It's the revelation of voices crying in the wilderness, tarnished by short-sighted simplistic solution seekers peopling our way forward with morally bankrupt demagogues, false profits and vengeful Goliaths vowing to crush all who dare to slingshot wisdom into our voting booth.
I recently received this comment: Just got home from the Organic Grocery. The flag out front was at half-mast. I asked the shopkeeper why. She said, "For the school shooting." I asked, "Which one?" She said, "I forget," checked a paper, and said "Santa Fe."
I live in St. Mary's County Maryland. We recently had one of those shootings right here at Great Mills High School, just weeks after one was prevented at nearby Leonardtown HS. In both those instances, children had access to their fathers' guns. In the one case (Leonardtown) the son's dad had a federal license to distribute guns.
As I left the store, I told the clerk they might want to fly that flag upside-down. After all, the Nation is definitely in distress.
I have loved ones whose childhood memories include drilling what to do in case of a natural disaster, like earthquakes. My childhood education was replete with, Duck and Cover, as Military Industrial Complex's K.I.S.S. educational defense against nuclear attack on school children.
Now, as Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School students Emma Gonzalez and David Hogg memorialize for us, our gullible naivete has been horribly morphed into a case of Second Amendment fraud, protecting the bottom line of gunrunners and enabling children and adults to spare families nothing, in rapid fire transformation from potential contribution, to suffocating too much innocence and too many dreams -- too soon.
On Memorial Day, as we remember those who fought, died and continue to live for, what most have forgotten: Our American Exceptionalism is our one person, one vote Democratic Republic infrastructure -- should we pass along Franklin's gauntlet, keeping it by strengthening our natural national connection to, Out of Many, One.
On 27 May 1941, Bismarck was sunk by His Majesty's British Navy, six months and eleven days before Pearl Harbor's Day of Infamy. Three months later, we imprisoned Japanese-American citizens in internment camps -- some until 1946.
On Memorial Day 2018, let us consider remembering, and celebrating, that apart from Native Americans in uniform, whether Code Talkers or not, all others, preserving, protecting and defending us, both then and now, are descendants of immigrants, believing in the united promise of the United States of America in all its hues, persuasions, preferences and splendid diversity.
Yet, enduring an encore of holiday timed gouging by Oil Company gasoline prices , seems as normal as entertaining Russia's electoral beneficiaries. So, it's immensely understandable to crave any opportunity for laughter, cookouts and alcohol numbing breaks from chaotic times -- shared with friends and family to forget, what myopic media pros insist is American life, A Doin' what Comes Naturally .
Nonetheless, the lesson is, America's dream is no destination, but a challenging journey rising to uphold this truth to be self-evident: it is our civic, as well as moral, duty to lift each other in a joint effort to share equally our Constitutional right to Freedom of Expression, whether kneeling in thanksgiving to God or in memorial of life cut down too soon .
Our Calling:
to embrace anew our band of brothers and sisters
to ban distress imposed by lesser men wallowing in deferments favoring other priorities or bone spurs iniquity
to secure the hill of harmonious ensemble, knowing when we stumble, the long line before us, will reinforce our, Land of the Free
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