Fully Present Post 50

I spent a lot of time during my years in higher education encouraging students to believe that the campus and the world itself belonged to them too and that they had an obligation to use their voices to help shape these spaces into places they can thrive in. I was simply passing on the sense of agency I gained from several of my teachers and mentors. From these early influencers, I learned that it mattered whether or not I shared my opinion. I learned that one person can make a difference. I learned that silence was consent. And I learned that if you don’t try, you have already lost.

Over the years I had to repeatedly refute arguments like: “No one is going to listen to me” or “They’re not going to change their minds no matter what I say” or “I’m just going to mind my own business” or “I don’t want to make waves”. But the argument I hate the most to this day is “I don’t have time to be bothered.”

A former professor once told me that my voice and my vote is magnified because others remain silent. A political aide confirmed to me that politicians view each letter, email, or phone call they receive as representing many more opinions than just the person who wrote in or called. She explained how important it was to hear from constituents because it gave the lawmaker a clearer picture of what people wanted. She said that people had no idea how influential their voices actually are. I recall how some lawmakers have said that it is up to their constituents to push them to do the right things. Of course, dark money has entered the scene, giving corporations and the wealthy an added advantage to push their agenda. It means that it will take more of us to push for our concerns to be heard.

Last week, I mailed a letter to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, expressing my heartfelt sentiments on current political issues. My thoughts were too lengthy to fit the allotted online email contact form, so rather than leave anything out, I went old school.

Below is the content of the letter:

January 11, 2022

Dear Senator Mitch McConnell and Senate Leaders,

I write this letter feeling dismayed, frustrated, confused, and in real fear for the future of our country.  How is it that the Republican Party has allowed itself to be taken over by a man who clearly puts his own fragile ego and personal pocketbook above our democracy?  As a student of history, I’ve watched how the Republican Party embraced this new demagogue, Trump, in much the same way the conservatives in Germany embraced Hitler, allowing lies and disinformation and scapegoating to divide that nation.  Is the Republican thirst of power so great that you are willing to burn down the country to secure it?  Or is your belief in white Christian supremacy so deeply engrained that you are willing to throw away democracy and the rule of law entirely?  To my eyes and the eyes of many in the nation, this is how it looks.  The constant lying by Fox News, Newsmax, and other conservatives in the interest of inciting violence in order to gain political power makes me genuinely worried for the future of my children and grandchildren.  A country where guns, misinformation, lies and scapegoating are promoted by leaders who know the truth leads to a violent and dangerous future for us all.  Trump Republicans are out of control, threatening elected officials from congress to school boards and everyday citizens with violence. 

The Republican political machine has eroded trust in elections, has ignored the rule of law, has become mean-spirited, and has shown itself to be cowardly in the face of a bully named Donald J. Trump. 

Your failure to impeach Trump twice when he was clearly in violation of his oath of office effectively demonstrated your Party’s willingness to make the legislative branch of government subordinate to the presidency.  This is not healthy for our nation and I believe you know it.

And now the Republican Party across the country is doing everything it can to make it more difficult for citizens to vote.  In addition, I can’t imagine how any reasonable person thinks we can have a fair election moving forward by placing partisan election officials in place who can overturn the will of the electorate if they don’t like the results.  There will be riots in the streets unlike anything we have seen.

I know you and most Republican officials know that there was no widespread voter fraud and that Trump loss the 2020 election.  And yet, your Party and your news organizations continue to lie about it in concert with Trump.  The record must be set straight for the sake of the country and our democracy.

The way forward is to become a Party with ideas that appeal to the American people, not a Party that strategizes to steal future elections.  No citizen should have to wait 9-11 hours to vote.  No citizen should be prevented from mailing in a ballot or dropping it off in a drop box.  Many citizens work and voting should be easier, not harder.  We know who our citizens are and when they are of voting age.  Why not pre-register every citizen to vote and send them a ballot directly? 

I’m writing to you and your Republican leadership in the hope that you will turn away from Trump and the destructive path your party has taken–a path away from our democracy and the rule of law and toward tyranny.  I implore you to find the courage to do what is right.  Find the courage to work for all Americans and to preserve our Constitution.  Please save our nation from men and women like Trump who desire power and wealth above all decency and humanity. Do what is your patriotic duty.  

Sincerely,

Dr. Juanita Hall

Citizen of the United States of America

I’ve been on Facebook since 2008. For most of that time, I’d describe myself as a “Facebook voyeur” content to keep up with the life events of family members, old friends, colleagues, and former students. I rarely posted much and if I did, I paid almost no attention to likes or comments. My notifications, friend requests, and instant messages got little, if any, attention for months at a time. I was on Facebook to observe, not to contribute. But that has changed since the election of Trump and the disruption of COVID-19.

I haven’t changed as a person. I’ve always been an outspoken advocate on issues of social justice, human decency, and compassion for humanity. That advocacy was expressed in my work with and on behalf of students, in my community as a volunteer, in my giving of financial resources, and in my consistent communication with political leaders. What has changed is my engagement on social media platforms.

The pandemic physically separated me from my students and colleagues. Suddenly, we weren’t having those important discussions or rallies or meetings of the mind around important social justice issues. I was no longer sitting with friends, colleagues, or students providing a listening ear to life dilemmas or encouraging the discouraged. I think the absence of a regular platform on a university campus and at academic conventions initially because of COVID-19 restrictions and then from my own retirement forced me look for an alternative outlet to continue advocating for of a better society and helping individuals navigate life. That platform became Facebook, Twitter, and now Instagram.

One of the things that became apparent was that I’m not very good at using these new tools. I’m thankful to my daughters who tutor me. This past week, my younger daughter spent a couple of hours teaching me how to use Instagram. I learned from my older daughter that I need to respond to people, so I’ve done that. However, you can’t just say anything. I got put on time a one-day suspension on Twitter for replying to Congressman Jim Jordan that his pandemic lies were killing his constituents. In the Twitter world, that bit of truth was a bridge too far.

I also learned that not everyone who sends me an instant message has good intentions. In fact, I received two scam attempts from people pretending to be someone else. The first was someone pretending to be a colleague whom I knew personally. Red flags quickly came up and I stopped responding. The second was a message from a deceased friend. I reported that person to Facebook. No surprise that there are people with bad intentions on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Among the three, I find Twitter to be the most combative, hence the phrase, “Twitter wars” is a thing. Since becoming active, I’ve found myself engaged in a couple of them: one involving a woman’s right to choose and another about vaccines. I’m disappointed by how quickly some people resort to personal attacks when their arguments fall apart.

I learned not to befriend everyone who sends a friend request. Since I am creating content that I want people to see, to increase my views, I recently put out a lot of friend requests to people with whom I have at least 40 common friends. However, I noticed that my political and social justice content has inspired what I believe to be a lot of white male “Trump” folks to make “friend” requests. I’ve ignored those requests, having once been threatened with violence by one of them. I had to unfriend that person.

As an analytical person, I rarely shy away from an argument among my “friends”. So, on occasion, I will get into a back and forth with someone on an issue I believe is important. I had to explain to my children why I bother with people who say ridiculous things. My reasoning is that I feel a duty to that person and to those who read their comment to provide an opposing viewpoint. I wouldn’t allow half-backed ideas to pass in my classrooms and I won’t scroll past them on Facebook or Twitter if the issue is important. I view challenging misinformation or specious comments as my duty to society.

The opportunity to fulfill my calling as an educator, counselor, and a social justice advocate is what continues to get me out of bed in the morning with a pep in my step. Every day, I look forward to finding creative ways to share my ideas about current events that affect our lives now and in the future. And more importantly, I’m constantly looking for ways to inspire others to take an active role in creating the kind of life and society we all want to live in.

But the truth is, I still enjoy looking at the travel pictures, the babies, the wedding pictures, the food pictures and holiday decorations. I’ve even joined a couple of BTS fan groups: BTS! Dope Old People, BTS Army Over 40, and BTSArmyMom International. However, I must confess that I’m just a little frustrated when pictures of my homegrown tangerines receive many more likes and responses than my commentary on preserving our voting rights.

This past week we recognized the first anniversary of a violent attack on our Capitol by a motivated mob of Trump supporters’ hell bent on stopping the certification of a presidential election by hanging Mike Pence and other lawmakers. By their own admission on videotape and in court, the insurrectionists claimed that they were sent to the Capitol by Donald J. Trump because they believed his claims, despite any credible evidence, that the November 2020 presidential election was stolen from him. However, I argue that it was never really about a stolen election.

In fact, there was ample evidence to the contrary that this had been a fair election, completely devoid of the level of fraud needed to overturn any electoral votes. Biden had won the popular vote by over 7 million legally cast ballots. Trump’s failure to produce evidence of fraud in dozens of courts didn’t matter. The testimonies of Republican election officials and the attorney general upholding the integrity of the election didn’t matter. Multiple audits confirming Trump’s loss didn’t matter. Even with Fox News being sued for defamation by voting machine companies and Trump lawyers losing their law licenses over filing baseless lawsuits hasn’t been enough to stop the narrative of a stolen election. These insurrectionists and their sympathizers have chosen to continue with the false narrative of a stolen election because it is too awful to admit that what they are actually reacting to is the threat of losing “their” country to white liberals, people of color, LGBTQ folks, feminists, non-Christians, and in particular, Jews.

At times like this, I turn to history, human nature, and big picture thinking to understand a problem before trying to find a way forward. History and human nature tell me that we have been here before. White men in this country like Donald Trump, Steve Bannon, Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Rudy Giuliani, Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham, Ron Johnson, and Rick Scott who are motivated by greed and power, have always been willing to limit democracy whether through legislation or violent intimidation. Our history tells us that the conservative white seat of power and wealth does not relinquish its hold on either without a legal fight or actual violence. And since the founding of this nation and even beyond the Civil War, we have been fighting to reach the ideal that all men are created equal as set forth in our Constitution. It’s been a bloody and very rocky road with conservative white males in power fighting against the progress of women and minorities each step of the way. And they have always used fearmongering and inflammatory rhetoric to stir up insecure “Christian” whites to do their violent dirty work.

The presidency of Barrack Obama was a sign to those old school conservative white Americans that they were in danger of losing their control and supremacy over what they considered “their” country. Donald Trump merely said out loud what was etched in the minds of too many insecure white people: that the opportunities, wealth, and control of this nation belongs to them and “those outsiders” were trying to steal “their” country away from them. The insecure and largely uneducated white masses who identified as conservative white Christians listened and then clothed themselves in an American flag, calling themselves patriots, as they deny the humanity, dignity, and Americanness of people of color, LGBTQ folks, feminists, and non-Christians. They seek to preserve a nation that was never great for citizens other than ambitious rich white men. And in truth, it was never really all that great for them either, but at least they weren’t outsiders. They are “real” Americans.

It is no coincidence that the Republican Party has successfully stacked the Supreme Court in their favor, failed twice to impeach Trump despite clear evidence of his guilt, and that some voted not to certify the 2020 election. We should all note with concern how Republicans have thwarted every effort to limit gun regulations while right-wing commentators and lawmakers elevate a person like Kyle Rittenhouse to hero status. They need their army ready and willing to perpetrate violence and according to a recent poll, they have succeeded. It is becoming clear that the attempt to overthrow the election was planned by a growing number of Republicans in the White House, in Congress, and in other places such as Fox News. I believe they intended to use the rally and the insurrection as their first blow. However, it didn’t succeed.

In fact, it had the opposite effect as millions of Americans, like me, watched the event in horror and laid the blame squarely at the feet of President Trump. Attempts by Republican congressmen and rightwing media to blame others or to downplay the event have largely failed except among those insecure white folks. The almost laughable narrative that the election was stolen and that there was no insurrection on January 6th is just the continuation of a cover for the Republican Party to continue to try to thwart democracy by suppressing voting rights in Republican held states.

Our democracy is in actual danger. The civil rights gained by people of color, feminists, LGBTQ people, and non-Christians are being threatened. And they are being threatened by wealthy and powerful conservative white men who are determined to hold onto their ill-gotten gains through legislation upheld by their stacked courts and by creating an army of scared white Christian terrorists whom they have convinced that “their” country and their value as white people is being stolen from them. Ironic, given that their ancestors brutally stole land, labor, and human lives to secure their position in the first place. But of course, they also want to erase that bit of U.S. history.

Given this reality, it should come as no surprise that no Republicans are in favor of the new voting rights legislation. They are aware that they can’t win on their policies and ideas of white Christian supremacy in a multicultural society, so they will keep as many of “them” from voting as possible or legally overturn results they don’t like. If these tactics fail, they will once again incite their misinformed, insecure, gun-toting white conservative Christians to violence. This is where we are.

At this point, it is up to the Department of Justice to prosecute the laws that are already on the books that make election tampering, fraud, dereliction of duty, and inciting an insurrection illegal. Section three of the Fourteen Amendment actually bars elected officials who engage in insurrection or give aid and comfort to insurrectionists from holding office or running for office. It is our responsibility to pressure the Attorney General do his job. It is also up to those who are being defamed by the lies used in service to these white male conservatives to file defamation lawsuits against them like Dominion did.

The 2022 mid-term elections have never been more important. Securing a larger majority in the House and Senate is the only way to ensure our democracy, the rule of law, and continued progress toward civil rights. If we are not careful, we will no longer have representation in our government and the laws governing this nation will once again become discriminatory and oppressive, favoring white Christian male heterosexuals with money and screwing the rest of us again.

It’s a given that being human means that each passing year will have both good times and bad. However, I’d say that 2021 was different. It was a far more turbulent ride riddled with a constant barrage of fearful moments, frustrating moments, angry moments, sad moments and a brief reprieve of happy moments. I’m honestly not too optimistic that 2022 will be much better, but how I respond to the upcoming challenges will determine whether or not I have any regrets.

There were some powerful problems facing our nation and our family in 2021. Among the national problems were the ongoing pandemic, the January 6th insurrection, the effects of climate change. We were able to see light at the end of the tunnel when a vaccine was rolled out. We got double vaccinated and then got boosted. However, Republican politics, misinformation, and conspiracy theories denied our country a collective victory over Covid-19 and opened the door for variants. The January 6th Trump inspired insurrection shocked us and then frustrated us when Republicans refused to convict him in the Senate for his attempt to overthrow a fair a free election. Trump’s lies ushered in a sustained attack on our democracy using Republican run state legislatures to pass anti-democratic election laws. And as if this wasn’t enough, we experienced the dangerous effects of climate change with draught, fires, and tornadoes. The national turmoil happened in tandem with the challenges our family faced in 2021.

For starters, my husband’s lung cancer returned. He underwent another surgery, followed by 38-radiation treatments in conjunction with chemotherapy. Even as I write this, we are still dealing with the physical and emotional toll from that challenging course of treatment. It is emotionally taxing to witness the person you love in constant pain, especially when there is little to nothing you can do to mitigate it. I thought the world was cruel when in the midst of this cancer recurrence, my grandson was born a month early and my second daughter was hit with a severe case of Bell’s Palsy. I spent a lot of time praying and a lot of energy trying to be positive and encouraging despite my internal fears. And sadly, a few family members, dear friends, personal heroes, and national icons passed away in 2021.

But there were causes to rejoice in 2021 as well. My husband is still here and will begin a two-year maintenance treatment to prevent the cancer from returning. My grandson James Edward is happy, healthy and so handsome. My daughter has regained much of the movement in her face. In the midst of all this trauma, I retired on July 1st. That turned out to be a joyful and wise decision. I held my breath as I got caught up on all my pandemic-delayed medical exams, including a colonoscopy, mammogram, PAP Smear Test, eye exam, dental exam, dermatology exam, and kidney exam. Even though I desperately need to lose weight, I didn’t have any negative results. And finally, my daughter-in-law started work as a doctor at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOPS), ironically working in the neo-natal ward. She also passed her medical board exams. And on a national level, we breathed a sigh of relief when former police officer Derek Chauvin was convicted for the murder of George Floyd. And we should all be satisfied that many of the January 6th insurrectionist were brought to justice, although the master minds and instigators remain to be held accountable for their crimes by the too slow Department of Justice.

While I am glad to see the end of 2021, for the first time in my life, I’m not too optimistic about 2022. I feel like 2022 will also be a year of struggle. We will struggle to get my husband back to good health and pain free. And I will struggle to do my part to help preserve and defend our democracy, the planet, public health, and our basic rights. I will be launching the Better Human Project in conjunction with Inclusion Media Group, writing my weekly blog, commenting on social media sites, supporting Democratic candidates for the House and Senate, writing to elected officials and the Department of Justice, and doing my part to help end this pandemic.

However difficult 2021 was, I got through it without regret. I attribute that victory to time spent in reflection, mediation, prayer, planning and my pen. And I am determined to do the same this year so that win or lose, I will also get through 2022 without any regrets.

I want to start this Better Human reflection on inclusion by acknowledging human nature. I believe that there are only a handful of people in the world who deliberately set out to hurt and harm others. And if we are paying attention, those psychopaths and sociopaths among us reveal their antisocial tendencies, allowing us to wisely steer clear of them. Unlike these rare individuals, the rest of us have varying levels of empathy that prevent us from intentionally hurting others.

But we do hurt others. And most of the harm we inflict on our fellow human beings stems from either our attempts at self-preservation or human error. For example, when I was in my thirties, I was working in a department where I was the only person of color. A few colleagues in the department were throwing a baby shower for a pregnant colleague with whom I was very friendly. However, I was not invited to the baby shower. I was hurt by the obvious exclusion and asked our department head about it. The official explanation was an oversight, but the same thing happened a total of three more times and each time was meant with profuse apologies. I understand that these were not psychopaths hellbent on hurting my feelings. These were human beings conditioned by our American history to not include me. Exclusion makes minorities either hyper-visible or hyper-invisible. True inclusion requires a change in mindset.

Today, many Americans have fallen victim to psychopathic leaders who effectively fuel their need for self-preservation. This time, that empathy silencer, self-preservation, is rooted in fear rather than the greed that haunts our history. School board meetings are filled with white Americans struggling with the reality of U.S. history because they feel empathy for their children’s feelings. They understand the uncomfortable feeling of white guilt and they desperately want to shield themselves and their children from that trauma. They are terrified that learning about the historical hurt and harm inflicted upon women, people of color, LGBTQ people, and persons with disabilities by individual and state-sponsored exclusion will damage their children’s view of themselves and their nation. Misguided parental groups like Moms for Liberty are behind a push to make it illegal to teach the true history in our schools. They are literally using words like diversity and inclusion and white privilege to signal lessons they don’t want their children to hear.

Perhaps without realizing it, they are giving cover to white nationalists like Trump and others. Denying a history of exclusion paves the way to blame minorities for their problems and low status. It is possible that these protesting parents fail to realize that the Trump campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again” only resonates for those who were included in the American dream. As the nation is living with the legacy of exclusionary practices, these parents wrongly want to hide the truth that can contextualize our current situation and therefore pave the way for satisfactory solutions. They instead want to protect their fragile emotions. I say no.

It is time to acknowledge that self-preservation in the form of greed was at the root of Indian genocide, black slavery, and the oppression of women. At the founding of this nation, white males subverted any healthy empathetic impulses by readily accepting the notion (from psychopaths) that Indians were savages, that blacks were sub-human, and that women were childlike. Convince people that LGBTQ people are immoral and people with disabilities are incompetent, and society will allow for all manner of discrimination, exploitation, and mistreatment.

The history they wish to hide is that white males and their families gained wealth and power by excluding women and minorities from decision-making, ownership, citizenship, voting, education, and jobs. It made sense that if you eliminate the competition using a legal system of violence to exploit labor, steal land, rape black women, deny opportunity, and kill with impunity that these things will make you the winner in the game of life. Any reasonable person would call this “ill-gotten” gain. Trump and his supporters know that if they can hide this truth, then they can move on, retaining all they have accumulated guilt-free while covertly maintaining systems of exclusion.

I think it is accurate to surmise that these parents wrongly believe that their children cannot handle the truth that people who came before them did some pretty terrible things and that those actions had lasting negative effects on groups of people living today. They sell themselves short and their children short if they refuse to realize that their empathy will be satisfied if they face the truth and work to do better. That is what practicing inclusion is about.

Inclusion is about recognizing that doors of opportunity were closed for a very long time and that many people were so accustomed to those closed doors that they 1) never prepared for them to open; 2) don’t know how to walk through them and 3) are terrified by the mystery of what’s on the other side of the door. Therefore, inclusion requires a proactive approach, not a passive one. It means taking people by the hand and helping them to walk through open doors. It also means reminding people who have always been able to walk through open doors that the same doors remain open to them. Inclusion doesn’t mean removing people from the table, it means building a bigger table. Parents and white nationalists need to learn this lesson.

Better humans have to “practice” inclusion by continuously noticing the previously excluded. Who is missing from the invitation list? Whose voice is not being heard in this discussion? Whose story is not being told? Who is not applying for this job and who is not getting an interview? The answer to solving our exclusion problem is never more exclusion, but intentional inclusion. And that takes practice.

It has taken a fair amount of self-observation and self-reflection for me to understand and accept myself, particularly when it comes to the subject of helping others. I am neither entirely selfish nor entirely charitable. In Sunday School and scouting, I learned that helping those in need is a virtuous act and a humanitarian responsibility. It also feels good. At school and work, I learned to discern between helping and enabling. I also learned that helping can be unreasonably costly for me and my family and so I adopted the Biblical proverb that “charity begins at home”. The airlines gave me another good rule to follow. They say, “Once you have secured your own air mask, then you can assist those around you.” With these principles in place, finding the right balance for me beyond securing myself and helping my family was something I stumbled upon.

I suppose my approach to helping others is rooted in a part of my personality that is highly empathic. I discovered that I am deeply affected by human suffering to the point that I experience empathy in my body. For example, when my mother broke her foot, my foot swelled up so badly that she carted me off to the doctor for an examination. He diagnosed my ailment as “sympathy pain” and my foot reverted back to normal size almost immediately. My involuntary responses to the physical ailments of family and friends occurred frequently into my late adolescence, prompting my mother to tell me to completely abandon any notion of entering the medical field. Not surprisingly, my response to the emotional suffering of others wasn’t much better, particularly when that suffering related to injustice, suspense, and acts of violence. My kids joke about which movies I can and cannot watch because of my acute emotional responses. One example was during the opening scene of “Saving Private Ryan”. I was crying so hard that my friend suggested I leave. Over the years, I have left many movie theaters, mid-screening, to collect myself or to completely avoid the most emotionally difficult parts. As I’ve gotten older, my tolerance for emotionally taxing stories has gotten worse to the point where I need to know the end of a story before I can read the book or watch the movie.

The point is that my high level of empathy greatly influences my approach to helping others. If I cannot tolerate watching fictional injustice, suspense, violence, and human suffering, imagine the depth of my agony in real life. When I see those things happening to people, I have to do something to help. The only emotional relief I get comes from knowing that I am doing what I can to relieve the human suffering before my eyes. However, I also learned that my approach to helping is a product of recognizing my own limitations.

While I am highly empathetic, I realize that I am also highly judgmental. When I was in my early twenties, I thought I could help young women in juvenile detention. I visited the detention center several times and had conversations with the young women being detained for a variety of serious crimes. I quickly discovered that I was too angry and disappointed by their warped thinking and willingness to harm others that I abandoned the notion that I was the right person to help them. I realized that my generosity didn’t extend to people who harmed themselves or others. I discovered that my heart wasn’t that big after all. Thankfully, there are other people who have the level of compassion needed to help others find redemption, healing, and rehabilitation. I have to admit that I greatly admire the doctors and nurses who continue dealing with unvaccinated COVID-19 patients with patience and compassion these days. I couldn’t do it.

I’m also limited by an acute fear of heights, fire, water, and speed. I’ve never been the dare devil who rides roller coasters, rock climbs, surfs, mountain bikes or jumps out of planes for pleasure. I learned early on that even horseback riding was a bit too much for me. In Costa Rica, I refused the opportunity to zipline, opting to miss the beautiful forest view. In Hawaii, I sat in the boat while my family enjoyed snorkeling off the island of Kauai. And in Italy, I remained seated in the boat when my companions jumped into the crystal blue water of Blue Grotto off the island of Capri. So, it’s highly doubtful that anyone would ever find me on a dangerous rescue mission when it involves confronting these fears.

On a somewhat redeeming note, I realized through a game of “This or That” that as a scaredy cat and introvert my most prominent pattern of helping people over the years has taken the form of writing a check as opposed to physically showing up to help others. I’m not the person you will find on the front lines of a disaster, distributing food, marching in a protest, or canvasing a neighborhood on behalf of a candidate. Over the years, I have done most of these things at least once or twice and quickly discovered that I much prefer behind the scenes preparations, financial donations, or even fundraising. I prefer helping by using my pocketbook, skills, and my handiwork rather than my physical presence. For extroverts and dare devils, helping likely entails very different behaviors.

The final realization about my approach to helping others has to do with a lesson many of us have learned about giving a fish versus teaching a person to fish. I find that I am an advocate of both. Giving a fish solves the immediate problem; teaching to fish deals with the elimination of the need in the long term. I’ve worked to teach my own children to fish, although sometimes I wasn’t 100% effective and they had to learn the hard way. Beyond my family, I donate to Women for Women International, various scholarship funds, and The Boys and Girls Club with the mindset that this kind of helping enables people become the best version of themselves.

However, sometimes helping others in an immediate situation isn’t about teaching anyone a lesson; it’s about mitigating immediate suffering. So, I give to Doctors Without Borders, Unicef, Children’s hospitals, and St. Jude. When a homeless person on the street is asking for money, I tend to give it. He or she isn’t looking for a lesson on how to get a job and become a productive citizen. That person is simply trying to survive through mental illness and/or substance abuse and an inadequate public assistance system. I try to make it a point to give without judgment. In this regard, my husband taught me a different approach by refusing to give money and offering food instead so that the money can’t be spent feeding an addiction. He has a point. He will go out of his way to purchase a sandwich and take it to that person instead. Admittedly, his approach is better than mine.

I didn’t realize that the desire to help others wasn’t a universal human trait. It took a while for me to realize that I was one of those people who could only find fulfillment in my career if it entailed helping others. My parents passed down the notion that it was more important to make a lot of money and then help people on the side. My mother was known for her volunteerism in the community. However, it was only after her death that I pursued my second career as an educator and counselor. My second career made me much happier than my corporate career in finance despite the significant pay cut. I don’t dispute that some people make a ton of money and give a lot of money to charity. However, only a few actually give in proportion to their wealth and without ego-boosting strings attached. I imagine a lot of injustice, pain, and suffering in this world would be significantly reduced if the wealthiest among us actually cared enough to contribute what is needed. They have the means, but not the will. The reality is that many of them don’t even want to pay their fair share in taxes.

Better humans help others. The method may differ according to our personalities and circumstances, but the virtue and humanitarian responsibility of helping our fellow human beings is what better humans are compelled by empathy and conscience to do.

I’m amazed at how early children grasp the concept of fairness. It almost seems like our brains are hardwired to expect it and when our sense of fairness is violated, we cry foul. Social justice is the fair treatment of all people within a given society with respect to their access to resources and services, life opportunities, law enforcement, and protection from environmental harms. Whether or not a society treats all its members fairly can be determined by observation primarily of its inputs and not necessarily of its outcomes.

I know a lot of people look at outcomes to determine whether a system is fair or not. And in many cases, desperate outcomes raise red flags about a broken distribution model. For example, a mother bakes a pie and slices it, giving each of her twins a slice. However, the twins notice immediately that one slice is much larger than the other. As expected, the child with the smaller slice complains about the unfairness. Mom has a couple choices. She can ignore the protesting child and allow resentment and frustration to fester. Or, if there is more pie, she can easily rectify the situation and add more pie to the deficit slice to make up the difference. However, if the rest of the pie is already distributed to others, she could choose to take some pie from the twin with the larger slice to even out the distribution. This last option might then anger the twin who was perfectly content with the original size of his slice. The problem lies with the imperfect distributor of the pie, not with the twins who are now feeling the uncomfortable stress of unfairness. Thankfully, someone created an equal pie slicer that allows mothers to avoid this problem. But the unfair distribution within our society still needs fixing and the solutions are contested.

Today, we are dealing with social injustice caused by an historically flawed distribution of access to resources, opportunities, placement of environmental hazards, and unfair treatment under the law. Since the beginning, the system in the U.S. favored white males with bigger slices of every variety of pie the country had to offer. White males were provided with the greatest access to education, job opportunities, land ownership, healthcare, and the ability to vote and make the laws. And they were the police of the laws they made. People of color and women were not only given crumbs from the pie but suffered major atrocities at the hands of these self-serving white men. The relative wealth of white Americans today is rooted in this unfair distribution. This is history some white conservatives hope to hide. They want to hide it because, like the twin with the larger slice, they are content with what they have and are fearful that demands for social justice threatens them with the loss of their exorbitant pie slices. This is why they prefer to push a narrative that minimizes a history of slavery, genocide, stolen lands, and state sponsored discrimination in favor of a narrative that blames the lack of social economic progress on a list of character deficits they ascribe to the victims.

The truth is that America actually has more pie available, but the white conservatives want it for themselves. Social justice or fairness demands that the country first rectify the inequity of the past distribution and then moving forward the country must provide fair access to resources, opportunities, and equal protections. Yes, I am in favor of reparations for the descendants of slaves and American Indians because it is the least this nation can do to acknowledge past wrongs. I believe social justice demands mitigating the past wrongs that continue to disadvantage those who were negatively impacted by the systematic unfairness. All Americans deserve a common starting chance in life.

That said, social justice does not necessarily guarantee equal outcomes. I think about the parable Jesus told wherein a father distributed gifts to his sons. One son invested his gift, and it grew while the other took his gift and hid it, producing nothing. The father came back and condemned the son who did nothing with what he was given and then gave more to the son who invested his gift. The point is that unequal outcomes are indicative of individual human capacity and not always an indicator of an unfair distribution. Some can make much from little and others can make nothing of a lot. Think of Oprah Winfrey and how much she made of her life using her extraordinary intelligence, talent, and energy. At the same time, there are countless stories of children who were given everything and squandered their lives. It is a mistake for conservatives and others to make an example of the few extraordinary people like Oprah Winfrey or former President Barak Obama and say that their outcomes represent the fairness of our social justice system today. They don’t.

By the same token, conservatives wrongly point to the disproportionate number of black and brown people in prison and claim that it is because black and brown people commit more crimes. They choose to ignore the fact that whites made laws to criminalize drugs, then over-policed black and brown communities, gave longer prison sentences to black and brown people, and showed leniency toward white criminal behavior. One only needs to watch the different behavior of law enforcement towards armed white suspects versus black suspects (who may not even be armed). If Kyle Riddenhouse was black, he would be dead. If the 15-year-old who just killed four classmates was black, he would be dead. America knows this to be true and yet the injustice continues.

In addition, conservates choose to ignore the fact that hopeless poverty and crime are closely intertwined. It is human nature to ignore laws in favor of survival. Think of how many black and brown children grow up poor and without the love and guidance of fathers because of an unfair criminal justice system. However, the outcome of this unfair criminal justice system plays right into the conservative narrative of dangerous black and brown people. A thoughtful person simply needs to example the root of the system to discover that years of social injustice has yielded the result we experience today.

Better humans must take the lead in exposing the inequitable distribution of resources, opportunities, and law enforcement by concentrating on the broken distribution points and not only looking at the outcomes. Black Lives Matter is about looking at these distribution points where the pie continues to be distributed unevenly. This is precisely why conservatives hate them so much. This is why they fear critical race theory and “The 1619 Project”. History is not on their side. The facts counter the conservative narrative that desperately wants to hide the system of social injustice. Better humans ask questions like: Who gets access to education, healthcare, clean water, clean air, voting, and job opportunities? Who is subjected to harmful chemicals, excessive policing, poorly resourced schools, longer prison sentences, and longer voting lines?

Demanding social justice means demanding reparations for past inequities and demanding equal protection under the law and access to resources and opportunities moving forward. It’s only fair and any child can tell you that.

I am convinced that bigotry is at the root of human mistreatment of other humans. Bigotry is intolerance of other people based solely on their group membership. It is an emotional rather than a rational dislike of a whole category of people. I’m pretty sure that bias and bigotry are both rooted in our evolutionary need for connection and survival. We seem to naturally prefer those who are like ourselves in significant ways such as ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation, nationality, or even love for a particular football team. It stands to reason that on an evolutionary level, humans reject those whose differences appear to threaten their connections and survival as a group. Perhaps bigotry is a first cousin to rivalry.

It is feasible that bigotry and rivalry are actually closer than cousins; perhaps they are brothers born from the same parents: tribalism and survival instinct. Our species has survived until now by banning together in tribes and fighting other tribes for control over land and scarce resources. Human history is a story about conflict, one group pitted against another as rivals who come to hate each other by concentrating on differences enough to kill, oppress, and enslave other humans. In the past, human leaders exploited these perceived differences using loyal and gullible members of their own tribes as pons to secure control over land or other resources needed for survival.

Today, the majority of leaders are motivated by personal economic gain and political domination, not the literal life and death survival of their tribe. And unfortunately, the most loyal and gullible pons who are get caught up in the dehumanizing lies about other human beings outside their political or religious tribe become ruthless killers. Bigotry is a powerful emotional tool, triggered only by immoral leaders. The FBI says such pons have been “radicalized”. We’ve watched this play out in the Middle East and Northern Africa and now it is here.

In the U.S., it has become painfully clear that new tribes have emerged along political lines with one tribe in particular looking to dominate the entire country. Their leaders have made this a question of survival around certain questions: Who will decide the moral direction of the population? Who gets the job opportunities? Who gets to make the rules? Who gets to decide right from wrong? Who gets to enter our borders? The young men in Charlottesville, chanting “Jews will not replace us” says it all. The insurrection was a warning.

Personally, I prefer sports rivalries over political ones. Sports is about trophies and bragging rights. Many of us were once willing to allow sports to satisfy our basic tribal rival instincts. On game day, we wore our colors and openly hated on the rival team. Things could get heated, but people seldom died over the rivalry. The Olympics was a good proxy for national rivalry for a while. But some leaders have abandoned sports as a satisfying substitute for tribal rivalry because the personal payoff wasn’t high enough. However, they need pons to do their bidding.

In our nation, we are reverting to a dangerous kind of tribalism that has less to do with sports, but more to do with politics. A few power-hungry republicans decided that having a black president was a bridge too far and decided to become an aggressive tribe, first destroying political compromise, then dehumanizing democrats as evil pedophiles and baby killers who are communists. They allowed a “strong man” to take over their party in order to create a tribal army. Trump republicans have become increasingly bold in their willingness to outright steal elections after stacking the courts. And now they are showing a willingness to take up arms against those who oppose them.

The problem is that too many people allow themselves to be pons. They have bought into the unfounded fears stoked by these greedy and power-hungry leaders who need them to wage their wars. These media and political leaders need tribal conflict to make money and to gain or maintain power. So, every day we see them stoking the fire, getting people riled up, because igniting bigotry is a surefire way to get people to act aggressively against others whom they now view as a threat. They think they are patriots, but they are not. They think they are preserving a nation when they are tearing it down.

The bigotry running rampant in our nation today is dangerous. If not curbed, it will surely lead to violence in the streets. Better humans will tap into their ability to reason and to overcome the instinct to automatically hate people with opposing viewpoints. Better humans will recognize that we don’t need bigotry as a motivator to vote for people, we need good sense and accurate information. Better humans will challenge bigotry, will call out leaders who provoke it, and stick to sports to fulfill their need for tribal rivalry.

I have unconditional love for those who share my blood line. I think this kind of love is baked into us as human beings. Maybe its some kind of biological imprinting. That doesn’t mean I don’t recognize family members for who they are. They could be horrible, hurtful and even dangerous human beings that we need to cut ties with for safety reasons. However, I discovered that this emotional love persists anyway because I never ceased loving my own father who had been a violent alcoholic who traumatized our family. To deal with my feelings in a safe way, I had to establish clear boundaries around our relationship. These lasted until his death in 1989 and I was the only one of his three children who could say goodbye to him without regret. In the process of loving my deeply flawed dad, I learned a powerful lesson about humans and blood line love. First, I learned that even the most depraved human has some redeeming qualities to offer and second I learned that blood line love becomes emotional poison if denied and unexpressed.

So, during the disappointing circumstances that lead to my divorce in 1996, I sat my three adolescent children down and told them that they were biologically preconditioned to love their father for their entire lives no matter what he had done to hurt our family and that I wanted them to preserve that relationship for their own mental and emotional health. The relationship they maintained with their father was up to them and I would support it. To this day, I am thankful for that wisdom and understanding of blood line love as my children have enjoyed and continue to enjoy a healthy relationship with their dad. I’ve come to see for myself that the love and support of two dads (biological and step-dad) is a definite plus in their lives, especially because we don’t fight for attention, affection, nor control. We are able to keep our love for the children at the center of our relationship. Love for my family in the sense of emotional attachment comes naturally. But love of others outside my family is entirely different. Brotherly love or loving ones neighbor is a decision.

I find it easy to love people who like me, agree with me, and encourage me. I even find it easy to love total strangers. But the other folks–those who get on my nerves, hurt people, and destroy everything in sight are difficult to love. However, I take to heart the lessons from Jesus on loving my neighbor as myself and on loving my enemies. The key is not to expect the same emotional attachment I feel with my family because it does not exist. What does exist is a conviction that each person is God’s creation, each is a human being possessing both good characteristics and flaws. Jesus acknowledged human weakness and how God loves us anyway. So, I’ve come to realize that loving others isn’t about how deserving they are, nor is it about developing or maintaining an emotional connection. It is solely about how I treat others.

For me, being a better human who loves others means that I treat other human beings in the way I want to be treated: with compassion, thoughtfulness, and understanding. It means that I act with consideration, defend humanity, speak hard truths tactfully, and offer assistance based on our basic human needs. Peace and silence are not love. So, loving others does not mean that I ignore justice. It does not mean that I don’t hold people accountable. It does not mean that I ignore rude and destructive behaviors. And it most definitely doesn’t mean I stay silent in the face of dangers to humanity itself. Brotherly love is an action word, not a feeling word.

These days, a lot of humans are making it particularly difficult to love them. They act selfishly, refusing to wear masks in public or to get vaccinated. Believing lies about a stolen election from a morally bankrupt former president, they stormed the Capital on January 6th. Convinced that their white skin makes them superior to other human beings, they threaten violence and enforce discrimination. And the most difficult to love these days are the people who profess Christianity but have become the nastiest, most intolerant, hateful, oppressive, and stingy human beings on the planet. But being a better human means loving them despite their crazy. It means fighting for the best interest of their humanity and ours.

My way of loving these difficult humans is to speak the truth as I understand it without cussing them out, calling them awful names, or threatening them with violence. Admittedly, I have to stop myself from hoping they get what they deserve. I leave that judgement in the hands of the Almighty.

If we could all be better humans who love humanity we would experience greater generosity, kindness, thoughtfulness, and empathy because of an understanding that we are all humans living in this world together.