beach putting my intentions out there and speaking positivity, trying to find my vibration on that frequency. I tell the Universe, whenever I go out there to practice my "New Age" spirituality, that "I'm open to possibilities." I'm still curious and ready for the next adventure.
This white guy from rural America is hardly what you expect.
Dick and Liz Cheney are the LAST Republicans I ever expected to defy party for decency.
But defections like this are becoming common.
We are mere weeks away from a Harris/Walz landslide. Don’t believe the polls. It ain’t that close. All anecdotal evidence points to a large blue wave coming. Let’s hope they win Congress, too.
Young voters and Republicans voting blue are going to turn this election. Mark my words!
These uneducated (presumed) white dudes, all MAGATs, all blind Trump supporters, want to remind women of their place in the home and in society. “Stay barefoot and pregnant in front of the kitchen sink” (to paraphrase VP candidate JD Vance/Hamer/Baldwin) and “Stay out of our White House.”
They’ll tell you that Kamala Harris is a “DEI hire” who is unqualified for the presidency and only rose to the position of VP by “going down on her knees.” Well, which is it, Misogynist America? Was she picked solely on race and gender? Or did she “blow her way to the top?”
These same idiots couldn't even tell you what DEI stands for, let alone SPELL IT!!!
None of them qualified for even a middle management position, yet believe this former prosecutor, Attorney General of California (border state the size of a small country) and Vice President is UNqualified to hold the highest office in the land. Let's say the Chief Operating Officer of a Fortune 500 company is promoted to CEO. Are they unqualified, too? Oh, they are...because of their race and gender, perhaps??? Your sexism and misogyny is exposed! Just quit with the dog whistles!
White dudes in America feel their grip slipping. Propping up this wannabe Dictator who is rich and white and who will "protect" their rights/power, is their last hope to hold onto power. The patriarchy is crumbling and this scares them! They want to regress instead of embrace progress and change. They believe the stereotypical myth that America was "so much greater" in the postwar flee to the suburbs where Jews, blacks and other minorities were restricted from homeownership. America was never that great for these Americans, just ask them.
I grew up watching these same whitewashed re-runs, from a bygone era in early TV days when neither a black person nor a minority (lone exceptions being Tonto on Lone Ranger and Buckwheat on Little Rascals...which were bad racial stereotypes) were represented. These false, white archetypes just bolstered the patriarchy and made sure everyone else, from women to minorities, KNEW THEIR PLACE! And this falsehood is when Trumpites (cultists) thought America was "great." It wasn't. Again, just ask the women and minorities who lived through the turbulent 1950s.
People like JD Vance/Hamer/Baldwin still believe the mythical standard set by June Cleaver is the gold standard for all women. Women everywhere are chanting the refrain, "WE'RE NOT GOING BACK!!!"
We are not. Progress demands that we look forward, we move forward. White men have had all the power forever and a day. They've believed these false 1950s stereotypes are what kept the family, the economy and America strong. But we don't live in the 1950s! We've made 70 years of progress since then...progress for women, Jewish Americans, minorities, civilization. Those who would look back through rose-colored glasses are willfully deluded.
Take the inbreeders in the photos at the top. How would they react to an infringement on their personal rights...on their private parts? What if women said to them, "God gave you that limp dick and you should just live with it." If he wanted you to get hard and be able to impregnate a woman, he would've given you the ability. Then, they outlawed erectile dysfunction treatments of all kinds, from pills to pumps. If men were threatened with imprisonment from seeking such treatments on-line or across state lines, you'd hear a VERY DIFFERENT TAKE on bodily autonomy. But their autonomy has never been challenged or questioned. So why do they believe they have the right to limit and take away yours? That's exactly what the Dobbs decision did overturning Roe v. Wade.
The polls show a growing wave in support of Harris/Walz, including young people, disgruntled Republicans and NEVER TRUMPers of every race, creed and color. Data also shows record numbers of young people, Gen Zers who 2/3 of them hate Trump, registering to vote. If they turn up in numbers, this will be a landslide for the left! I welcome the trend towards progress. Change is good.
I've written about race in America quite a bit in the last eight or so years because it affects me deeply and personally, like on a soul level. From the above pics, you can see that I live in a very MULTI-RACIAL family. My sister adopted an African-American sibling pair the year before I adopted my first daughter, who is white, and four years before I adopted my second daughter, who is multi-racial. So when Americans started shouting "ALL LIVES MATTER" in 2016 and again in 2020, I had to dissent. ALL lives haven't mattered even though the preamble to our Declaration of Independence signed in August 1776 PRETENDS THEY DO!
I wrote in June 2016 that "the backlash to the Black Lives Matter campaign is rooted in ignorance," and it very much is. Ignorance of history. Ignorance about white privilege and how this country was founded. "ALL MEN" were endowed with "UNALIENABLE RIGHTS." But even as our forefathers penned that, they didn't really believe that ALL LIVES MATTER. In fact, they ruled that African men were 3/5 of a human being, justifying their lower status and white ownership of slaves. The founding fathers believed in Manifest Destiny and that it was bestowed on WHITES by their Creator. Hell, it is believed that George Washington's "wooden" teeth were actually those of slaves...but I digress.
I concluded in my June 2016 blog post that, "It wasn't blacks who created the divide amongst humanity. By and large, it was white people. It began with the premise that races OTHER THAN white were somehow inferior. In the case of Africans, they were classified subhuman. The African slave was classified chattel. They were no different than livestock and often treated WORSE! So white people created the US v. THEM culture between themselves and everyone of a "lesser race" (blacks were often referred to as "mud race")."
That STAIN ON AMERICA is what we are still living under the dark shadow of. It is the basis for the systemic racism we see in our Institutions, from governance (at all levels) to housing policies to media disinformation. But even still, in white-controlled America, we still have African-American's towing the line to protect the status quo of racial inequality. Watch this video about Tim Scott, one-time Republican Presidential Candidate, narrated and produced by a black man who compares Scott to a "magical negro" from Hollywood lore.
Not only do "conservative blacks" like Scott distort the narrative, they effectively try to REWRITE it! And our national narrative, as told in history books and propogated by the far right, is ALREADY AS WHITEWASHED as it can possibly be. It's why Republicans vehemently OPPOSE the ideology behind Critical Race Theory and want it banned from any and all curriculum. HOW DARE BLACK PEOPLE TELL THEIR OWN STORY IN THEIR WORDS!!! White America would rather keep them shackled and muzzled. WHAT'S NEW?!?!?!
Tim Scott shucks and jives with the very best of them, selling his version of "the American Dream." Ask most African-Americans what they think about this dream! Just like the preamble to the Declaration, it's HORSE MANURE! It doesn't apply equally. What Scott's story wishes to ignore (dare I say, WHITEWASH) is the struggle his parents and grandparents faced in a country that didn't see them as equal human beings! It ignores the fact of how they even got to this country. MOSTLY BY SLAVE SHIPS ACROSS THE ATLANTIC!!!
Most Black Americans did not immigrate here BY CHOICE, they were dragged here BY FORCE in some of the MOST INHUMANE means possible! And though their blood, sweat and tears built this country, sustained the Southern U.S. Economy until the Civil War, and was spilled on the battlefield (from the U.S. Revolution through the latest conflict in Afghanistan), they were not treated as equals until the civil rights movement some 100 YEARS after Emancipation!
So spare me the false narrative Tim Scott. Even today, you could just as easily be profiled, assaulted and killed as George Floyd!
To that point, I have to worry about my own daughter.
Unless you've had to "have the talk" with your kid, YOU DON'T GET IT!
My daughter has faced micro-aggressions her whole life! She doesn't look any more African than Kamala Harris. But she's a lot more brown and "ethnic-looking" than her white friends. If a group of them is caught smoking weed (a legal drug where she lives) out in a public space, guess who the cops are going to single out!
You don't think racism still exists in America?? YOU ARE BLIND. Maybe you're just too white and need some black friends, I don't know. But it is a SYSTEMIC problem rooted in our very dark past. It's just a fact.
And if you don't understand white privilege, I invite you to read my post from August 2017. In it, I write how us whites "benefited from the way the system had been rigged for all of history." That was an inherent privilege bestowed on us by "our Creator," I guess. It goes back centuries to Europe and the Roman Empire. It was the basis for the rise of Nazi Germany and wanting to engineer an Aryan society of blond-haried, blue-eyed whites. Nazism was very strong in America in the 1920's at the height of the KKK movement. Look it up. Manifest Destiny all over again.
The bottom line is, YOUR EXPERIENCE is not your neighbor's experience, regardless of the class or race of person he/she is. HOWEVER, the white American experience is VASTLY different than the black experience in this country, and if you'd just take the time to ask or to look into it, you'd see that. JUSTICE FOR ALL doesn't mean for folks on both sides of the tracks and it never has! We see it every day in stories of police brutality and racial profiling.
That's proof of systemic racism. It's built-in. It's always been there, from slave times forward. America is a melting pot and we all give society it's flavor. Without the black experience, told by black voices (not the Token Tim Scotts), we lose some of that flavor that makes us all Americans. I see that when I go to one of our oldest cities, New Orleans. You talk about rich American history, rooted in Europe, Africa and the Caribbean! Jazz music, which started in the Treme', a historically multi-cultural neighborhood in the heart of N'Awlins, is the most American music there is! Cultural diversity is our strenghth, not our weakness, and it should be celebrated.
This isn't my white angst or guilt coming out. I don't hate myself or the race I was born into. I had no say in the matter. Neither did my daughter. But this is deeply personal to me, not just because of her, or my brother-in-law or my many nieces and nephews. I got sick watching the original Alex Haley's Roots in the 1970's as a kid. It was so eye-opening and stomach-turning revelational to me. It changed my perceptions from then on about race and how one was so disgustingly treated. So please don't come at me with your white angst about how your power and circle of control is vanishing. White Americans will be in the minority in another couple of decades. Get used to it!
When I got back into a committed relationship with Lynn Ann Farber, nearly TEN YEARS TO THE DAY after we first broke up, I knew I was treading into dangerous territory filled with emotional land mines. But we both convinced ourselves to ignore the obvious red flags and warning signs. She adopted my narrative that I really only left her here in February 2014 to be with my kids. That wasn’t a complete fabrication, it just wasn’t the whole story. Our demons got the best of us and my flight response was triggered.
It took several weeks to heal and this blog captured much of it. Even though I wanted out, did the breaking up and the leaving, I was still heartbroken. My pain and recovery all spilled out into my journal and onto this site. I wish I could simply repost my March 3, 2014, post “Moving Forward.” I’ll share a couple of snippets below by screen capture, but please take the time to read the full blog post by clicking the link, above.
History, indeed, repeats itself when we don’t learn our lesson the first time.
Is American Democracy at a breaking point? I think it is. Watch this Mother Jones video to see why.
My daughters have told me for years that it’s mine and their Papaw’s generations fault for propping up the patriarchy. I cannot argue their point. We just mindlessly go along with the system that we know is horribly broken and corrupt!
I’ve felt for years that the Electoral College is skewed in favor of red, less populated areas of Rural America. The Senate, meant to level the playing field between states, gives a vastly disproportionate advantage to rural red states, like Wyoming, the least populated state in the Union. So that when the Senate votes, to say nominate a Supreme Court Justice, two votes representing just over half a million voters (580k) carries the exact same weight as two votes from California’s Senators who represent almost 40 MILLION! California has nearly the population of some countries (39.03 mil) yet in the highest legislative body shares an imbalance of power with Wyoming at 1.5% the size.
So basically a very smal minority of our citizens are actually represented in the Senate and by our Supreme Court. Shows you how the MAGA cult took over and reversed a woman’s right to bodily autonomy. If American women don’t control their own bodies, what control DO they have??
And to the point of this video, if the founding fathers who rigged the system this way, many of them slaveowners who believed black men were only 3/5 a person, HOW could they possibly write the preamble to the Declaration of Independence?
The same author featured in the Mother Jones video, above, also appeared in a Democracy NOW! video three months ago. The host of that video said the attack by the right-wing minority “violates one person, one vote,” further bolstering the populous view, especially among millennials, that our votes don’t matter, they don’t count. Author Ari Berman lays out a compelling case. Watch the above video or the one I just linked to for more.
To put an exclamation point on this post, I turn to the ladies of I’ve Had It Podcast. They point out how President Obama was ready to place Merrick Garland on the Supreme Court. Obama who won the Electoral vote AND the popular vote TWICE in 2008 and 2012, yet he was BLOCKED by Republican Mitch McConnell and Trump’s cronies in the Senate. WHY? So they could stonewall a moderate pick for a radical like Neal Gorsuch, who Trump then appointed. Trump who didn’t win the popular vote EVER!
I blogged just ELEVEN DAYS AGO that, “Gen Z and younger millennials are going to become the main voting block in this country.” And we are seeing it happen already. In the week since KAMALA HARRIS became the Democrat’s presumptive nominee for U.S. President, voter registrations by this group have gone through the roof in states like New York and Michigan. Regisrations surged by 38,500 in just 48 hours according to Vote.org, and USA Today reported Friday that number had surpassed 100k.
Don’t believe me? I watch a lot of progressive political YouTubers like The Rational National, David Pakman, Adam Mockler and Luke Beasley and their audiences are energized, just watch this clip from Beasley’s channel.
The USA Today article says, “A number [of younger voters] described themselves as ‘double-haters,’ or said they planned to turn to independent candidates if they'd bother to get off the couch at all.” They are tired of establishment Democrats, mainly old, white men, running the party and our nation’s politics. Harris, a middle aged, woman of color, has been a breath of fresh air to them and her team’s excellent use of social media, namely TikTok, has touched a nerve. On Saturday, The Guardian called it a “gen Z-powered wave of online ‘Kamalalove.'"
This surge in popularity is reflected in the polls. The same article states that Harris is up 18-20 points over DJT among voters under 30, depending on which poll you look at, NYT or Axios. It’s reflected in the energy you feel surrounding this fledgling campaign. With every TikTok that goes viral or the daily releases her campaign posts, you see these young progressives on YouTube get more on-board the “We Will Win” train.
And while this post might feel like an “I told you so,” IT IS! I’ve been saying this! I raised a 20 and 23-year-old daughter in this millennium. I’ve listened to their views on the world as well as their friends, several who are openly gay or live somewhere in the rainbow.🌈 They hate the patriarchy and were just waiting for someone like Harris to emerge to the forefront of American politics. As the USA Today article headline asserts, this presidential race just got a lot more interesting. Stay tuned.
In my March 2016 post about white angst, I wrote, "But the Trump phenomenon is beyond weird. He played upon the growing angst of white, conservative America. He served up, in true reality TV fashion, all the most inflammatory rhetoric he could muster, like a grand dragon at a KKK rally in the deep woods of Mississippi. He's yet to distance himself from that domestic terrorist organization, by the way." And I wrote this a full year and a half BEFORE the Charlottesville incident!
White angst is rooted in the real population data which shows a declining percentage of white Americans, down more than FIVE MILLION in the second decade of the 2000's. Pew Research Center found in 2021 that only FIVE PERCENT of Republicans think the dwindling of white Americans is "a good thing." And because the whites now feel marginalized--Native, Black and Brown Americans are saying "WELCOME TO THE CLUB!"--and their way of life under attack, they have lashed back. "This is why they cling to their 'traditional' and 'family' values. They want to believe that life was actually once like 'Leave It To Beaver' and their favorite black-and-white television shows of the 1950's. They'd like nothing more than to turn back the clock and relive those heydays of segregated bliss. They want prayer back in school, abortion abolished and white privilege to once again reign supreme," as I wrote way back when. That last line could be the promotional ad for Project 2025, Trump's current platform of Christian extremism. But I highlighted the segregation part of my quote because that gets to the root cause of white angst, a topic I've taken on several times on this blog page.
No longer in the majority, many whites feel like they're world is crumbling, like the people of color are taking over and their rights will be stripped away. To heighten those fears, the traditional, family and "Christian" values they've held since the 50's (when a lot of GOPer's were born) are no longer in the mainstream, widely accepted, adhered to or en vogue. In the 2020's we've seen church attendance dip below 50% for the FIRST TIME EVER in this country. More and more Americans are non-religious; and those who once were are no longer attending church nor are they requiring their children to attend Sunday school, VBS or youth services. Those were all things I was required or encouraged to do, growing up in a middle class, Christian American home.
But this country, sorry to tell you Heritage Foundation, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, WAS NOT FOUNDED on the Bible or Christianity. Morality DOES NOT depend on your scriptures or sacred texts. There were codes of morality in the Mesopotamian region LONG BEFORE your religion or the texts even existed. Morality is determined by humans who make the laws governing society--humans who are both influenced by religion, but also by humanism, atheism and lots of other ISMS! Quit ringing your hands that Jesus was taken out of government and the classroom. HE NEVER BELONGED THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE! Even HE washed his hands of government and politics. "Then he said to them, 'So give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.'" Luke 20:25, Mark 12:17 and Matthew 20:21. So for those keeping count, that's ALL THREE Synoptic Gospels quoting Jesus on his views about taxation and government. He wasn't too concerned with it. His concern was "his father's heavenly kingdom," which he makes quite clear throughout the gospels (and might I insert here, he never once mentions homosexuality anywhere in the gospels).
So now that we've made clear that Jesus agreed with our Founding Fathers on one issue--that is separation of church and state--let's get back to our main point. White Christians, in particular, feel that they are under attack. Because they no longer control the narrative or censor Hollywood or the media or control the halls of justice, they feel marginalized and bullied. Guess what, TOUGH SHIT! You controlled the narrative for long enough! Ever since the Roman Empire co-opted Christianity, white Europeans have controlled the narrative, written and told the story still printed in our history textbooks today. Talk about INDOCTRINATION!?!?! When was the minority view ever considered? When were they're stories ever told?
Only since the civil rights movement of the 1960's have we even BEGUN to learn about black and brown contributions to our great country. Only in recent decades have the voices of Native Americans been heard. ALL OF THOSE MARGINALIZED PEOPLES since the beginning of Western Civilization contributed greatly to our history! Think of the Native American code breakers who assisted our war effort, the black Union soldiers (and black veterans in every war since) who left their blood on battlefields around the South and the World, the migrant workers who put half of the produce in your local Walmart, etc...they have helped to shape America into the inclusive, representative republic that it was supposed to be. Their stories are finally getting added to the history books, but not without white backlash. Take for example, Critical Race Theory and how angry that made white Christians and other conservatives. HOW DARE THEY HAVE A VOICE! DON'T 'THOSE PEOPLE' KNOW THEIR PLACE???!
Which brings us back to whites becoming the minority. When you are the minority, your stories don't get to dominate the history books, the media, the collective narrative anymore. Again, WELCOME TO THE CLUB! How does it feel to get a taste of your own medicine???
Like I wrote in March 2016, "white privilege breeds fear and it has ever since the end of slavery." Conservatives who want to roll back time and "Make America Great Again," are just perpetuating age-old stereotypes, now including brown immigrants, and preying on white people's fear, their angst. Back in the 1870's, they didn't know what to do with newly freed slaves roaming the countryside, looking for work, housing, equal rights to free white citizens, so there was a huge backlash. Enter the Jim Crow era for the next 100 years!! And now, since civil rights assured them their equality, we are seeing the same Jim Crow-like backlash. It's called Project 2025 and the new, more aggressive, more fascist Trump regime. He's preying on that white angst like a mother####er!
Those "Christian values" they hold so dear are the same ones that "put Africans in shackles, Native Americans on reservations, turned a blind eye to the mostly Jewish Holocaust, interred Japanese-Americans and now wants to deport every 'illegal' back to their homeland," I wrote in 2016. Are the whites now afraid of a new black and brown backlash? That the same oppression they perpetuated for millenia will be brought back to bear on them??? Is that their fear? "Did the African-American President ever open those FEMA camps to inter white folks? Has any minority--Latino or otherwise--ever considered putting privileged white folks in shackles and selling them into slavery? So what are they so scared of?"
We've seen how the Establishment of old, rich white dudes react every time black or brown people seek to be heard, whether it's kneeling through an anthem or marching to protest George Floyd's death. I wrote in October 2017, "It's like a sudden eruption of white-hot angst from just below the surface that bubbles over in the form of hate, outrage and bigotry." And now that a WOMAN OF COLOR will probably be the next Democratic candidate for President, watch how the right responds. We already know how the white Christian right feels, it's in their manifesto (Project '25).
Their fear is that eons of "white privilege" is slowly being eroded away due to the fact that they will SOON no longer be in the majority. The socialist redistribution of wealth is a threat to the stranglehold they've had on this country since it's foundation. This is at the heart of their angst. This is why conservatives have aligned themselves with hate groups (like in Charlottesville, 2017) who shout, "WHITE POWER!" They are not ready to give over their privilege or their power. It causes them to lash out in anger and support a neo-Fascist (but only on Day One, right?) who whips them into a frenzy, even leading them to attack our government (like on Jan 6, 2021), to deny election results and to hate their black and brown neighbors--both legal and illegal. See my post from May 2019, "White Privilege Breeds White Nationalism."
It's about to all play out again this November and probably in January, when the election results are contested by the Orange Cult Leader and his minions.
I'm just going to need the white Christian nationalists and those worried about their white privilege, to sit down and simmer down! We've heard ENOUGH out of you. Let the black and brown people speak. It's their turn now.
