ClydeStyle

Father’s Day had to be started with the greatest intentions. There is absolutely nothing wrong with celebrating the person who donates the sperm especially since we celebrate the person with the eggs.

But beyond the conception part of these holidays which is what makes us worthy I guess, the principle behind it seems to be getting lost. What I mean is there was a time when having a baby meant that if I didn’t quite have myself together at the time of conception, I had 9 months to get there before the baby came.

So the coming of a baby actually had the power to make people stop drinking, smoking, doing drugs, swearing and fighting. Men straightened out themselves and got good jobs, went back to school, learned a trade and even joined the military. The point was that you never wanted your children to think or feel like they were born into the loser family!

We used to tell our kids about their heritage and what our last name really meant whether we were a family of hard working men, math wizards, great cooks, business people or we simply had style.

Today, we can’t seem to get the child’s birth certificate right! You see, today is far more common to be born to parents who are not married. And if your mother was angry with your dad, you might not have his last name. Some father’s were not working before the child was conceived and by the time the baby is being walked to kindergarten by dad, he still ain’t working! Some kids fathers are behind bars, some are drug dealers or users and still some are thieves and the joyous occasion of the new bundle made no difference.

Societal status does not escape the scenario because history may give one account and the family would try to spin it differently. For example, how does Richard Nixon’s grand kids feel about his life and what he did as president? What will Donald Trump’s great grandkids think? What about Kwame Kilpatrick’s grandkids or Michael Vick’s? How about Bill Cosby’s great grands or Bruce Jenner’s great grands?

I guess the point here is not to ruin the holiday but call us to a higher place. We used to live in a country that dirty things whether in business or personal were hidden from the masses. We weren’t perfect but we were much more mindful of the ones coming after us. Nowadays it seems like we don’t give a damn.

Given the true history of the United States of America, are we not too sophisticated for guns in our society?

We are still experiencing school shootings, homicides, suicides and accidental deaths by guns. In healthcare we are trying to get everyone to be proactive in getting their screenings, knowing their numbers (related to blood pressure and diabetes), excercise, eat the right foods, why? Because doing these things will promote good health and save lives. And all the advocates for good health carry a message that is null and void because of guns.

Does profit matter that much to us that our very lives have become worthless?

Over the last 45 years 1.4 million people have been killed by guns. We loose about 13k people a year because of guns. It just seems that it’s such an easy decision to say that we have outgrown firearms. It seems that we would want to be a more civilized nation and not have a need for such violence.

The main politicians who speak in favor of guns are financially connected to the industry in some way. They are making money off of our dead.

Japan and other countries have all but eliminated firearms from civilians. Are they really that much better than us?

In the midst of protest, I wonder what actually makes someone want to protest? I mean, we will see many protests on abortion in the weeks to come. Any number of other protests could take place from gun laws in the wake of the Virginia Beach shooting to this foolishness Republicans are doing with the census.

The problem with protesting is being in the know about what you’re protesting. Is it really possible to be outraged by an abortion law that kills babies, but be silent about police shootings on African Americans? Can we truly hate Trump for putting kids in cages in detention centers who come to our country seeking escape from somewhere and not be just as outraged with Obama who did the same thing?

Is it right to argue the inhumane treatment of animals while enjoying steak, bacon or fried chicken and never mention how those animals are treated?

If any of these are possible then protesting is simply hypocrisy! Or maybe the problem is that we are not informed. We have not done our homework before we lash out in protest. We want to be so up-to-date with our arguments but all it shows is that we haven’t done our homework.

Although it is never taught this way but this is why history is so important. There is nothing new under the sun. Most of what we are seeing is a rerun. And when you research how some of our laws became laws and how some of our practice became “best practices”, it will make you sick to your stomach.

This is why Donald J. Trump is definitely not the worst president the U.S. has ever had. Ninety percent of what he has done, was tried before by another president. The anger should not come against the president alone because he’s not acting alone. Both political parties have failed to represent the middle and lower classes, but without history we protest the wrong things.

That’s your history lesson for the day! Happy protesting!!

I feel like every other month I’m writing about someone being someone else’s fool. It seems that some people say that they hate being the fool, but their foolish behaviors never change.

There are so many different areas where you can major in foolishness from the workplace to relationships, at church and even with strangers. What makes a person “play the fool?” Great question! It’s normally when they are blind to the obvious. There is something they want so bad that they forget to apply common sense.

Common sense in your life works like salt does with food. You see salt brings out flavor. Your meal isn’t supposed to taste salty when you use salt. It’s supposed to taste flavorful. In other words salt is an enhancer for your food. It helps the food to be all it can be to the delight of your taste buds.

Well, common sense does the same thing with the scenarios in your life. Remember I said that the salt is an enhancer? Common sense, when applied to any situation magnifies or enhances that scenario so that you get a better read on the situation. Without it, the situation looks bland or dull to you and it’s hard to negotiate the decision making process when things are out of focus.

Case in point: When you are in a relationship and you are constantly giving, and giving and giving and the person you are with never attempts to match your intensity, then they are really not into you. This is obvious to see when common sense is applied. Take away common sense and all that is left is simply wasting your time hoping the person will come around seems like the right thing to do. Without common sense you will start rationalizing behavior and empowering the laziness in your relationship. Then when someone with common sense comes and shares a different view of your situation you get angry and think that they just don’t understand the situation.

Stop playing the fool.

Relationships are for people who are whole, not broken. When you’re broken it’s hard to be sensible. Fix your brokenness before you try to give yourself away to someone in pieces. Failure to do this results in you playing the fool … sometimes.

There are some things that just are not meant to be sold. Your integrity must be one of those. The term “sell out” although normally used to describe someone in the music industry is the act of giving up artistic integrity for the purpose of becoming more popular or successful. So an artist who began his career speaking out against social injustice only to be persuaded by social norms to begin softening his message to sell more music is by definition a sell out.

This definition fits politics, sports, religion and the like. So I have to say something blunt to the sell out. I must first apologize to those it may offend but I need to say it if for no other purpose to help balance the universe.

Mr. or Mrs. sell out, your level of selfish self preservation stinks to the high heaven. The people you abandoned in your attempt to boost yourself did not deserve your betrayal. You are the worse form of a rodent you can find and may your gain prove to be your demise. Great job of looking out for yourself. You deserve all that comes your way. I can’t wait until you get the full cycle of your new inheritance. There is a greater power than you.

Ok. I’m done. See that wasn’t so painful. It is never necessary to be a freakin sell out. As you were.

Being arrogant and ignorant is a deadly combination and sadly it seems that the more privileged places have the most occurrences.

If you ever wondered what it takes for a person to hate to a level of destruction, having these two characteristics are all that is needed. In recent news, we have people who would shoot up a religious building with occupants. We have seen people set fires to churches and we have seen people use religious holidays for their day of destruction. Why? Whatever cause they believe they are upholding suggests that some other opinion is not worth life. Who actually has authority to end another person’s life?

Being ignorant means you are uneducated or uninformed. It means that you don’t know what you don’t know. Then an arrogant person is one who has a super skewed sense of their own importance. This is why they attempt to give advice when not asked. They are extremely opinionated and they use social media as their platform. But what is undeniable is that with all of their advice, their own life actually speaks to their ignorance.

I’m not talking about specific people and there is no hidden agenda. I just struggle when I watch the news because it seems to showcase this stupidity. We see people hurting people, destructive opinions and insensitive actions.

Clearly this must be the reason God said that revenge belongs to him and he would repay. Only God can make a commandment that he himself would not violate. Could you imagine if these ignorant/arrogant people had the authority to decide and create policies? They would only eventually destroy themselves.

What is just as sad is that it does no good to encourage people to examine themselves because if that would work, then there would be no one walking around ignorant and arrogant.

Low-hanging fruit started as an agricultural phrase literally referring to fruit that grew on the lower branch spurs of a fruit tree. This fruit is never the best fruit because it gets far less sunlight than the fruit at the top of the tree causing it to ripen slower. Not to mention if you were, say an apple picker and you started your climb picking the low hanging fruit first, by the time you made it to the top you would not have room to pick and store the good fruit.

This is not a blog about fruit picking but I needed to give you this info first. There is a major problem with this concept in our society.

Low-hanging fruit started in publications as a term in the late 60s. It was not picked up by mainstream media until the 90s where for some reason everyone started using the phrase — the business world especially and it was considered a good thing.

By definition it means: a thing or person that can be won, obtained or persuaded with little effort. So in business they teach the new sales guy to “cut his teeth” on the low-hanging fruit or the easiest to persuade. New businesses jump into an industry grabbing the low-hanging fruit and if you wanted to develop a new territory, you guessed it, you go for the low-hanging fruit.

The problem stems from trying to apply this phrase to problem solving in our society.

During the war on drugs in the 80s, President Ronald Reagan never went after the suppliers of the drugs. Afterall it was his wife Nancy that started the “just say no” campaign. The drugs were being brought to this country in planes and ships. Well who would allow drugs on their planes or ships? Instead of going after the ones who brought the drugs into our country, we went for the “low-hanging fruit” and that was the drug dealers and the runners on the streets. They were easy targets and it would look like we were doing something to stop drug use.

These petty crimes created a revolving door for felons and greatly effected the poorer neighborhoods in our country. So putting a bunch of poor, downtrodden dummies in prison for drugs was going to stop drug use in our country? Yeah right!

Then in the 90s, Congress gave president Bill Clinton more money to give to police agencies and built more prisons for the purpose of locking up more “bad guys”. But the plan still never touched the owners of the planes and ships which brought the drugs into our country. It simply destroyed poor minority families by incarcerating the heads of those households who owned no planes nor ships but sold product on the street and ran little ghetto cartels in the hood. This led to more than 2.3 million Black people in prison with excessive sentences of 20 years and more because they were considered “low-hanging fruit” and rich people needed to feel safe from the minority boogeyman. This has solved nothing as far as drugs go in this country in fact the problem is far worse.

Look at all our countries problems and you will see our approach to solving these problems is to start with “low-hanging fruit” which really means we are not even going to address the real problem.

Human trafficking is a hot button now and we have come up with a solution to fix this problem: For human sex trafficking which greatly effects our young runaway girls and young women being brought into this country for this purpose — some as young as 12 — we are arresting the “Johns” instead of going after the people who are recruiting these girls into this lifestyle. So we are switching one victim (the young girls) and creating a new victim (the Johns) and this solution does not even make a dent in stopping sex trafficking. What it does is shame the user, shame his family, tears apart his already troubled marriage (wife doesn’t want to stay with husband who is out in the streets participating in sex acts), and innocent kids suffer.

Consider how we treat cancer, obesity, healthcare, wars, poverty, and homelessness in our country — all with this low-hanging fruit concept.

My point: Low-hanging fruit stops nothing! Climb to the top of the damn tree and get the best fruit — it’s better for all of us.