Manns Medium

  For those who have heard but refuse to believe the saying that “everything happens for a reason”, history provides us with the blueprint to advance and failing to take advantage of this opportunity leaves us unprepared and woefully ignorant of how bad things can get. Today, we stand with clear knowledge that the real distance between a democracy and an autocracy is a razor’s edge.   We know this because the first term as president by Donald Trump, enabled by those around him such as David Pecker who made up stories against his political rivals while finding and killing stories about Trump.   A Republican party that did not drop him like a sack of potatoes after the Excess Hollywood tape came out and instead choose to continue to push the narrative that they knew was a lie about him being an honest and decent person.   Mitch McConnell who was compensated to finally take out Roe vs Wade by blocking President Obama from appointing Supreme Court Judges as well as a w...

  America has always been the land of opportunity however we have become lax in our efforts to ensure that this right is made available for all of us to achieve and enjoy.   Far too often, those who see themselves in a position of authority or great wealth begin to confuse themselves with an idea that since you may be thought of as successful, means your now have the power and authority to dictate to everyone else. This lying power makes those allowed to flex it feel bigger and better than they really are.   It gives them a false sense of righteousness and security over all people, places, and things which must be corrected before we completely lose our very humanity. Every last one of us knows this is wrong but history has allowed these individuals to exercise this false position of power without consequences and punishment. Every one of us is guilty of sitting on our hands and waiting on someone else to save us instead of finding our own intestinal fortitude to save o...

  The Idea that because something bad has or is happening to me, gives me the right to take any action that I deem appropriate even if it results the most unnatural act of all, the taking of another human being’s life.   Ethan Crumbley entered his Oxford High School armed with a pistol and the knowledge that it was okay to shoot it up because his family had been totally disrespected by those immigrant parents who did not care about learning and is the primary cause to his family’s financial struggles. He wanted to change his mind and was hoping that someone would talk him out of it or stop him from completing his task, but no one stood up for him, no one saw him, no one heard him, and no one listened to him.   The desire to win the admiration of his parents won out that day and ends now with a 15-year-old teen being charged as an adult on 24 counts of murder and terrorism. He sits in his jail cell, under suicide watch and with a public defender at his side, while ...

  A brother Marine asked me “Why does the African-American community vote Democrat?   He asked me if I could try to explain it to him and below is my explanation. Since no race of people are all the same, I can only tell you what I think that reason maybe but if you want a more definitive answer you are going to have to ask individual blacks.   Here is what I believe could possibly be the reason so many others vote Democratic.     The first thing that needs to be made clear is the majority of African Americans don’t follow a party but an idea.   If a politician promises to do right by the African-American community, he/she has a really good chance of getting their votes but when they get in power, forget their promises and/or turn their backs on blacks, know that next go around, many blacks would not spit in their butts if their guts were on fire and if the turning of the back was brought on by a group of people, that group would pay as well.   Her...

  Today’s focus is on this election between Donald Trump and Joe Biden for the office of the President of the United States and while I cannot say that it is not something we should not be focused upon, there are other things going on behind the scenes of this that we refuse to recognize or choose to just simply ignore. Many claim that it is a fight between Democrat and Republican, Liberal and Conservative, the Right and the Left, the Right and the Wrong but that is not the truth, as I see it.   It is and always will be the fight between Good and Evil. This battle has been waging since the beginning of time and it is a never-ending war.   It is a battle that will be and must be fought every day of our mortal existence.   It is one that will never have clear winners and losers because if just a few of us fail to achieve victory in this war, we all fail.   This is not a battle to save the soul of a country, a nation, a world, or a universe.   It is the ba...

Growing up in the Deep South, all I heard from black people was, you can’t do this or you can’t do that because “the man” won’t let you.   I had always wondered who this “man” was and when someone finally had the nerve to tell me they said it was the “white man”.   I used to walk around thinking that every white man had the decision on who I was and who I would be, that was before I began to read my Bible. My Bible taught me that the only person in complete control of me was God and he was a spirit not a mortal man.   My Bible told me that God entrusted me and me alone with this treasure we call a soul and I and I alone was responsible for caring for it and protecting it until that day God calls me home to review what I had done with this soul.   After that, I began to understand that only those whom I allow to control me can and those who I allow to not manipulate me couldn’t.   No mortal holds power or dominion over me unless I choose to let them.  ...

I was presented with this article titled “ How Jared Kushner built a luxury skyscraper using loans meant for job-starved areas By Shawn Boburg for the Washington Post which leaves me with two questions.  The first is why this was not discovered and reported during the campaign and the second is whether this is what even local politicians mean when they say that only they know how government works.  An extension of that question is whether this action has been happening right here in our city of Rockford and other places where federal dollars sent to cities to help with the high unemployment numbers or to benefit the lesser of us were re-routed to serve only those in power or people that they knew in power? The story mentions that “ Jared Kushner and his real estate partners wanted to take advantage of a federal program in 2015 that would save them millions of dollars as they built an opulent, 50-story residential tower in this city’s booming waterfront district, just acro...

Since Donald J. Trump made the decision to run in the Republican primary, I have been struggling to understand why it is still difficult for me to totally accept this man as the 45 th president of the United States.  My better angels are telling me that one can only control that which one can and therefore must accept those things that they cannot but for the life of me, I cannot understand why being reasonable in this situation is harder for me than any other I have ever encountered.  That was until just a few minutes ago. It was after hearing those voices in Kentucky who benefited  from the Affordable Care Act (ACA) or Obamacare hearing Trump say that his main focus will be to repeal and replace it, would still vote for him.  It all became clear to me when I heard this one voice say that the only reason she voted for him is because she detested and did not like Obama.  So because you don’t like a person, you stand against all that they say or do even if ...

Pride used to be something that we all felt when we accomplished a goal that we set for ourselves and the majority of the time it was not a goal for all to see or hear about.  That is the major difference between pride and arrogance.  Pride makes you smile from the inside as you recount accomplishing that goal while arrogance makes you smile only when someone sees and comments when you have accomplished something.  We used to take pride in mostly everything we did, which elevated our attention to detail and level of work but today that sense of pride does not exist and we simply only do enough to get by. There used to be a time when we sought to do a better job than we did yesterday not for the sake of the company but for the sake of ourselves.  Coming home at the end of a hard day used to make us walk taller and broader but now coming home after a hard day’s work means that you had to put up with more drama than you did yesterday.  You come home angry and ...

I find myself somewhat tickled when I hear people say that the way this country is not what was intended by the founding fathers.  It’s funny to me how anyone who have taken a few minutes to be truly objective about our history fails to see that this is exactly what the so called founding fathers intended even though they may be credited with penning the Constitution.  It is written, that they left Europe with the intent to create a nation free of oppression and so that they could practice their religion without persecution.  Yet these same founding father brought with them a system of suppression copied after the Kings, queens, lords and barons of Europe.  They brought with them a class of people who would be their servants after claiming that they were no longer wishing to live under those same rules.  Maybe they meant that they themselves were tired of being someone else’s slave so set out to find a place where they can now be slave masters. They cam...

The older I get, the more I attempt to find a positive spin on anything that occurs.  I do this because it is easier for me to try and understand the motives of another if I can see things a little as they see them.  It helps me to reconcile myself with the fact that as the Bible tells us we should always respect another person’s truth.  It does not say we have to agree with it or even like it but it does ask us to respect it and in so doing we can now expect that they will respect our truth. Listening to the latest in the Donald Trump Saga, many are talking about a rift in the party and those anti-Trump people may have a valid shot at winning and blocking him out while others are saying the exact opposite.  I don’t truly know which is right or wrong and neither is it my place to say either way.  I have never been given the power or authority to tell anyone whether they are right or wrong, I can only control and diagnosis my actions and advise myself. ...

The Grand Ole Party voters are throwing a temper tantrum right now and Donald J. Trump is the recipient of the fall out.  Why are they throwing a temper tantrum?  There are several reasons for it, some are good and some are not so good but those are not what worry me.  It’s not the reason; it’s the results that frighten me. When the Tea Party was going strong and Democrats decided to stay home, the GOP glided into offices all over the states and in Washington taunting destruction from within.  Many thought that surely they would not do that and if they tried, the senior members of the GOP would stop them in their tracks and educate them on how this is supposed to truly work.  Many thought the senior members would corral these gunslingers and show them that no one gets everything that they want but by compromising, you can get a lot of what you want.  They were wrong and when it came time for those more extreme candidates to seek re-election the GOP vot...

I don’t care how many times I brooch this subject, it still surprises me that so many of us in the black community have yet to wake up and truly smell the coffee.  There are many things that Black America should be proud of and find pride in like the millions of blacks that greatly contributed to the building of this nation but instead of helping to push the positive stories so that our children have more to look forward to than a rap career or on some athletic field, we continue to do nothing about making our rich history a much bigger part of the over-all American History. We hear many screaming racism as if it is the only reason blacks are not treated equally as they should but when those in a position of power and can change the course of this event fail or refuse to step up and stand up we just give them a free pass.  Many of these same people are still pissed at President Obama because they thought his election and re-election would make all others finally recognize...

For some this may be an exciting time for voters in the Republican party and a snapshot of how dysfunctional America’s government is but for others it is more about getting famous or found than it is about the one most important thing left to us.  The vision of a nation, the direction of a country, the development of a society and the legacy of its entire people.  Many marginal members of the GOP have expressed their choice and their voice about who they wish to lead this nation and even though the choices are slim there is still one who may be able to restore some sense of balance. That person is Ohio Governor John Kasich, consider the options. Now it is not often that I find myself agreeing with the Milwaukee Wisconsin Journal but I have to admit some of the information that they printed in the article titled “ John Kasich the GOP's best hope, can win and govern” does make sense. The article points out that “ after terrorists murdered 35 people in Brussels last week, D...

I have been racking my brain trying to figure out why someone would truly support Donald J. Trump and besides the fact that they are his family or worked for him before he declared himself a candidate, I kept drawing a blank.  I thought that many who say they stand with Trump wasn’t doing so because they actually believed in the things that were coming out of his mouth but the frankness and courage it took to say them out loud.  If this is the only reason to support a candidate for president and place him in front of others world leaders as the best that we could do then maybe we need to re-define this entire thing of choosing a president. It wasn’t too difficult for me to surmise that the reason for some coming to his aide is because while having his show Celebrity Apprentice, he brought back some names of people many may have forgotten and if we look at closely at those speaking for him at one point of another, we may find that many was those he hired to play on the sho...

It all started January 19, 2008 after Barack Obama won his first term as President of the United States.  The stars had already aligned for many who just could not believe that a man, unlike any of those that have gone before him was actually voted into an office many felt very name denies them entry.  Those who just could not believe were told to believe and as sheep to the slaughter, they followed their masters without questions.  Today they still follow their masters without questions except now it has culminated into one form, one being, one chance and that chance is Donald J. Trump. People say that Donald J. Trump is a brilliant businessman but I don’t agree with it.  I do say that Donald J. Trump is an outstanding opportunist however because he saw a very clear and wide berth opening up toward the Republican nomination for President and when he finally decided to take the plunge, he dove in head first and now refuses to admit that there he now stands among...

People often wonder why someone would run for president and often times they say it takes a pretty large helping of arrogance to think that you could be the leader of the free world but I think that it is more than that.  I think it is simply a way for history to either repeat itself or get rewritten.  Repeat itself, when we refuse to learn from the past and get rewritten when we choose to not only learn from the past but change it.  Yes, I think the spirit of a person compels them to run or put themselves out there for public consumption so that we have a chance to demonstrate whether we want a different outcome or not.  I believe that it’s the spirit of a person which pushes them to seek public office and not simply an emotion of arrogance, desire or even duty.  I believe that this man-made body is more controlled by the spirit that dwells within it than many of us know.  The actions we take, the decisions we make and the satisfaction we seek are all...

Washington politicians and the media that covers them wishes all of us to think that this so-called Tea Party Movement has taken over the GOP and candidates running for office has no other alternative except say outrages and outlandish things to get their vote.  Common wisdom in this up-coming election as well as a few prior says that the Republican voter wants obstruction to anything President Obama wants to do or want them to stand against anything he stands for.  They wish you to believe that common wisdom says that the Republican voter wants to get rid of governmental agencies, defund Obamacare and Planned Parenthood.  Common wisdom says that the Republican voter despises Obama, is racist and is full of bigotry and hatred for anyone who don’t look, act or think like them.  Common wisdom says that the Republican voter wants everything Washington does to be about finding dirty laundry to expose on anyone who is not Republican and they should remain obstruction...