good eating everyone you know I I couldn't sleep it's about 120 in the morning and that was just laying there in bed thinking and I was reflecting a bit on today I reflecting a bit on that the images I keep seeing the news that keeps coming the the riots and the protests this is my backyard this is America you know I've been all around the world been more than 50 countries I've been into war zones I've seen tear gas canisters I've seen bodies but they weren't our bodies they weren't our canisters it wasn't our country and it's a rude awakening to see it happen in our own backyard so on Twitter I noticed a picture of national guard that had been deployed to the Lincoln Memorial standing guard over it and I couldn't help but think to myself that they weren't protecting the monument rather they were imprisoning the memory of the person the monument was built for you know monuments in America are very different than the monuments in Europe they're very different from the monuments in Asia in that we don't build monuments to kings to people who were born into things or these deities have long past we build monuments to people that did great things they came from amongst us they were the underdogs they were people that weren't supposed to win yet they dead and because of that were inspired by them the memory of them I think the Abraham Lincoln and what he endured as soon as he was elected it split our nation in half and it created a situation where he had to make difficult decisions that he knew would result in the death of many people and as the war dragged on and criticism continued he had to make compromise after cop from suspension of habeas corpus to understanding the reality that the entire economic order of the United States would have to be changed and it was very uncertain how reconstruction was gonna work after the pieces were put back together if they could even be put back together and despite all of that he rose to the occasion he never lost faith in the American people and he realized that even the people he was fighting for our nation to be whole they would at some point have to get back together I remember a photo I saw years ago when I was a lot younger about a Union soldier and a Confederate soldier smoking cigars together before the Battle of Gettysburg it turns out that they were brothers and they had snuck out of each other's respective camps to basically share a drink and some final words before a battle that actually ended up killing both of them that in essence was the greatest symbol of that conflict and despite the differences the bloodshed and the horrors that we unleashed on each other during that time period we found a way to get back together and become one nation again we have a lot of protesters and rioters running around some are influenced by foreign powers whether it be China or Russia or propaganda attempts to cuss strife and discord in our nation always happens always has happened during the 1930s many Americans forget that the American Nazi Party had hundreds of thousands of members and the Communist Party was quite strong as well both seeking to overthrow the American government many of these protesters are good people who are just fed up and tired because they perceive and often times with great justification and evidence that there are divides in our nation that go beyond economic means but also racial I recall growing up in Hawaii and being called a haole because I was white I recall living in Japan and despite being treated with dignity and friendliness it's very clear that I could never be Japanese regardless of what I tried and society treated me differently I can only imagine those who exist in a reality where because of the color of their skin they experience tremendous hardship and persecution some cases generationally and perceived the policies no longer work in their favor or have never worked in their favor how much anger can exist there these are legitimate grievances and they should never be diminished they should never be considered so standard or secondary or told well it will just get better because it never does seem to get better so they take to the streets in march and say please change it and most of them are young young people are magical in that they're not undocked Rene 'td to the systems of the past they have the ability to look at things in a different way and they're not in love with the system to the extent that they desire to protect and preserve it so from that perspective they can provide a nuance that society requires so that we can progress and grow and change but we should never fall in love with the idea that the young have the wisdom experience and skills necessary to build the society that they demand the reality is that what they demand must come from all of us and the oldest and the wisest in particular have to repurpose the skills that they have and the knowledge that they have to allow us to get out of the situations where n if we continue down this road the soldiers standing on those monuments won't just protect these old pieces of stone which are symbolic in that they're supposed to remind us of how we ought to be they'll start shooting on people and those people will shoot back if we continue to say that force is the only way to solve these problems we will end up seeing just as much blood in the streets as we saw during this a war if not more so because the weapons are better now the oppression is more precise the skills we've gained from the occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan have trained generations of people on how to put down insurgencies in very effective ways and means and both sides of these conflicts will use these techniques and tools on each other to devastating effect I don't want to wake up in a country like that I don't think anybody wants to wake up in a country like that and we must set our ego and our pride aside and we have to ask ourself what the hell does this all mean honestly set the propaganda aside the media side the divisions aside these vacuous terms like white privilege and social justice these vacuous terms like snow flake whatever the hell they all mean just set them aside for a moment and ask ourselves are we all so different from each other honestly are our neighbours so different from each other yes we have difference phrase yes we grew up in different places yes we have different values and priorities but goddamn it we are Americans we have the same rights the same freedoms the same marketplace and we ought to aspire to the fact that we can trust each other love each other and care for each other because if not then the very freedoms that we've been entrusted to preserve and keep and enjoy we don't deserve them we really honestly don't not until we can look at a society and say it's fair for all and if it's not then we must re-evaluate this entire American experiment as much criticism as our nation has levied on the Communist powers of the 20th century and the dictators we seek to topple and sometimes install at least they were honest enough to say that they didn't trust their people rather they feared them and thus must oppress them to preserve their monarchies their total tellurian ISM reign yet we tell our people we trust you then we don't trust them enough not to burn down the very monuments that should inspire them I for one say if they want to burn it down then let them because in the ruins and the ashes we can have a legitimate and honest conversation about who we are as a people and where the hell do we want to go as a people and if we have to sacrifice a stone statue to have that conversation for once in the ashes of it and for everyone to calm down it's a price we can pay in our own history the British didn't take us too seriously after the Revolutionary War and continued to harass us and press our sailors and we stood up for ourselves in the war of 1812 and the cost of that was the destruction of quite a significant monument the White House burnt to the ground and despite the stalemate the world understood that we would stand up for ourselves regardless of the consequences and it established a solidity about our national character and this is where we're at we should never condone the destruction of private property we should never condone the violence and atrocities against other people but we should also never forget that the people riding our children angry children who want something different and they're smart enough to know that the way that we do things will not change society they don't actually know how to change it yet they don't know how to articulate where we ought to go because they're not old enough and skilled enough and wise enough to take us there but they sure as hell know what we have is not moral just or fair and they sure as hell know that what we're being sold is hypocrisy at the greatest of levels so they do what they can do they do what they can only do which is act out just like all children do and sometimes it has deadly impact in consequences sometimes it hurts innocent good people and we should never tolerate it and do what we can to prevent it but then you have to ask yourself is shooting them beating them up bloodying them diminishing them demeaning them the way to solve that problem or do you acknowledge and say I hear you I see you you matter and the things you're talking about are real they're meaningful let's have a discussion about it the ones that are unwilling to have a discussion those are the ones that society can tolerate being silenced because society itself will silence them because it'll recognize that they're no longer part of any path to a solution but it's not a good idea to silence all of them I'm sad I'm just truly sad because I see where this goes I've seen it happen in the arc of history and I've seen it happen to other great nations and I never believed I'd see it here and we are truly at a moment an edge a precipice and we have to decide who are we going to be and where do we want to go this has nothing to do with who gets to be President as far as I'm concerned the legitimacy power glory the faith we have in that institution is gone it's been eroded for decades and it's gotten to a point where no one particularly cares the awe of hearing the president addressed the nation from The Oval Office and calm all of us down is lost we don't have that institution anymore to rely upon thus we have to look at things differently despite all of this the thing that really made me happy was to see a police officer take off his helmet and tell the protesters I understand you I hear you let's turn this protest into a parade and join them and you know what happened the violence stopped the anger stopped and people had a bit of a glimmer of hope they were treated like adults and give enough trust and faith that they could behave that way that's the beginning of a conversation we all need to have that's the beginning of a place we all need to go so I know that many of you perhaps will disagree with me or feel that perhaps we need to do certain things and it's ok it's ok for all of us to disagree with without being disagreeable but you all have to understand that if we want to honor the legacy of those statues that were built and the people who sacrificed so much who came before us to give us what we have today we must have the strength and the character as a nation to confront our problems our disagreements head-on with integrity faith trust and respect and accept that sometimes things get broken and burned property can always be repaired and restored sometimes horrible things are said grievances are created eCos are shattered blood is spilled yeah we can always heal and move on if we need to I'd like to do that with all of you I'd like the American people to do that with all of you and I don't want to see our military turned on us and our military turned on our military our police turned on our military I don't want to see a civil war I don't want to see this chaos keep pushing us I don't want to see society continue to break down and I no longer want to see people profit from human misery whether it be the media or the private prisons or any of these other institutions that have become so thoroughly corrupted and broken and a word let's do better let's be better let's wake up tomorrow and have just a slightly different perspective and understand that everyone's had a lot of hurt right now and a lot of pain right now and if we acknowledge that I think we can finally start on the road to recovery maybe then we'll be worthy of the monuments that were built for us
