I’ve done many things over the years and I’ve lived in many places. Until 2016 I chaired the Political Science, Government and International Relations Program at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales in the Republic of Colombia where I taught political science (human rights law, international and supranational law, constitutional theory, government and comparative political systems, history of political ideas, and, North American Studies), served as an English resource to faculty members, translated academic papers, and participated in development of international faculty and student exchange programs for the university. I periodically serve as a political commentator on local media and continue to be active as a writer and artist as well as a translator and interpreter. My university degrees are in political science, law, international legal studies and translation studies. I am active political matters both locally and internationally and have a passion for world affairs and history. I’ve sought spiritual enlightenment all my life but have yet to find definitive answers; I have, however, found an ever increasing and worthwhile, series of questions to speculate on. I am very drawn to the beauty, simplicity and justice of the Wiccan Reede. I love music, dancing, writing, reading, drawing, equestrian sports, tennis and softball. I maintain a warm and supportive ongoing relationship with my three sons in the USA. I was married twice with one serious relationship between the two marriages and also had several wonderful recent relationships. I dislike jealousy and respect the importance of private space and continuing individual growth; however, I also value loyalty and honesty very much and treasure affection.
The unique resonance one soul feels for another now tinged with pain.
A strange blend.
Not altogether unpleasant.
Perhaps like shadows and light or sweet and sour, or the odor of perspiration during intimacy, but distant, unattainable, as though alpha was enamored of omega, infinitely apart yet only a shadow away.
A romance that never really started but whose echoes can never end. _______
Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. He is currently a strategic analyst employed by Qest Consulting Group, Inc. He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at http://www.guillermocalvo.com.
Circles, in some aspects, seem the perfect shape, but they also represent closed systems, at least when considered alone. Spheres add dimension. And groups of spheres, almost infinite groups of spheres, well that is a very different thing. Groups of spheres seem to surround us, from micro, sub atomic structures to the shapes of ever expanding universes. We humans, and perhaps other biological entities, seem trapped in the middle, although, the gift of volition would seem to impact the concept of a closed system, a flaw in the predestination that geometry and mathematics and physics seem to imply. It is interesting to speculate on whether or not there was any volition inherent in the transition from singularity into everything which eventually evolved. That might, to some extent, explain the imperfections in that first great conflagration. Of course, that could imply a demiurge and, to be honest, demiurges are currently out of fashion.
Circes are symbols as well as archetypes, especially when configured in groups. And while the potential configuration of circles is infinite the classification of their configurations are not. They can be singularities (theoretically), solitary circles, groups of solitaries, concentric, overlapping, intersecting, and combinations of the foregoing. As combinations they represent the fascinating possibilities inherent in chaos where all that can be, “is”, and is simultaneously notwithstanding inherent contradictions.
As archetypes, concentric circles represent hierarchies, authoritarian systems, each level encompassing a prior level around a singularity in the middle. Overlapping circles represent interactions among some groups of circles without a hierarchy and without a centric singularity, and, intersecting circles represent interaction among all members of a group, without a hierarchy but with a common nucleus: circles interacting around a central axis with a portion of their circumferences overlaying, generating a small shared area, one that they occupy in common while the rest reflects a sort of independence. The latter variant represents very special things to me on a number of levels. The ideal blend of intimacy and independence in intimate interpersonal relationships, or the ideal relationship among social groups with shared values but also, with treasured differences; the antithesis of the revered melting pot concept much more accurately reflecting the ideal in a multicultural society and a multinational state. No one’s values superimposed over those of others even as important values are shared.
Ideals are such frustrating things though. They posit idealized solutions to intractable problems: unstoppable forces crashing into immovable objects but with the hope that faith can indeed move mountains. Somewhere in chaos, in the multiverse posited by the variant of string theory that encompasses eleven, rather than ten dimensions, somewhere where everything that can happen happens somewhere or some-when, idealized solutions function. But not here, not now.
It is very sad that in today’s polarized world where purported progressives have exchanged almost all of their values in a quest for perpetual power, the balance in my vision of intersecting circles is being brutalized and the quest for individuality, for harmonious liberty, for tolerance and mutual respect is being savaged. It’s as though an intellectual pandemic infected many of the people who once shared my values and my goals and turned them into negative mirror images of what they once were. Inexplicably, at least to me, metaphorically their quest seems to involve converting intersecting circles into concentric circles, and then, into singularities, reversing the tolerance-for-difference humankind once seemed determined to attain into Orwellian conformism.
I recall the hope and love inherent during the chaotic nineteen-sixties, a blend of incoherent emotions demanding change, demanding an end to bellicosity at every level; an end to war; an end to racism, xenophobia and misogyny; an end to intolerance; an end to inequity and injustice, but in each case, endings to be attained through empathy and love rather than conflict, conquest and suppression. However, we lost our way and flower children became politicians and entrepreneurs and journalists and, instead of great writers, many became great publicists, enamored with the apparent magic of the tools behavioral psychology made available, tools that, like the mythical philosopher’s stone, permitted almost total manipulation of feelings and beliefs. And truth became irrelevant, a merely relative concept. Rhetoric became a divinity at whose feet, amidst the sounds of silence, we became that against which we once railed.
As we changed, we propagated and under the leadership and guidance of many of us who, for diverse reasons, like Luke Skywalker aka Darth Vader turned to the dark side, much of our progeny became more and more incoherent, incongruent, vitriolic, violent and intolerant. Slogans replaced goals and to them, the changes in the present we so need required that the historical past be destroyed and replaced: in essence, that our historical mirrors be exchanged for discordant pseudo-art: visual as well as vocal, cinematographic, etc. To them, censorship, rather than the evil we once believed it to be, ought to be imposed in the name of security from discordant opinions, as though rather than the music of the orbs, only a single unending, unwavering, invariable note should be permitted to exist, and that what it lacked in terms of diversity, should be replaced with volume.
In essence, in this temporal instant, in this corner of the multiverse, we are experiencing a battle of discordant circular configurations, perhaps a battle between the armies of chaos (intersecting and overlapping circles, the good guys) and the armies of the concentric circles seeking the singularity we once were. Singularity which provides security through the absence of choices and the absence of opinions but which, in the end, crushes us all. ______
Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. He is currently a strategic analyst employed by Qest Consulting Group, Inc. He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at http://www.guillermocalvo.com.
Query: Is procreation a duty? If so, to whom? Are there any corresponding or at least compatible duties owed by the procreated to their progenitors?
Response and Observations:
As to the first question:
Given the constancy of procreation, the answer is apparently yes, probably an imperative duty reinforced by instinct and by the profusion of related dopamine production associated with the act of procreation as well as thereafter as evinced by the predominance of activities to maximize preservation of the procreated.
As to the second question:
In one sense the duty appears owed to the entire ecosystem but in concentric levels of importance given that beyond the closest nuclei, a destructive tendency appears towards destruction appears increasing in frequency at each level away from the nucleus. In some species, the tendency towards destructive intra species aggression is even exhibited at the closest levels, hence the Cain and Abel myths among the species denominated humanoid.
As to the third question:
The answer is apparently not as, only during certain historical periods and limited primarily to humanoids, do the procreated concern themselves with the wellbeing of their progenitors once the progenitors’ utility has been exhausted and they instead become a burden. This appears precisely the obverse of the instinctual behavior of progeny to their progenitors since for so long as the progeny remain a burden, progenitors usually subsume their personal welfare to that of their issue.
The latter is explained by a combination of physical and social factors. There appear to be chemically driven psychological changes that create a rift between progenitors and progeny as progeny transition through adolescence. Among humanoids, the chemical changes reinforced by social attitudes usually promote disdain for elders and a sense of rebellion in the young which make continued cohabitation uncomfortable (unless progeny fail to successfully attain independence, in which case they tend to linger in pre-adolescent modes). The social impact of the foregoing tends to vary epochally with social pressures at times forcing a continued close familial association while at other times, such pressures constitute a divisive force. Interestingly, in this regard, epochs seem to oscillate in pendulum fashion over several generations. The most difficult periods occur as one cycle transitions into the next, frequently resulting in large scale societal convolutions and disruptions predicated on incompatible generational mores.
Conclusion:
Trusting that this clarifies certain apparently incoherent psychosocial tendencies among the inhabitants of Terra and the predilection for constant apparently irrational conflicts among humanoids, this summary report is respectfully submitted.
Mork Resident Agent on Terra from the Orkian Federation
Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. He is currently a strategic analyst employed by Qest Consulting Group, Inc. He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at http://www.guillermocalvo.com.
Imagine a second coming starring someone whose name was a hint, for example, Theophany Jones, or Smith, or Cohen, or Lopez, or perhaps, Abdallah. Hmm, Theophany Abdallah has a nice ring.
Imagine what the corporate and social media censors would have done with him (… or her).
Once more, the word “crucify” comes to mind. _______
Transcendent in ethereal shades and hues of tenuous verity scented in primordial echoes from both the crystal past and fluid future, elusive memories of primeval music molding our bodies with dances we don’t quite understand but whose impact seems inexplicably profound.
Puppets on strings blowing in eternal winds, motes in infinite kaleidoscopes seeking paths towards illusory heavens; and then, ….
We wake to morning coffee and prophecies almost grasped quickly fade away. _______
Machiavelli and Murphy sip brandy (Cardenal Mendoza) in their comfortable overstuffed chairs at their club at eternity’s end and, playing cards, discuss the latest news. Pseudo-president Biden is in desperate political trouble, as is his political party, and with them the Deep State. Hardly anyone believes the corporate media but its members remain blissfully unaware, of anything, they only need to read from teleprompters: whatever the intelligence agencies wrote.
The two old pals had been laughing at the machinations in the Ukraine when a servitor brought Murphy a news flash. Laughing, he threw down a newly marked card: “Steven Breyer had just announced that he was resigning from the Supreme Court”. Nicholai’s eyes lit up. Oh the opportunities this presented! Murphy looked on slyly, agreeing, … but with plans of his own.
“Michelle Obama” they both whispered. And then they chatted, … although not all that honestly. They had style though.
Nicholai saw her as the answer to the pseudo-president’s problems as well as to those of his party which had been nervously waiting to be slaughtered in November. Oyez vey!! Nancy Pelosi had just announced plans to run again. But, a black woman intimately tied to Obama, what could be better! Competence and experience were irrelevant, only politics mattered. It would also eliminate her from competition for the presidency at the next election, something too many people in his party were apparently considering. And after all, only the next six years really mattered. Kamala would understand, in fact, she might also be thrilled. Anyway, did it really matter what Kamala’d been promised or what she thought (assuming she thought). Blacks loved him no matter what he’d done in the past and now he’d give them a reason to stand up and cheer again.
And it would put the GOP in a horrible spot. If they fought the nomination it would energize the Democrats’ base, and if they acquiesced, it would depress theirs. Check!
But not “mate” Murphy whispered to himself, not mate. Snickering under his breath as he was wont to do, he rubbed his hands in glee and excused himself. A bathroom break but one from which he didn’t return. Lost in his imaginative reverie, Nicholai barely noticed.
Murphy sneaked off to pour even greater delusions into the mind of another former first lady already busy dying her skin a much darker tone and planting evidence, with the connivance of her many friends in the media and her buddy Elizabeth Warren, to prove that she had a number of ancestors of African descent. “After all”, Elizabeth was saying, “don’t we all”? “Think of Lucy after all”? _______
Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. He is currently a strategic analyst employed by Qest Consulting Group, Inc. He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at http://www.guillermocalvo.com.
Guillermo (“Bill”, once known as Billy) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. He is currently a strategic analyst employed by Qest Consulting Group, Inc. He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at http://www.guillermocalvo.com
Synergy, somehow unloosed at inception, freed from its prison in no-space, no-time, no being; an expanding cloud, exploding, transcending proto-time and proto-space and proto-dimensions, always creating more than the sum of its parts in a trigonometric sequence, always expanding to cover all that was, is and will be.
As it increased, it created actual time to accommodate the necessity of movement, then, eventually, cascaded into infinitely growing eternities. And of course, never having time for reflection, it was always confused, seeking to attain ever evasive bemusement.
Thus, the angels; then six days of creation: first the dark, then chaos, then light, then a firmament and flora and fauna, the serpent, the trees, the apple, the man, and finally, the woman. Experiments all set in motion and then, all too soon discarded as synergy continued its perpetual series of caroms along an emerging and ever expanding Mobius strip to nowhere. _______
Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. He is currently a strategic analyst employed by Qest Consulting Group, Inc. He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at http://www.guillermocalvo.com.
Today, January 17, 2022, is a day set aside to honor two famous Americans of African descent, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Muhammad Ali. One wonders how Dr. King would view today’s America. I think it is almost as different as possible from what he hoped it would be. Ali might have been less surprised and more sanguine. Perhaps some reality checks are in order, unpleasant reality checks for everyone involved, and I believe Colin Rand Kaepernick is a viable vehicle for such introspection. He is a strange symbol for many concepts, a number of them incoherently inconsistent with others. In essence, like Ali, although to a much lesser extent, he is someone who has been forced to choose between professional and financial success and his conscience. Unlike Ali, he was not the best that ever was at his athletic endevors, he may have become a great quarterback or merely been eventually cast aside as mediocre, but cast aside he was, not by the United States government as was the case with Ali, put by the owners of the National Football League, bowing to pressure from jingoist elements in our society that worship symbols, much as fascists do, without really understanding them. Unfortunately, that pretty much defines the disparate competing elements working to sunder us, to polarize us to lead us once again into violent civil strife as once again, families are torn asunder based on narratives that have little to do with reality.
It is certainly not only right wing, empire loving pseudo-conservatives to blame. For example, the claim by Cancel Culture “Woke” warriors that meritocracy is racist and sexist is a huge insult to minorities of all races, nationalities and genders. It is amazing how blatantly unaware of their condescension those privileged pseudo liberals are. Real liberals and real progressives know better and all we ask is that as Martin Luther King, Jr. hoped, we not be judged by anything other than our character and abilities (“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character”).
Meritocracy would seem to have been what would have most benefitted Mr. Kaepernick, but meritocracy not delimited by required political correctness, a social disease that impacts autocratic infected activists in both major parties, none of whom adequately represent either the political right (denominated Paleolithic, fascist, racist and extreme or radical by its opponents in the Democratic Party) or the political left (denominated Communist, socialist and extreme or radical by its opponents in the Republican Party). Interestingly, the sane are not necessarily found in the apathetic center or among those who identify as independent due to lack of interest, but rather, are scattered among the populist fringes, left as well as right, who realize that for a very long time, perhaps forever, we have all been manipulated, used and abused for the benefit of the very few who rule us all as though they owned the One Ring of which JRR Tolkien wrote.
Colin Rand Kaepernick, a former quarterback for the San Francisco Forty-Niners of the National Football League is famous, or infamous (depending on your perspective) for refusing to honor the playing of the United States’ national anthem, “The Star Spangled Banner”, at the start of a professional football game in which he played. His example was subsequently followed by other professional and university football players of African descent, and then by athletes and sympathizers of diverse races. The related symbolic protests further polarized an already divided nation and Mr. Kaepernick has evidently been “blackballed” from playing in the National Football League, although at some point, perhaps his skill had so deteriorated that having placed him on an NFL team roster would have been a mere token gesture.
But what was Mr. Kaepernick’s point?
Apparently, the catalyst was the following line from the third stanza in the poem written by Francis Scott Key in Baltimore Harbor during the War of 1812, and subsequently incorporated into the tune of a British bar song that in 1931 became the national anthem of the United States: “No refuge could save the hireling and slave from the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave”. According to British historian Robin Blackburn, the phrase referred to the many thousands of African descended slaves who flocked to the British during the War of 1812, where their status as slaves was not recognized by the British, including a number who took service with the British against their American masters in the Corps of Colonial Marines. According to Wikipedia and other more reliable sources[1], Francis Scott Key, when he wrote those verses in 1814, was a slaveholding lawyer from an old Maryland plantation family who, thanks to that system of human bondage had grown rich and powerful. When he wrote the poem that would, in 1931, become the national anthem proclaiming our nation “the land of the free,” Key, like the author of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, not only profited from slaves but harbored racist conceptions of American citizenship and human potential. Africans in America, he said, were: “a distinct and inferior race of people, which all experience proves to be the greatest evil that afflicts a community.”
While Key was composing the line “O’er the land of the free,” it is likely that black slaves were trying to reach British ships in Baltimore Harbor. They knew that they were far more likely to find freedom and liberty under the Union Jack than they were under the “Star-Spangled Banner.” Key subsequently used his political office as the district attorney for the City of Washington from 1833 to 1840 to defend slavery, attacking the abolitionist movement in several high-profile cases. Key sought to crack down on the free speech of abolitionists he believed were riling things up in the city and prosecuted a New York doctor living in Georgetown for possessing abolitionist pamphlets. In the resulting case, U.S. v. Reuben Crandall, Key made national headlines by asking whether the property rights of slaveholders outweighed the free speech rights of those arguing for slavery’s abolishment, hoping to silence abolitionists who he charged wished to “associate and amalgamate with the Negro.” Though Crandall’s offense was nothing more than possessing abolitionist literature, Key felt that abolitionists’ free speech rights were so dangerous that he sought, unsuccessfully, to have Crandall hanged. Hmmm, that does sound quite a bit like the Democratic Party’s Cancel Culture attitude towards those who oppose compulsory vaccination during the current Covid Crisis. Mr. Key, was, of course, a member of his era’s Democratic Party.
American history is full of irony and hypocrisy but today, none is more blatant than that engaged in today by so called “woke” pseudo progressives waving the Cancel Culture flag. It is not surprising given the pathetic state of education in the United States. This week a “woke” reporter ridiculed a Congressional candidate’s reference to a debate between Abraham Lincoln and former slave and civic leader Frederick Douglas asserting that “the” debate was with Illinois politician Stephen Douglas, as if there had only been one debate between the late president and anyone named Douglas. In fact, there was a huge debate in the White House between Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglas and other Black leaders (then referred to as Negroes) concerning Lincoln’s postwar plan to deport all Americans of African descent from the re-United States, Lincoln noting that it was obvious the two races could never live together. Frederick Douglass did not agree. Neither, much later, did Martin Luther King, Jr. Ali’s position on the issue, may have been more complex. Unfortunately, not many people realize that, although opposed to slavery, Abraham Lincoln was an avowed racist. How sad that Americans of African descent today look upon him as their very own hero.
The sad reality is that almost everything taught in the United States concerning its un-civil Civil War is utterly distorted, most especially the claim that the “Union” invaded the States in Secession to “free the slaves”. Nothing could have been further from the truth as then President Lincoln made clear in his first inaugural address when he said ….
Apprehension seems to exist among the people of the Southern States that by the accession of a Republican Administration their property and their peace and personal security are to be endangered. There has never been any reasonable cause for such apprehension. Indeed, the most ample evidence to the contrary has all the while existed and been open to their inspection. It is found in nearly all the published speeches of him who now addresses you. I do but quote from one of those speeches when I declare that–
I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.
Those who nominated and elected me did so with full knowledge that I had made this and many similar declarations and had never recanted them; and more than this, they placed in the platform for my acceptance, and as a law to themselves and to me, the clear and emphatic resolution which I now read:
Resolved, That the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the States, and especially the right of each State to order and control its own domestic institutions according to its own judgment exclusively, is essential to that balance of power on which the perfection and endurance of our political fabric depend; and we denounce the lawless invasion by armed force of the soil of any State or Territory, no matter what pretext, as among the gravest of crimes.
I now reiterate these sentiments, and in doing so I only press upon the public attention the most conclusive evidence of which the case is susceptible that the property, peace, and security of no section are to be in any wise endangered by the now incoming Administration. I add, too, that all the protection which, consistently with the Constitution and the laws, can be given will be cheerfully given to all the States when lawfully demanded, for whatever cause–as cheerfully to one section as to another.
There is much controversy about the delivering up of fugitives from service or labor. The clause I now read is as plainly written in the Constitution as any other of its provisions:
No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall in consequence of any law or regulation therein be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due.
It is scarcely questioned that this provision was intended by those who made it for the reclaiming of what we call fugitive slaves; and the intention of the lawgiver is the law. All members of Congress swear their support to the whole Constitution–to this provision as much as to any other. To the proposition, then, that slaves whose cases come within the terms of this clause “shall be delivered up” their oaths are unanimous. Now, if they would make the effort in good temper, could they not with nearly equal unanimity frame and pass a law by means of which to keep good that unanimous oath?
How in good conscience then, can the claim be made that the Civil War was initiated in order to secure freedom from the odious institution of slavery for the millions of enslaved Americans of African descent then held as property not only in the South, but throughout the United States of America? Well, as easily as Jefferson’s claim that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal ….” is held as a sacred pillar of American democracy; and as easily as the Confederate Stars and Bars are despised while the Stars and Stripes, which flew over a nation that enforced slavery not only during the Civil War but for the entire period from 1776 until 1866; and as much as the anthem “Dixie” is reviled while Francis Scott Key’s Star Spangled Banner, including the lines “No refuge could save the hireling and slave from the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave” are glorified. They are useful lies used not only to maintain most Americans of African Descent in political bondage, but to assure that most of us are also subjected to sugar coated governmental tyranny. Colin Kaepernick was apparently, less ignorant than most when, on that fateful Sunday, he elected to kneel as Mr. Key’s ditty was played before the adoring football crowd in a now ubiquitous Pentagon funded pregame ritual honoring the ongoing murder of millions by a politicized American military machine.
Mr. Kaepernick’s protest involved rare coherence amidst our current politicohistoric incoherence, although perhaps the adjective “current” is misplaced. It is interesting to note that neither George Washington nor Thomas Jefferson nor Francis Scott Key nor any of the “founding fathers” (other than perhaps Benjamin Franklin) ever did as much for Americans of African descent as did Robert E. Lee after his surrender at Appomattox Court House, but he is the one on whom the purportedly “woke” have focused their disdain. So, Mr. Kaepernick may certainly have had a more than valid point, assuming he is not among the myriads of Americans of African descent who support the Democratic Party: the party of the Confederacy and the Ku Klux Klan, the party of segregation and of the Clinton-Biden welfare and penal reform acts that have destroyed most of the current generation of American Black males. The party that uses and abuses Americans of African descent to stay in power by doing all it can to generate anti-Black sentiment by keeping the issue of racism festering and profitably alive and holding out the worst among American Blacks (think George Floyd) rather than people like Mr. Kaepernick, Dr. King or Muhammad Ali as the persons who Americans of African descent should eulogize and emulate.
As I think today of Dr. King and Muhammad Ali, and yes, of Colin Kaepernick and even George Floyd, I grieve for the reality that Americans of African descent will never be truly free until they discard the emotional, social and political shackles that bind them to the worst among us, until they again develop real leaders, men Like Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcom X, rather than Democratic Party overseers in the Congressional Black Caucus. The Democratic Party is currently seeking to politically enslave Hispanics and immigrants (groups of which I am a member) the way it has way too many Blacks. Hopefully it will not succeed. Certainly not today’s authoritarian, antilibertarian, pro-Cancel Culture Democratic Party so alien from the party of Dennis Kucinich and James Webb and Tulsi Gabbard.
Mr. Kaepernick’s protest and his willingness to sacrifice a professional career ought to be more than merely symbolic. Indeed, merely symbolic actions tend to delay rather than to accelerate the required changes they seek to promote. With respect to racism and xenophobia and misogyny, change require a coming together rather than a drifting apart and those changes can neither be imposed nor legislated, they cannot be attained by fictionalizing history or by deceptive journalism, they cannot be attained by ridiculing those who need to be converted. They can only be attained when empathy replaces apathy and when transparent, honest and competent leadership replaces the snake pit of oligarchic elites who rule and ruin us all now, whether we are black, white, Asian, Hispanic, male or female. And that won’t happen as long as members of diverse ethnic, racial, religious and other societal groups continue to be deluded into voting as a block without holding their leaders accountable for failing to meet commitments essential to us all in attaining justice, equity, equality and a real opportunity to not only pursue but attain happiness. It won’t happen unless we rededicate ourselves with the courage of Muhammad Ali to the vision of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Something to seriously consider as we head father and farther away from Dr. King’s dream. _______
Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. He is currently a strategic analyst employed by Qest Consulting Group, Inc. He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at http://www.guillermocalvo.com.
The concept of family is, at best, in transition, at worse, just a memory. Its permanence is surely, in most cases, passé. While the plight of mothers is often articulated, that of fathers, especially fathers left behind, is virtually ignored. But some of us still manage to salvage the essence of what might have been.
My relationship with my three sons is strained at best, perhaps in some instances non-existent, but that is the present and recent past. The more distant past is beautiful from my perspective, and remains, not only vivid, but healthy and alive: I visit it frequently and its vibrant joy is not dissipated or diminished thereby. It is seemingly unquenchable, a cornucopia molded through long days and arduous nights in frequently difficult times but with yields too beautiful to adequately describe.
Living in the past is often criticized but to me that seems to be criticizing fulfillment of the fruits of one’s past sacrifices. Streams of images of my three sons as they were growing are always nearby, images preserved when hope that everything would turn out positively was more than a mere possibility, as long as I persevered. All I could ever want was inchoate and seemingly assured.
It has not turned out that way, not the way I hoped and expected, at least not for me, but the impetus of those joyous times is the wind in today’s sails, echoing with fragrances and mirages of what was and what might have been. So, rather than dwelling on what is, I revel in what was, insisting that having been real, the past is also permanent and that the love created there may be more than enough to see me through.
And that is true for so many, many, many fathers, most of whom believe that
Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. He is currently a strategic analyst employed by Qest Consulting Group, Inc. He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at http://www.guillermocalvo.com.
Guillermo Calvo Mahé 