Long after Master Race and decades before Extremism and Terrorism labels, I spent every August driving around Europe, as an inquisitive history explorer.
In the little town of Hallenberg, I met an old farmer lady, who schooled me in how Germans survived WWII: most came from the destroyed cities to little countryside villages, for food. We spoke of Patron Saints and cows and chickens hidden inside on the ground floor of her little farm house.
Seventy years later, the lesson remains, Tara – perhaps our best hope to survive humankind’s planetary history of slavery, lynching, internment and concentration camps -- if we can but replenish and restore that which we’ve raped.
Now, on our shared planet of weather extremes, we are engaged in a great global war between cultures, with hope for survival, our only victory – a victory made possible by recognizing the enemy:
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Really Big One along the SAF
- Sinking of lower Manhattan
- Flooding lowlands of America’s south east regions
- Climate changed mid-west
- Moral decay of The Golden Rule and Statue of Liberty promise
- Confused and disappearing Nature
- A Constitution smeared with the excrement of denial, stupidity and prejudice.
If we continue to imprison each other with lockdown thinking, I want my Country back, we’ll forever lose the sunrise of, in the Home of the Brave, the Land of the Free is everyone’s country, and can never be conquered by those who choose to fail the lessons of Evolution, Herstory and Global Warming. It is not Free Will, but folly, not to reason why, but to deny and die.
Our salvation: victory over Corporatism & Consumerism’s concrete climate changing us into crumbling infrastructure, Food Deserts and a regurgitated KKK, McCarthyism, WWII treatment of African-Americans in uniform, Japanese-Americans confined in internment camps even as their sons wore something Trump, Cruz and Cheney would never: an American military uniform in time of war.
Truth is, few can match the service of Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan, U. S. Army Bronze Star, Purple Heart, killed in Iraq, or son of Syrian immigrant Steve Jobs, or the sacrifice of military, civilians and President who died for the 13th Amendment.
For those still mistaking superficial gossip for in depth investigative reporting or trumped by non-presidential fear mongering as The American Way -- think of what we’re leaving the children:
- Iraq, innocent of 9/11 attacks, invaded by freedom loving society - us
- Climate Change caused by Cows, Fossil Fuels and Corporatism’s Global pollution
- Perpetual Religious Cultural war with Bush/Cheney induced ISIS
- A Military Industrial Complex funded by Corporatism with the blood of American citizens of every hue and background
ISIS has no monopoly on Religious Zealots. Every day, America bleeds from fearful white zealots fighting for the past and money hungry Wall Street zealots fighting to leave us behind, in the future.
Our Enemy is war, greed and, like Grenada, unjustified invasion. Our weakness is in becoming Guantanamo instead of reflecting the Gettysburg Address.
Our Middle East enemy is the post WWII self-serving deal of Shell Oil. Our environmental threat is an Exxon that knew, and for decades, threw us between them and melting glaciers.
History has proven that when We Built That CEOs convince our American lawmakers to convince those who bother to vote, to vote against themselves, we accrue ever increasing damage from Empire Building Conservative implementations of foreign leaders, policies, and domestic gun violence, all while failing to preserve the human necessities of clean water, safe food and long range consideration for planet earth and all living upon it.
If we want the Paris Climate Accord to be an all-inclusive reality -- if only one window box at a time -- we best start planting rooftop gardens, backyard trees and wind turbines on the plains – because there is no automatic Climate Justice in evolving Climate Change.
We need be more like San Bernardino’s Shannon Johnson, and wrap our arms around our melting rainbow pot, with I Got You and Yes We Can, before life as we know it, is Poe’s Nevermore.
As Greek-American Louie Psihoyos suggests: Startwith1Thing
