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 It was August 1949, I was five, my body was black, and I did not know it; the third son of migrant parents from Keysville, Virginia, had purchased a home on the east side of Baltimore. At five years of age, my first friend was white, and he didn’t know it. Our friendship came abruptly to an end one year later when we started school; it was segregation before boys in the hood. He suddenly stopped speaking, and his friendly smile went away. I did not know why. It was my first experience with having a discouraged heart. 

On April 12, 2015, Freddie Carlos Gray Jr., a 25-year-old African American, was arrested by the Baltimore Police Department over his legal possession of a knife. While transported in a police van, Gray sustained injuries and died on April 19, 2015; his death was ascribed to injuries. 

             In 1960 I became a high school dropout. Racial taunting at Baltimore City College High School had become a phycological nightmare. Fifty-six years later, in 2016, Dedric Colvin, with a BB gun resembling a firearm, was shot by police in East Baltimore. At the time, the Police Commissioner stated that he could not wrap his head around a child leaving home with a replica of a gun. His statement betokens a total disconnect, ignorance of “Cause and Effect” within the zip codes of Baltimore. Zip codes he vowed to serve and protect. — Zip codes of repression, as written in “A Colony in a Nation” by Chris Hayes.”  

           Baltimore is not unique in its sins as a city. Nor are we uncommon to many being, as labeled by #45, “a rodent-infested mess.” In a country that subliminally utilizes skin tone to measure equity and cultural beliefs, Baltimore has become a showcase through mythoi. Mythologies sometimes mature into alternative facts. Without a bridge between cultures, unfounded facts produce fears, illuminating anxieties that boldly integrate laws. Sometimes, a law can be unjust as it becomes fixated only on and to the benefactor’s belief. Laws, as platformed in the Residential, Segregation Ordinances of 1910-1913, labeled Apartheid Baltimore Style.

https://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2498&context=mlr

             Baltimore’s segregation law was the first such law to be aimed at blacks in the United States, but it was not the last. Various southern cities in Georgia, South Carolina, Virginia, North Carolina, and Kentucky enacted similar laws. Laws that create circumstances (Cause & Effect) that are never recorded in history books.

            As a military veteran, I am not an advocate of weaponry in the hands of the untrained. Nevertheless, in 1960, because of the psychological effect bestowed upon me through the bullhorn of the times, if I had had access to even a replica of a gun, I might have carried one myself. I cannot speak for Dedric Colvin’s mindset, but I have experienced fear and the emotional effect it can bestow upon the mind. Poverty, joblessness, and educational deficiency are the proving grounds for drugs and crime. People judging from afar are clueless about a black male’s mindset born into an environment of scarcity. Black youth spontaneously run from the police, not necessarily because of criminality but because of learned distrust —a foregone conclusion.

            In August 2016, “Black Lives Matter,” demonstrated at a police convention in Baltimore. An official from the police union sent to all attendees on a formal department memo stating: “Union members attending the state FOP conference should expect more bad behavior from the THUGS OF BALTIMORE,” referring to protesters. “On the bright side, maybe they will stop killing each other while they are protesting us.

In July 2017, although it seemed to be standard procedure, to “rough people up more” and not worry about injuring suspects during arrests, words from the most powerful voice in America, effectively endorsed the reuse of excessive force by cops. Apartheid reinforcement with a capital A.

            Privileged mindsets, sets no boundaries and, if confronted, have no path of aberration, except adversarial, having not a clue of life in “A Colony in a Nation,”  by Chris Hayes.

In the prolong era of rapacious fake news, hacking of emails, politicians trolling of each other, suggestion of election tampering, and the banning of a news reporter from the White House, one musttalso wonder about censorship in blogging i.e.  “A Tweet for the President of these United States,” posted four years ago, February of 2017 @ https://bookmystorydomain.blog/2017/02/06/a-tweet-for-the-president-of-these-united-states/  I have high regards for the office of the presidency, as a 22-year veteran of the US Navy, honorably served under the banner of free speech.     For me, blogging/tweeting the truth is free speech but in America it appears to not be a poor man’s portal. “A Peaceful Tweet to the 45^th” in October of 2017 in my opinion was proof positive. https://bookmystorydomain.blog/2017/09/25/a-peaceful-tweet-to-the-45th/   The stats after that blog showed a sharp decline.  Go-figure? Thee who has the most money control the minds of many through repetitive media marketing. Henceforth January 6^th 2021, circumstanced from chapter four “The Wrecking Crew” by Tomas Frank.

In my childhood on my grandparents’ farm, the rooster’s crow at dawn encapsulated the nature of God’s creation in the serenity of a loving family. But today, in 2021, since 2016, each morning, I have been awakened by the bark of my dog Raven on sporadic mornings. The dawn erupts with a whistle, way off in the distance. Her ears fine-tuned to the encroachment of a train, warning of its tonnage by the roar of its engines, racing louder until it passes, leaving in its echo the clanging of rail cars, its wheels churning upon the railways of the times. A clanking that reverberated in my soul as shackles of bondage. On January 6, 2021, metaphorically, a train ran into the United States Capital. Its cargo? The unlearned lessons of history passed, now projected in real-time.
     

“Money, politics, and the freedom of speech and the right to vote.” The three ingredients in a mindset taken for granted, while the fourth “voting” has become the idiomatic Achilles heel.

It was the 80th United States Congress in 1948, where the Senate Majority were Republicans, transferred over $12 billion (equivalent to $130 billion in 2019) in economic recovery programs to Western Europe. The 116th Congress, in 2020 lead by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, in a closed-door lunch in October, (ref. USA Today) told fellow Republicans he urged the White House not to strike a deal with Democrats on COVID-19 relief. The Grinch who stole relief while Americans are in dire need.

Although the education of our children has been interrupted, they are still learning divisiveness.  The question is, which way will our nation trend ?????.  Hypocrisy cannot be conducive to a democracy. A fact remains: if there’s no enemy within, the enemy outside can not hurt us. We might become our own worst enemy.

It was the 80th United States Congress in 1948, where the Senate Majority were Republicans, that transferred over $12 billion (equivalent to $130 billion in 2019) in economic recovery programs to Western Europe. The 116th Congress, in 2020, led by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, in a closed-door lunch in October, reportedly told Republicans that he had urged the White House not to push for a coronavirus relief deal before the election. The Grinch who stole relief while Americans were in dire need.

It was the 80th United States Congress in 1948, where the Senate Majority were Republicans, transferred over $12 billion (equivalent to $130 billion in 2019) in economic recovery programs to Western Europe. The 116th Congress, in 2020 lead by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, in a closed-door lunch in October, (ref. USA Today) told fellow Republicans he urged the White House not to strike a deal with Democrats on COVID-19 relief. The Grinch who stole financial relief while Americans are in dire need, Mitch McConnell, who will KEEP his stranglehold on the Senate and RUIN President-elect Biden’s first years in office. On the other hand, Trump spent the 2020 campaign promising that if Joe Biden got elected, the stock market would collapse. Well… the day after Trump basically admitted he lost, the Dow Jones hit 30,000 for the first time in history. As usual, Trump was dead wrong.

• Factually speaking, when in the cause of human events and the evolution of time, we must look at the privileged mind and the dinner table as the nexus between slavery and now. — It is the epitome of “Cause and Effect” into the absoluteness of how hate and supremacy are seeded and re-seeded. In the sequence of time, before the radio, the telephone, the television, and now social media, the family meeting place was the dinner table, the personification of today’s social media. What was communicated became a bonding message to the child. It was also in the telling a woman… but unarguably not in a gossipy way. In retrospect, it was the telling a woman who had the natural propensity for the enlightenment of others. At the beginning of slavery, although the slave planted, harvested, and prepared food for the diner table. It was the slave owner who broiled the meat for consumption. For generations, his authority menaced and loomed over the intellectual potential of all he dominated. Even his wife and any woman under his purview, illuminating the fact they were powerless and that they had no right to vote. (As in “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a dame. “Gone with the Wind”) When he spoke, she – they responded—replicating his jurisdiction into the souls of others and future slave owners, especially children, giving way to the “Internet Karens” of today, and the use of the “N” word as described by Mary Trump to Rachel Maddow. Words were his power in dominion, the marinading sauce of the subconscious, with no need for rationality, only the results of dominance with a topping of fear. Within this context, rational minds know and understand; the first decade of a child’s life is the most plant—tative. A sarcastic play on the word plantation, as it is the seeded words sowed as the child’s inquisitiveness grows while simultaneously fertilized with love and protection. Subsequently, some seedlings will become roots while developing into irreversible instincts. Some instincts remain vibrant year-round, some become perennials, while others hibernate as they become embedded in the soul.
• Instincts, deeply embedded, will germinate to life instantaneously when watered by a dissenting episode, whenever its mindset is opposed. Fast-food and social media have replaced the diner table, providing very few nutrients in the maintenance of life and a warm, cordial society. Likewise, the negative con in the phrase “a gossiping woman” has been around for decades, beguiling—revamping a contrary intention by men, making it another genre of gender control. But we all know, on the contrast, behind every genuinely successful man (minus the mandate of supremacy), there’s an authentic woman who shares the spotlight as equals with her man. Michelle, with Barrack indisputably. America’s society will continue to elect those who promise a pesticidal cure, while the vermins among us systematically become immune. There is no cure for a learned abomination that has become rooted in the heart and soul except rebirth in the spirit. Taking a look at one’s self would be the first step in this process. Bishop T.D. Jakes tells us in his book, “Let it go.” to ask ourselves: “How did I get to this point in my life?” Is this where I want to go? If hateful souls can come to this point, then and only then, maybe the process can begin. Otherwise, it’s only the woman, the bearer of the child, and the unsoiled minds of our youth, that will place this nation on a positive trajectory. Movements don’t start with a strategy; they begin with a moment. It is the exact Moment when a Set of Principles are united in a space of time where positive thoughts from rational people are congenial. It does not take a rocket scientist to understand the qualities of the individual who perpetuate a divisive society. Case in point, the recent attack on New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez with witness and then denial by Rep. Yoho. https://bookmystorydomain.blog/2019/02/13/movements-dont-start-with-a-strategy-they-start-with-a-moment-3/amp/

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To those who cannot see the virtue in my words, I will say, “It’s understandable,” for one has not walked in my shoes nor I in yours. For the living body can be a testament of faith with the mind being the greatest weapon between good and evil. Consoling the caliber of words cultivated through the printed word being the ammunition from the chambers of my soul.

Figuratively speaking, the root cause of hate is literally from the roots of its tree, as the apple will not fall too far. The tree, covered by its bark and its grain, is intrinsically ingrained and will never change. It can only be modified by the chain of wisdom, cut, and mounted in its own image. So, as the child is taught, the shell becomes the teacher, even of hate or charism.

In life, things happen around us and to us, but the only thing that matters is how we choose to react to them. I decided to use my ammunition in print. For in my lifetime, I’ve witnessed the glory of words, many lives of black men fallen unjustly, the majestic kneeling of Colin Kaepernick in justification, and still a knee to George Floyd’s neck. May he Rest in Peace. 

In my travels, while in the military, by the Grace of God, my encounters with the ingrained mentality of superiority were not fatal. However, physical encounters and countless episodes of mortification will never fade. My core belief is that no individual is born without the capacity for fulfillment through God’s grace, despite the denigration from another human being. My fulfillment is in BookMyStory.net. One day I will be heard because of “Footprints in the Sand.”

Controlling what people think can make you extremely powerful. Case in point, Mao Zedong, Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party from 1943 to 1976. Through violence and thought control, over time, it becomes the norm, paralleling a battered woman but on a larger scale.

Restricting ideas and imposing opinions through censorship and the curbing of school curricula, for decades, have suppressed the poor and people of color in the United States from slavery, through Jim Crow, and subliminally through trickle-down economics. Threats and innuendos of hate come from small minds that have never developed a sense of humanity. The better angels about nature.

Superiority and dominance are a mindset fueled by primitiveness and a lack of empathy for others. It has taken an invisible virus, COVID-19, to bring to the forefront through contact tracing the sacrificial. And now, the survival of the fittest is propagated by armed individuals on government property in protest of social distancing. Regardless of the science, the facts/statistics, who is still on the front lines? It’s the poor, the front-line medical workers, and people of color – the prevailing sacrificial in a divided nation invigorated by one man.

Now in Tennessee, on April 7, 2023, Rep. Gloria Johnson, who survived GOP’s push to punish her, says it’s ‘pretty clear why she was spared, but 2 Black Democratic lawmakers were thrown out because they demonstrated for gun control. Psychology. The boldness has gotten pretty blatant
While a Texas law went into effect on Thursday, April 6th, 2023, that bans abortion-inducing pills – also known as Plan B – after the seventh week of pregnancy. While the banning of books in Florida rolls on

My friends and fellow citizens, three years ago, I wrote a story to https://bookmystorydomain.blog/  titled “A Tweet to the President of these United States,” https://bookmystorydomain.blog/2017/02/06/a-tweet-for-the-president-of-these-united-states/ containing a pledge. A pledge that I am now rescinding. The narrative began with: Super Bowl Sunday is one of America’s most united days, all because of the bliss of football. All through the season, we support our specific teams and then come together one day of the year to cheer on the one we individually choose to be the best. The following is a re-write of that anecdote. 

The polarization of our society with violence has overtly and by you, slithered into America’s greatest past-time, (Football) like the virus COVID-19 of which you labeled a hoax. I do respect the office of the Presidency, and in 2017, I pledge I would never yell, “You Lie.” (Referring to U.S. Representative Joe Wilson) As long as you are in office, I would never question your place of birth, make fun of your hair, call you names, question your ethnicity, nor bring attention to the water coloring of your face. I wouldn’t even ask for your tax returns because I wanted you to succeed. You were going to be the president. If you succeed in creating jobs while keeping America safe, improve the quality of life for all, especially the poor and the declining middle class, claim the fears and the hatred, then and only then would America succeed. However, valuing the position does not mean by any law; I must respect the person. Respect is something that’s earned through the deportment of one’s intentions. As a Navy veteran, during the primaries, I was saddened to hear a potential Commander in Chief of the greatest military on earth, make a statement about a slain Muslim American soldier, and disparaging remarks about a prisoner of war, Senator John McCain. Men who took the same path as me to serve our country. I have had relatives who have served in every war since WWII with honors. I feel ….. you, who have never served, disrespected them also.

You are on the far end of the spectrum, a narcissist, falling into the category of not having a clue. The country is now on the edge of a disaster, and you are still calling names and now suggesting to the American people the ‘injection’ of disinfectant to beat coronavirus.  It has been three years since this original writing, and I must resend my pledge. You are no more than the back end of a donkey. Running a business requires investing money for a return. But, in the position of the highest office of the United States of America as Commander-in-Chief means, you’ve got to invest in people. People than by human nature will respond positively. Don’t call me a four to six-letter word and expect me to serve you breakfast in bed. We are not under an Empire, and you are not an Emperor.  

As a patriotic citizen, it depresses me to write in such negative terms about the Commander in Chief. Nonetheless, in the words of Edmund Burke, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” I call on the good citizens of these United States to do something by sharing …… if you agree.

Henry L Faulkner USN Ret.

Chief Navy Counselor