Thoughts From the Road (Part 2)
Don't you want to know why millions of people around the world are risking their lives, welfare, professional standing, employment, health and personal convenience to raise YOUR awareness?
February 27th - Wednesday, March 2nd, 2022
Dear Freedom Friends,
First, for those of you who have expressed concern, I can tell you this: I feel completely safe, I am surrounded by good people with heartfelt stories and positive goals and the diversity of this convoy doesn’t just exist. It is being celebrated! We are experiencing that special openness that occurs when people come together, in person, to share breath and hear one another speak.
Second, for those wanting to see footage of the People’s Convoy, HERE you go! Over the past two days, we’ve driven through Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Illinois and we’re now in Indiana. Along the way, I’ve received many lessons, but a few shine brightest.
The Ambiance!
I have participated in many protest movements over the years. They all share three things in common:
A strong, motivating reason for participating.
An edginess.
A refusal to be silenced.
At the turn of the century, I attended an Ani DiFranco concert in Seattle. Midway through the concert, a large, potted marijuana plant suddenly appeared in the crowd, being passed hand over hand, through the audience and up to the stage where Ani joked that the band would have to smoke it fast, as they were headed to Canada the next day. Now, marijuana is legal in Washington State. Then, it was not. In other words, a crime had been committed during that music concert, in full public view, as a statement of shifting public opinion about marijuana legalization. And, the police did nothing. Why? Because, the action (the crime) was a soft form of public protest and the potential for public harm was low. An excellent example of edginess that Thomas Jefferson (and other participants in the founding of our nation) readily agreed with, promoted, encouraged and believed was necessary for the continuance of these United States.
Today, Ani DiFranco is just as active as ever. I recommend that you watch this video of her song, “Do or Die,” released September 2020. Watch the whole video. Did you notice the last image of two flags?
Necessary & Good Trouble.
Throughout human history, brave men and women have stood up (usually at great personal risk to themselves) and refused to bend under the weight of oppression. No matter the issue, these historic figures have shared one, defining trait: COURAGE.
We, Americans, have been riding the coat tails of our Founding Fathers for well over two centuries. We enjoy a level of freedom (for those challenging the existing paradigm) that much of the world has admired, desired and envied. There are myriad colloquialisms for shifting paradigms: “I have a dream,” “Be the change you wish to see in the world,” “Imagine,” or as Congressman John Lewis often said: to make “Necessary Trouble.”
That’s what I mean by edginess, and it’s what Thomas Jefferson meant when he said:
Let’s take a step back from the brashness and judgement of the above quote. Not that I’m challenging Thomas Jefferson’s assessment. Some people are timid and they do have a preference to avoid trouble. Even if it means their own death - or the subjugation of their children - some will bow down in front of an oppressor and hope for mercy. These men and women are cowards. They have given up their will to fight, forgotten their individual strength, abdicated their protective role within the community, sidestepped into the silent position of bystander - saying and doing nothing while others are abused - and are no longer holding themselves responsible for being an active co-creator of equality, freedom or liberty.
Yet. Culture has an effect.
Today, I will touch upon two such cultures: Traditional Japanese/Japanese-American culture and the Kool-Aid Culture; both of which have been horribly impacted by "Yellow Journalism.” That term “Yellow Journalism” is well-recognized, but few know that it has a very specific origin story, which you can read more fully HERE.
For now, let me summarize. Beginning in the 1890s, two newspaper owners engaged in a greed & power driven rivalry. In a competitive move, William Randolph Hearst bought the New York Journal.
Hearst immediately began a circulation war with Joseph Pultizer’s New York World, undercutting Pulitzer’s price by selling his papers for one cent against Pultizer’s two cents.
When Pultizer matched the price hoping to bankrupt the Journal, Hearst lured many of Pulitzer’s staff to work at the Journal instead. Included in the staff shuffling was a highly sought-after cartoonist that ran a popular comic strip called Hogan’s Alley. The comic strip featured a bald child in a large yellow colored nightshirt that was called the “Yellow Kid.”
The competing papers each published their own versions of the “Yellow Kid” for a time to try and win over audiences. The dual use of the “Yellow Kid” as well as the familiar styles used by Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst eventually created a new term for their journalistic practices: yellow journalism.
Jump ahead to 2022, and consider that The Pulitzer Prize remains one of the most coveted awards for achievements in newspaper, magazine, online journalism, literature and musical composition within the United States. Established in 1917, by provisions in the will of Joseph Pulitzer, does it creep you out that modern journalists crave and seek the approval of an award created by one of the greatest masterminds of Fake News in American history. Surely this should give us pause for thought? We do not have a Hitler’s Prize or a Machiavelli Prize, and for a very good reason. What does it say about the Media Industry that they promote an award named after one of the Forefathers of Media Manipulation?
The Fake News epidemic that exploded in the 1890s continued to cause incredible harm across our great nation as Government Politicians, Military Leaders and Corporate CEOs have recognized the powerful weapon available to them.
Four years ago, in January 2018, I had the pleasure of interviewing Kate Moore, author of The Radium Girls, which went on to be adapted for Netflix. Her research focused on:
The many uses of radium, before its dangers were identified.
The horrible effects of radium upon the girls hired to paint the luminous, glow-in-the-dark dials so valuable to the war effort in Europe.
And — how the government/military/industrial complex attempted to suppress the truth, largely through Yellow Journalism and intimidation of lawyers, judges and victims.
What did these poor girls and their families do? They stood up. Persevered. Fought. Suffered persecution. Died. And they won.
The long-term effect of their battle for recognition, truth and honesty was the creation of OSHA. One of the primary tenets of OSHA: “It is illegal to be fired or threatened for reporting a safety issue. Worker participation is a core element of a safety and health program.”
These women also agreed to annual testing for the rest of their lives. Because of this, the long-term effects of radiation poisoning could be studied (given that it would be medically unethical to intentionally do this to healthy people). We owe these brave women (and their families) our gratitude as the protective gear and policies developed to prevent radiation injury to military personnel, health care workers and patients was kick-started into existence by a handful of victims who refused to be timid or cowardly.
And yet, most of us have never even heard of them. Is this accidental? Or on purpose? Imagine if all American children learned about The Radium Girls? What “culture” would we see in the United States of America today? How much “blind trust and faith” would adults of today feel for their government, if they fully comprehended the sins of that same government?
“Fake News” is not a problem of inaccurate information. That’s normal. Unavoidable. Natural. We’ve been dealing with inaccurate information since the beginning of time, and we will deal with it forever into the future, because questions beget answers and not all answers will be accurate. No, inaccuracy is not the issue. Nor is the issue simply the “intentionally inaccurate information, employed with a goal in mind, by human beings who want to achieve a goal by misleading other humans.” No. The problem runs deeper than that.
Americans have developed an appetite for Kool-Aid.
“The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.”
― Thomas Jefferson
There are few in the United States of America who understand this better than Japanese Americans. Until 2021, I could only imagine what Vashon Island Japanese Farmers felt, as their neighbors stood silently by while they were forced to sell their land and leave their possessions, pets and businesses behind. Learn MORE.
Similarities between Japanese Internment & Covid Medical Apartheid
Land Grabs & Shifting Wealth —
Japanese Immigrants and Japanese Americans are culturally hard workers with a tight family ethic. Prior to WWII, these Japanese Immigrants and their children had developed successful businesses of all types. During their internment, virtually ALL of these businesses, lands and resources were taken over by European Immigrants and European Americans.
Similarly, the Covid Experience has arguably resulted in the largest wealth shift in human history, but this time, the wealth has moved upwards. Keep in mind, every penny distributed to the citizenry in the form of “stimulus checks” came from our own taxes. While the political class dithered and argued, wrung their hands and wailed about pathetically small “stimulus checks,” in truth, those stimulus checks (whether a good idea or not) were given from ourselves, to ourselves. The funds stayed in the family, so-to-speak. Of course, economically we “gained” nothing in the process. In fact, we lost money, because we had to pay for the administration of that sideways transfer of our own money. Both points are worthy of discussion, but far, far, far more concerning is how the political class said almost nothing (not a peep!) as the treasuries of ALL First World Western Nations were gutted, with the bulk of our existing wealth (and the wealth of the foreseeable future) being neatly transferred into the coffers of the Pharmaceutical Industry and their Globalist Allies.
The Effect of Japanese Culture —
In May 2017, Lonny Kaneko was a guest on my radio show Prose, Poetry & Purpose to discuss his upcoming collection of poetry: Coming Home From Camp and Other Poems, where he expresses the reverberating trauma of his family's imprisonment in the Minidoka concentration camp during WWII. Without committing a crime or due process, the Kaneko family was among 120,000 Japanese Americans put in concentration camps in the United States. “The camp experience is buried within us; we can’t rid ourselves of the memories and the effects it had on each of our lives. And of course, it affects people differently, but it shapes how we see ourselves and how we think others see us.”
In August 2015, I was also blessed to interview Lawrence Matsuda, touching upon his book of poetry, A Cold Wind from Idaho and Glimpses of a Forever Foreigner. His response, as a child born in the concentration camp of Minidoka, is more culturally American. What I have learned is that traditional Japanese Culture had a tendency to suppress the suffering and pain inflicted by the horrendous harm & perceived shame caused to Japanese Immigrants and Japanese Americans leading up to, during and following WWII. I hope you will listen to Lawrence’s interview, as he speaks with eloquence and also anger, which differs from the quieter response offered by Lonny. These two men are emblematic of the cultural differences between Traditional Japanese culture and the cultural blending we see in Japanese-Americans.
Unjustified Danger to Society (Xenophobia & Germaphobia) —
In short, it has been recognized by the United States of America that Japanese Immigrants and Japanese Americans were of no more danger to the USA than any others living along the West Coast. This suggests that Americans were vulnerable to hate-mongering that worked. (FYI - you can view these and more in the National Archives, when you next visit D.C.)
After decades of anti-Asian Immigrant yellow journalism, the bombing of Pearl Harbor pushed increasingly xenophobic Americans over the edge.
What is the difference between one person who becomes xenophobic and another person who becomes germaphobic? Nothing.
Logic argued effectively that Japanese Immigrants and Japanese Americans were not a risk to the Western Coast of the USA, but FEAR prevailed. Similarly, logic and science demonstrate that individuals (injected or not) present equal risk of viral transference, yet — FEAR prevails.
In other words, The People’s Convoy is doing what Good Americans should have done on February 19th, 1942. Standing up to protect fellow Americans who are being unjustly and unconstitutionally persecuted by special interests hiding behind politicians, tax-funded consumer protection agencies (captured by the industries they’re designed to regulate) and a well-orchestrated media machine spewing endless yellow journalism into the faces of weak, frightened Americans who are drowning in Kool Aid.
Because, yes. This sign is unsubstantiated BS.
In summary, the AMBIANCE of the People’s Convoy is one of sincerely committed motivation and, yes, there is an edginess to the movement. How can there not be? The "edginess” was already there. We are simply responding to it.
Our history — indeed, the virtuous and admirable history of the world — is studded with moments like these, where coordinated wrong-doers are reined in by the moral and ethical resistance of those they seek to harm. We, and every person in America who is stepping up as best they can, are discovering ourselves through our actions. We are becoming more American, as we move beyond “enjoying” the freedoms, human rights and privileges bequeathed to us by our parents, grandparents, great-grandparents and all others who have come before us.
Now is not the time for entitlement. Now is the time for PEACEFUL PARTICIPATION in OUR GOVERNMENT and TAKING AN ACTIVE ROLE in the DECISIONS BEING MADE.
Now, is the time for speaking up! Reach across the aisle. Be open-hearted. Listen more than you speak. Remind the frightened to be brave. Seek knowledge. Be open to changing your mind. Question what you’re so incessantly being told to believe.
And…as Congressman John Lewis would say: make Necessary & Good Trouble.
Every time you are told that something complex is simple, you are being told to understand less so that you will be more vulnerable to fear.
Over and over, medical professionals with incredible resumes and stellar reputations in their field have asked: “Can we have a public debate?” The establishment refuses every time. Why?
The People’s Convoy has brightened my worldview, as the diversity of our unique country surprises and delights again and again…one brilliant conversation at a time.
Humans have a biological tendency to hold onto the first piece of information they receive. The skill of continually checking the accuracy of those earlier pieces of information and intentionally replacing them with new, updated information is EASY to gain. You simply need to see the wisdom and choose to do it. All three of those things (the sun, the moon and the truth) can be avoided if you gouge out your eyes and deafen your ears. So, don’t.
And, do not repeat the sins of the past. This time, we must do better.