...so, thank you Donald Trump.

 

In spite of normal self, I can promise there is nothing ironic for me about the title of this short essay I write. This is not to say that my views or personal feelings have changed even an iota in the previous five years. I still would gleefully call Donald Trump a traitor to his face. I still find even the notion of voting for him to be beyond all grasp of my comprehension. The pit in my stomach from even having to entertain the feeling of looking out over a precipice has neither simmered nor shortened. Yet I would be remiss to say that these last five years have been without some benefit in terms of the crystallization of why I feel the way I feel, and what I actually want from the United States of America as a country, if I am to hold to my principle of being fair and objective, and from true Americans, if I may be so bold as to believe I am such a person, and might be so inclined as to ask for their help and understanding.

 

So, I must acknowledge that I do have five things to thank Donald Trump for, and I do not expect these things to change anyone’s mind about voting for or against him, as I am relatively sure you, whoever you are, have long since made up your mind. I only hope that if you continue reading this it will help you reflect and consider what will happen on November fourth, and remember that November third can do nothing more than produce a name – it cannot truly reflect the depth and dexterity of a whole people.

 

…so, thank you Donald Trump for giving me the clarity to see that a vote for you, against you, or even to write in Mickey Mouse, has nothing to do with why I should or should not believe in Americans. Americans are good people. They are pragmatic. They are pugnacious. They are persistent. They are personable. They are proud. Americans are like people all over the world – they are good people. This is not to say I think everyone who lives in the United States of America is an American; I do not. Being born in any zip code means nothing. Being American is a mindset, one you must apply to yourself every day. There are people who live ten thousand miles away from any zip code that we would recognize as the United States of America who are more American than anyone I have ever met who does hail from said zip codes. In this way Americans are unique, that no country makes or devalues the depth of character that they have in everything they do every day. I certainly hope I am one of them, but I can only wake up every day and do my best to earn it – it cannot be given. No vote makes that moniker any better or worse, because Americans vote with toil, tears, and tenacity, and they vote every day. I do not have enemies because of some button pressed on some knock off iPad, but I do have antagonists to what I wake up to and try to do every day because of my belief that in doing so I am a true American.

 

…so, thank you Donald Trump for giving me the attribute I was so very lacking five years ago. I needed to learn how to forgive myself for my failures and stop being angry at the failings of a system for my loss of faith. My faith in the United States of America was broken long before Donald Trump set foot on a debate stage. I was angry, and hurt, and embarrassed. I felt betrayed. Yet I forgot that any deal or agreement I made had little to do with the United States of America, a flawed and deeply misgiven country, but I did it is as an American believing I was helping other Americans. I forgot that I was not representing the United States of America when I had these feelings. I represented Americans, those persistent, proud, pragmatic people. I did not stand in those sand storms or scale those mountains or teach in those schools for laws, and taxes, and zip codes I could not care less about. I did those things for people I believed in, that I still believe in. I let my weakness make me angry before it made me determined, and that was my fault, and my fault alone. I have realized though that I forgot that it was the systems, not that people, that antagonized me, and no person has ever enabled me to make this distinction so clear as you have in these past five years. I forgot that sometimes those strengths of character can be weaknesses when we let our egos and our characters feed off each other and forget what we stand for when we wake up and work towards improving ourselves every day. We do need to temper ourselves, forgive ourselves, and not make decisions because they make us feel better or seem like they will vindicate what we want to do.

 

…so, thank you Donald Trump for giving me the realization that my strength of conviction at times was just as much a weakness, and that all of us best heed to watch our strengths, for they oft are also our greatest weakness. That tenacity that defines Americans can be a great gift. They truly do not believe that anything is impossible, and swell with pride when they believe they can be a part of the solution. They stand and hear that anthem about a bunch of backwater oil vendors loading cannons and repelling attacks, and believe it speaks to a deep and lasting part of the soul of who they are: commitment incarnate. It is why I still tear up every time I hear those horns and trumpets play that song, because I do believe that some of those people were thinking about future Americans, and are not suckers because they put others before themselves. I hope one day I am counted among them and if I am ashamed it is that I forgot that this was my goal the whole time I did any of the things I believed were good and meaningful in my life. That belief that we can accomplish anything is a great part of my sense of self, and I think any true American would see it as a key component of their world view as well, and would never denigrate the memory of those people, from coal miners, to nurses, to teachers, to train operators, to soldiers on the front line, and would certainly never think they were “suckers”. I think Americans, being pragmatic, know they need to seek help and advice from every possible perspective if the success they want is to be achieved. True Americans see that sometimes their strengths do not aid them, and so need to look to someone different for advice, comfort, and help, and that this willingness to attend to and be attended to by others is not a weakness, but an appreciation of how being American has not place or time, but has meaning because of every person honest, decent, and persistent enough to make it have meaning.

 

…so, thank you Donald Trump for giving me the experience of needing to self-reflect and ask myself hard questions. Do I actually care if someone fits my definition of “good” before I am willing to listen to them? Can I put my ego aside long enough to remember that two wrongs do not make a right? Am I brave as I think I am, or would I shoot at people I do not like and want to provoke so I can seem tough as well? Would I forgive myself long enough to allow my poor first impressions and bias to not misdirect my actions? Could I actually understand what it feels like to not be wanted in your own country, or do I just believe I can in some vain attempt to make believe that I am not responsible for anyone feeling like I would forget and forsake them? What is the value of being American to me, and does it matter more than playing a childish popularity contest or making my myself enriched? I wish I had good answers that were definitive. I do not. Much like your “response” to pandemics, protests, and pernicious assaults on the foundation of every system that supports the people you “lead”, the answers might certainly have clear implications, but must be assessed every day, and the greatest of all failures, as you well know, is in not acting. I wish I can sit here and say I remember that every day like a true American would. I wish I could say I get up every day and assess myself and strive to have good answers to those questions, like a good American would. I cannot. I fail sometimes, harder than most I would imagine. I know now though the only moments in my life when I ever truly had bad answers were the days when I would have had no answer, no plan, and no willingness to even pretend to care. True Americans never give up, because they know the only true defeat is when they decide to give up.

 

…so, thank you Donald Trump for giving me the stimulus I needed to stop feeling sorry for myself and angry at some giant piece of dirt that never much meant a thing to me in the first place. I do not care about any country or set of laws or set of beliefs or set of structures or how anyone who blindly worships these things feels about me. I care about the people. Ten years ago, I forgot that. Five years ago, I still had little memory of that. I do not forget anymore. Long after buildings and banners and bullets crumble and scatter and rust, there will still be an idea called ‘America’. It will last longer than anything I do today, longer than anything anyone will do today, even longer than anything you do today Donald. If America has ever truly ‘always’ been something, it has always been this place of dreams of what could be done if only we are willing to try. That is not dead. Five thousand years ago it had a different name, as two thousand years ago, as five hundred years ago, as a hundred years ago, and people five kilometers away from me have a completely different word for it, but we have, all of us, always meant the same thing. No one fool can stop that, and no one fool sustains it. It is sustained through the billions of little acts of kindness, and decency, and faith in something having value whether we exist or not. No clump of dirt or tome of laws or piles of money make that choice any more or less valuable. I held others and an entire country responsible for my feelings of loss and sense that this belief I have, to the deepest core of who I am, was devalued. For this I was deeply mistaken, and I hope true Americans will forgive me. I will most likely make the same mistake again, but I certainly hope I never need so long a time to regain my footing the next time I fall, and that I have learned from my mistake to possibly be a better man, a better teacher, and hopefully, one day, a true American.

 

…so, for however much it pains me, thank you Donald Trump.

And so, to anyone who reads this, let me ask you only this. Wake up every day and work at being a true American. If it sounds like I equate being a good American with being a good person, it is because I do. I do not care if someone was born in New York, or Norfolk, or Novgorod, or Nanjing – they can be just as American as anyone. Part of that is that what we do, all of us, we better be able to stand behind it. So, whoever you vote for, own that vote, and own why you made that choice. I voted for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris (latter way more than former) because I believe they will not make my job, as I see it, of advancing economic and civic rights expansion harder, and they will be willing to think of how much they can help create systems that will at least not harm those I care for most. I do not want them to help me, and I would not be so completely selfish or misguided as to think they would ever give two rats about such a thing. Yet, I believe that they will not make what I need to do every day more difficult, and will look after those things that I expect them to with diligence and duty. I have no misgivings about making that statement. Whoever or whatever you vote for, be as honest with yourself as I am. My motives are VERY selfish, as in I voted for who I see as the least incompetent, but at least I can state specifically what I want to see, and I do not just talk about how a vote makes me feel. I have expectations of public officials, not entertainment. If you voted for Donald Trump, fine, but tell me EXACTLY why you did and stop blindly thinking that choice will ever personally benefit you.

 

If there is one thing we all better have learned by now, it is that there are many divides left in the United States of America. If it ever can be a place where all true Americans call home, honesty had best become something we can easily have between each other. I am not here to fight with you. I am here to improve myself and hopefully do you some good in the process. I will not give up on you, and I hope you would do the same for me. True comradery, though, can only be had if I know who and what you are, and if you are as willing to admit that to me as I am to you. Whatever you are going to do today, before you do it, as you should every day, think:

 

What does this decision mean for everyone’s tomorrow?

 

If you have no ill feelings after that thought, do it. If you even so much as slightly hesitate though, which you should, I urge you to reflect and consider what I said earlier in this essay: the only bad answers are the ones were do not care enough to consider and assess. Whatever we do today, let us, each of us, own it tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after, and for every moment for the rest of our lives. I think that is what a true American does. So thank you Donald Trump for making me see, for possibly the first time in my life, why I will never be ashamed to be called American, and how honored I am to wake up every day and fight for the right to call myself one. That decision, no matter what hunk of meat sits in some oversized, over-stuffed, self-stroking chair, is the one that I will be proud of tomorrow.

A Plea

I am sure many of you think you can attest to my political views.

I promise you might get half of them right.

But almost anyone can easily identify the most important of all concepts to me. That is the most important political concept ever conceived and elucidated, and it goes something like this:

All Men are created Equal.

Why the dumb, sappy one that everyone quotes?

Much like all the “dumb, sappy ones” like ‘Then we must do no harm.’, ‘There is no price too grand to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.’, ‘Upon all the Living, and the Dead.’, ‘The misery upon us is but the passing of greed.’, ‘There is a field. I will meet you there.’, ‘Judged by the content of their character.’, and ‘But you will respect each other.’, to truly live the expanse of every aspect to the political ideology that every creature of any form of sentience is, by the most essential aspect of worth, Equal, is perhaps the most difficult belief a person can have.

The dumb, sappy ones: they are the hard ones.

They challenge us not because they are idealistic. They challenge us because they show us the truest depths of what we can be. Of what we should be.

And Americans, whether you like it or not, you are the most loud and obnoxious of all about the concept of “live up to your potential” garbage, so yes, you are most culpable when you do not just fail, but you blatantly disregard trying.

I am sure many people take my current absence from the country as evidence of me being unfit to judge. It is fair to say that since my rise into true adulthood, I have spent more time outside of America than in it.

I wish I could say I see it as a bad thing, or that I miss any aspect.

I do not.

I do not miss dimwits prowling on about how saved they are by the light of their invisible sky fairy friend.

I do not miss paying for services that barely work anyway and even when they do they usually are barely worth the minimal price being asked.

I do not miss morons arguing over why they are apparently so special and important that their “freedom” should come before other peoples’ safety.

I do not miss everything being about how far you can shove your head up your rear and the most important task you can do all day is convince other people you eating waffles is of genuine worth to know.

I do not miss the most blatant and offensive form of hypocrisy on the planet – I do not miss it at all.

If you view me as harsh and overly critical…I suppose my complete breaks with many aspects of my life were long overdue.

Yet I can defend my points, even my last one.

Americans jabber on and on and on about “exceptionalism” and how inspiring it is to be American. I have now lived in South America, the Middle East, and China. Guess what – the only “exceptional thing” I see is how exceptionally awful you are at being helpful, and exceptionally awful it is that your greatest characteristic is the tendency to blow things up.

I will give a little credit: Americans should brag about their goal to be exceptional. It is the very essence of our birth. To be an American, so far as I can see, means that in 1776, you would have signed that document too. You would see the worth of a cause of more than just Liberty and Freedom – you would see the very heart of Humanity in what you hoped to accomplish.

You should brag that this is what you are born into.

You are not living up to it though.

Not in any form, fashion, format, or fantasy.

I wish I did not have to bring up the most recent example, but I do.

I was going to avoid voting. I am honestly slowly becoming sick of the whole damnable process. I went through the rather considerably annoying troubles of voting abroad for this reason and this reason only: If I have to go to my grave knowing I did not do at least something to stop that orange skinned sociopath, I never could truly forgive myself.

Donald Trump is NOT an American. I said it, and let me reiterate.

To be an American means that there are a set of principles you hold as the most important things in this world.

They matter more than your life.

They matter more than your faith.

They matter more than your family.

They matter more than your feelings.

They certainly matter more than your money.

To be an American means you surrender what you were before and become one of those few who truly believes in the full depth of those words immemorial.

Donald Trump is the worst of the misinterpretations and bastardisations of the concept of what it is to be an American.

He is not an American.

If he is an American, I do not want to be one.

He is a sociopath.

He uses the concepts of Freedom and Liberty to excuse himself from being culpable for his grossly inhuman and inhumane behaviour.

And MANY of you (almost everyone who reads my blog is from Europe and North America…sorry, but it is just reality) are just as bad.

I cannot stay silent on this for this reason only: even after people in these many countries get to know me, they still think of me as their American friend. To them, I represent America. Maybe that is part of why my friends do not understand my criticism, because they do not think such a country could make someone who would gladly give his own life for their happiness. I must be blunt though.

It was my decision to forsake everything ‘America’ as it is now that made me into that person.

For me, that is the most disappointing realisation of all. It does hurt me. It makes me wish for something better.

You do not have to be this though.

You are the product of that grand ideal. You are better than what you are right now. You can be great, not because you are American, but because it was an American who introduced Humanity to that most important ideal.

Stop being so afraid. What about this world is scary? Is it scary that not everyone thinks you are the best? GET OVER YOURSELVES!!!!!

Of course people disagree with you.

Stand up and look them in the eye and be strong and proud. Do not skulk away and blow up their country for giggles.

So let me make my point extremely clear.

If you vote for Donald Trump, you are not an American. You do not believe in that most fundamental ideal of what it means to be an American. You are a cowardly, slimy, unbegotten, wretch of a human who thinks it is better to cast a protest vote than attend a protest, because it seems easier to just ruin something others depend on than possibly lose something you want but do not need. A vote for that thing is a vote to end the most important aspect of what America truly is.

Do I think Clinton is so great – no. Not by a mile.

Clinton is like getting hit by a car for the tenth time – sure it hurts, but it has happened to you before, and you know you will survive.

Trump is like getting stepped on by the kaiju from Pacific Rim.

You are not merely dead – your essential existence has been obliterated.

If you are truly fed up with the system our government has now, fine. I completely understand.

Here is what you do: the next time anyone who has served more than two terms for ANY political office comes up for re-election, DO NOT vote for them. If you want the politics to change, than get rid of the current class of politicians.

The president, whether you understand this or not, is primarily a figurehead. The ideal president REPRESENTS what America is to the world. I am not saying Clinton is perfect, but she can at least pull an Edward Norton, and make it REALLY convincing.

If you elect that sociopath, you are telling the world ‘Please forget that whole ideological and meaningful tomfoolery we spouted back in 1776. This is who we are now. Never expect anything better.’

If that is how low we have fallen, then let me be clear: I will NOT be a part of that America. That is not America. That is a nightmarescapee from the nether regions of Chuthulu’s dark abyss.

So in my final comment I beg only this. Americans, please, I beg you, I beseech you, I implore you, in the name of anything that can be called righteousness, DO NOT GIVE THIS SOCIOPATH EVEN ONE VOTE!

Show the world we are not so pathetic and cowardly and dash this sociopath’s hopes as harshly as is possible. Tell the world that this is not us. We do still believe in those great words and that ideal.

If you truly want to change the government than elect new governors, new representatives, new Federal Representatives, and new Senators. That will change the government. Electing this sociopath will only serve to prove the fact that (yeah, this is real) most people see us as nothing more than boisterous, noisome hypocrites.

In the name of everything we as Americans truly hold sacred, please cast nigh a vote for this man. We can make America great again, but only if a man like this can NEVER again be taken as serious outside of a locker room, and even there seen as the excrement that he is.

On behalf of everything America truly is, I beg and plea with all my heart, DO NOT, now or ever, let anyone like this sociopath represent who and what we are. 

A Tribute to Jon Stewart

The reason why I loved Jon Stewart so much, why I became even more enticed to watch the show after I learned about deconstruction and critical analysis, is because people like him can teach us a lot.

They can teach us we do not have so many differences between us.

My first lessons of it came from Gene Roddenberry, and a show that still makes me a kid whenever I watch it.

Jon Stewart though turned this lesson into a strong and immemorial lesson, straight from camera three. J

I, and many people, have a great thanks to give to him. He introduced us to the concept of vigilance, because as I have said before, you cannot change people, you cannot do much to change the world, you are never going to change Human Nature, and you will be lucky to truly change your community.

You can easily change a perspective though.

When you change the paradigm, you can change how people approach a problem, and how they decide to live together.

I have friends who are staunch conservatives, and die-hard communists. I have friends who pray five times a day and friends who I might have to one day report for trying to dig tunnels under a church to steal the alter (NOTE: Please do not do this guys…I have zero experience with getting someone off for that one legally and I am not sure I am that good). I have friends who love “America” and friends who hate “America”. I have friends who probably want everything to be solved with an explosion, and friends who abhor the mere thought of any violence. I have friends who think Humanity is doomed, and friends who cannot wait to join me on the UFS Enterprise.

My friends, much like me, are pretty weird. J

Those of us who remain friends though, who still talk to each other, and at least one from each of these groups remains, stay friends because we can see through Stewart’s metaphorical commentary about bovine excrement.

We see what we believe as a measure of who we are because of what we personally understand. We know that many of our decisions are more a matter of what has happened, and has not happened, in our lives. We do not look at each other with eyes of judicial condemnation and providential decree.

To me, my Sunni, Shi’a, Catholic, Protestant, Atheist, Agnostic, Jewish, and Hindu friends are all incredibly ethical and upright people. I find them exceptional on the whole. I do not see any of them as lesser or greater because of what they believe. Much like how I see no difference between my Continental, Conservative, Labour, Apathetic, Socialist, Liberal, Anarchist, Theocratic, Libertarian, and Communist friends.

They know me, I know them.

I look at them as people, not as ideologies.

Perhaps that is some form of bovine excrement, but I find it to be in the innocuous category.

It is innocuous to propose that we can learn to live together.

It is disastrous to genuinely believe, in your heart and soul, we are doomed to forever be ensconced in cruelty and discrimination.

I find it almost provincial that Stewart signed off seventy years from the moment when the perhaps most iconic of the great crimes against Humanity occurred.

I find this so interesting because if I am correct than we can use it as measure, a mark of how far we have come, or regressed.

I know a lot about history, and I recall no commentator or critic so well known as Stewart in the 1950s and 1960s. You could say Edward Murrow did a lot, and was a very influential figure, but Stewart I feel is beyond professional and non-professional, reporting and satire.

Stewart to me, and many, taught us how to begin approaching a topic, and why the ludicrous loopholes and detours many a commentator and newscaster make are so debilitating to good conversation.

And yes, you do need to be taught that.

Before we merely assumed people would “mature”, but no one really did. It was simply a “simpler” world, and by that I mean communities and restrictions were rigid and rather absolute. Yet we have emerged from a very powerful century, for good or ill, will the ability to now people a click away from seeing one another and from learning practically anything.

This is an evolution in our cultural capacity that demands a similar moral and mental evolution, and we have, to this point, failed rather fully to make any such advance.

We are the product, whether we enjoy it or not, of being the losers for the first 4.6 billion years of Earth history. Even upon our culminating step to Homo sapiens as a proper species, we were more often the hunted, not the hunter, and what few things we did hunt, it becomes more and more evident that we were not particularly good at it.

We have programming that does not run on the current model of civilisation we have available to us.

The schematics for the operating system are very much available, but we do need to choose to use it to make something greater than we have.

People who teach you to look at something from a critical perspective, be they Jon Stewart or Big Bird, matter to your development.

They matter because the “club” that is acceptability is slowly a dying illusion. Why I put America in parentheses before is because I do not believe there are rational people who hate a landmass (dirt bothers me sometimes but what can I say, I grew fond of it) and I certainly do not think that a rational creature could ever hate an entire group of people for the actions and extremes of a minor percentage of that group.

Sure sociopaths can, but not rational, fair, ethical people.

Some of my friends hate the idea of America as this club for a specific set of people, and by that the main group of lunatics mean a Caucasian confederacy of gun-wielding, intellectually resigned amoralists who are more concerned of the interest yield on their CD than fair trade agreements, and who of course draw a god concept from the Latin Deus.

I hate this idea too.

I do not want “America” to be a club, because I find our soul too grand to be so pathetic.

You cannot start with the idea “all Men are created equal” and two hundred fifty years later be arguing about whether or not anyone gave two rats about who gets marriage benefits and who does not.

The two concepts are not able to coexist.

In that sense, I notice what most of my friends, and myself included, rage against is hypocrisy.

If you only want your country to have medicine that is fine – admit it.

If you are glad your country makes trillion every year because it sells things that go boom that is fine – admit it.

If you could not care less about someone different from you in some pathetically visual or expression-based fashion that is fine – admit it.

Now you say, ‘But then I will look like a huge douche bag and people will not accept me because it is not illogical to say that if that is how I act towards one person there is little to stop me being that way with everyone.’, then I would say, you are correct.

Sadly though, you probably will still get elected. Considering that we are not as morally and ethically evolved as we may pride ourselves to be, you might even get a medal and/or raise (not at all referencing Vladimir Putin or Donald Trump…not at all…).

In the main, yes, we do understand that thoughts like this make descent into inhumanity far too easy and accessible, but I also fail to see how we are making it so that this line of thinking stops altogether.

Stewart, and people like him, show us that there are ways to begin this process, and I hope Humanity does grow into itself to see the extremes are very rare.

In the end, there really are only four questions of which you can only be one side of the argument or the other.

Can Humanity govern itself, with equal representation for everyone?

Is value for a Human essential or extraordinary to the individual person?

Is every Human life an equal value, deserving of equal provision?

Are Humans an indelible product of our evolution, or can we condition ourselves out of analytical infancy?

My friends who continue to talk to me, I notice, answer these questions very similar to how I do (Yes., Essential., Yes., We can condition ourselves.), and I think most people have enough faith in themselves that they would answer the same.

The real excrement occurs when we know the answer to these questions, but we act in ways that demonstrates the opposite line of thought.

Whether we trick ourselves, or we fall back into bad habits when we act contrary to our ability to fairly assess these issues, honestly is not an important issue.

The important issue is whether or not we can accept lessons from great teachers to be more analytical, to not give in to our programming, to stop thinking we all belong to some exclusive and important “club”, to grow a tad of humility, and most importantly, to realise we are far more akin to one another than the peripheral and simplistic environs would have us believe.

Yes, this will be very difficult.

We need to do it though.

We need to challenge ourselves to see that once we know the answers to these questions that there is no divine or destined preponderance of events to get us to where we need to be in order to truly flourish.

Survival we have down – if that is all you are looking for, congratulations.

I look for more, and people like Jon Stewart teach us that vigilance is the preliminary activity in how we can achieve more for ourselves, and each other.

One final time Mr. Stewart, I thank you with a debt I cannot repay, and may you always be well, remembering that you are always a teacher to more than you may have ever known.

Live long, and prosper. 

A Set of Thoughts on Feelings and Relationships

I am a teacher.

I love my job.

I may have done things most people would call absurd, astounding, and adventurous, but in the top three things I will think of more and more often as I note my own approaching sunset because of how essential they are to who I am, two involved being a teacher.

If I were forced to dissect what ignites my passion and soul completely, it has a lot to do with something that happened earlier last week, that really changed a post I was going to make about a very general concept – and yes, it has changed the tone of my commentary considerably.

I was going to enjoin towards a very blunt and unreceptive attitude to be taken with the ‘I deserve things’ and the ‘You need to be selfish’ and the ‘Power of happiness is in merely choosing’ cesspool that infects this planet.

Epicurus died millennia ago – if you going to be so unoriginal that you steal something relative in age to The Iliad, can I offer instead the phrases ‘Then we must do no harm.’ and ‘Do to Others as you would have them do unto you.’ because at least those act like there exists something more important than how often you can make yourself orgasm in a day.

I do very much dislike these people and this ideology. I have always assumed this is why I often come across as a conservative-minded person, as my rhetoric does sound very teleological, provincial, pedantic, and “moral-focused”. Maybe I should read more about how to make yourself sound like you do not suck, and I will read Bibi’s autobiography. ;-)

While I am not much of a moralist, I have negative amounts of acceptance to any relativity argument when it comes to value and the core of existence. I cannot fathom the logic, nor the rationale to such a ludicrous concept that reality and the engagement of all things is self-centred. Ayn Rand made comments like this, and if you genuinely believe, ever, that an inhumane act can be elucidated and even vindicated in light of the “self-referential outcome” then you are a sociopath.

You should be locked up for your own good, and the good of the universe.

You are dangerous.

And if you want to know why you are dangerous, rather than a lengthy essay I was beginning to rather enjoy scripting, if only out of my sense of duty to Humanity and enjoyment of pestering buffoons, I can sum up your flaw in one sentence.

You might be of decent sense when it comes to moments where someone’s life is in danger, but you are going to one day, by your direct action or involuntarily, make someone believe their value is cheapened because of who they are, and they may never be able to ignore that.

If you think that is not your problem, then you are a fool.

Whether we like it or not, this is the only planet we can inhabit as of current, and we need to manage each other and ourselves, fairly, in hopes, in dreams, in needs, in desires, in wants, and we need to do it here. There is no sign that anything is coming to save us from ourselves.

And if you are one of the people who like a movie getting spoiled, I will ruin this one for you: there is nothing and no one that can save us from ourselves, and there never was, and there never will be.

I am not conservative-minded. I believe everyone on this Earth should have everything they need, and I do mean everything. A home, a job, an education, a fair and conscious social community and commitment, Freedom of Association, representation before judgment, mercy in condemnation, Freedom of Expression.

I do not think anyone should ever even need to ask for these things; in asking, they have already paid too much.

I believe we should all be willing to help each and give to each other these incredibly general aspects of life. Perhaps more in-depth Provision does need to be arranged by more accounted processes. I would not begrudge that.

Yet there is no reason, and has never been any reason, why children go hungry at night, why elderly feel insecure, why I get medical treatment because of my zip code, and why someone is afraid to simply say what they feel most properly describes who they are because they know the merciless crusade that will be hounded against them for the mere utterance.

I have fought many a battles because I believe this so fully.

I, at no point, believe Humanity has “earned” these things. Forgive me if I seem to echo the Isidore and Aquinas I was once force-fed, but what could ever be done to “earn” such grandeur of existence?

What did we ever do as a species to be granted the very fact that we are an exceptional miracle in and of itself?

We evolved from colonial prokaryotes in primordial oose, to become an entity that can do more than consume and fellate. That is a true miracle, but I cannot genuinely bring myself to feel the transition was either inevitable or earned.

Whether it was or not, and one of my previous comments, that being your involuntary hurt of Others, would both be very difficult concepts to ever fully grasp and metre-out. I only ask that we begin a stage in our cultural evolution of reflection and analysis, with focus on how we are connected and moved by one another.

Look at something that has moved you. A phrase, a picture, go watch the movie, think of the gravestone, listen to the song.

You feel something deeper than mere survival in this memory. You feel connection.

We are by our birth connected to each other, and not merely genetically. We yearn to exist with one another, in good conscious and with fair assess. We often want this more for ourselves than others, but we want it nonetheless. We did not earn a love of this – it is simply who we are.

Value is simply in the fact that we exist – there is no evaluation board or accrediting agency that gives you a seal of approval that finally you are of any worth.

Especially for Caucasian people, when would we get that seal? After we saved thirty people in our life? The clothes we buy, the food we eat, the guns we sell, the cars we drive, and the communities we build to wall us off have cost the lives of hundreds in almost every corner of this world. And I am probably only talking about this month in saying the phrase ‘hundreds’.

How many lives do the owners of Nike^® “owe” back before they are worthy again of being thought of as Human?

Believe me when I say, they are in debt. They owe a great deal. They might never repay what they owe. Yet they do not owe anyone anything for their individual value to remain intact, whole, essential, and affirmed, as it has been all their lives.

They matter. You matter. Nothing made that True, and nothing can make it “truer”.

Once, someone may have made you question that. I would give anything if I could take that back. The only price I could ever be bought for would be if I could erase that moment from every memory, of everyone, forever.

It is important. It does matter.

You matter.

You do not get to act like you are special because of this though.

This issue is now closed, but do not think it prevails you exceptional right to be special.

I wanted to shove this concept of value and the true material that exists in us, accentuating and affirming the drive we have to believing that we are of value, down the throat of every self-serving prick who would view with clean conscience as despondence and drudgery occurs every day, regardless of intent or merit.

Then I had a chance to put my money where my mouth is.

I really I hope I did as well as my ideals make it seem I would too.

Little kids really can be the best some days. They can remind us of moments before we allowed our eccentricities and preconceptions to guide us more than the simple desire to enjoy ourselves and to try whatever we can imagine possible.

I do not want to get into a debate over when and why that process occurs, but often I wonder how much help the transition really is. Discuss that on your own time.

I am not used to teaching young children. I usually teach collegiate or collegiate-guided students. Being a graduate-level chemist, it should not baffle anyone why my more common age range is closer to eighteen than eight.

I would be lying though to say this experience has been anything less than one of the best choices I ever made, and if I had to specify how I say that the third best part of who I am is that I got to teach special education children, these kids might be the group I have come to admire the most.

My second, third, and fourth graders are a true joy to my life. More than anything, they are funny and laugh at everything – reminds me of my own sensibility towards maturity.

This is the age when questions and the answers to those questions start to matter and remain with them for the rest of their lives. I do not need philosophical treatises for that – psychologists have done extensive work to show it is true.

One of the many things we might remember first about that time is our first crush.

I remember mine a little too well – she was my best friend. She’s even my first memory. I love her – I always will. Maybe one day I will have enough of self-spite to give up all the hate I have to finally see her grave. I am not sure I will stop hating myself for long enough though and I probably would not even known where to start…point being, this did not end well.

I am not trying to say everyone’s first real attempt to understand emotional attachment has to be spectacular. I have a feeling most, when people look back on it, would say they remember their childhood fondly, or at least on good terms, even a first crush. I think I am the exception, and I am very willing to admit that is probably my issue more than any fault of anything considering my current age, emotional and mental development level, and my general psychological maturity, or lack thereof.

Yet sometimes we can help people see what it is all worth, even those of us with less than stellar records, and while it is unlikely that we get this chance with peers, mainly out of our own stubbornness, children can be really helped.

Short end to a long introduction, a fourth grader is in love with me.

Oh goodie…

Being a young male (and believe me, I am the only thing with a Y-chromosome in this place) I was told bluntly how to deal with this as apparently it was a definite to happen: Do not deal with this.

From the simplest perspective, this is definitely a good method.

Face it, most kids have a crush on their teachers because the teacher is someone different. I am sure if I ate potatoes and corn for seven years, even lima beans would appear candy-like.

Then you eat those lima beans twice…never mind, the potatoes were by no means killing me. Starch me up!

Of course you do not really acknowledge a grade school crush, because no matter how mature it is, it is a grade school crush. Perhaps the real big piece of advice, if I write it all the way out, comes with this clause: So long as the student does not directly try to act upon and insert themselves into your life, crushes will go away, so better to just not deal with it.

This is correct. How many times in our own lives did we have a small crush on someone and we never verbalised anything past fantasy thoughts, and the feelings and fantasy eventually just went away?  Even kids stray from that kind of confrontation.

My problem occurred when it got verbalised, and I had to acknowledge that the “radius of audible interaction” included about two dozen people, including another teacher or two.

I was only partially awkward about it by the way – go me!

I was not mad of course – dumbfounded most accurately describes how I felt. Yet I did know, not at all to my liking, that I was going to have to do the extra work in assuring that I could still work with the student, and that boundaries could be properly set. 

Like I said, it is so much better when not verbalised.

Of course I did everything I was supposed to and in my personal opinion I supplied to right answer to the question ‘Do you want to be the one to talk to the student?’ of which I can assure, I would never say anything other than an affirmative.

In case you wonder if I was awkward before, I am sure I did a bang up job here too.

The conversation always begins with asking the student to reiterate what was said or done in their own words. I admit, I feel sorry for the person who ends up with this student one day in life. They are not only tough, but rightly brilliant and manipulative.

 I can see why they were attracted to me. ;-)

After that comes the “adult time” where you do our best to put the meaning of certain phrases, actions, or relations in context for appropriate social interactions. Considering I was in the room, I am sure NOTHING of expertise was present, just to set the record straight.

I often wonder how much of this ever penetrates the mind of any child.

I never cared much for adults talking when I was a kid. By eight I was already well aware that most adults were my intellectual and ethical inferiors, and I admittedly took no end in joy of tormenting them with every possibility. I would like to believe most kids look more fondly on the words of adults, but I am not sure even they believe words we known are moot in comparison to the issue at hand.

I do hope something got across, because I do not want to be the one who is going to be the deciding factor for good development in this child’s life. Lord knows, that does not bode well for the student.

I added my piece.

I talked about what care and affection meant to me.

I talked about how I cared for the student, but in the same way I cared for every student, and every person.

I talked about how I had flown across two continents to help my friend just because they asked for help. I talked about how I worried about everything and anything when I thought my daughter was in trouble. I talked about the sacrifices I had made for people I barely knew, and to the extent I had gone even for them.

I talked about knowing you will never get anything back from relationships and from friendships, but caring more about the person, inherent and worthy, than anything else. Even yourself.

I said how anyone who truly cared for me would see that my care for everyone on this planet, even those who probably could not mind me less, was my most important care.

I talked about how if you truly wish to care for someone, you need to believe in their greatest care too, because you need to be able to understand one another.

I talked about how understanding me, as I am, means you understand I may never treat anyone any different, or be impartially in relation to any person.

I hope I broke her heart as easy as you can.

Perhaps I am pedantic and a little too idealistic for my own good, but I did not teach anyone some stupid nonsense about ‘You will know when it is right.’ or ‘You just need to wait to understand.’ or, the worst possible, ‘You just do not get it yet.’

I am sure if you asked the student, they would tell you they get it.

I do not mean to give full credence to a childish crush – I mean to say it is a stage of development. It should not be criminalised. Childhood cannot be overlooked. It is the preparation for adulthood.

We need to treat it as such.

I should sit down and talk about how I feel, and what it means to me – that is what adults should do.

I respect every person enough to say the full extent of my feelings.

I do not like most people. I find the normal human concerns so pathetic, drone, and inconsiderate that the overall conceit makes me sick to my stomach.

As I said, I do not believe we have “earned” a thing, and the way people value themselves and each other worries me to no end.

I may leave this life, much sooner than I want, believe me, but I am not okay with this being how I leave. I have lived a life where I have never believed I was wanted – I refuse to accept this fate for most people.

Someone who loved me would need to accept that as my greatest care, and be willing to live with me on that term.

Whatever that meant to me or asked of me was unimportant. I knew a long time ago I could be more than my moments of loneliness.

I can be someone who decides to make moments for others, even if I will always be shaky making them for myself.

If you call this Other-focused, fine to your perspective, but I have always known my relationship to my 7 billion wide family, and I have never believed more than the notion that if something can inspire love within you, whatever it is, it deserves to be protected and remembered.

I want this to of course be more than action – I want this to be a paradigm. Priorities are what change people, and if we look at relationships as ways we truly live with each other, and help express the value in each other, rather than “own” each other or get what we want, I truly think a better world can come from those thoughts.

I hope I convinced the student of one thing I said more than any:

You do matter to me. I would do anything I could to always be there. I would do that for anyone. I cannot be just for one person. I help everyone. I want you to be happy, and I promise that only if everyone is happy, can you even hope to be happy. I will always think of and be there when you need me. I would do that for anyone. You can do that too.

So, did I do well? No idea.

I hope this is more to the student than just another learning moment. I hope the student believes me, and wants all relationships to mirror this goal. I hope everyone does the same.

I know at the end I was given a hug and thanks for being “…the best person I know.”

Yeah…I cried. Hard.

Yet again, I fear my students did more for me than I them.

With any luck I hope I started someone down a road of caring more for the involuntary, the unconsidered possibilities you generate when people can believe you care. I hope I made an impression of some worthwhile meaning to human life and what love really can be.

At very minimum, I feel like I set a good standard about how to demonstrate a proper way for the first person one person loved can love them back, and they will hopefully always believe that in a way that is more affirming and fulfilling than mere comfort.

Even if in all 25 years, that is all I did right, at least I did one thing right.