IT'S FREEDOM, NOT FREEDUMB!

One way to process all the events streaming through our media and threatening to numb our minds, is to look at them as concise windows into the national psyche. What we see through these windows can be both disturbing and hopeful. We’ll get to the hopeful part too, I promise. We will see patterns that reveal strengths, deficiencies, and common themes. Significantly, we’ll be better able to read the intentions of actors and others, right up to the commander and chief. Wait a minute though, I didn’t say this was going to be that easy! This perspective can help us process issues that fly at us more easily, and we can sharpen our focus as to where we place our energy, attention, even love. We also might get a reading as where the hell our country is going!

One recent window that opened in the news involved a couple ‘defending’ their home against protestors. Besides, being very conscious of their home and possessions, to the point of perhaps subconscious privilege, they were unaware of the context that brought the protestors into their ‘gated community’ in the first place. The theme of ignorance and fear enters here, and considering the likelihood their beautiful stone edifice of a home must house posh flat screens and the latest in internet technology, the ignorance is likely willful, cloistered, or brainwashed.
The willingness of too many to jump to their defense only reveals a broader lack of sophistication of sense and thought.

These protestors were seeking to hold a rally in front of their Mayor’s house because this elected official publicly revealed the home addresses of people exercising their freedom of speech. She had invaded their neighborhood, and threatened their safety through public proclamation. If that’s not stupid enough, the couple brandishing a gold pistol and assault weapon, usurped her in vying for the Darwin award. If they had real concern about protestors, and not aberrations of reality, they would have greeted them and asked them to kindly respect the neighborhood or asked for the situation to be handled sensitively by police. Why? Because they could have both ‘read the crowd’ and avoided escalation that might have actually provoked what they most feared.

A message to dumb rocks: 

If you escalate an issue with a transient stranger in or around where you live, THEY KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE and can strike at any moment, while you don’t have an f’ing clue as how to retaliate if they do a hit an run on you. I learned this lesson while dealing with threats to my own home in the past. If you have a real threat, you don’t show your cards. If by chance it turns out not to be a threat, you have not gone of half cocked and caused yourself and others damage. Know when to hold or throw your rocks!

They could use a lesson in street smarts, but that’s difficult when you, cloister yourself or if you as a country, ‘nationalize yourself’ your thinking to the point of xenophobia. Zoom out to our ‘nationalized’ landscape and you can see the same trend of brandishing weaponry, while jettisoning real strength. A pandemic exacerbated by a distorted sense of ‘privileged immunity’ has exposed all of our systemic weaknesses. While we implode under the weight of a second wave of this pandemic, we are hemorrhaging into a worsening position of global strategic weakness. Just like that ‘thin of mind and thick of body’ couple, our country is too immersed in conspicuous consumption, while vacant of collective and strategic conscience.

The world is looking at the United States, which they esteemed to be a solid rock, and is wondering…

Is it gunpowder they use to both ‘enforce and celebrate’ their freedom, or is it dumbpowder?
Is it freedom they espouse or freedumb?
Are they dumb as rocks?