SILENCE? YES? NO?

     There are times to speak up and times to keep quiet. Most of the time, it is and should be necessary to speak out against things one deems to be wrong, or exaggerated, or unfair. Keeping silent at that point crosses the line of being complicit in the wrongdoings. Keeping quiet usually means there is an element of fear or suppression or cowardice or moral weakness or power grabbing or any number of things that are so wrong.
     Yesterday it was my great pleasure to attend a Simon and Garfunkel tribute show which used the immense talents of the Aztec Two Step duo and details from the lives of the tribute duo. To say I, and the audience, enjoyed it is to understate it, for it was tremendous. Their music of the 60's and 70's, so relevant to the times then, are so relevant today and I am just wondering what the heck that means! Personally, it upsets me, for the same problems seem to have arisen again in many cases and I wonder what we have learned from our past and why we have allowed the progress to retrogress.
     A particular point that struck home was the silence in Sound of Silence.
     "Silence like a cancer grows. Hear my words that I might reach you. Take my arms that I might reach you." 
     Today we have people reaching out in the darkness of fear imposed silence, of uncaring silence and of nasty silence, acquiescing in its violence, in its misdeeds, in its evil imaginings and motivations. And the words that are spoken in trying to break this silence?
       "But my words like silent raindrops fell and echoed in the well of silence."
     So, on the third day of a new year it is even more incumbent upon us to break the silence. It is only when silence is broken that progress can be made. Silences about child labor, about the rights of women, about  civil rights, voting rights, immigration rights, educational rights, prejudices against all who were different because of orientation or religion or color or ethnicity or whatever could be ginned up to increase, to ramp up the hatred - all had to be broken to progress.
     On the other hand, some people should shut up, the sooner the better. We have a Demented One as President and here are the summed up comments of his discussions in his first Cabinet meeting of the year, even as the country roils on his imposed governmental shutdown, as crises begin to pile up. "About walls. About wheels. About death and sand. About Mitt Romney and Iran. About his popularity in Europe and within the Republican Party. About essentially firing Jim Mattis as defense secretary, and forcing the retiring senators Bob Corker and Jeff Flake from office. And about validation from Kanye West and how his generals were “better looking than Tom Cruise.”
Warren rightfully called him an "accelerant" to basically all that is so wrong in the country today. Surely this is an example par excellence of who should keep the silence, but he does not and so it is incumbent upon us to break that silence, to show people who have taken the neon gods of today instead of recognizing them as fake and dangerous to us. Trump praises Russia for their invasion of Afghanistan, which in my opinion, truly pushed forward on the road to the current crisis. He praised them for Syria, even as they celebrated our pullout from there, thereby giving Assad back his war torn country.
     He and his coopted Party are ramming through incompetent and unqualified judicial nominees who will ruin our judiciary for decades to come. Their only qualification necessary is their extreme conservatism, even unto the point of stating that the 1954 decision in Brown vs. the Board of Education was not correct!! I kid you not! And by all means, if he feels so strongly that Hillary needs to be prosecuted for her emails issue, then make sure to goose and gander the whole matter and place the co-defendant at the table with her - Ivanka!! There are no exceptions in the courts of law, under a fair and non partisan system of law.
     Comey's statement applauding the honesty of Romney, his own statement that there is no room in the Republican tent for integrity - well, this man has learned that silence does not work. True, he opened his mouth at the wrong time and caused, or helped cause, the disaster we are now living but for the most, silences must be broken.
     Last night I caught up on the Murphy Brown Thanksgiving episode, a good one which ended on a serious note. In it, two good friends were hastily taken away on Thanksgiving Day for the crime of living for decades in the country, raising a child, a Dreamer, running a business which benefitted the community and paid taxes, law abiding people, but their crime - undocumented - put them into the pariah category. They followed the pathways of history that led humanity down tearstained roads - be it the Trail of Tears of the Cherokee right here in our country, or the slavery movement, or the forceful ejection of Armenians by Turkey or the destruction and murder of Jews all throughout history or the persecution of Christians in countries today or the expulsion of the Rohingya - and unfortunately, the list can go on ad infinitum ad nauseum. Murphy Brown spoke up even as we heard the excuse that the ICE police was "only following the orders of my government." When a government orders - orders - us to do the wrong thing, the immoral, then the time has come for voices to be raised loud and clear and determined. It is time to speak out as Murphy Brown did on her TV show.
     Breaking the silence does not always work immediately, but it gives a start, an impetus, to shift towards doing the right thing, the moral thing, the humane thing. So let us break the silence on the one hand and force the hatemongers, the immoral, the oh so wrong side of these issues, to shut down their hate filled and violence inciting negative remarks. We need to judiciously choose what silence is good and when it is not. The silence which allows misdeeds is bad. That silence which reaches out to others, well, we all know the truth, even if some bury that knowledge deep within their souls. Listen to the sound of silence. Listen hard. Listen well. Listen carefully- and then help others to heed your words and the words of so many. Silence, like cancer, grows apace, leaving harm behind and ahead. Let us attack that evil silence and let the country once more ring aloud with the proper and necessary words of life, of joy, of humanity.