A Variety of Thoughts About Everything

 During the 1920's and 30's Adolph Hitler had a uniformed cadre of thugs called the SturmAbteilung commonly called the SA. They were also known as the Brownshirts, because they had Brown Shirts and Brown Pants as their uniform. They were the Terrorist Arm of the Nazi Party which he used to create havoc and disorder which he then blamed on Jews, Communists, Liberals, Trade Unions, and basically anyone whom he did not like. Somewhere along the way there was a unit formed within the Brownshirts called the ShutzStaffel. and their shirts were Grey and their Pants were Black. Originally they were considered the "Elite" unit within the Brownshirts and were Hitler's bodyguards. They were commanded by a little known person by the name of Heinrich Himmler. Once Hitler gained power he did what every dictator has ever done. He turned on the people who got him there. In 1934, about 6 or 7 months after he got into power he had the Night of the Long Knives. And that is where he ...

 I went to the yesterdays No Kings in America protest. And, even more amazing, my 89 year old Mother, who has never protested anything like this in her life, went with me. She has been politically active in her life. Always from the inside. She was, for example, part of the Sullivan County NH campaign committee for Jimmy Carter in 1976 and Sullivan County campaign chair for him in 1980. So always within the system. Never from outside of it. For two hours she sat in a folding chair and, sometimes with a sign in front of her and sometimes no sign, waved at the people driving by who were honking and waving at us. Standing and walking hurts so her just walking from the car to where I set up her chair was painful and then walking back to the car after. I ran around talking to people and getting pieces of people's story, when not standing next to Mom saluting cars that were honking and waving. I was in the Army many moons ago and still know how to render the hand salute properly. After t...

  noun 1) the psychological identification with or vicarious experiencing of the emotions, thoughts, or attitudes of another. She put an arm around her friend’s shoulders and stood by her in silent empathy. 2) the imaginative ascribing to an object, as a natural object or work of art, feelings or attitudes present in oneself. By means of empathy, a great painting becomes a mirror of the self. (Thank you dictionary.com) For many years I was, and sometimes still can be, a very self centered person. Everything was always about me. Usually colored by my many resentments. I had exactly zero empathy, or any real identification, for other people. It was aways about my perception of things and how I thought that things affected me. As a friend of mine used to say, It is always about me and usually in the worst possible way. And it was always filtered through how I felt about it. Which was almost always in the most negative way possible to feel about things. As a result I could never have a...

 I was talking with a person a few days ago about a variety of things. And in that the topic of the killing of a Right Wing Hate Speecher that has recently happened came up. And the person I was talking with said something along the lines of, There are a lot of people celebrating the death of NAME and I think that is messed up. After they had said their piece I stated, again, something along the lines of, I am one of those people. I think that this person reaped as they had sowed. That they had called for violence and death against anyone who they thought was different. And they got the thing that they had wished on others. They reaped as they had sowed. As a set up for the next piece of dialog, a few months ago there was a person who went into the home of a very famous politician in order to kill this person. When they could not find the politician they took the politicians spouse prisoner and then proceeded to beat this spouse almost to death with a hammer. So the next thing out ...