Lane von Herzen: The Power of the Good

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.

Friday, February 9, 2024

The Power of the Good

Yesterday, unexpectedly, I cried over the harms the FBI has caused me.

I cried to my husband, because he is kind and sincere and good.

I haven't cried in that manner since I was a child.

And, while I doubt it will happen again for a long, long time -- if ever -- it felt fantastic to speak the truth about the crimes of the FBI.

I did not disclose all of them, or even the worst of them. But I did say that the FBI has given me at least twelve illnesses, any one of which could take my life.

Between TB and green lung, several cancers, Echinococcus multilocularis, schistosomiasis, and prion disease, I will die without expert and prompt intervention.

The FBI caused every one of those health problems. Before the agency began to prey upon my family, my health was perfect.

But the Phoenix Program, which the FBI helps manifest, is all about the murder of virtuous Americans -- especially those who threaten to expose its crimes against the law-abiding public, both in the United States and internationally.

The FBI is involved, together with the CIA, in the perpetration of mass atrocities that exceed in number those of the Holocaust.

Now, as then, minorities are being "selected" for targeting in numbers that far exceed their percentage of the population -- not that such targeting could be justified under any circumstances. But Jews, people of color, women, journalists, certain public officials, and whistleblowers have all been singled out for death through the Phoenix Program's horrors.

And there can be no excuse for this -- no justification for the egregious and intentional human rights violations that the Phoenix Program is currently committing.

There never will be an excuse.

The only question is whether the truth of those atrocities can be spoken in a manner compelling and immediate enough for the public to understand they are at risk -- and to understand it soon enough to make their votes matter to the next election.

If virtuous people are rendered silent by Phoenix, totalitarianism will have won.

It is not too far a reach to state that all of the future freedoms of mankind now hang in the balance.

On a personal level, trusted friends, this circumstance is worth crying over.

Only those who are ignorant fail to privately weep.

Our hope lies in joining forces to alert the public to this crisis, and to do so with all the courage, ethics, compassion, honesty, and insistence we can muster.

The far right depends on its attempts to disrupt, discredit and divide people of virtue.

We must not be fooled, manipulated, or coerced by those deceits.

Rather, we must join hands to defeat those who wield power through tools of inhuman and unconscionable harm, and who do so without election or even appointment, in an unrepentant attempt to usurp the people's sovereignty.

The power of the good resides with out ability to stand unified while advancing the truth.

No other strength is equal to this one.