Anyone who watches the Godfather trilogy knows after watching the three hypnotic and strangely depressing trilogy of movies, in the end, the last Corleone simply collapses over the ashes of brutal life in which he achieved everything, bought the world, but at the price of his soul, and died alone.  He jettisoned his idealism in exchange for a fearful power and accompanying wealth.  Trapped in the limited world of fatal chess like moves and tragic strategies he died spiritually bankrupt and alone.  Amen.  We must not as a nation, follow the lethal blueprint so brilliantly outlined for us in that cautionary tale. Yet, here we are, just short of our 250th birthday, strutting along with mafia confidence, threatening, insulting and terrifying the nation and world with the brash confidence of a gangster with a loaded gun in a vulnerable community.

I say ‘we’ because our gangster, as long as he rules unchallenged, represents the sum of America to the world.  The 21st century has been a tale of democracies at a tipping points between freedom and facism.  The frightening new understanding is tyranny is electable.  All that is required is an overwhelming power and an electorate that has gone to sleep.  Being ‘woke’ is a being presented by the current American government as a liability in America these days, and we are buying the lie.  We are now becoming the third major superpower under tyranny.  Collectively we can still recover.  As isolated individuals we are in danger.  

A Modest Proposal for Good

Being “woke”  is not an equivalent of the extreme left.  Being “woke” is being self-aware, conscious, and witnessing reality.  The Western traditions in civilization have gotten a lot of things wrong but ‘knowing thyself’ is not one of them. Not surprisingly only a very, very, small number of the people I have met over my years would be comfortable with murder, kidnapping, and brutality.  Yet, again, here we are.  Those crimes are somehow wrapped into a sense of blind patriotism.  The evidence is before us to see.  See it and respond to your sense of good. So very few of us wants to live a lie, so lets live truth in our own governance.  That would be good and yes, the road back is now very risky.