RMC

It was quite the day. As it is I am sure for many of you. I personally have had a walk down memory lane today.

Memories stored in the recesses of my mind are now at the fore-front. I have rummaged through some files and found pictures that remind me of days long past.

Some of those days, well, a lot them were and some still are lost in the fog of war that embattles my soul.

I have never been a doctor. I never have wanted to be a doctor. That’s why I didn’t go to school to be a doctor. I had never even heard of the notion of playing doctor until someone else, had mentioned it to me. Even still now, as a reflect, I try to understand where a person might get that notion from? Facts just are facts. As much as I didn’t really enjoy High School I didn’t hate anyone. I very much so disagreed with many who I went to High School with. Yet I  came to find that in my own clique, which was basically just me, I got by. Because for some reason I had a tough time understanding how the world worked. So I played sports; and played a few of them well. Some more so than others. Because I was not just fast, but my acceleration, was pretty impressive.

Initially out of High School I wanted to join the Marines. It was an idea imprinted in my mind from a Marine recruiter that visited my High School in the late 1990’s.

I got the inclination, as I think back to it, to join and serve my country and be a part of a team from that very Marine himself while I was at school. As I talked with the man and told him I’d think about it, he looked almost desperate to sign me up then and there. I should have listened to the Marine. He was an African American, and everyone in my school, was caucasion with the exception of maybe two or three individuals who were in a special program at my school.

To be a part of a brotherhood that fought to protect the freedoms and inalienable rights of all Americans. Americans on both sides of the aisle in Congress, Americans from every street, city, town, state and home. Upon my return home I wanted to join my State Police Department.

After that I wanted to join what many would consider a partisan Federal Law Enforcement Agency in Virginia. I wanted to help serve and protect not just abroad but at home as well. I wanted to keep people safe to dream the dreams a progressive society would dream.

I remembered reading my history books in High School and knowing of the original sin America had committed from years long past that still reverberate to this very day. The sin of enslaving another human being. The sin of actually feeling like owning another human being as a piece of property was, “normal.” The atrocious notion sends shivers down my spine as I think of it even now.

That brother would turn against brother and shed blood against Northern Aggression or what the South perceived as basically a centralized government and it’s taxes. Or how the North would consider the South as rebellious and demonize them for their way of living and the South’s own rights and own ways of living themselves; in trading goods from the large plantations the South had.

Now, decades long gone are those bitter issues. As so it may seem. Yet some still grapple with those very basic principles to this very day. Today is a day of reflection.

Today is D-Day. The day American troops in 1944, June 6 saw it. What the cost of Democracy was: the deaths of many men’s lives from every corner of the Nation. The idea of the Democracy we had established for ourselves with the blood of our forefathers was in jeopardy. There was a great evil dwelling in hatred and mass murders across the sea. As it grew, a madman stood and was set on conquering the world while the masses in Germany stood in awe at the power of Adolf Hitler’s military and radical thought. (And not the good radical.)

The United States stormed the beaches of Normandy over eighty years ago now today. I personally knew someone who fought in World War II. Upon his return, he was alive (obviously) and enjoyed his family and shared his life and laughter with those around him. He had been across the world for over two years. Victory had been had with the tragic but necessary bombs that were to bring an entire country back to reality.

That reality was one of peace and one where Democracy was the cobblestone of innovation and every-day life. Democracy was the foundation that layed down the brick work for some to pursue the, “American Dream.” To go to the school of your choice, to worship or not worship the god of your own choosing, to move freely from state to state as well as have an opportunity to make money and support a family in peace and tranquility.

In America the freedoms afforded us were bought with blood. The blood of our forefathers assured us of our freedom from Kings and Queens. The blood of Americans brought peace to the whole of Europe. Americans banded together to battle an Axis of Evil. Yet today I see the language written in many publications. And such language is permissable most definitely. Yet when you really stop to think about it, in my opinion, in every individual who lives and breathes, their lives sometimes are very different from others.

I believe it is a gift that we all don’t speak the same languages here in America. While many, or a great deal of many of those I know, believe that people’s opinions should not be their own. So what happens is that those who don’t see diversity as a gift end up classifying people. Stigmatizing them and making them feel like outcasts. There is so much vitriol for others now these days that it tears at the fabric of who we are as a society. We have a felon as one Presidential candidate, and the oldest President to ever sit in the Oval office occupying it right now.

I know we are a nation of great power. June 27, 1817, the British member of Parliament William Lamb made the statement, “the possession of great power necessarily implies great responsibility, ” during a debate. His country was in disarray and there were violent riots occurring at the time. Some over the suspension of habeas corpus; other riots over economic policies and poor harvests following the end of the Napoleonic Wars.

Indeed I believe America has a great responsibility. That belief may or may not be the right way of thinking. Yet after defeating the tyranny of Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany, where Hitler murdered millions of innocent women and children, I believe it is America’s duty to do just that very thing, which is be responsible and take accountability for our own actions. Just because of their beliefs and in how they worshiped and the god they believed in, Nazi Germany killed millions of Jewish men, women and children.

Not far from the sin of a country that murdered innocent people is the tyranny of another nation’s assault on Ukraine as I write these very words today. The fact we as a country ourselves dealt with with slavery, which I consider inhumane in the very least, the genocide of millions in Nazi Germany faced a reckoning. As did America’s original sin.

For today, I would like to thank those men and women who were so vital to us as a nation, bringing me the right to write what I want to, say what I want to and live as I so choose just as long as I don’t break the law. Even the law is subjective but one thing that we as a country grapple with today, as I am seeing, are the distortion of facts. And even now today, after all the bloodshed of war, racism seems to be prevelant. Even in 2024.

Facts are facts whether we agree with them or not. How we choose to respond defines us. I went to school to study Communications. I studied Philosophy, Sociology, English and Journalism. I love such subjects and read about those topics to this very day. I am a religious person as well.

My religion and definition of God is very different from many I know. Yet one thing I consider is that forgiveness is divine. For in nature itself, nature is very unforgiving. It is our duty and responsibility as mature adults who have seen history long gone to not let it come back to repeat itself!

The rancor of hate, it seems, has been prevalent now going over 10 years, at least. Still, I can remember trappings of such vitriol like that an American President wasn’t even, “born in this country, ” and that whole birther theory, which was finally put to rest by the very man who started it. It seems so strange now that those words were said by now someone who is a convicted felon; still running for office. It’s all you ever see in the news now.

So let me offer you this. I’ll not talk about politics anymore. I won’t. I’m just thankful America has become a nation other nations aspire to be. Or use to anyway. Today, even as I write this, women and children are dying on the other side of the world. Innocence is being shaken to the very core of our human nature. No one believes anyone is genuine anymore in their feelings.

Everyone thinks everybody has an agenda or ulterior motive and sometimes people judge others based off of who they think voted one way or the other. It’s insanity. People forget the value in the honor of a person putting their lives on the line for our freedoms. It is a virtue.

I’ll say it again. It is a virtue that one would place their lives on the line for freedom. To stand against the biggest bully of them all in Europe, Hitler, says something about the character of a responsible society. To stand against a murderous, insane, and evil person was their duty. With that being said, there is no weakness in kindness and diplomacy. The ways of thinking Americans might have is that we must project strength militarily, is understandable. We must defend ourselves and those who can’t defend themselves against tyrants, or bully’s.

We must have faith in the institutions we as a people have established. To cast doubt on a whole system based off of one’s own misgivings and experiences with that system is the trait of a totalitarian. I have faith in what my eyes see and what they don’t in heaven above. As I have faith in a God I do not see, though, I also believe in the goodness of man though we as a species are flawed in many ways.

Yet as flawed as we may be, we have a choice. The ability to make any choice has been given to us by those who have given their sweat, tears, blood and their own lives to do so. Every word of hate, every display of it, disrespects what brave soldiers missions were in defeating a fascist entity in Germany.

Those who have fallen in battle are not suckers; nor are they losers as some felon President said once, and then doubled down on. It hurts my heart. I don’t know how children nowadays process the hate that we see spew from the mouths of some of our leaders.

It is my fervent hope, though, that especially on days like today that the youth of our society get to see what true valor is and what true duty to one’s country means a person is willing to do for us as a society. Not what a person reaps as a leader just for their own personal situations or agendas. Our public health, our school systems and our children’s safety is far more important than any profit-margin or big revenues that companies covet more and more on certain presidential cycles here in America.

Yet let not us forget America’s original sin. America’s original sin was so horrible that there are some who want to re-write history books. I say leave the books alone. Banning books is not the trait of a forward thinking society. In my opinion. If youre going to change some history, but not other history, which history would people like to change? I think we all need to ask ourselves that question. Respectfully and responsibly.