I wasn’t going to write a column this week. I don’t feel witty or humorous at all. The recent assassination attempt on Trump, while not totally unexpected, shocked me as I am sure it shocked you. We live in a country where violence is used when bribery, shaming, blackmail, and indicting don’t work. Violence is the go-to method for getting things done. And a lone crazy always does the job. The crazies are all loners until a few decades later, using records and information hidden until inadvertently discovered, we discover there were accomplices. Take this as a reason to look deeper into these events, far deeper than the corporate media ever will.

I love this country and its people. I traveled and lived all over and I found good people everywhere I went. As a people, we fell into a trap set for us by very rich and powerful. I must admit that I fell into this trap as well. We forget the incredibly wealthy own the news as well as all the other media and that we only see what they want us to. That is called propaganda, and it has been going on for several decades. We also forget the power of money to corrupt. That is why so many politicians become multi-millionaires before they leave office. We are seduced into a life of convenience where we don’t pay attention to those who run the country except on occasions such as elections or big events like the beginning of a war. Our bodies are softened, our minds are muddled, and our spirits contaminated by the acceptance of too much convenience.

It is often said that diversity is our strength, and this is true to a point. A powerful force often overlooked is our Constitution and the freedoms it details we are born with. We are attacked from all sides and divided into warring tribes in the name of protecting our freedom and upholding our diversity,. I don’t know about you, but I befriend many people. They are of different races and religions and they express a number of different opinions. I may hold a radically different view from many of them, but we’re able to discuss without shouting or violence. We talk in terms of evidence. None of us ever harms the other because we disagree.

Many of our national conversations lack evidence. The media excludes, muddies, and downright lies about it. As a result, most of us never get to the truth of the matter which further separates us from each other. It’s difficult to have a conversation when much of what you want to talk about is distorted, covered up, or lied about. We have the freedom to speak, that is, to say whatever we want. Remember that. Each of us has the freedom to lie, but it also means that each of us has the freedom to not listen or to debunk those lies. Therein lies the strength of freedom of speech. That’s why the chosen tool to use against our people is censorship. They say it is being used to protect us, and we all should reject this argument as it really means that we are not credited with the intellectual capacity to understand without being told. In other words, you are unintelligent. I hope you reject this completely because you are intelligent.

Incredibly wealthy and powerful individuals are taking down our country from the inside. They are working through both major parties. In order to combat this we need to be tolerant to each other and incredibly intolerant to intolerance. We must protect our freedom of speech at all costs while remembering that we also have the freedom to not listen. We must realize that are powers trying to divide us and refuse them. Most of all, we must be open to new ideas, new thoughts and willing to wait for evidence before we decide. Above all, the attempts at dividing us must not succeed for if they do, it will have huge consequences for our nation and for the world that looks to us to keep the light of freedom from going out.