"BEAT DOWN" OR "LIFT UP"

Such was the choice presented to America in one   of Harris's closing speeches prior to the election. With a clearcut stark difference, the choice was presented as a definite differential. Harris's 'lift up' philosophy with a culmination of victory for one who would be a "president for ALL Americans". Trump's victory meaning an America touted as the shame of the world, broken down, last legs, needful of an administration championing the idea and practice of revenge and retribution, with firing squads primed to shoot people "in the face". Lift up vs beat down. Civil and civic behavior vs savagery and authoritarianism.

While I have doubts as to the rather Pollyannish view of an America consisting once again of a union of its various tribes, able to discourse in civic and civil tones, these doubts fade into insignificance when compared to the guaranteed dystopian world of a Trump presidency. He would be the last duly and democratically elected president of what would become a defunct USA. 

Instead of attempts to reunite this country, to remind us of all of our shared 'Americanness', this nation would further devolve into terrorized sectors. ruled by firing squads primed and ready to shoot enemies of Trump in the face, as promised. From the horse's mouth direct. As extreme as that sounds, I have no doubt of its implementation based on past behavior and the ever-rising decibels and frequency of shrill hate and vows of revenge emanating from his twisted mind and mouth. 

Violent rhetoric inevitably leads to violent deeds. So history has taught us, so history has bled us. There are those who treasure those terrible lessons of history. They strive to recreate them, to reinstall terror, and amass unbelievable wealth and power, to rule via fear and threat. To stifle and brutally crush all attempts to better the condition of mankind and restore rights and hopes and dreams. It is time, way past time that we wake up and see reality and its truth, clearly and undeniably. It is time we recognize the hard work which must be in place, ever ongoing if we are to save ourselves from ourselves and the consequences of our own stupidity. It is time.

America is not perfect. It was not born of perfect motive. It is not perfect and will never be so. That is because Mankind is not perfect and is charged with the responsibility to ever strive to reach perfection. What must be perfect is our realization and acceptance of that fact and its import. We are in control of ourselves, our fates, our future. We can pray to the G-d we call by many names, ask for   help, to 'have our collective back', but bottom line- we must grow up and accept the yoke of responsibility that is the burden laid upon us.  

We now stand on the cusp of history. We have a maximum choice. It is a choice of a future of our own creation. Personally, I await the results of the election with great trepidation. Will those trained to stop the election actually attempt to do so? Could they actually succeed in halting the counting, changing the totals? Will they use physical violence to achieve their misbegotten aims? Are we so far from what we once were supposed to be? Are we actually standing on the brink of another Civil War?      

Can we? Will we? Do we want to wake up in time to understand our precarious condition? We are standing on a crumbling ridge. The ground beneath our feet is broken. The grains of sand no longer hold together. The rocks below await us. Or do we have the sense and enough time to grab hold of each other and take one giant, two giant, three giant steps back, in unison and confidence and trust and come to our senses? There are so many problems in this world that need solution. Bringing about those solutions will not be easy. But then again, what is? We are holding ourselves hostage. We are the captors of ourselves. Only we have the key to unlock the cells and the shackles which bind us. Only we. Only with sacrifice and understanding  can we stop tragedy in its tracks and build a better future for all. 

Maybe. Let's see what Wednesday morning is all about.

Vote.

THE NUMBERS GAME

Numbers do not lie. We have been so informed and so we are told until we believe its premise. However, it is a false statement, for numbers, statistical data, can be manipulated and in fact are, very often. Why? To prove or disprove a point. To gain sympathy or increase enmity. Whatever the purpose, numbers can be made to tell different stories, even the same numbers can be interpreted at odds. 

Multiple times a day we are reminded of the deaths in Gaza. We are told to weep for the dead, for they are apparently all 'innocents", caught in the brutal crosshairs of Israeli fighters. Yes. there are thousands of casualties in Gaza, but what do those numbers actually mean? No breakdown is provided, merely an implied understanding that the casualties are mainly noncombatants. women and children. So where are the men? Fighting for Hamas. Battling the Israeli army and incurring casualties. Their dead and wounded are presented to the public as innocents. Never mind their gleeful bloody participation in the. October 7 massacres. Never mind the slaughter. Ignore the captives, children, infants, elderly and terrified cadets, men protecting their families. Now either dead and/or dying or remaining in brutal captivity in airless tunnels or private homes. Perhaps only 51 remaining alive -and for how long? But never mind those numbers, or the sum of 395 days in captivity. No end in sight. Much of the same in Lebanon with Hezbollah.

Numbers indeed. Truth? Not so much. 

Numbers also fall into categories. Who and what determines the categories and interpretations of them and their numbers? Beats me. In fact, it appears to be that anyone can decide, a free for all, and is a 'never mind' state of mind. Even if the claims are absolutely ridiculous, based on absurdities or even nothing at all. And all the while, new words and accusatory phrased are ginned up, new idiotic categories of offense conveniently given life when they should have been stillborn. 

Here is the latest brouhaha and be sure to shake your head in sympathetic commiseration with the aggrieved. I kid you not on this one. At a time of blatant overt physical and oral vicious events and attacks reeking, dripping, of in-your-face antisemitism are claimed to be needful of investigation as to whether they are indeed hate crimes, where is a balance when an actor in a Broadway play claimed to be highly offended and suffering from " “bullying” and “racially microaggressive”   language. What exactly was that powerful word capable of inducing this awful feeling? Warning: possible trigger word. (Yet another stupidity of modern times.) A statement made by Patti Lupone that the music of the play was "too loud”. Please note that this is not an unusual statement or complaint made by playgoers   particularly when the play is about modern. music. "Micro aggressive!!!" Give me a break.    Now remember, if we were to use the applicable numbers here, that of the decibels of the music being played, Lupone would most probably have been proven correct. However, this is a time when numbers were deemed not as important, far less important than the ridiculous attention-grabbing claim of "microaggression".

The media gives us every day, sometimes on an hourly basis, new 'breathtaking" accounts of such egregious incidents, 'aggressions' of implied racial bias, even though most cannot see it, but hesitate to say so in this rather toxic area of modern society. We have reached a point where we denied the obvious. We refused to address actual important topics and instead direct our words, thoughts and efforts to trifles and no-account trivialities. We ignore planks and concentrate on splinters. We are blind to violations of decency and humanity and expend our energies and attention upon concerns of nitpicking value.  Bottom line, we will get nowhere fast. In fact, we will probably go backwards at a much faster rate. Check the numbers on that and see how the numbers of haters have grown - along with the streams of money.

Obviously, we need new mathematicians. We need new interpreters of data. We need to check our eyesight and our hearing. We need to clean up the clots in our brains and the spiderwebs of our minds. We need to decalcify our hearts and find room within for others. We need to see ourselves in others and others in ourselves. We need to play the music of life at proper decibels. We need to make room for truths over falsehoods. We need to have the courage of quixotic attempts to right wrongs, to not only dream the impossible dream, but in fact and effort, help to make it possible. 

These are hard, difficult charges made upon us. Some are perhaps out of reach at present, but we cannot give up. We cannot cede victory to the negative, to the haters, to the deniers of humanity. 

We simply cannot do that. We cannot give up. That is the cost of life, the numbers game of our existence upon this planet. The rent is due, even overdue.

 

THE HOUR THAT WAS

  One hour. 60 minutes. 36,000 seconds. Imagine what could have been accomplished in that one hour. Yes, I know we actually gained an hour, but it feels as if I, we, lost an hour. What could have been accomplished in that one hour. As I look back over the year, I think what could I, should I, have done if I had been given all the time of that one hour, with permission to do anything within its bounds. Think about what you would have done if you had been gifted that treasure. One. hour. A great responsibility. Unlike the fisherman's wife who wasted her three wishes, we cannot afford that error. Each change, each direction taken, must be thought out carefully. In addition, this is not an endless hour. Once those 36,000 seconds are used up, spent by the ticking of the clock, there are no more second chances. No ability to go back, erase and redo.

I am sure that each and every one of us have some very similar wishes. The temptation to make some grandiose wish is very clear, sharp, and dominant. Think about it. What good would it do if you wish to be the richest person even as the world remains in this very precarious state of being. You might have asked, understandably so, for peace to reign.  Think of that peace. Would it be an imposed peace wherein all dissent and opposition are suppressed, and punished? Would it be a peace of understanding? A mutually shared idea of peace and the benefits of peace. Wishes and dreams and thoughts must be extremely explicit lest they be twisted and turned into something completely other than what one wished for or had in mind.

Perhaps selfishly, though I am sure the fulfillment of this desire would actually benefit the world as a whole, would be the cancelation. of the death of my grandson Yitzy. He had so much beauty, talent and promise. Think of what his life, continued on his same unbelievably beautiful track, could have, would have, meant for our very troubled world. If at the age of 13 he had accomplished so much, how much more could have been accomplished had he   lived in multiples of those 13 years. To be honest, even though there is a wider consequence of benefit via cancelation of his death, my main purpose would be to eliminate this constant ache in our hearts and the empty space between. our arms meant to hug him and hold him tight. 

 What else would I have attempted to accomplish during this gift of an hour? That too is simple. Clear as day. I would have canceled October 7,2023. The screams of terror and pain. The raucous raspy sounds of bloodlust, of people who have forgotten humanity, who instead indulged and wallowed in the basest of all instincts and desires. The horrific consequences of that day - think of it. The lives lost on all sides of this conflict. The waste of the creativity of the human brain. Of the potential of our potentiality. Of all that could have been built with the. money and materials funneled into Gaza, so that instead of building tools and weapons and paths of destruction, tools and paths to resurrection and rebuilding and prosperity and peace could have been engendered instead. Why do we humans continue to pour our resources always into the wrong places and to the wrong ideas? And then wonder at the horror we have created. Here is a more definitive wish. There will never be another October 7. 2023. Not in any shape. Not in any way. Not in any form. Not in any desire. Not in any actualization.

In order to make that an actual reality, another act of that hour would be to somehow defray and discard, actually prevent any reasons for the bloody enmity amongst the people who live in that region. Somewhere, somehow, there must be people of Solomonic wisdom who can clearly see the way through the morass of the bog in which we now find ourselves. They see the possibilities of missteps, the traps awaiting, and they avoid them. And along with them comes the multitudes of hordes of people who desire not blame, not a bloody future, but a peaceful future, one with hope for their children. Unfortunately, as part of this wish and its realization, the distorted minds of many will have to be reformatted. Brain cells of hate and anger and bloodlust would be disappeared. Humanity within all would prevail. 

Ha, is the cynical following thought. If wishes were those proverbial horses, we would have a mammoth herd thundering over the plains of the Earth. But instead of those horses of peace we have the thundering boots of human beings marching off to war. So instead of wishing for this nebulous and false and shallow peace, we must dig and delve deep within and make great strides and efforts to achieve real, true peace. Of and for the world and   the soul. Would that I have the power to make this so.

Is there time within this hour for yet another wish? A little, perhaps grandiose puff of wind into the air? I certainly hope so, but this wish would entail the opening of eyes and minds. The growth of understanding of human beings as to the harm we have done to our environment, how we have endangered ourselves to the point of almost existential end. Could that actually happen? Think of it. Our little orb spinning through space, rebirthed, gifted with life, reformatted for a promising future. It is a dream of beauty. It is a dream of life. And unfortunately, at present, it's a dream of futility. But maybe, maybe in the magic of that one hour, maybe....

In the waning settings of that gifted hour, I would address my selfishness. I would wish not for obscene amounts of money but enough so that I could ease the lives of my children and my grandchildren and my great grandchildren. Lives of friends and family would be better. In fact, the lives of all the peoples of this earth would be better. for one cannot pull oneself out of the crowd of humanity that lives upon the surface of this planet. It's simply impossible. 

I would love to buy my house of dreams here. I would love to buy my house of dreams in Israel. I would love to have a mammoth private library in my homed with beautiful wooden sliding ladders and platform upon which stand. as I seek a   favorite book or two. Very selfishly, even as I wish for the cure to the myriad diseases which plague humanity, I would wish for an end to those which plague me in particular. Think of that. The boulder of Sisyphean weight now pressing me down       would be lifted. While that is of little matter or import to the world at large, it is of great import in my own little universe.

Back to reality. Unfortunately, the gift magical imaginary thinking withers and dries up by the time we hit adulthood. In fact, by that time there was very little of it left. Would that we would be able to keep some of it. To pluck it from within the swamp where it is drowning and breathe new life into it. New uses, inspired by possibilities. Would that humanity even without that magical wishful thinking, actually attempt to bring about the changes that are possible. One hour of time. One hour of magic. Millions of years and lives benefited.

If only. What a waste we have made of the gift of creation of man and its myriad possibilities. Instead of a world of beauty and benefit to all, we have created a world of shattered glass and broken cement. Heaps of fragments of what could have been, what should have been, what would have been if only we had paid more attention. If only we had followed all threads of possibilities through to the end and acted accordingly. But instead of building and rebuilding in a positive manner, we destroyed our habitats. and those sharp edge fragments shredded our dreams.

Dear God, one hour. One measly little hour.

IN MY OWN LIFETIME

 In the play The Rothschilds Hal Linden sang that very sad, yet hopeful song. A song of hope and a song of despair. A song of life's achievements against all odds and a song of bitter knowledge of the ease of instantaneous disappearance. It is a song of the eternal truth. No matter how high, how well integrated into society, no matter how long they have lived within that nation, the certainty of it remaining in place is actually a delusion. History has taught us so time and time again throughout the millennia.

We are living in times easily comparable to earlier times of terror time. Times of massive death. A raucous conglomeration of harsh hate fueled voices   echoing the past and threatening the future. A constant flood of maxims of hate and violence. A once again reawakened and revitalized tactic of blaming the victim. Once again Jews are cast as threatening outliers determined to take down society. The very nation which has given so much to the world and continues to do so, is portrayed via horrific verbal and actual grossly frightening portraiture as the foe of civilization. 

Never in my own lifetime did I think I would be rejected by my nation. Always there was no conflict between the parts of me which made up the whole.  Jewish. American. Woman. Contributing member of society. Raised a family with the same attributes. Educator. Friend. Zionist. Never did I ever feel a conflict among these delineating facts.  No cross purposes. Always my identity was comfortable in the resultant mix. And why not?

However, an ugly muck of the past has managed to ooze its way through the cracks in time and found a comfortable niche where it can reside in safety. There it will also nourish itself, fed by the leavings of a sick and troubled society. Increasingly, its stinking corrupted rotting tentacles of hate are breaking through, more and faster.  In direct relationship my shoulders are rising ever closer to my ears. It is a reaction of fear, tension, uncertainty, and confusion. It is in fact. a reaction to reality.

Once I thought that despite very visible aberrations, society was well on the path to a better, finer, world of true civilization. People embraced their creativity. They understood more and more the interconnectivity of humankind. It was understood that we all shared the same fate on the same planet. Yes, there were huge gaps. Yes, there were many deniers. Yes, there were and are many backward thinking people. But yes, there was a fresh pride, a growing optimism. Look how far we had come and how open was the road ahead. 

And then we tanked. In our own lifetime we began to reject the good possible, so close to us. The bright light of the sun and enlightenment turned instead to the darker side of humanity. Why? That is for wiser heads to answer. To parse, understand, explain, and perhaps avoid repetition. Those efforts are being increasingly waged in a world dimmed of light, threatened by ever lower, ever darker layers of clouds. 

In our own lifetime we have seen a rejection of progress and a growth of negativity. New ideas and patterns of thought are deemed harmful. Increasingly we are banning, destroying, rejecting the best of the past even as we resurrect the uglier segments. Once again, we are burning books. Once again, we are having the ironic and so very sad case of creative minds calling for the boycotting of other creatives of the world. In our lifetime we have turned back to the idea of the limitation of rights. In our lifetime we have taken the beauty and the faith of religion and grossly perverted it. In our own lifetime we propose once again to highly restrict all immigration, even legal. The echoing sound of knocking fists and pleading voices of the denied continue to ring loud and clear, even as we remain deaf. All of us must think where would we be, even if we would be, if our ancestors had been denied entry in time of desperate need. Think also of those consigned to be returned to the killing fields of the world because this nation is selfish.

In my own lifetime. In our own lifetime.

A world of sun and hope. 

A world united in humanity.

In my own lifetime.

In all of our own lifetimes.