It's not just Trump engineering America's funeral. Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan and Mike Pence staining both John McCain and Capitol Rotunda, confirmed mounting evidence of GOP hypocrisy - defending Trump and his Kavanaugh fix.
Too many American souls are willing conduits, victimized by political-media misinformation, but those who refuse our exceptional privilege to ensconce freedoms of speech and expression, to worship God in our own way, while not preventing others from doing the same -- freedom from want and fear, regardless of skin color or sexual preference as an exceptional gift -- drain America out of Americans.
Listening and voting are the pillars sustaining America's founding vision, but the nectar-fusing individual and collective freedom is cultivated by a mutual common good quest for life, liberty and the pursuit of, being involved in mankind -- if not kneeling to render CPR to our failing stewardship of earth and all life upon it -- then at least respecting our differences, with civil debate.
Despots like Dick Cheney and Donald Trump have not only weakened Checks and Balances, but in their massive autocratic attempt to inter Americans with oligarchy, their power grab has put the presidency on life support and accelerated funeral arrangements for our nation's vital institutions.
Notwithstanding Brett Kavanaugh's protective trumped Congressional wall, no American, of any rank, is entitled by decree, Constitution or assumed executive privilege, to interfere with America's Justice Department, obstruct FBI investigations, nor relegate education and environmental protections to a murderous bier, masquerading as divine providence.
Most of America's enemies are seeking to bury us from within, by transformation. Extremes easily program the under-informed into radicals who threaten, if not attack, pizza parlors, football players, citizens adorned in T-Shirts flagged with Puerto Rico - even professional news outlets. Such seem dead to lessons from history's leaders inciting violence, fostering world war - just seventy-seven years ago.
When extremists threaten the general populace with intolerance, demagogues rise to entomb the most vulnerable -- as in institutional trafficking of stolen refugee children.
Children are the infrastructure on which our future will survive. It is they who must resurrect from Trump/Pence rubble, the remnants of America.
The Boston Globe nor Abigail Spanberger are enemies of the people. America's enemies are those who project their aggrandizement sins onto truth-seekers, while financing and perpetuating gerrymandered districts - and those who ignore the needy to death.
For every lauded American hero, there are thousands unsung -- but like Teddy Roosevelt, immigrant Takeo entered the arena. Following in the footsteps of a father whose banana-business cargo boat was instrumental in MacArthur's evacuation from the Philippines, my father-in-law saved three family generations from racial discrimination, sexism and educational limitations -- creating a global market for citrus fruit, and with Michi raised five children who knew how to behave in restaurants -- yet delighted in sliding on the backseat of his Cadillac during the curves life throws us.
An honorable son, he endured dialysis, for the last thirteen years of his life, disconnecting only after his 102-year-old mother died.
Listening to President Obama speak at John McCain's funeral reminded me of why I voted for him. It wasn't his skin color, but his multi-cultural heritage and educational pedigree.
My artistic Asian-American wife is a loving multicultural education, but I wasn't surprised by her surprise regarding the length of Aretha Franklin's funeral. I responded, African-Americans take funerals seriously.
Back in my real estate days, I trained new agents. I guided Mabel, an African-American, through her first sale. She was so excited, too young to die -- and taught me about death at her funeral.
The absence of people like Aretha Franklin, John McCain and Takeo, instantly disappears happiness with the ugly cry: there they go, we wail -- uncomforted by, somewhere, somehow on the other side of our evolving American rainbow, there are joyous souls, faces glimmering with happy tears, cheering, here they come.
Know this: even the soul of a great nation, lost for a time, flows home, at last.
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