Everyone has something to contribute and everyone contributes more than their share. So many people talked about stepping outside their comfort zone, going one step further, trying something for the first time – and feeling exhilarated by it.
It took the Resistance, the nationwide gaggle of Indivisible groups, ADAPT protesters, health care advocates, and the people themselves to bring this reality to the forefront. They marched and shouted, they posted and tweeted, they emailed and called and sang, they carried photos of their friends and family, yes, they disrupted and got arrested – but mostly they told their stories.
We trust in the institution of government, a government that is, in the end, made up of all of us, all of the people, a government that creates the law by which we agree to be governed.
Listen to what we are being told:
Fear those who cross our country’s border from Mexico – the are rapists and murderers and drug lords.
Fear those who cross our country’s border from Mexico – the are rapists and murderers and drug lords.
Fear those who cross our country’s border from Mexico – they are rapists and murderers and drug lords.
Fear those who run from brutality and death in Syria – they are terrorists who hate our freedom.
I am confident that any bill of impeachment passed by the House will not only fail in the Senate – it will never go to trial in the Senate. Senate boss McConnell has shown that he is perfectly willing to simply ignore House-passed bills, so they never get a hearing, never get a vote, never…
Our democracy doesn’t just permit you to speak freely, but it requires it. It’s through the freedoms of speech and press that our democracy defends itself, strengthens itself, and grows itself.
“The West Wing”, Season 3, Episode 12: “100,000 Airplanes” (January 16, 2002) SCENE: The team is gathered in the Oval Office. President Bartlett has told them that he wants to include something in his State of the Union speech to say that we will cure cancer. His advisers explain, one by one, why he can’t…
I think people always operate in their own self-interest. Always.
And I think we rarely know what someone else sees as their own self-interest. Instead, we impose on them what we believe they should be interested in.
As we await the trial phase of the impeachment proceedings, it’s apparent that many members of the U.S. Senate are jumping past the first question – the question of fact – and starting on the question of punishment.
Burke’s book was a great introduction, for me, to the central tenets of the Deadhead community – that sense of sharing, of helping one another, of finding your place within the world around you, and of keeping that place intact against the familiar pressures of everyday living.
More than just a story – though certainly an interesting and entertaining story – F.T. Burke’s “The Bohemian Adventure” shows us how we can grow, even in middle age, to re-center ourselves into a sense of purpose and value. That value isn’t found in ourselves as solitary individuals, but in the community of like-minded people, sharing among that community.
