Now you see it. Now you don’t. Total control of everything on the YBR. Will there be consequences?

I like gadgets, but I love tricky gadgets. I should start calling my cell phone “Merlin” because it is magical. It does just about everything. I am intrigued by the “lens” tool. You take a picture of a flower you’ve never seen before and instantly learn what the flower is called, where it grows, etc. Amazing.

The photo erase tool is also as amazing, but in a different way. I took the top picture of a woman who was setting up for a celebration of the Feast of Our Lady of LaVang at the Carmelite Shrine where I work. I then used the magic eraser tool available on my phone. The woman in the orange dress is…gone.

The revised picture is real…isn’t it? If I trash the other photo with the woman in it, the real photo (a truthful photo), all that will remain is the photo without the woman.

We can debate the use of such a tool until the proverbial cows come home, but that’s not what I’m really talking about. I’m talking about how we can magically erase things from our memory to suit other purposes. Instead of dealing with things as they really were/are, we can alter the reality to better suit our (agenda-driven) narrative.

People on the left and far left do it. People on the right and far right do it. And they often do it to change the narrative that works for them as they tell/sell their story to “their” followers.

Sometimes that which gets erased is not always the same “sticking point” that gets erased in another “version” of the story.

Our ability to render different realities is not something new. You never needed an app to change a part or parts of the “truth.” It’s human nature. Honestly admitting that we do it is not human nature.

Until we all admit we are “guilty” of altering reality, we will have people out there who believe Donald Trump was denied the presidency and that Joe Biden had no idea whatsoever what his son was doing.

Until we take a deep breath and are willing to look at things as they really are…or at least admit that we tend to overlook things that “ruin” our story, we will never walk the yellow brick road…together.

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In our end is our beginning on the YBR.

(Photo by Brendan Smialowski / AFP) (Photo by BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)

T. S. Eliot ended his classic poem East Coker (the second poem in his Four Quartets) with the line “in the end is my beginning.” I believe it is an appropriate line to end my mini-discourse on the times we are living in. I say appropriate because the inauguration of the 46th President of the United States, just two weeks after the nation’s Capitol was breached, represents an end and a beginning. Sort of.

Constitutionally it does mark the end of the Trump reign and the beginning of the Biden era, but is there…or will there ever be…a beginning because the end has not ended. I say this despite President Biden’s heartfelt words meant to bring Americans together again.

75 million voters who cast their vote for Trump did so, in my opinion, because they felt ignored. Not only that, many of the Trump voters do not see themselves reflected in the faces of those people who call themselves Democrats.

I beg the following questions. What is a Democrat? What is a Republican? I have yet to hear in all my 72 years a believable answer to those two questions. An orange is an orange. An apple is an apple. I have no problem understanding what they are. I can’t say the same about a democrat and a republican.

If we are honest we would admit that the image we conjure when we think of a democrat of a republican is cemented to stereotype.

the sophisticated city dweller (top two) and the country folk (bottom two)

Of course that’s not true…but we all seem to think in stereotypes. Many Democrats think of Republicans as country bumpkins…a “class” of people who are Bible thumpers, who don’t have a progressive thought in their heads and who would join a mob of people and trash the US Capitol. Many Republicans think of Democrats as people with low or no morals, who have permissive attitudes about everything, and who pay lip service to a God that Republicans believe in.

We have set ourselves apart and claimed allegiance, not to the United States of America, but to a political party. It appears that Democrats beget Democrats and Republicans raise Republicans.

We call us the United States of America. Is that true? Was it ever true? If you look at presidential election maps you see blue states and red states. It took a civil war to let us all know something EVERYONE knew…that we were divided. The Civil War might have ended in 1865, but has the “fighting” really ever ended? While we talk about a wall on our border with Mexico, we never talk about the walls that separate one state from another or one group of people from another. Those are the walls President Biden needs to talk about. Those are the walls that won’t come down with legislation or national guard interference. They have to dissolve because we want to dissolve those walls. And the only way they will dissolve is if people of reason from all political parties bring an end to the hatred in this country that is fostered by political partisanship.

There were many signs of hope at the inauguration. Unfortunately, politically inspired sentiments have a short expiration date.

I found the voice of Amanda Gorman to be a voice that could help dissolve our differences. Her recitation, I believe, could be the beginning that will put an end to the hatred that divides us.

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