Something Very Personal........

I am a man. Men don't often open their hearts and feeling to anyone unless they are extremely psychologically wounded. But I will in this article, at the risk of others seeing “weakness” in doing so.

I have chosen to be a non-Republican over the years. This started with the attack and eventual impeachment of Bill Clinton by Republicans, continued by the theft of the 2000 election by GW Bush and solidified with the total obstruction of the Obama presidency that started in clandestine meeting between top Republicans BEFORE Obama was even inaugurated.

This is what made me a non-Republican. What made me a Progressive Liberal are the opinions, feelings and morality my Mother, a single mother instilled in me and those I have developed over the years. My Mother, who I still worship today after she died almost 25 years ago, was a bigot and what is now called a Conservative. She was not a hater of Blacks, she felt she disliked (she never used the word “hate”) Jews, intensely. My older brothers were not really bigoted. They felt that "Black people were great and everyone should own a few"..... that overt/covert white suburban bigotry that persists to this day.

So did my Father who I never met. He was even worse, forcing my eldest sister to stop seeing a man she loved, because his skin was too dark. He was of Mediterranean descent and olive-skinned.

Publicly, he never showed this prejudice I am told, he died when I was just over a year old, but my sister and my Mother made his feelings abundantly clear through their recounting of his actions and words. My Mother however, never quite explained her dislike for Jews. She had a story, told to her by her Mother, that took place during one of the 19^th century European “purges” of Jews during the Franco-Prussian war. It is a long story, but the take-away I got from it, was that my Great-Grandmother was Jewish. Judaism runs down the maternal line, similar to the way Islam runs down paternal lines, thus making Barack Obama, in fact, a Muslim in the eyes of Islam, but not America where we accept one's faith by declaration. This “lineage religious identity” also made my Mother one-quarter Jewish and myself one-eight Jewish, still a Jew in the eyes of the Talmud, IF, my interpretation of the story is correct!

Since 1890's America was overtly anti-Semitic, I can see how through three generations, my Mother would develop these feelings, particularly since she was a young woman during the rise of Hitler. I don't agree with these feelings, but I can understand them.

So I should be an avid supporter of the Republicans. I should be out there waving “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN” banners, due to my upbringing! What happened? David Canada happened. Here is the story:

I did very well in the retail automobile business, rising to become a General Manager of a Houston car dealership by age 30. I still made the deals, hired & fired and ordered cars as a GM. While still a salesman, I disagreed with how the dealership was being run. One thing led to another and I quit, going to work immediately for a competitor as their sales manager. There, I “inherited” a couple salesmen. One was a young Black man. This guy was big, he was black, he used “Afro-sheen”, he had extremely long thumbnails, a sign of a street fighter, spoke with the unmistakable accent of a non-college-educated Black man. In short, he was everything I was raised to dislike. But he sold cars and he LISTENED to everything I said about selling.

My old dealership was ordered to turn their sales around and it was “strongly suggested” that they bring me back, as General Manager, or lose the franchise. They made me a lucrative deal and I went back. A couple days later, my “midnight-alleyway nightmare”, David, showed up dressed in a $500 suit, asking for a job. I needed two salesmen, but not “him”, so I sent him away. Once a month for five months, David showed up smiling and asking for a job, every time, I had “no opening”.

It was June, Summer now in Houston, 95 degrees and 95% humidity. David showed up again, wearing the $500 suit. But this time, the suit was soaked through with perspiration as if a hose had been turned on him. He was flushed, hot & thirsty. I asked him what happened. “It is really hot out there,” David started, “Walking 23 miles up here I worked up a sweat.”

This man, unemployed, living in his Mother's house with a wife and two small children had WALKED FORTY-SIX miles once a month to ask me for a job. I asked him why he wanted to work for me so badly and why he didn't hitchhike. “I want to learn from the best. You are the best I ever saw,” he started, “.... and here in Houston, Black men don't hitchhike!”

Once recovered, David left me with a new job, a “demo” car, a $300 advance and the respect he deserved, but was forced to earn. He was my best salesman ever. One day a huge redneck farmer came in, angry that he felt he was charged too much for his new truck and screamed he wanted to “kick the sales manager's ass”. I came out from the office, expecting a fight. As he approached me, the world went dark and I heard that familiar “street Black” accent say, “You can kick his ass, right after you kick mine!”

David had put himself between us and was glaring DOWN at this redneck who lost his nerve and silently left. I told him I had it under control and the man would not have succeeded. “I know that, but he didn't! You are my friend, so I helped!”

Last I heard of David was over 20 years ago. He was a sales manager at a Ford dealership in Houston, still crediting me with his success.

I wan never sure why I needed to dislike those not “like me” anyway, but David cured me forever and I now look for the best in everyone and most often find it. But he did much more that I can never thank him enough for! David quietly made me climb out of the “box” I lived in and look down at it. He made me question everything I believed and reexamine my “soul”.

No man and no woman has the right to dictate what another thinks or does, so long as their actions do not affect the lives of others, PERIOD! Your “right” to swing your arms, ends where my nose begins. Literally and metaphorically. No one has the right to hold back another based on perception of appearance. Everyone has the moral obligation to lift up those in need and in pain and to leave the world a better place for Humanity in general, not just those in Humanity with the same skin color or deity.

That is a lot to learn from a Black man walking through the hot streets of Houston!

I was wrong then and in many other cases since. But I have done my best to learn from each occasion and David always comes to mind when faced with a crisis or decision.

So how does all of this tie into this contentious Presidential election?

I have had not only the experience of being a bigot and liberated from it, but also of being both rich and poor...... several times. I have been a parent. I have had failed relationships. I have fought in the streets and worse. My friends over these nearly 64 years have included surgeons, lawyers, truck drivers, underground miners, the CEO of Ford Motor Company, even a murderer...... or several. I have spent a few days in local jails, learning enough from those experiences that I NEVER wanted to see more than that and mended my ways fast! I once formally debated a Catholic Archbishop who later became a Cardinal, TWICE, to a draw both times. I also “debated” an ex-con boxer in a sleazy bar to a bloody victory he never recovered from.

I have been blessed or cursed, depending on your point of view, to have seen more of Life that most and I have to admit, that was my goal! I have talked to countless men and women from more walks of life than the majority of people will ever see and had inebriated “discussions” with other men from seminarians, to Congressmen, to actors, to murderers, to actors who murder their craft and I NEVER, EVER even ONCE heard a man or boy admit to any form of sexual assault. NEVER, has a single male human I spoke with say they grabbed random women by the crotch and kissed them!

I have met men, most men, who claim to have gigantic genitals, even claiming that myself on occasion. I have met men who claim to have had CONCENTUAL sex with every women they have ever seen. I have met men who describe their sexual antics as more intense than ANY “X” rated movie ever produced...... liars, all of us of course, but NEVER one admitting to sexual assault! Oh and I have been in more than a few “locker rooms” during these discussions!

What kind of a man admits to, even in private untaped conversation, just walking up to any woman he pleases and start kissing and groping them? In all the men I have met, I never met one! My very limited time in local jails has, however, shown me how men incarcerated for these crimes are treated! I don't think I need to describe the reception they get at night from fellow inmates!

In my bigot days, in my young Republican days.....where I once sat with then Vice-President George HW Bush at a “Young Republican” event in Houston, in my remote mining camp days, my truck driving days, my Sales Manager days, my unemployed days and my few days in a County Jail, I NEVER EVER, said or heard another man say he was a sexual predator and then describe his offenses. This is NOT “locker room talk”. This is mentally disturbed individual talk! It, when taken in context and with all the other talk we have heard from the mouth and thus the heart of the person (cannot call him a man) who manipulated the Republican Party into allowing the corporate take over of it and his subsequent Presidential nomination, MUST be considered fit for only one job in this country: making license plates.

I am NOT writing this as a Democrat, I am not one. I am an Independent voter. I am not writing this from a perceived position of superiority, I am highly flawed! I am not even writing this as an American, though I am an American patriot! I am writing this as a MAN. I am writing this and sharing these deep secrets, feelings and emotions as a man who revers women, children and the society we have built. I am writing this in hopes we all realize that as flawed as Hillary Clinton is and has been, there is but one choice that can win this election, protect our society, protect our wives and children and our way of life from those who would use it for profit, control and power and would think NOTHING about preying on our daughters and wives and she is the one who has dedicated her adult life to doing just this...... whatever other flaws she has.

To those Conservatives out there who would vote for this predator to “preserve the Supreme Court” or to return us to being the only First World country with no national health care plan to improve on and tweak to American excellence, I say this:

No matter who is appointed to the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court will never force YOUR women to get an abortion. It will never force your sons to marry another man. These things are OUR choices and wholly dependent on YOUR influence and on YOUR version of Faith. The Supreme Court will never allow the reversal of the Second Amendment. Constitutional Amendments require 2/3 majorities at both the Federal AND State levels and a lot of us Liberals would never allow that!

To those who get their news from Alex Jones, Breitbart and the like: WE, WE are the Government, WE will NEVER allow ourselves, through the military, to come to your house and “take” your guns, let alone fire upon you. The very thought is ludicrous!

Wal-Marts are stores, not staging areas for an assault on your trailer! YOU KNOW THIS, really you do. I get your thoughts, I understand your fears, but do you really want “one of you” sitting in the Oval Office with nuclear codes? I have been where you are a few times in my life, unhappy with “the way life has treated me”, blaming everyone BUT me for my failure and listening to Coast-To-Coast AM, INQUISITR, BEFORE ITS NEWS and Alex Jones, desperately wanting a change! But the cause of your, our problems...... is US and we must change us, not destroy America's political system. I had to realize what you all need to realize before becoming at peace with myself! You must too! You must stop making Jones and the like wealthy off your misery: “Wherever you go, there you are!” We are the source of our success and our failures. No matter how far we run, we catch ourselves.

Donald Trump is an admitted sexual predator or worse: he WANTS to be one. Don't give him any more opportunity than his Father's money already has! ! I know disturbed thinking and his is disturbed!

Put Hillary Clinton and sanity in the White House and if you are unhappy, plan and work for 2020. At least with Hillary Clinton as President, we can be fairly certain we will see 2020!

(You have my permission to share and cross-post this as you wish. My only request is that you leave my name and contact info on the share)