By Allen Schmertzler.
I have this unsettling feeling of my being occupied. Life continues, seemingly with familiar fixings, but at the core, near the heart, not the essential physical organ, but the mythological storehouse of one’s “soul” a feeling of a hostile presence in residence ensues. It didn’t take long for seasonal goodwill to sour then morph to acidic acrimony, even before the national feel good MLK Day celebration in diversity. I almost got there in sustained bliss. President Obama gave it his all with a profound rebuttal of Trumpism and a soaring celebration of positives for his eighth and last State of The Union.
But with less than two days to frolic in those positive potentials, including Obama appointing V.P. Joe Biden to wage an American lead-from-the-front game changing war against cancer, of which Speaker of The House Paul Ryan could not manage to applaud, Fox News hosted the Death Star-Doomsday Republican debate.
Now I ache from head to toe, from inside out, with distinct worry wrinkles snaking across my facial landscape. Reactionary low information jingoistic machismo has every potential in 2016 to occupy the White House and most essential positions of government, leaving recognizable infrastructure in place, but ousting polite, compassionate, measured, rational and experienced leadership that embodies the spirit of America. American politics is threatened to become “Tibeted,” a country and culture devoid of its spirited leader and occupied by hostile forces.
My pain is not the kind one might expect from slamming a hammer accidentally on the utilitarian digit known as a thumb, nor like being a 135 pound lineman who just played in their first spring training NCAA qualifying football camp. My pain is more akin to being an idealist contemplating the definition of Humanism along with an image of the aging, country-less but peaceful Dali Lama, offering endless kindness as I sit in the first four star bakery in a gentrifying neighborhood finally peeling its urban decay skin, while hungrily awaiting the last promising freshly baked artisan slice of bread that arrives to my table burnt beyond the menu’s description of “wood fired.” It is a pain of shattering potentials not of shattering body parts. My sense is too many Americans have lost common sense patience and are ready to forsaken hope and “blow up” the baby with the bath water.
I don’t want my artisan bakery to fail, leaving me with only see-thru white bread that has no wonder. I don’t want my government to fail. I don’t want the past eight years of President Obama’s achievements repealed. I want to see strength and stability built upon the past with continued improvements, experimentation, and research and development based on facts and the best scientific information with an outreach of acceptance and kindness to all Americans and all potential Americans. I don’t want the potentiality of inspiration, kindness, compassion and peacefulness to become values refugees from our country. I want the Dali Lama back in Tibet where he belongs to lead Tibetan potentialities. I want Americans in 2016 to elect a facilitator of positives and vote to oust our occupying hostile dark forces to keep the light of potentialities lit and free us from the Tibet occupied feeling.
