Triumphing Over Adversity - Individually and Together
AMERICA - AND THE AMERICAN CAUSE - THE CAUSE OF ALL MANKIND
For some of my readers and I - we have been linked here on SubStack for nearly three years.
And we have stood over these years held hostage to tyrants - those who would bring totalitarian world governance.
Currently - these tyrants - carrying the seeds of their own destruction - proceed as they will continue to do - to fall apart.
I am taking this fateful Sunday to take stock of where we have been and of where we are going - as individual human beings and as fellow brothers and sisters in arms.
We stand at the threshold of a new world rising - even now as we still grieve the fall of so many amidst the failure and disintegration of the old world now fading away.
As we approach this holiday season of 2024 we approach the anniversary of that Pearl Harbor day of 2021 when I realized I would begin writing publicly here.
I began with a handful of readers and commenters who managed to suffer through my early attempts to wrestle with the essay format.
Writing publicly as a learning experience was something else - but my reason for writing was not to become some notable writer - but to do what little I could for those without a voice.
As a grandmother I wrote for my own children and grandchildren - and for all of those who were caught up in the totalitarianism which had gripped the world.
Mostly I wrote that we as writers and readers here might engage in free speech - and despite the shackles of these totalitarian regimes - move the gauntlet forward.
As a child I leveraged myself out of a terrible family situation by joining a community swim team.
I was a tiny - and a not particularly athletic - eight year old.
The tough German coach and my team members were all part of a family oriented community of those who hoped to turn us into Olympic swimmers.
I had no family which would attend all of the races like the others and neither would I become an Olympic competitor - but I trained with those who did.
The experience brought something out in me which otherwise would have lain dormant - and in this I see how all of us often do not rise as we would like until necessity arrives and insists.
A fierce competitiveness and determination to work with others to shape lives which otherwise could never have been.
Moving the gauntlet forward - teaming up with others who could make this possible.
Later in my life I would discover family history that even my family did not know - that our family was a broken branch of the very earliest Americans - and descended from both the so-called founding fathers - and the Native Americans who lived here for many millennia before the European conquest.
This branch of the family broke off after the insults of many wars had taken their toll - and finally - for my grandfather’s generation - for two sons of the South.
One grandfather was the child of two successive generations who had fought the civil war - as cavalry - on two different sides.
The other grandfather was as well - and was forced into child labor in the coal mines before making his way as a young adult to San Francisco - where as fate would have it - he met my grandmother.
America has been through great trouble before this - and people who were formerly called upon to rise did precisely that - relying in faith in God and in each other to rise to unparalleled heights.
In coming to understand the history my parents never knew - I learned what it was like to live in a confused maelstrom without a history and then the difference it made to have - and to understand - a history.
One of my favorite quotes comes from the Winter count of the Lakota Sioux.
A PEOPLE WITHOUT HISTORY IS LIKE WIND ON THE BUFFALO GRASS
But never in my life before 2019 would I have guessed the way my own family trauma and tragedy would come to inform the present - because none of us can know the lengths we might go to - or the demands we might rise to - until we are truly called upon to rise.
This is where we as individuals - and as Americans - and as citizens of the world - stand at present.
As human beings - we are only as strong as our weakest links - and our weaknesses as individuals are made strong by our faith - and by our willingness and action to join with others to achieve a common goal.
In so many ways our lives are relay races - passing the gauntlet forward little by little - overcoming insurmountable odds to do so.
Never did I imagine that American could be as badly broken as it is today - our constitution and bill of rights lying broken on the ground like so many beloved shattered Christmas ornaments.
However the knowledge that America - like we as humans - is a process and not a static monolith - keeps me properly inspired.
As our founding ancestors have cried before - we have a dream - and that dream is not to be given up on by those who understand the odds at play here.
And that is that though the odds of achieving that dream are great - the greater the odds - the greater the race we must run.
There is a gauntlet we pass forward generation by generation - one which has burned in the heart of our predecessors with stellar force - the dream that we will achieve liberty and justice and freedom.
I had ancestors from all across European history whose dream was this - and ancestors among the native Americans whose dream was this - and ancestors who were the first Europeans to set foot on this continent whose dream was this.
Among the Europeans - some were French Huguenots - and some were subjects of British or Danish - or other - kings - but none were free.
All put the lives of themselves and their families at risk to board leaky wooden ships - to find themselves washed up as strangers in a strange land upon these foreign shores.
And the native Americans - shocked to find a bunch of tired and hungry and desperate strange humans invading their lands - suffered great hardships to remain Americans.
And we ourselves - finding ourselves awash on the shoals of great adversity - shipwrecked as our ancestors have been before - broken upon the rocks of tyranny - more determined than ever to overcome.
But there is a difference now - our technological progress has handed us an unexpected gift and a tool to use to move the gauntlets forward.
As is any technological achievement this presents us with a double edged sword - one edge offering further tyranny and destruction - and the other a great gift toward obtaining our goal of freedom and liberty.
And that technological achievement serves as the foundation for why someone like myself can write at all and be read by so many.
The internet - and the nearly instant access we have at our fingertips with the world - has become both a tool of tyranny and also a great equalizer.
The internet allows us unprecedented communication with the world and overcomes many previously impossible barriers to this kind of communication.
Our engagement here is such that the motivations we each have for what we do are revealed through our actions and words and deeds.
This great equalizer makes clear - like no other - the very high stakes in play.
And it makes clear - like nothing else - that we are all only as strong as our weakest links - and stronger together as no other force.
The internet - this great equalizer - this great communication tool - allows us to begin to achieve the impossible.
The Great Ideas - those which our ancestors often died to protect - whom all of the Sons Of Liberty and the great communicators like Thomas Paine laid down their lives to serve - are now available to us to share as we sit at our desks with our screens and keyboards.
This crisis of 2019-2024 - not a new crisis - but one we as humans have been facing for millennia.
And like any great crisis - one of both great danger and great opportunity.
But this time - unlike in the past - we may share this one with all of our fellow human beings.
And for each of those who favor tyranny - and who hate freedom and liberty - there are millions who will take the side of liberty.
As expressed by some of our greatest singers - “ It is a chain by now”.
Except for a few ruling class so-called elites - the rest of the world is part of the chain of liberty and freedom - and shares with all of us these unalienable rights conferred by our creator.
The time has come to declare our freedom from the few miserable rats at the top who feed off is us and who live off of our good graces.
It is a chain by now and all of us a link in the chain.
How the so called elites conduct themselves has been the same for millennia - and as I have written before - these destructive elements are engaged in the process of self destruction.
Carrying within themselves the seeds of their own destruction.
And as Napoleon is supposed to have quipped
“Never interfere with your enemies as they engage in self destruction.”
“These lands have been condemned” but they will not remain so
We grieve and through this process come to understand the powers which move us.
But in the end the recognition that we are all our brothers in arms
Don’t worry - they are busy destroying themselves while the world watches.
I had faith this would happen but did not know quite how this destruction would unfold.
IT IS A CHAIN BY NOW
As always - may our creator strengthen these unalienable rights - and stand us in good stead - and strengthen our will - while we help to bless all of the peacemakers.
In Congress, July 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
“THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated”
― Thomas Paine, The Crisis
“Persecution is not an original feature in any religion; but it is always the strongly marked feature of all religions established by law.”
― Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
America - these United States - much fallen to tyranny - and all the more reason to embrace the ideas which at her founding - as these still remain - and grow stronger.
“The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind. Many circumstances have, and will arise, which are not local, but universal, and through which the principles of all Lovers of Mankind are affected, and in the Event of which, their Affections are interested. The laying of a Country desolate with Fire and Sword, declaring War against the natural rights of all Mankind, and extirpating the Defenders thereof from the Face of the Earth, is the Concern of every Man to whom Nature hath given the Power of feeling; of which Class, regardless of Party Censure, is”
―Thomas Paine,Common Sense
The totalitarian so-called elite will not fall apart all at once and tyranny will always remain an enemy in our midst to be alert for and to defang before it may gain a foothold.
Tyranny will never altogether disappear and requires constant vigilance by active and involved citizens. The fight against it is one never to be relaxed. May we never grow so comfortable so as to be blind to it.
Late breaking additions.
https://open.substack.com/pub/celiafarber/p/does-douglas-emhoff-husband-of-kamala?r=boqs0&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
https://www.hopiumchronicles.com/p/the-vp-visits-north-carolina-the?r=boqs0&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
https://open.substack.com/pub/cindysheehan/p/32-32-32-rainwoman-gets-stuck?r=boqs0&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
These panics over land grabs are decades too late. When you accept federal money to rebuild after a natural disaster, it often is not to rebuild on the same piece of real estate. You are in reality selling your property to the federal government.
I learned of this in the 90s when the Mississippi River flooded. People who received federal assistance were being arrested for trespassing and theft for trying to retrieve family photos and heirlooms from the destroyed homes.
We didn’t stop it then, why should we be surprised when it happened in Hawaii and now in N. Carolina.
For shits and giggles, look into what your state can do after a family members dies who was receiving Medicare.