American Truth

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When the Founding Fathers gathered in Philadelphia after the American Revolution to try to conjure up a formula for the new United States of America, it is hard to imagine the size of the challenge they faced.  They had just been through a war and finally had shed the miserable cloak of tyranny from England.  They were embarking on a quest for a blueprint to insure that they and their fellow citizens would not find themselves at the mercy of another monarchy or tyrant.  They were grappling with incredibly divergent ideas about stability and longevity for the new republic.

Fortunately for us, they focused on Truth as being the central lynchpin of the new political mechanism.  Starting with truth, they layered, like an onion, the various sentences and paragraphs, enshrining the pursuit of truth and rule of law as ideals that would become our Constitution.  Imagine the arguments, interminable debate and ultimate compromise that resulted in a remarkable document that has guided our actions as a country for over 200 years.

What they couldn’t possibly have realized was the brilliance of the result.  They had no idea whether it would work or falter.  There was no history, no example that predicted success.

Fast Forward 242 years…..

We are living through our own chapter in the evolving experiment we call democracy.  Our country has changed, evolved and become something the Founding Fathers could not have imagined 242 years ago, and yet we are still clutching to a document and an ideal that we believe will be our salvation.  Why?  Because it has always been there to save us.  It is our foundation, and we all believe in it’s central lynchpin…..The Truth.  Face it….democracy cannot exist without the truth.

So what we are witnessing every day is the clash of that central lynchpin with a force that is attempting to corrupt it.  Those battles have always been there during our history, but this time the battle seems more existential.

As Americans, we have taken for granted that we believed in our ideal, that we are one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.  It is our bedrock belief.  We never expected to be testing that ideal in the way we are currently having to grapple with the situation we face today in America.  What we are witnessing everyday is the messy, bloody battle that is the hallmark of democracy…a minute by minute conflagration between the purity of truth and the rot of corruption.

And the end result, I believe, will be the triumph of Truth and the Rule of Law.  You can actually see the beginnings of our collective consciousness coming to the realization that what we have been enduring for the past two years is perhaps one of the largest battles we have ever fought on this battleground.

The Trump administration ushered in an amplified era of lies and deception and we weren’t paying attention as guardians of our Constitution.  And it didn’t just suddenly happen two years ago.  We have been on this slide for several decades as greed and self-interest got the upper hand in our legislative machinery.  Somehow the agents of corruption slipped in, bringing all the deplorable characters that are their sycophantic minions with them.  Like a cancer that takes root, or a tapeworm that latches onto its host, they found their way into the body politic bloodstream and are attempting to corrupt the integrity of the machine so carefully constructed by our forefathers.  They will ultimately fail.  You can see signs of it appearing in so many ways:

--The steadfastness of the Special Counsel

--The awakening of the populace and increasing size of the Blue Wave developing on the electoral horizon

--The recent polls showing that the majority of Americans want Mueller’s probe to continue

--The increasing mania of the Trumpists as the evidence grows concerning obstruction of justice and the collusion with Russia.

--The daily hysteria from the White House, with louder and more disgusting vitriol every day.

--The emerging facts about Michael Cohen and all of Trump's and his shenanigans.

All these signs and so many more that are beginning to be seen by all of us, should give us confidence and hope that the process of vetting our true ideals according to our Constitution is working.  It is messy and causes incredible anxiety, but the purity of Truth and our belief in the rule of law will ultimately be America’s salvation.

Thank You Dr. Guerra!

Last Tuesday I became bionic.  I had a complete shoulder replacement implant replacing my arthritic right shoulder which I injured over 20 years ago.  At that time, I underwent arthroscopic surgery and had what is called a ‘slap’ repair which involved literally hammering in place a tack to re-attach the tendon that had been ripped off the bone in a fall. The repair was good for about 5 years and then progressive degenerative arthritis stole my mobility over the ensuing years.  Also my shoulder caused me constant pain, which only got worse year after year.

Eventually the only solution was to replace the joint, which I avoided for years until the pain became constant and unrelenting.  So, less than a week ago I underwent the surgery even though the concept of it was abhorrent to me.

I was pleasantly surprised.

As you might imagine, typing is a bit difficult since I only have limited use of my right arm, but let me soldier through to extoll the miracle of todays orthopedic surgical techniques.

My brilliant surgeon, Dr. James Guerra, sports medicine director at Florida Gulf Coast University has perfected the ideal protocol for shoulder replacement.  He is leading the design team at Arthrex, one of the countries pre-eminent producers of artificial joints and instrumentation.  These engineers have brilliantly designed my implants to mimic the actions and range of motion of the shoulder joint, one of the most complex joints in the body.

My experience at the hospital was amazingly smooth.  I arrived at the hospital about 7am and within 20 minutes I had been admitted, washed, disinfected and prepped with a painlessly administered IV.  Every tech I came in contact with immediately examined my wristband to confirm who I was and then questioned me repeatedly about my birthdate.  It was reassuring that they wanted to make sure who I was and which shoulder was getting replaced!

After about another 20 minute of this, my ‘bartender’ arrived and without fanfare, versed took me to a peaceful place far from where my new companions were working on me.  That is that last I remember until I awoke in the recovery room, wondering when I was going in for surgery!  These docs have mastered the pain protocol.  They gave me a 36 hour nerve block shot to deaden my right shoulder and arm so when I awoke, I was completely comfortable with no discernable pain at all!

After about an hour of dozing off and on, they took me to a private room where the nurses hovered over me and made me comfortable.  Within an hour or two I was pretty well conscious, just tired.  Slept on an off all afternoon and had a small bite to eat about 6pm.  Made it through the night, arising every hour or so to march around the nurses station to incite my bladder to start working again.  Finally about 6am in the morning, it obliged me, thank God.  I was probably a mere 15 minutes from having to face the catheter monster.  I think it finally scared me into rousting my sphincter from it’s refusal to answer my prodding.  I think that was the worst part of the whole experience.

Meanwhile, by 9am, I was checked out of the hospital, sent home with drugs and told to expect almost daily visits from home nursing and home physical therapy.  So stem to stern my surgical experience lasted only 26 hours, a true miracle for something so major.

So here I am exactly one week post op and still not a shred of pain!  The strongest pain relief I sought were two Tylenol last Friday.  That’s it!

Now clearly, I am facing 10 weeks of PT that is not going to be a picnic, but the horrid arthritic pain I had been enduring is gone!  I am wearing a sling/brace for another three weeks which reduces any chance of disturbing the healing, but I am already experiencing increased range of motion and mental relief at seeing this experience in the rear view mirror!

So kudos for science!  The next 20 years of my life will at least be pain free and more mobile because of the brilliance of my docs and the engineers that support them!  For those of you who need a better frame of reference for this procedure, here is a pic of the ‘after’ taken yesterday.

Freedom of the Press

I was always under the assumption that a journalist is a person who is a curious independent soul who investigates the who, what, where, when and why of a news story.  That was the mantra I learned from my first day in J-school at the University of Florida.  It was the journalist’s creed to find the truth and speak the truth in an unbiased way.

Our democracy has depended on the ‘Fourth Estate’ to be the voice that speaks to power.  In times when politicians and those who want to influence public opinion and behavior work hard to make us believe a particular point of view, the journalist has been the ‘vox populi’ that exposed corruption and shined the light of veracity on any issue that was of public importance.  An independent press has been the backbone of our democracy. 

There is no better example of the degrading of that concept than what is happening today in the age of Trump.

While Trump rages on and on about the ‘fake news’ and demeans the media by calling them the ‘enemy of the people’, those of us who are journalists know what he is attempting to do.  Our mission becomes more important and vital to the survival of our free society and the rule of law.  His attempts to shape current events by elevating the half-truths and outright lies, especially promoted by the Fox News organization, only redouble the efforts of a free press to speak truth to power.

Now comes a more insidious threat to our democracy.  The Sinclair Broadcast Group, a collection of stations owned by the family of Julian Sinclair Smith is the largest station group in the country with over 200 stations owned in over 100 markets covering over 40% of the country.  The company has always expressed a conservative bent, supporting Trump during the 2016 campaign.  Sinclair is also trying to increase its holdings and stations to reach more and more of our population.  In its effort to buy more stations it is doing the Trump administration’s conceptual and political bidding to expedite its acquisition approvals by the FCC.

Sinclair often mandates its stations to air specific reports, segments, and editorials, referred to as "must-runs". The practice has been criticized by some of Sinclair's stations' news staff due to the viewpoints they propagate.  In April 2017, Sinclair announced it had hired Boris Epshteyn, who was briefly the White House assistant communications director for surrogate operations for the Trump administration, and a senior advisor of Donald Trump's presidential campaign, as chief political analyst.  All Sinclair stations are required to air Mr. Epshteyn's commentary nine times per week.  This month Sinclair ordered its stations to deliver an "anchor-delivered journalistic responsibility message" during their newscasts. The wording of the mandated script was criticized by some station news staff and outside pundits for its discussion of "fake news", with some critics arguing that the message used similar language and rhetoric to that of Donald Trump.  Here is a video showing how the on-air ‘journalists’ were mandated to parrot the script supplied to them by the management of the network:

The segment ends with the clarion call, “This is extremely dangerous to our democracy!”  No kidding!

This is just another glimmer of the kind of creeping authoritarianism that is threatening our democratic experiment in America.  The effort to corrupt the tenets of a free press by Sinclair is made even worse by the complicity of the on-air journalists!  For the most part the people in the previous video example are supposed to be seasoned journalists.  Where is their integrity?  How is it that they can justify this blind acceptance of a policy that is reminiscent of state media control practiced by countries like Russia??  It is a sad consequence of the constant barrage of accusations against the free media promoted by the Trump administration, Fox News, and now Sinclair Broadcasting.  Moreover it is a frightening abandonment of the integrity these individuals are supposed to live their professional lives by.  I am really surprised that not one of these people values a free press more than their paycheck.  I can forgive the young first timers, but the veterans should be ashamed of themselves.

The more we surrender our minds to those who do not honor and respect the truth, the closer we careen toward the abyss of autocracy.

If you are a watcher of any of the Sinclair stations, I would urge you to not patronize their sponsors and call them out for their desertion of perhaps one of our most cherished traditions….freedom of the press!

The Enablers of Hope

One of my arch-conservative extreme right wing acquaintances just posted something on my Facebook page that has me hyperventilating:

The Democrats are doing Exactly what Hitler did... He used the Youth to disarm and Control the People This is scary!

I am stunned that he could even draw this parallel!  It shows the kind of mind numbing idiocy that afflicts one third of our population.  His reason for believing this ridiculous idea is that in his mind George Soros is behind it.  He is claiming (without presenting a shred of evidence, I might add) that Soros is funding the entire effort that culminated this weekend with millions of people worldwide demonstrating and standing for rational thinking about gun legislation.  I am aghast.

He is equating the Hitler Youth organization with the March for Life Organization.  For those of you who don’t remember what the Hitler Youth organization was, here is a short definition of its origins, mission and objectives from Wikipedia:

The members of the Hitler Youth were viewed as ensuring the future of Nazi Germany and were indoctrinated in Nazi ideology, including racism.  Many activities closely resembled military training, with weapons training, assault course circuits and basic tactics. The aim was to instill the motivation that would enable its members to fight faithfully for Nazi Germany as soldiers. There was great emphasis on physical fitness and hardness and military training than on academic study.  Sacrifice for the cause was inculcated into their training. The Hitler Youth were used to break up Church youth groups, and in anti-Church indoctrination, used to spy on religious classes and Bible studies and interfere with church attendance. Education and training programs for the Hitler Youth were designed to undermine the values of the traditional elitist structures of German society along with their privileges; their training also aimed at an obliteration of social and intellectual distinctions between the classes, so as to be replaced and dominated by the political goals of Hitler's totalitarian dictatorship.^[  Besides promoting a doctrine of classlessness, additional training was provided that linked state-identified enemies such as Jews with Germany's previous defeat in the First World War, and societal decline. As historian Richard Evans observes, "The songs they sang were Nazi songs. The books they read were Nazi books.

So, my ‘friend’ is trying to persuade all of us that there is an equivalence between the Nazi Youth movement and the goals and objectives of millions of rising teenagers who represent the new movement to obtain rational change in our society.  What he doesn’t even acknowledge is that the Hitler Youth was an organization that was designed to destroy societal norms and promote racism and authoritarian dictatorship.  How does that compare with millions of youth, their parents and other major parts of our society being angry at the segments of our population and government that value the possession of guns more than the lives of our children?  And by the way, is this all a Democratic plot?  The fact that some actually believe and promote this parallel is so appalling that it defies true definition!

There had to be a deficit somewhere in our educational system that resulted in people promoting that kind of thinking.  It is not rational.  However it seems, hopefully, that this line of reasoning is confined to a strata of our society that is going to pass from the scene sooner rather than later.  What the youth movement of today has illustrated is that the rising generation of Americans who are coming of age and will soon make their voting power felt are motivated by humanistic values and objectives as opposed to the economic cynicism of the previous generation.

This is a generation of Americans that is adept at social media and has a unified identity that previous generations could not achieve.  They are instantaneously connected and share common ideas and motivations.  They have grown up together in an environment where they all are afraid to go to school!  The current generation of adults never had that kind of fear on a daily basis which probably explains their inability to empathize with the anger, fear and frustration felt by victims of this ongoing assault.  It is this vacuous understanding that contributes to current non-action.

The February 14^th massacre at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida was the final cathartic tipping point that awakened the pent up and unrecognized emotional tsunami resulting from years of inaction and “thoughts and prayers” instead of much needed regulation.  It was bound to happen, but the surprise is that the wave of action and mobilization came from an unexpected source…the victims!  And these are no ordinary victims.  These are articulate, highly motivated, angry, victimized young people who have mastered the new communication technologies.  They want change and seem driven to rid our government of corrupt decision makers who take money from the NRA and then stand in the way of any kind of rational regulation.  It is inspiring.

So, what are the prospects for change given this new force in the electorate?

Expect real political involvement by this new generation in November.  We are going to see a hopeful change in the complexion of our representatives.  It will take two more election cycles for a complete change to be effected, but each successive election will move the needle away from where it rests now.  Perhaps the most important impact will be a change in control in the House of Representatives that will break the chains of incompetence and rigid economic servility to lobbyists and vested interests that have gridlocked our democracy.

There are new energetic and intelligent voices in the political biosphere that are

going to push progress and change.    It will take time, but what we have witnessed over the past couple of months is the first real indication that there is hope on the horizon.

--> The most important thing that you can do?  Vote in the primaries and the general election….be sure that the people you support do not take money from corporations and vested interests that operate NOT in your best interest.  Representatives work for US!  Never forget that.