My Third Novel's Conclusion, My Heartbreak

My heart begins to break when I think about completing this particular book -- because this narrative has sustained me like no other story I've known. It's both more personal and more universal than my other works. But beyond memory and archetype, it's a cri-de-coeur about needing to become the person one is destined to be. And in the writing, I have met my own life's work, my own fated journey -- having the sense all the while that the pages are suffused with a resonance, an energy, an electrified field that defies explanation. Writers hope and pray to be overtaken by a work in this way -- to be conscripted into passionate service of a profound story. To experience it even once in a lifetime seems a great privilege. I still have several months before this novel is complete, and this constitutes my reprieve. Because I'm not ready for the beauty to end.




Sunday, June 12, 2022

Why President Biden Must Run Again

President Biden is not just my personal hero.  He is also democracy’s hero, in ways the American public has yet to grasp.

He understands, more than any other President in recent history, the pitched battle being waged behind the scenes between autocracy and democracy, between disinformation and fealty to the truth, between governance as false pageantry and democracy as a way of life.

 

And President Biden is striving, often out of the public view, for the civil liberties and human rights of all Americans – all – even the vast numbers who remain unaware of the effort to nullify the validity of their vote altogether.

 

There are some who would prefer to turn American democracy into a mere performance of freedom, in which citizens vote for their elected representatives only to have their government controlled by the unelected, the unvetted, by those who would prioritize the exercise of power over the defense of our civil liberties.

 

It is a great test of our nation that the most profound challenge to our democracy has arisen from within segments of the national security apparatus of the United States itself.

 

Divisions of the FBI under Director Christopher Wray have engaged in falsified law enforcement reporting for anti-democratic objectives, falsely accusing law-abiding American citizens of crimes as far-reaching and egregious as “espionage,” “terrorism,” and “predation” toward the vulnerable.  Harnessing fabricated email accounts, fake social media profiles, falsified text messaging, edited and misattributed audio, AI-generated video co-opting the likeness of “targets,” and more, these false allegations have been made within certain divisions of the FBI for totalitarian objectives.

 

The public is perhaps familiar with the fact that FBI agents knowingly falsified the victim statements of the USA gymnasts regarding the criminal predations of Larry Nassar. Yet, the public is all but entirely naïve to the fact that the FBI has undertaken a program of broad-scale falsified law enforcement reporting through corruption of the Nationwide Suspicious Activity Reporting Initiative.

 

For an example of the FBI’s false allegations of “terrorism” against law-abiding American citizens, see Ahmad Chebli’s account on the ACLU website, here:  https://www.aclu.org/news/national-security/i-refused-to-become-an-fbi-informant-and-the-government-put-me-on-the-no-fly-list

 

FBI Director Christopher Wray knows that, if the FBI can control the reputations, careers, economic futures, personal lives and free will of any member of the American public it chooses, autocracy will have won over and above the exercise of a government of the people, by the people and for the people.

 

In the version of America the current FBI leadership hopes to enforce, democracy will have been replaced by something known as “surveillance capitalism,” in which freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, right to privacy, and many other rights protected by the founders of our nation within the Constitution – will have been sacrificed to the dictates of a de facto police state – a totalitarianism which rather ruthlessly seeks to “neutralize” those who choose to object to its pervasive and limitless constraints on the civil liberties of the American public.

 

When one understands how indiscriminately certain discrete elements within the U.S. security and defense apparatus are currently inflicting unauthorized civilian casualties through drone strikes in various corners of the world – and when one understands that the Pentagon has recently contracted with Google to create AI technology that will “identify” the targets of drone strikes without any real-time human input, one begins to perceive the unacceptable dangers present within such a model of future governance.


https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/03/technology/google-pentagon-artificial-intelligence.html

 

The current FBI Director clearly possesses ambitions to rule well beyond U.S. borders.  CBS’s television series, “FBI International,” which is available for live-streaming 24 hours a day, telegraphs the agency’s ambitions more succinctly than I can.

 

Has anybody wondered why a federal law enforcement agency is promoting its own “international” profile through co-opting the ostensible “entertainment” arm of a major television network?

 

Americans should be concerned about this thinly-veiled foray into the realm of self-promoting propaganda.  This series is the agency’s narcissistic equivalent of a shirtless Vladimir Putin on horseback – a naked attempt at self-glorification at the expense of a nation.

 

President Biden understands the frightening prospect of a totalitarian America manipulated by FBI disinformation and manufactured “kompromat,” even if the public has not yet fathomed its perilous implications.

 

And I need to say, it takes immense personal courage and fortitude to stand for the truth when that truth exists in opposition to corrupt factions within the FBI.

 

It takes courage for a private citizen to stand for that truth.

 

It takes courage for a President to stand for that truth.

 

President Biden possesses that courage, and he is manifesting it to heroic degree – not on his own behalf, but on behalf of all who love democracy – liberals and moderates and conservatives, alike.  Everyone.

 

Americans need to know that, in learning of this pressing threat to the survivial of our democracy, most presidents would choose to keep their heads down – not to cause controversy – not to invoke the discomfort and disapprobation of autocratic elements within our own national security apparatus.

 

In truth, most American presidents already have made that implied choice.  They have simply made it outside of the public view.

 

As Eisenhower presciently observed in 1961, “the potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

 

Yet our hope rests in a President who has sufficient strength of character to oppose such a rise.

 

I will say this:  having been the recipient of endless death threats and attempted bribes over the last year regarding my Freedom of Information Act Request #1496758-000, it takes profound strength of character and deep spiritual resolve to tell the FBI noNo, I will not accept a redacted report.  No, I will not accept a withheld report.  No, I will not excuse you from accountability for your lies.

 

Strength.  Fortitude. Faith.  Courage.  Determination.  Hope.  Integrity.  Character.

 

President Biden possesses all of these gifts and more.

 

Certain people are irreplaceable.

 

President Biden, a rarity among leaders, is one.

 

Americans need him in defense of their democracy as surely as I need him in defense of mine.

 

If I am granted the time and safety in which to express to the American people why President Biden is their fierce defender, their intrepid advocate, their best hope at this crossroads in America’s democracy, I intend to try.

 

Because our freedoms require that all Americans among us have access to the truth, I intend to try.

 

With the abiding, heartfelt, indelible love I possess for this country, I intend to try.

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