Ravenspeaker

We don't live in a democracy. To be transparent, I am what used to be called liberal but is today called libertarian. I am neither conservative nor progressive so those viewpoints arent promoted or attacked here.
The United States was never organized to be a democracy and the Constitution goes out of its way to prevent what the Founders called "mobocracy" from ever happening here. Certain politicians and almost all media repeatedly use that phrase to describe us as if majority rules is always good and always sacred.
If you are a minority and think for five minutes you can suddenly appreciate occasions where half the voters plus one might want some law passed that would not be good for you and definitely not sacred. If you are minority you can think of actual historical examples to prove the point. Democracy can and will devolve into tyranny.
Today, people in Canada and the UK sit in jail for activity protected in this country by our Bill of Rights. Both those countries have the misfortune of being democracies. Half the voters, plus one, get whatever they want no matter who suffers. Its all well and good until you are in the half the voters minus one crowd. The technical term for this unhappy but "morally superior" system is bu****it.
I especially do not like this idiotic phrase some politicians use. "Save Democracy".

We need to be saying instead "SAVE THE REPUBLIC"
That is your morally superior system and it's amazing we let ourselves be educated (brainwashed?) out of understanding that.

Your friendly neighborhood Ravenspeaker

High School Reunions- I suppose we all have at least one person we wish we could have said a deeply meaningful thing to back when it could have made a difference. For years I was only able to avoid eye contact with two such persons from my high school while offering some mumbling hints at the truth. The stories of what really happened are major themes in my book "Building a Man" which I am honored to know some of you have read.

About a year ago I finally had a heart to heart with the less intimidating of the two and told her how she changed the course of my life and taught me self respect. She had no idea she had any impact on me let alone being such a needed person in my journey through life. Hearing her declare herself honored and even flattered changed something in me and I only regret not having that conversation with her way back in the day.

Readers will know immediately who that person is by the clues I have laid down here. They will also know who the other person is by what I am about to say. Over the years I had admitted to admiring her in flippant, throw away, "used to feel that way" language. I would be an idiot if I thought she would have taken any of these weak "confessions" seriously. What I had never done is look her in the eye and express what never really left my heart.

I finally got a chance to do that at a small gathering the night before our high school reunion.

I was surprised at how nonthreatening she was when I spoke decades of suppressed truth. I was surprised how unthreatened she was by it. She was relaxed, interested and predictably denying of any claim to being special, which of course she practically defines.

There are two moments that stand out which might teach more people than just me: First, she repeated something several times, I had once overheard her say to someone else after one of my pathetic throw away "admissions".

"I wish I would have known that then," which was a pleasant thing to overhear, but not exactly saying I would have gotten a date to the prom if she had. I heard it very differently last night when she said it to me several times. We had talked about my personal struggles once or twice while I was writing the book that includes this story. She never suspected any of it or how I hated myself or didn't feel worthy even of having a pleasant chat with her in the lunchroom or something. We both understood she was including this recent knowledge in what she was saying.

"I wish I would have known that then," It doesn't matter if I ever could have gotten a date to the prom, though it seems less impossible today for me to have at least tried those decades ago. I declared my eternal friendship and devotion last night. She let me know I always had hers then she invited me to come sit at the table the rest of her friends were at.

Life seems to need concern from others and concern for others to live at all. I would like to thank the Goddess of Cleveland High for being my friend. I am definitely hers.

Your Friendly Neighborhood Ravenspeaker

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Have you ever had the experience of not being able to learn something or do something no matter how much you tried this or that to get better? What about realizing there was something in the situation you didn't even know you didn't know?
It can be very embarrassing to be so certain you will "get it right this time" only to stumble or even fail yet again. I have recently become convinced of the theory there is only ever one cause for this kind of activity or learning blindness. I have known about this idea for many years and casually agreed with it but my eyes were opened this weekend to just how true, important and far from casual it is.
If you can't do something, can't learn something or can't find any point of agreement when you hear someone say something there is a word important to the understanding of the subject that doesn't mean what you think it means.
If you are smart this is especially dangerous because "of course I know that word"
Yeah, do you know all 7 definitions of that word as found in the nearest dictionary? I will bet money if you get down to the bottom of a page and have no idea what you just read, just before you went blank, will be a word the dictionary defines differently (sometimes only slightly different) than you do; and that difference is not a casual, who cares, kind of thing. You can't do it because you don't know EXACTLY what is meant. Getting this and acting on it will change your life.

Your Friendly Neighborhood Ravenspeaker