Opinion/Editorial
FROM THE BOTTOM OF THE CISTERN OF THE BARREN
I reach up in an attempt to touch humanity once more, the cold sweat of life’s hard, cracked, and broken walls makes any real attempt to rise impossible without help from above. I listen and watch motion and talk from incoming leaders who espouse intent to do away with freedom of speech, punish opposing media figures, and place millions inside concentration camps across the nation that will have everything but the expression “Arbeit macht frei” (work will set you free). A public not of my making and a public I no longer want to be fully identified with has deserted everything I have come to think, hope, and believe about the vital assortment of cultures above that I have lived my life with and for.
God is up there somewhere as I reach toward forces that have lost the meaning of the word hope or help. Raised in Hawaii I know the “H” word well, as it stood for Haole, a word meant to be the ultimate racial insult among all the islanders who somehow have come to believe they are the owners and everyone not of their color or distinction are less than slave material.
I cannot stay down at the very bottom of this moist cold hole looking ever downward until my head is forced to rise once more. How am I to accommodate a majority of humans above who have unknowingly begun the descent of evil, first as to be delivered by them upon the poor and weak and then to be delivered to them by those same poor and weak?
Belching pick-up trucks grow ever more nasty and dangerous along the roads crisscrossing above me. People wearing ridiculous red hats break in to tell others to leave the country if they don’t like what’s coming. Yesterday, at a local coffee shop, a man approached of that ilk. He seemed so friendly at first, waiting for his coffee to be delivered at the nearby counter. He finally asked about my feelings about the election as he saw that my laptop had an image of Clarence, a character from the movie It’s a Wonderful Life pasted to its front surface. I gently laid out my fears of what has to be coming after January 20th. He looked at me and told me to leave the country.
I was shot three times in Vietnam and lost over 700 Marines for this man, and so many others around and like him. I just stared, my thoughts going to places of PTSD satisfaction the prey in front of a real predator must never be allowed to know about unless terminal action is taken. “Gary,” a female voice called out, and the man turned. His coffee was ready. He picked it up from the counter and then turned to look at me standing at my table, still staring and unmoving. Finally, he walked out. I called my wife a place of true refuge in my life. She told me to change coffee shops immediately and I agreed and said I would do so. She paused and then said, “And I want you to get rid of his license plate number right now.” I denied I held the numbers firmly buried inside my memory complex. “I know you. Do it for me?” she asked. I could not deny her so I changed coffee shops and let the letters and numbers go from my mind.
Up above, on the fertile, pleasing, and still free ground above, human existence across the United States’ small footprint of geographic and social existence is almost unaware that truly caring, loving, soft, and peaceful predators are buried down at the bottom of such cisterns that I occupy, hoping against hope that they will not be pulled from the earth to serve horrid retribution and suffer horrid consequences for actions above that never had to be, but may well be demanding attention. The man in the coffee shop, nameless and without a license plate in my brain, goes home untroubled, unconcerned, and unaware that he walked away from a danger he could never contemplate until it was way too late.
If you are bereft at what’s happening to the USA right now, then be aware that those holes in the ground are there for a purpose. PTSD is not bad dreams and nightmares that cannot be cured by mushrooms and Ecstasy. It’s genetically buried and imprinted brutal life experience that’s there to be recalled at a later time if needed.
The land above must be repopulated with humans who will stick together to face those who want nothing like that. Today up above should be the first day where Americans come to realize that the media, the Internet, television, and cell phones have divided the public and allowed for what is coming in late January, presaged by completely insane appointments of senior government officials who are about to tear the heart out of the country, and then pick from the leavings of what’s left among the piles of city and country debris. Talk to family members, although you may have to wait until the blood begins to flow. Meet with community members and leaders to begin bringing surrounding populations into enclaves of sanity and resistance. Store water, get a generator, and make sure it’s working. Get fuel and fuel extenders, as electricity is likely to be sporadically delivered at best, as time goes by. These things are all being derived from the very few good results of the coming destructive dictatorship that’s being created right before everyone’s eyes. If you understand how the names Caligula, Stalin, Mussolini, and Hitler are revered today, then you must have an inkling of how the names Trump and Musk will be mentioned in the far future. The dream and experiment of America is filled with a huge amount of impetus and sustainability but its ability to outlast truly evil leadership supported by so much of a bushwhacked public is unknown.
I must climb from this cistern and take my place, as a soon-to-be battered population is silently and unknowingly calling me back. As I will take my place you must do so too. Your appetite may be gone, your heart beating erratically and depression not curable by any medication…but for the children and the grandchildren you have an obligation, those of you who have any understanding.
The future of the culture is not just counting on you…the future of the world is.
