This Is Your Life

For the most free nation on earth, we've had ourselves a rough couple of weeks in trying to explain to one another how freedom works. I'm a sixty-two year old white man who will not insult your intelligence by pretending to understand any aspect of every day life of a person of color.

Relentless pragmatist that I am, I would suggest I don't need to understand you, nor you I, as long as we agree that each of us has a right to be here and to be whom we are. That presumption and assumption has been sorely tested in the days just passed and I'm afraid tomorrow is not looking too good either.

The days of rage we have seen across the country in the last week, and there's more than anger I think involved there- there's a hatred of domestic tranquility (as the Founders called it) and the rule of law- speaks to something deeper and more ugly and ferociously fearful in those who are pretending to be exercising their freedom of speech (to include those on the other side telling them to shut up).

Murders in Florida, Missouri, New York, actually all across this nation are not now, nor should they ever, be who we are. I and mine are not making you and yours do anything or be anyone you do not want to be-and vice versa. We cannot join hands to rebuild battered and shattered communities when we keep them balled in fists of anger.

Stop looking out the window for who is to blame and turn, instead, to the mirror. No matter the gender, creed, politics, wealth or color, the reflection is and will always remain  American Skin. To be continued?
-bill kenny