'Waiting for Columbus'

S E E D E D   C O N T E N T

Noel CaslerOct 12, 202562228Share

Imagine being Native American and living in harmony with the land for thousands of years and creating a beautiful and rich culture that honored the relationship and value of all living things in the natural world.

Of truly knowing your place in the clouds while walking on this sacred earth and seeing the white man come here with guns and greed; capturing, colonizing and enslaving indigenous peoples to exploit and extract resources.

Enslaving fellow human beings in the pursuit of both profit and 'civilization'.

Watching those people labor until death, under rulers feigning piety who felt absolutely no guilt slaughtering men, women and children for imperialist gains in the name of progress and a 'New World'; in the names of kings and Christ.

We are taught in schools those men are heroes, and indeed they were not all bad, there were indeed sparks of progressivism and political brilliance in much of our forebears' history but there was also madness.

Christopher Columbus represents that as well as anybody - and in many ways foreshadowed what was to come. It is no accident Trump has given Columbus his holiday back by proclamation - a reactionary crumb tossed to the anti-woke crowd he calls his base.

Noel's Notes is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Subscribe

We are not taught the true nature of Columbus's actions in most of our schools - and MAGA wants to make sure we never will be. We cannot ignore forever those things for which we should atone. The same philosophy applies to systematic racism, assault rifles and armed ICE officers attacking people based solely on the color of their skin - and increasingly the journalists attempting to cover their abuses.

Pretending we are not living on the cusp of madness, ready to fall into the abyss, will only deepen our dilemma.

I believe most Trump voters have humiliation/domination fetishes. They enjoy all the trappings of toxic masculinity with their silly 'Don't Tread On Me' flags and goofy MAGA ephemera but in reality they are being laughed at and demeaned by the very man they voted for, stripped of their civil rights and economic power that will never return.

When they wake up from watching the latest college football game or Fox News troll-fest they may wonder where it all went but there will be no time for learning then; just the sad recognition that everything they pretended to love about this land is long gone.

The fact that we are even talking about Trump winning the Nobel Peace Prize feels indicative of mass psychosis. The cowardly reprobate spent most of his adult life sexually assaulting women and girls and breaking the laws of business, morality and democracy.

He is the most unpeaceful POTUS ever - and in my book, the worst American.

Every awful attribute of a bloated and backsliding mindset can be found in Donald J. Trump; ignorance, arrogance, entitlement and a rapacious greed that is rivaled only by his sexual predation and compulsive mendacity.

DJT is selling watches and cutting side deals with Qatar and Saudi Arabia while slashing federal jobs and stealing healthcare from millions, including myself. I received an email this week notifying me that the plan I am currently enrolled in via New York State will be ending on July 1st of next year - thanks to a GOP Congress hellbent on repealing the ACA to deliver more tax cuts for billionaires.

As a freelancer, the last fifteen years of 'Obamacare' were the only time in my adult life I have had steady, affordable health insurance and it was a true blessing. Turning fifty-five and losing access to quality care is not something I relish - and I realize that I am still one of the lucky ones.

What of my fellow citizens who are battling serious illness and received a similar email this week from their insurance providers - millions of families plunged into uncertainty.

All thanks to one awful man (and a supplicant GOP) who was born a millionaire and spent his entire life taking from others, cheating on his taxes and bankrupting his businesses.

The 'Friday night massacre' so-called RIF (reduction in force) firings at CDC will decimate public health and place children's lives in danger. As with so much regarding 'America First' and Project 2025, the cruelty is the point.

Trump only feels truly alive when others are suffering.

The House of Representatives is entering its fourth week of paid vacation because Mike Johnson wants to protect Trump from a bipartisan vote on a discharge petition to release the unredacted Epstein files - which is all but certain to pass with the swearing in of a newly elected Congresswoman from Arizona, Adelita Grijalva.

What would one expect from the rotten but stink?

But what of those Americans who know better, who can see quite clearly that we have a corrupt and evil president leading us down a very dark and undemocratic path?

The ones who have sat on the sidelines for the last decade with flaccid proclamations such as 'I don't do politics'; the privileged who went about their personal lives and pleasures and careers while refusing to take a meaningful stand.

I know many folks who are exceedingly well practiced at turning a blind eye to the suffering of others at this point. A skill set that will not serve them in the future.

There's only so many times you can wake up to a country you no longer recognize, turn the pillow over to the cool side and go back to sleep before the nightmare reaches you as well.

They are ignoring the precipitous flames licking at the walls of the house we all share: eventually the smoke comes for all us.

The time to get in the fight was many yesterdays ago, but right now is as good a time as any to act. It is never too late to do the right thing - though our options, as a people, are becoming increasingly limited.

Stephen Miller is heading up a multi-agency crackdown on what they have deemed as 'radical left terrorist' organizations and they are in reality targeting the most anodyne and law abiding Democratic fundraising organizations, progressive PACS and influencers you could find.

Far from 'extremists', this administration is trying to label anyone they disagree with as 'ANTIFA'.

They are attacking opposition itself - the ability to speak out and gather in peaceful numbers and protest our government's misdirection. Things as elemental to this republic and the purity of our democracy as the right to vote and liberty and justice for all.

Voting itself will be much different in the coming years thanks to Dominion Voting Systems being purchased this week by a pro-Trump GOP election official, Scott Leiendecker, a 2020 election denier who has rebranded it 'Liberty Vote' and promises to implement a MAGA-friendly 'election integrity' system. Including third party access auditing (a la the Arizona 2020 recounts) of the voting machines, which were used in twenty seven states to count over half the votes cast in the last election.

Essentially, the physical apparatus of elections themselves are in Trump's tiny hands now.

The odds are being stacked to deliver elections in the GOP's favor. This is only one of a multi-pronged attempt to consolidate power, including voter ID laws, banning mail-in ballots and gerrymandering Republican districts. ICE agents and National Guard troops could also be deployed to polling places to intimidate voters. You can assume they will.

What Trump has been so successful at is rebranding the United States for people who never really understood this nation in the first place. The folks that MAGA exploits are the same uniformed population that the GOP has been picking on for generations.

But now it is supercharged and algorithmically enhanced to cultivate a feckless and obsequious 'America First' movement. A land of Christofascist followers and 'warriors' willing to fight on behalf of oligarchs and oil companies.

Trading in their futures for the white-hot rush of worshipping false idols.

They do not recognize the danger in a weaponized DOJ going after Trump's perceived enemies, which in the case of former FBI Director, James Comey, and New York AG, Letitia James, is the most egregious abuse of prosecutorial power in my lifetime.

It will not stop with them, as the execrable Attorney General, Pam Bondi, made clear in her abomination of a performance in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee this past week. Threatening not just Adam Schiff but anyone who dares question the lies of the 'Dear Leader'.

Her performance was an affront not just to decency but to the rule of law itself - and provided a chilling glimpse of what is to come if MAGA corruption is allowed to fester.

AG Bondi clearly serves only one man: I promise if he is given the power to punish with impunity it will not stop at his so-called enemies. (Bondi's soul was purchased by Trump long ago for a paltry twenty-five thousand dollar contribution to her political PAC when she was Florida's AG. She subsequently dismissed any legal action by her office regarding Trump University, one of POTUS's many now-defunct scams).

Everyone in his orbit sooner or later feels his wrath; that is how madmen operate.

Just ask his ex-lawyers or ex-wives (the alive one, not buried on his golf course). His children could tell you what an aberrant and abusive personality Donald is at his core - if they weren't in on the scams and loathsome grifters themselves.

It's as if an entire cabal has formed around a cover up. Now a nation is being abused and misused, restructured to serve Trump and his benefactor's needs at the expense of the rest of the world and the very people he is meant to serve.

They speak of peace like it's a plaything - a prize, a gold medallion that Trump can hang on his garish Oval Office mantel, next to the golf trophies he awarded himself and the made-in-China 'Trump 2028' hats.

Trump has 'MAGA-branded' spiritual ideology, to fleece his flock, because he doesn't understand what principles really mean. He's a man who has never known peace, let alone purveyed it; an angry heart and an empty soul, surrounded by scoundrels who reflect his particular dis-ease back to him.

The generous and the kind-hearted possess something he will never taste - true freedom.

And humility - an attribute more nourishing to the human soul than gold, for without it one can never overcome their own personal flaws and resentments and live a life in service of others.

The very essence of real leadership and political innovation.

It's the pons asinorum in this earthly school and the quickest way to overcome an inflated and aberrant ego that blocks us off from the sunlight of the spirit. Without humility compassion may never bloom, both for self and others.

'Faith without works is dead'.

Ask anyone who has ever done the hard work of both inner-reflection and moral inventory what a balm humility can be; no real understanding of the human condition is available without it.

There is a wealth of riches a man like Trump will never touch, his life so consumed with the cheap and vulgar.

Empathy is anathema to him - and he seeks out others who feel the same way, the cowardly and the weak who use brutality to mask their own fears and frailties.

We must not succumb to the lowest common denominator among us but rise to the occasion.

As Thich Nhat Hahn discovered in the mid-seventies when he was working to rescue refugees after the Vietnam War ended and more than eight hundred thousand men, women and children took to the seas to escape persecution.

The plight of the 'boat people' was largely being ignored by the world; Southeast Asian countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand towed their inadequate vessels back out into the ocean rather than let them come ashore.

Approximately two hundred fifty thousand Vietnamese perished at sea during this time. Some estimates put the death toll as high as four to six hundred thousand.

Thich Nhat Hahn, a decade after being nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Dr. Martin Luther King and living in exile from Vietnam, was organizing aid and rescue boats to bring refugees to Guam or Australia, with some assistance from the French Embassy in Singapore, when he was discovered and ordered to leave the country within twenty four hours.

He knew eight hundred souls would surely perish on a particular boat that was currently off shore, awaiting fresh supplies of fuel and food, if he were to be deported. His empathy was such that he felt as if he too were at sea, imperiled.

It was a seemingly insurmountable obstacle to solve in just twenty fours hours. The Zen Buddhist monk known for bringing the concept of mindfulness to the western world then decided to practice his meditation topic, "If you want peace, peace is with you immediately".

He was able to achieve calm but not carelessness; he cultivated a peaceful state of mind in the face of an overwhelming existential dilemma. An idea came to him to ask the French embassy to intervene on his behalf, to extend his visa for a few days to tie up logistical loose ends on behalf of the refugees.

At five minutes to noon, just as he would have to leave the country, his extension was granted.

The Zen master credited his long night of walking and sitting meditation, his mindful steps and breathing for allowing him to achieve success in that instance because he had faced the problem directly.

He did not succumb to anger or fear but instead chose awareness.

Nhat Hahn understood that if he could not have peace in that moment he would never truly attain it. If he could not have peace in the face of danger, the kind of peace he might realize in easier times would not mean anything.

He was no stranger to suffering; realizing the true 'peace prize' in life was the ability to help others, love and non-violence in action. It begins with ourselves.

As a result of his efforts on behalf of the Vietnamese refugees, the world began to pay attention - and in 1977 the U.S. government increased their quota of refugees to one hundred thousand per year. Australia and other countries soon followed suit.

To paraphrase Thich Nhat Hahn, 'If we do our best, in full awareness and with a heart free from anger, we can achieve great results'.

Stay mindful. Peace is the way, even when you're waiting for Columbus.

*If you enjoy 'Noel's Notes' please consider becoming a paid subscriber. All of my content is available free of charge but your support makes it possible. Thanks for reading.

62228Share