"To be is to stand for."

            "To be is to stand for." --Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel

          Too many people have allowed themselves to be brainwashed by the misguided, clearly unsuccessful strategy for safe coexistence with “others:” the purely reactive approach of standing up to haters, standing with victims, and standing against injustice. We see protesters reacting to acts of hatred with defiant superiority (“standing up to haters”), and neighbors reacting with “misery-loves-company” sympathy (“standing with victims”) or self-righteous outrage after someone’s persecution (“standing against injustice”). But this reactive approach is like fire-fighting with individual fire extinguishers in the wake of troops of flying arsonists, while complaining about the reckless abandonment of so much combustible material along the arsonists’ paths. Perhaps it is high time we that implement a proactive approach to preventing conflagrations, to replace the reactive approach to hatred, by focusing on what we stand for—our ideals, our morals—and modeling those ideals. 

          I read this morning that a long-time Republican party official publicly stood for his own beliefs by renouncing his membership in the Republican Party and joining the Democrats. Here is the first of a long tweet  thread from Steve Schmidt, the former campaign manager for John McCain:

29 years and nine months ago I registered to vote and became a member of The Republican Party which was founded in 1854 to oppose slavery and stand for the dignity of human life. Today I renounce my membership in the Republican Party. It is fully the party of Trump.

11:41 PM - Jun 19, 2018

https://www.newsweek.com/former-mccain-campaign-manager-leaves-republican-party-985854

Notice he used the phrase "stand FOR"? This is what we need, more of this. We must all decided who we are, what we stand for. We must raise kids who know what they stand for. We must never forget what we stand for just to stand with others who misrepresent our values and use their power to control us, or just to stand against those who have opposed us in petty politics. Politics are not life. Life is bigger than petty power struggles. Leadership means standing FOR principles. I admire Steve Schmidt. 

Poetic Response to a Mass Shooting: Another Day in the Life of America

Sometimes the only response to recent news is an angry poem:

Abomination 

(written after the mass shooting at the Pulse dance club in Orlando, Florida, June 2016) 

By Susan L. Lipson

The Holier-Than-Thous are twittering again,

moaning online and calling for public “moments of silence”

to honor more victims with the passivity of prayer,

victims whom they’ve victimized themselves

by dubbing gay love an “abomination,”

and by restricting their rights to liberty in love,

and to living with acceptance, rather than mere tolerance.

The Holier-Than-Us call out for prayers

to protect our world

(when they really mean their world)

from terrorism

(when they really mean a certain non-Christian religion),

and also from hate crimes

(not including their crimes of exclusion, derision, and delegitimization).

How convenient to pray now for the souls of some of the “sinners”

whom they previously reviled,

to pray in the interests of the “greater” Good

(their greater Good),

and how ironic that they do not dare now

to publicly call that Pulse stopped by evil

“a Divine scourge against sinners,”

only because this time, the judgment was wreaked by those

who also threaten them.

A murderer planned to induce terror,

but instead, he induced a bittersweet moment of forgotten labels and  

       remembered humanity.

A moment of possibility,

lasting only until the next judgmental rant…