The 2016 Presidential Election as Story

The one thing we can all agree on today is: Thank gawd the U.S. presidential race is finally over!

And the long-shot candidate won: Donald J. Trump will be the 45th president of the United States.

Let’s be honest, whether or not you voted for the Donald, no one but the Donald thought he could win.

Keep Calm & Keep Campaigning

Sometime last year I caught a glimpse of his announcement to run, not sure exactly where or when I saw the clip, maybe on a treadmill at the gym, but my thought was: OMG! He’s riding down an escalator with his wife in an off-the-shoulder dress in the Mall of America.

What the heck is this country coming too?

The next thing I remember seeing was the New Yorker's cover (July 27, 2015) of a bloated Trump diving into a pool. Again, I wasn’t really paying close attention.

At that point, the only thing that mattered to me was: #NeverBush and #NeverClinton. After all, we don’t do dynasties in the United States … Right?

In February of this year I discovered Diamond and Silk, the hosts of The Viewers View (VV) on youtube. Again, I don’t remember exactly how or exactly when I stumbled across them, but after one episode, I was hooked on their engaging, energetic, insightful, and humorous election analysis. As the year progressed and the election turned REALLY nasty, I relied on every VV episode to keep me sane.

Whatever was happening, those ladies made me think (rethink) and laugh out loud.

Anyway … the night before the election, after the Real Clear Politics average showed Trump ahead in: Florida, Iowa, Nevada, North Carolina, and Ohio, I stared at the Seabiscuit poster in my office—1938, Seabiscuit Moves Ahead of War Admiral—and thought: OMG! Donald Trump is going to win because he’s moving ahead of Hillary Clinton in all these state polls and peaking at the right time.

And whether you love or hate or are indifferent to Donald Trump, you have to admit this story, like Seabiscuit’s, is a uniquely American one. With everyone in “the establishment” against him, attacking him, and piling on, he just kept on campaigning.

No matter how much was thrown at him, he just kept on going.

I was astounded. I think we all were. I mean how many of us didn’t ask ourselves at least once during the campaign, How is he doing it? How does he keep going? Where does he get the energy?

I mean, the guy has a work ethic.

And his age!?!?!

Is it because he’s never had a drink of alcohol or smoked a cigarette? Or is the key ingredient to his Energizer Bunny ethos the Kentucky Fried Chicken and Big Macs?

Maybe beneath the spray-on/tanning booth suntan he possesses the faith of an Old Testament prophet.

I don’t have the answers. But as someone who long ago lost faith in both political parties and is a reliable fan of the underdog, I thoroughly enjoyed the 2016 Presidential Election as “story.” It’s an incredible one, and an incredible fighter won against incredible odds.

As Hillary Clinton quoted from the Bible in her concession speech: Let us not lose heart in doing good, for in due time we will reap if we do not grow weary. Galatians 6:9

Trump never lost heart.

And he never grew weary.

Now, if that was all there was to this story, you might call it inspiring but one-dimensional. Well, life is #NEVERONEDIMENSIONAL.

Going back to Seabiscuit's unlikely and inspiring win over War Admiral during the Great Depression, there were three critical players in that story: automobile entrepreneur Charles Howard, horse trainer Tom Smith, and jockey Red Pollard.

And the Donald—and his indefatigability—was not the only critical component in yesterday's historic upset.

The Relocated Trickster from Down Under

In mythology, and in the study of folklore and religion, a Trickster is a character in a story (god, goddess, spirit, man, woman, or anthropomorphisation), which exhibits a great degree of intellect or secret knowledge, and uses it to play tricks or otherwise disobey normal rules and conventional behaviour. —Wikipedia

Julian Assange, the Australian founder of Wikileaks, who will (apparently) live in perpetuity in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London with a now-famous kitten, played the trickster in the story of the 2016 Presidential Election.

After throwing the Democratic National Convention into chaos by releasing hacked DNC emails on the eve of the convention, Wikileaks relentlessly dropped John Podesta’s (Clinton’s Campaign Chairman) emails on the American public through the remainder of the campaign—up until the final hour, when we learned the Clinton Foundation funded Chelsea’s extravagant wedding. Practically a minor revelation by that point.

I’m not going to recount all the bombs, they’re easily found all over the internet. Their effect: It became impossible to watch Hillary Clinton’s lips move without comparing the yawning gulf between what she professed with those moving lips and the pesky truths exposed in digitally preserved archives.

If that weren't enough, Assange’s interview with John Pilger, released on November 5 threw a great big wet blanket on the second Clinton’s grasp for power.

If you don’t have time to watch the 25 minute video, its two salient points:

As Secretary of State, the war in Libya was Hillary’s War. In overthrowing the Libyan government to advance her anticipated presidential campaign narrative, 40,000 lives were lost in Libya, and an international migrant crises was unleashed upon the globe.

Second point: United States international arms exports doubled in dollar value under Obama/Clinton. (This, while they attacked the constitutional right of their own citizens to bear arms.)

“If wars can be started by lies, peace can be started by truth,”—Julian Assange

Poetic Justice

In 1994 Bill Clinton signed The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 which “led directly to the destruction of African American families, had disastrous economic consequences and led to an escalation in the criminalization of young black boys and girls.”—Goldie Tayler, Daily Beast

In 1996, Hillary Clinton infamously used the term "super-predator" in defense of this bill.

For five decades, whenever a Democratic candidate won the White House, it was a reliable and largely monolithic Black vote that delivered the margin of victory. In 2008 and 2012, more Black Americans than ever came out for Barak Obama. In 2016, Hillary Clinton took their support for granted.

Analyzing county-by-county results for Tuesday’s election, it's clear that Black voters didn't turn out for Hillary. In flipped states, the margin of her loss was Black voters in urban areas.

Why weren't they with Her? Because they didn't like Her anymore than anyone else did, and the Obama Administration has never delivered to this key constituency.

An unlikely but extraordinary cast of characters.



What a story.

 ***

Diamond and Silk's Unity Message on Facebook:

Millennials & Nones Refuse to be Programmed

I confess, I'm intrigued by millennials. I'm even more intrigued by nones. I didn't know I was one—a none, not a millennial—until I discovered a "label" has been coined for people like me. (Nones are those who embrace "spirituality" while claiming no religious affiliation with Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, Judaism or any other organized religion.) So ... in this my second blog series on spirituality (the first being Sunburned), I'm going to be including more musings on nones, and how they might just be the crest of the wave of the 2nd Age of Enlightenment.

But today ... I'm just going to riff on voting since the United States 2016 presidential election is next month!

There are a lot of articles around the internet about non-voting millennials/nones.

The main question being: Why—aren't they voting?

Could it possibly be because ...

They know it’s complicated.
They know life is not a soundbite.
They know the whole purpose of talking points is to manipulate.

Politics, okay, the world, is suffering from the application of “marketing strategies” designed to manipulate the target. Vote. Buy. Like. Follow. Sign up.

Millennials/nones recognize the shallowness, dodge the bullet, and avoid further invasive interaction at all costs.

Why?

Many (most?) millennials/nones grew up in divorced (let’s talk about being sick and tired of divisive rhetoric!), single parent, and/or blended families. Parents break the family vase (or simply never have one) and amazingly expect their children to look the other way.

Suck it up, Buttercup.

While I destroy your life, I’ll go out and fulfill mine. While you’re deprived of the basic nutritive ingredients upon which human-beings thrive: attention, security, and the savoring of a child’s unique history, we’re gonna focus on this stranger (new guy or gal) who's—guess what?—moving in with more strangers (kids). And we’re going to create this new family (vase).

What’s that stinky smell beneath the rug? The corpse of your first family—or just the corpse of your other parent, who after all, wasn’t up to snuff. Oh, well. We’ll just spritz it with some nifty lemon-scented air freshener. BECAUSE mommy and daddy are happy—and really!—that’s ALL THAT MATTERS, because we’re in charge. OF YOU.

Why would kids raised in that kind of environment buy into any system? Once a kid figures out the “family system” is a convenient ruse to gain buy-in without any/much/reciprocal investment or consideration on the parents’ part, it’s not a leap to extrapolate that equation to (any) (all) other systems.

Millennials/nones are self-protective. With good reason.

Ironically, as much as the human brain has been compared to a machine, and just as we get all swept up in the glamor and the “maybe it will fix-it-all or maybe it will destroy-it-all” siren song of artificial intelligence … Millennials/nones are refusing to be programmed.

By family—“It is for many almost [obvious] how difficult it is to pass religious passions from one generation to the next.”
By religion—“nones have outstripped the single largest religious group of Americans: Catholics, who are now 21 percent of the adult population. The next largest group, white evangelical Protestants, represent 16 percent.”
By politics—“the religiously unaffiliated is no voting bloc”

Droids, robots, can't do that, by the way.

REFUSE TO BE PROGRAMMED.

Perhaps it will be the millennials/nones who tear down the media mind-meld-wall and envision/create a geo-political future beyond the banal-baiting marketing strategies which increasingly reign supreme around the globe. To its obvious detriment.

Will millennials/nones vote in the upcoming presidential election?

“They could have considerable impact on the political direction of the country but have so far chosen not to do so.”

All quotes are excerpted from this RNS article: More ‘nones’ than you think, but many won’t show up on Election Day by Lauren Markoe

Great News!

Finally!

Isolt's Enchantment, The Girl Who Believed in Fairy Tales, and Beautiful Beautiful are available at barnesandnobles.com! YAY! For years, we've been unable to offer Nook Readers free books—without going through a convoluted process which ... well ... I won't bore you with the details.

But this week, Barnes & Nobles has updated their policy and now Nook Readers can grab these amazing reads for free. (Android Readers they're available at GooglePlay, iPad & iPhone Readers they're available at Apple's iBooks store, Kindle Readers they're available at Amazon, Kobo Readers they're available in the Kobo store!)

Isolt's Enchantment is a prequel to Daughter of Light, although many readers enjoy reading it after they have read the first book in the trilogy, Half Faerie.

The slim novel is a collection of tales chronicling the historical events which have seeded the looming battle between Dark and Light in the enchanted world—the battle being the apocalyptic threat the eighteen-year-old Melia must face in her epic quest.

The tales are interwoven with the moving and inspiring story of Ryder's early years. An orphan adopted by the priests of Idonne, Ryder is determined to overcome his rootless past and safeguard the Whole from Umbra, a sinister consciousness dwelling in the Void.

Half Faerie and Half Mortal are currently available at all online book sellers.

War & Grace Update: I'm still cranking out the first draft of War & Grace. When I began writing this final book in the trilogy, I guesstimated it would be approximately 120,000 to 150,000 words. Well ... I've just passed 150,000 and have approximately seventeen more chapters to write! This book has been a huge challenge for me, and when I realized it was going to be bigger than either Half Faerie or Half Mortal, I freaked out! Should it have been published as a series rather than a trilogy? Bites nails. I turned to my trusted inspiration, The Lord of the Rings. How many total words were in that trilogy? Since you can find everything on the internet these days, I was able to find the exact word count of each LOtR installment at the LOTR Project:

Fellowship of the Ring: 188,000
The Two Towers: 157,000
The Return of the King: 137,000
Total: 482,000

I compared those word counts to the word counts in Daughter of Light:

Half Faerie: 120,000
Half Mortal: 150,000
War & Grace: 190,000 (yep!) (current estimate)
Total: 460,000

As far as word count, when compared to LOtR, DOL works as a trilogy! YAY! With that concern out of the way, revising my time schedule has been the remaining hurdle. As the story has taken some surprising turns, I've had to hunker down and accept: The first draft will be complete ... when the first draft is complete! I'll continue to post updates ... but please rest assured, I'm thrilled with the story up to this point and am committed to writing an enchanting, action-packed, and original end to Melia's story.

So ... Nook Readers, pick up a copy of Isolt's Enchantment for free!

The Girl Who Believed in Fairy Tales is a prelude to my Once Upon a Time Today collection. Throughout my life, many friends have said, "You should write a story about your life." Ugh, is pretty much how I feel whenever I hear that. However, I have loved fairy tales since I heard my first one as a child and have found them to be instructive, inspiring, and ... just plain great escapes. In TGWBFT, I share three specific times when fairy tales helped me navigate the dark woods of my own  psyche and helped me to: survive a wicked witch, transform overwhelming desire, and recognize that a duck trying to be a swan ... probably really isn't a bird at all!

Beautiful Beautiful is the first novella in the the Once Upon a Time Today collection.  OUTT are fairy tales retold as contemporary stories for "those who have already left home." In BB, a retelling of Hans Christian Andersen's fairytale, Beautiful, a mother analyzes her own past experience and perspective on beauty as she spins extemporaneous bed time stories for her young daughter.

So why offer these books for free?

To allow readers a risk-free glimpse into my writing world!

Enjoy!
Heidi

We Are the Creation

We are the creation,
The creation unfolding,
Infinitely loved by the Divine. — Heidi Garrett

Beyond the cliches, platitudes, and other superficials spoutings on love, lies an experience of a type that surpasses verbal explication. This is the experience of which I will attempt to speak. The love that brightens our lives with ecstatic joy and sustains us when we are beyond reach of all else, in the abyss of despair. Every life claims such peaks and troughs of human existence.

And yet love never abandons us.

I’m in the midst of my first read-through of God’s Ecstasy by Beatrice Bruteau. I say my first read-through because this book is going to require a re-read, if not several re-reads. Bruteau is a mathematician and philosopher. She has a mastery of quantum theory that will remain forever beyond me, but it is her extrapolation of that understanding into a theology of “the creation” that has had my mind pinging around like a ball in a pinball machine for the past few months. I read a few paragraphs every day with breakfast and let them percolate. She's the first “theologian” (I use the term loosely to mean anyone who applies spiritual concepts to our experience) who has satisfied my longstanding disagreement with the “we are one” religions and philosophies. [We are one and many.] I love it. Doesn’t THAT have a ring of truth to it? Okay, I’m tangent-ing …

Last summer I began to consistently meditate again. I’d fallen off the bandwagon. As someone who doesn’t have tons of worldly attachments, loosening my spiritual ones has never really been a helpful thing in the long run. So last summer, when I began to realize something was missing from my life, I began consistently meditating again, often outside in my backyard. Among the grass and the trees, the wind and the bugs, the sky and the clouds, the wonderful fresh scent of it all … and I connected with an abundance of love that I don’t remember ever connecting with before.

Sometimes when I meditate I get eureka-type insights. I prefer to not write them down, because I have a strange (is it strange? I don’t know) belief that if the insights are valid they will endure … or rise again until I won’t forget them.

The insight I had on one of those summer nights beneath a full moon was that: We humans are incapable of unconditional love. I know! You laugh that I had to meditate to come to that realization. But this was a cellular understanding. Think about it … we’re all exhorted to “love thy neighbor as thyself” and told that “love conquers all” and, well, you know, “love means never having to say your sorry”. But who is supposed to do all this loving? Imperfect humans? We, who none of us have ever been loved perfectly or unconditionally, are supposed to expect ourselves to be perfectly and  unconditionally loving of others? We who learn by imitation?

Isn’t that a double bind? A demand that simply can’t be achieved?

So … what if we have it a bit wrong? What if all these exhortations, guilt trips, shamings, cajolings, to love one another perfectly and unconditionally are simply … misguided?

I think we do need unconditional love.

But maybe, just maybe, the answer isn’t an outside to outside connection. Maybe the answer is an inside to outside connection. Let’s just say you meditated, and in that meditation, you connected to a source within (What source within? That spark of divinity within us all … the spark I call the soul flame) … so let’s just say you meditated, and in the silence you were able to experience an infusion of unbounded love. Let’s just say, you did this, experienced this for 3 - 5 - 10 - 20 minutes every day, most days. And it was the most complete thorough experience you ever had of feeling perfectly and unconditionally loved. Like you didn’t have to hide even a speck of who you are. And you felt that unbounded love FOR every quark of your being and IN every quark of your being.

Mightn’t that alter the way you perceived, approached your day … and the people around you? Mightn’t you naturally (no pasted on fake sh*t here) smile at the next person who came across your path?

Probably.

Would it create a lightening-strike transformation? Like, would you in one fell swoop be delivered from your old grumpy, irritated-irritating, distracted self?

Probably not.

But, what if … you meditated every day?

I'd like to re-quote a powerful message from one of the meditation articles I linked to in Meditation & Eclectic Spirituality, Volume 4.

A Case for Meditation in Schools: Aguirre's conclusion to this opinion piece is quite powerful:

When we are able through meditation to take the time to love ourselves, we stop looking to the world for love and find it within. Through self-love and awareness, there is no longer a need to inflict your emotional pain upon others, as it becomes easier to view yourself in others, and realize that hurting others is hurting oneself.

I'd like to posit replacing the concept of experiencing self-love with the concept of experiencing the unconditional love of our creator ... the same creator that created the universe the galaxy the stars ... and loves it all.