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Thank You Vaccine Makers

Thank you for persevering,

For working tenaciously to create a means to extending our lives,

Oh, how those 270 thousand Americans and over one and a half million people worldwide

Who have so far perished, would have benefitted.

Thank you for believing in science,

For not giving up when you ran up against what may have seemed

Unsurmountable obstacles,

Thank you for collaborating with others, believing in teamwork,

Thank you for having chosen your professions,

For trusting that committing to what you wanted would one day reward you,

Thank you for loving life,

For only because you do have you now been able to

Be part of this grand effort to bring relief to a battered and anguished world,

Thank you for your courage,

For your generosity,

For the power of your imaginations,

Your willingness to dare,

For taking on the challenge that nature presented to us,

For having had the resolve to face adversity,

And not having flinched,

Instead tamed the monster that threatened to extinguish us.

Thank you and thank you again.

May your lives be rewarded with honors

And may your example forever remind us

Of how we can rise to defeat all challenges,

So long as we commit to preserve and enrich the bonds that tie us,

So long as we never forget that, with all our differences,

We are one.

Dark clouds have often gathered over our world,

And it is because of men and women like you,

Men and women of every race and nationality,

That we keep moving forward.

So thank you, Vaccine Makers,

Knights of Science and Progress,

Knights of Humanity,

For lighting the torch that lets us see the path ahead.

Oscar Valdes   oscarvaldes.net   oscarvaldes.medium.com  oscar valdes@widehumr

Daily Reminder

I am responsible for my life lived and unlived.

I am responsible for my freedom.

I have one life.

oscarvaldes.net

On Demagoguery – PiSTE – Power in Submission Thinking Error.

When a nation or an Aggrieved group of people perceives itself as being challenged by a Rival group, they have the option of competing or attempting to suppress them. If either of those approaches fails, then the resentment of the Aggrieved for the Rival group will grow.

The Aggrieved group may continue to search for a solution or, if despairing, settle instead to be led by someone who comes along with an idea to relieve them of their pain.

But anyone who comes along with such an offer will want something for it.

The person presenting themselves as the problem solver will say to the Aggrieved group, ‘I see your pain, I feel it, and you are right to feel as you do and here I am to fight for you.’

What that person will want in return is the surrender of the group members’ individuality.

When the Aggrieved group gathers to hear the leader, the individual members will not have a question and answer session at the end. Their meetings will not be set to reflect on their doubts and recriminations as to why they have failed. Their meetings will not be set to educate, but instead to affirm their cherished views, regardless of a changing world, all of which the new leader is most glad to validate for them.

The new leader needs room to maneuver, and thus he is not to be questioned. He will do the strategic thinking for the Aggrieved group.

‘I will make you feel good about who you are, as you are now,’ says the mighty leader.

Implicit is that thought and self criticism is to be sacrificed in the interest of feeling. But once you adopt that position, the stage is set for abuse to happen.

Speaking from his elevated stage, looking down on his followers, the leader is promoting a transfer of power from the group unto him.

The leader will ceaselessly remind the Aggrieved group that they are better than their Rivals, that their views should reign supreme, and that the challenge the Rival group poses is, indeed, the reason for all their ills.

The Aggrieved group’s core beliefs are to be seen as immutable. The simpler the communications, the better. Complexity is to be avoided. Tweets are perfect for this exchange.

Left out of the discussion is why the Aggrieved group did not better organize itself to fight against the Rival, instead preferring to blame and disparage.

If the above is familiar to you it is because this is what is happening in America today.

Many Americans have surrendered their power to a leader who never dared to challenge them, just like he did not dare to challenge himself.

There is no real power in political submission but merely the illusion of it.

A mind that does not question itself is a mind that settles for less. It is a mind that defrauds itself. It is a mind that chooses to die.

Oscar Valdes Oscarvaldes.net     oscarvaldes@widehumr     oscarvaldes.medium.com

The Nation Thanks our Postal and Poll Workers and Ballot Counters

Thank you for the commitment to your task.

When there was much uncertainty as to the outcome of the election

You remained steadfast in carrying out your duties

And gave us confidence that the results would reflect the will of the people

For a few tense days, all eyes were on you

And you responded admirably

Reminding us once again

Of the importance of working together

That there is a place for everyone in this land,

And that it takes all those efforts to make our system thrive

There are many things on which we will disagree

But we must always seek a measure of compromise

Or we will become vulnerable to leaders keen to exploit the differences

For their selfish reasons

If Red and Blue makes Purple

Then that is what we should strive for,

Purple to bridge the gaps that divide us

Purple to bring gender and racial equality to our land

Freeing us to think boldly, conquer our fears and act courageously.

You have done your part

And in so doing affirmed our democracy.

It has been a wonderful display of patriotism and citizenship.

The nation is deeply grateful.

Oscar Valdes  

oscarvaldes.net   oscarvaldes@widehumr    oscarvaldes.medium.com

The President’s Regrets

Alone in the Oval Office, the TV off because the count in Georgia and Pennsylvania now has Biden in the lead, while both Arizona and Nevada continue to lean democratic, the President sits and lowers his head. The long dreaded defeat has finally arrived.

‘I tweeted too much. Which meant I didn’t take time to reflect. Presidents shouldn’t tweet so much. Joe doesn’t tweet like I do but I’ll pass it along anyway, just before the transfer of power.’

‘I should have let the scientists lead the effort on the coronavirus from the very beginning. This is a big one. If I had done that, then if the virus would have spread, I could’ve blamed them. But no, I chose to be the man in charge, even though I didn’t know a thing about the virus.’

‘I identified too much with the Right, as if this country was not a huge place filled with people who have lots of different points of view.’

‘I should have worked more with my supporters, to tell them that to make America Great Again it will take the work of all Americans. I cringe when I hear Joe Biden talk about how he’s going to be a president for everyone, and that during his term there will be no red and blue states. Damn. That should’ve been my line.’

‘I should’ve danced more with Melania, sang her a song, just be with her. Relax with her. And spent more time with my son Barron, too, see what he had to say. The young can always teach us something if we care to listen. I didn’t.’

‘That’s a problem I have, listening. A huge problem. If I had listened, I wouldn’t have fired good generals like Mattis and Kelly.’

‘If I had listened, I would’ve kept some of my early economic advisers who told me to go easy on the tariffs on China. Sure, there is an issue with their theft of intellectual property and their push to world dominance, but I ought to have been more gradual.’

‘I should have brought more women into the cabinet, lots of them. My cabinet should’ve been at least half women. And I could’ve even appointed a woman to be secretary of state. Hell, I would’ve been reelected if I had done that. But I didn’t.’

‘And why did I go bananas on overturning environmental regulations? The climate issue is real. Everybody thinks that. How come I was so blind and deaf about it?’

‘And the George Floyd incident, that was a missed opportunity. I could’ve jumped in and said, “This is horrible. Ghastly. There are great cops in our nation, but this is not permissible. This is murder, and I will make sure that justice is done” But I didn’t do it.’

‘I pissed off a lot of European allies. There was no need for that. There were other ways I could’ve got them to pay more for the costs of defense.’

‘I am feeling depressed. And have no one to blame but me.’

Good luck, Mr President.

Oscar Valdes wrote extensively in an effort to get the President to reflect. And sent him his books.

Oscarvaldes.net   oscarvaldes@widehumr

Biden because…

We need to restore sanity to America,

We must have a president who will not shirk from confronting a foreign leader,

A president who is not preoccupied with every criticism that is made of him and who can think before he tweets,

We need a president who is comfortable with thinking and reflecting,

Who is open to having the best people around him, regardless of what party they’re affiliated with,

We must have a president who can hear a dissenting view,

A person who values independent thought, men and women who can stand on their own and choose to serve the nation out of a sense of patriotism rather than personal gain, men and women who’re not quick to say, ‘yes, mr president, of course you’re right, sir, absolutely right, you’re the greatest, the most wonderful human being I’ve ever met,’

We need a leader with the courage to address the nation in the face of abject cruelty, as when George Floyd was murdered in public view, and then step out and denounce the abuse of power and stand and grieve with the rest of us,

We need a leader who believes in science, who doesn’t feel diminished because he has to wear a mask,

We must have a leader who doesn’t lie to us, repeatedly, shamelessly,

A president with the courage to not blame China for the enormous losses of life we’ve suffered and who not once has said he takes responsibility for any of it.

In his view, whatever he does, is a masterful move.

We need Biden because he’s committed to bringing women to the center of our political world,

Women, who in this land of the free, have not been elected to the presidency or vice presidency in 231 years, yet all the while they’ve been nurturing men, educating, strengthening, helping to guide us, inspiring and comforting us, and we have the gall to turn around and deny them the right to control their bodies and to not think they are fit to lead.

We need Biden because in bringing women to power, he opens the door for them to govern the nation for the next 50 consecutive years, at least, and so make it possible to have racial and gender equality in our land.

Men simply could not do the job and need to move aside and let women do it.

We need Biden to reach out to the president’s supporters and remind them that we must sit down and have a dialogue,

We need Biden, who will tell the president’s supporters that they are essential in the struggle to improve our nation,

We need Biden

To remind us of our true powers, and that this is not the time to step back from acting with concern for the plight of the downtrodden anywhere in the world, for their suffering is ours too. Embrace it and we will embrace our own, and as we do brighten the flame of hope that has always lived in our hearts and minds.

So, go Joe, go Kamala,

Fight for our land as you know how,

And let not the winds of hatred and envy blight our future

Oscar Valdes     oscarvaldes.net     oscarvaldes@widehumr

As Election Day Approaches

There is an oppressiveness that hangs in the air in our nation today. The oppressiveness of having in the White House a man with no interest in building bridges to unite us.

He is a president in name but not a leader.

He is a man who has failed repeatedly to stand up against racial injustice.

He is a man who has done profound harm to the nation by not siding with science in our struggles against the pandemic.

The notion of freedom that is so dear to us, is perverted by a man who doesn’t have the basic decency to acknowledge his limitations.

This is a man who could not stand up to Vladimir Putin on July 16th 2018 when, after meeting with the Russian tyrant, failed to confront him and say to his face that our intelligence agencies had solid evidence of Russia’s interference in our 2016 presidential election. Our president said, instead, that while he believed our intelligence agencies, he also believed Putin’s denial of involvement.

Our president is the man who could not confront the Saudis when ample evidence was offered by Turkey (and confirmed by our agencies) that Jamal Khashoggi, a journalist with the Washington Post who was critical of the Saudi regime, had been brutally murdered and hacked in the Saudi embassy in Ankara.

Our president is the man who could not step up and speak loudly against police brutality in the wake of the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis earlier this year. The video showing the officer pressing his knee against Mr Floyd’s neck for over 8 minutes as he lay handcuffed on the ground, was not enough to move the president to be outraged with the rest of us and grieve the loss of a fellow American.

Instead, when protests followed, he summoned security forces to clear the area in front of a church near the White House so he could pose for the cameras while holding a bible.

Never mind attempting to reach within himself to find the decency to stand up for the downtrodden.

Our president stands as a symbol of shallowness, of contempt for our basic liberties, contempt for the sacrifice our soldiers have made in defense of our land, as when he was quoted making derogatory statements of men and women fallen in battle.

And yet, some people are still willing to vote for him.

The 1930s and 40s saw the rise of the extreme Right in the world (Germany, Italy, Japan). In Germany and Italy it took the form of a clown posing as a leader and a population allowing itself to believe they were better than the rest of humanity. The misery, the atrocities perpetrated as a result stand as a record of our propensity to deny what is in front of our eyes.

But it keeps happening.

There was a moment, years ago, when I remember thinking that I had already watched enough movies about the Holocaust. I was wrong. We need to keep making them, again and again, while adding works about the new cruelties we keep inflicting and witnessing; the genocide in Cambodia under Pol Pot, the massacres in Rwanda, the plight of the Rohingya in Myanmar, the forced confinement of Uighurs in China, the ongoing mistreatment of minorities throughout the world.

And yet, the other day I saw a frontpage article in the Wall Street Journal about a wealthy farmer in one of our northern states. He argued in support of the president, and that doing so would ensure that taxes and regulations would stay down. ‘We have to take the good with the bad.’ To the gentleman, his economic concerns were enough to override everything else. That is the same restricted mentality that leads to the rise of extremism everywhere.

Closer to home, yesterday I made a call to a friend and casually asked, ‘you voted yet?’, and the friend replied, ‘I don’t vote.’ I was dumbfounded. ‘I don’t like either candidate,’ the friend continued.

‘But wait,’ I pleaded, ‘the preservation of our liberties requires that we exercise choice, you may not like either of the candidates but surely there are advantages to choosing one over the other.’ ‘Don’t insist, I’m not voting,’ came the reply. I said no more. But today, I left a text urging the person to please reconsider.

I remember reading once that nations deserved their leaders. Without bothering to properly reflect on the meaning of the sentence, I repeated it to an old Cuban émigré who had served several years in prison under Castro. He politely disagreed. ‘We didn’t deserve Castro,’ he said, his expression revealing the pain he’d endured in the struggle for liberty in his land.

Do we deserve our current president? No. But let us not prolong the oppressiveness under which we now live, or we might forget what the sweet scent of liberty feels like.

One last thought. My heartfelt thanks to all the campaign volunteers who keep reaching out to persuade the undecided, the men and women who keep making call after call to motivate the apathetic and disinterested, our fellow citizens who seem to have no clue as to what it takes to preserve our freedoms.

Oscar Valdes     oscarvaldes.net     oscarvaldes@widehumr

Paris is Where We Find It

There is the beautiful city, which if you can, please do visit, at least once. It is charming indeed.

But Paris is everywhere. It is in your neighborhood and maybe just around the block.

It could be at your local coffee shop, at a chance encounter during a stroll, at work or while standing in line at the market.

Paris is the frame of mind that lets you be open to all of it, the frame of mind that lets you get excited by the expression of the other, by the touch of their hand or the glow in their eyes.

You don’t ever have to go to Paris to have been in Paris.

You could have it stamped in your passport that you visited the city and strolled through its beautiful boulevards, and all of it would make for a pleasant memory.

But Paris is an attitude. It is an openness to welcoming the other into your life.

We don’t know how long the experience will last and how satisfying will it be, but the openness to what is possible will make the two who come together richer in their hearts and in their minds.

To have felt deeply will add to our range as human beings.

Standing on the Eiffel Tower and letting your eye roam over the City of Light will be memorable but it will not compete with having allowed yourself to mesh with another human being.

Nothing can replace that feeling.

Money cannot buy it (although it can corrupt it). Achievement cannot either. Earning a much desired prize won’t get you there. And it does not come from devotion to a god or a cause, however lofty and meaningful that might be.

There are substitutes, of course, as in the satisfaction that pets give to their owners.

But the uniqueness of the coming together of two human beings attracted to each other has no parallel. Nothing ignites as this does, nothing has the capacity to probe us to our depths and stir us to our heights. Nothing has the capacity to heal the mind and the soul. Nothing has the power to pull us back from the edge of despair – although it can take us there too when things go awry.

All that we’ve accomplished as a species has, in one way or another, been motivated by our desire to be acknowledged or admired, with the underlying expectation of a merging with the other.  

Solitude has its virtues but emptiness does not suit us.

But give us a memory that we cherish, a longing that stirs, hope that our striving will be rewarded, and we’re set in motion.

Paris celebrates that desire and so it lives everywhere.

Paris is where we find it, where we turn on the light.

If we’re not doing so we have to ask ourselves why, for the longer the wait, the poorer our lives.

Oscar Valdes   oscarvaldes.net    oscarvaldes@widehumr

Political Donations and the Fragility of Democracy

We keep being asked to continue to pitch in, so more information is sent to voters.

But haven’t most people made up their minds by now?

Four years of Trump is not enough to persuade the citizen?

Apparently not, judging by the incessant requests. And so, it appears, that the fate of the nation comes to rest on a group of people who don’t seem to have strong views one way or the other and who can be persuaded by a postcard or advertisement.

Downright scary.

It is a good argument to invest more in education, to invest in helping people think.

A neutral subject like Thinking 101 could be made part of the curriculum, starting in 4th grade and continuing through the end of high school.

It ought to go hand in hand with Psychology 101, Learning to Recognize Your Emotions, so you’re not a slave to them but in control of them.

The classes could be just interactive lectures with no homework attached. A simple exchange of views with a mature adult with an interest in awakening young minds.

I, myself, would have got a lot of out of such courses.

The courses could use stories to illustrate instances of how thinking and being aware of your feelings can keep you out of trouble and move you in a direction that is right for you.

Sounds so basic. Who would be against this?

Some people are.

Some people who feel they have to capture the young mind to their way of seeing the world before the young even know who they are.

What a disservice to democracy.

What a disservice to humankind.

Oscar Valdes  oscarvaldes.net    on Twitter  oscar valdes@widehumr