It's not my intention to offend, although it also not my intention to appease either, our political atmosphere today is one of inarticulate berating and it seems that one cannot afford an opinion without being attacked - we no longer merely disagree with one another, we actively seek any reason to segregate. I think it's appalling, so much so even that I refuse to engage in practically any conversation surrounding our political atmosphere. 

There is, however, something that I cannot understand, and I need help trying to put it together. 

Donald Trump. 

I understand the appeal of the idea of what it is that Donald Trump might represent. The corruption of politics in the United States is beyond fathomable, there was a time decades ago when the swamp at least attempted to keep the corruption out of the purview of the American people but, for many decades now, the swamp has blatantly beguiled the American people into systemic submission without the slightest concern for subservient quietness. 

The idea of bringing someone with a fresh constitution who has not been muddied into the arena, a business-person who might effectively rebuild our crippled platitude from the foundations skyward; the possibilities seem limitless. 

But why are we trading a corrupt politician for a corrupt businessman? Politicians are still, at the very least, dependent on us for their tenure, corrupt businessmen are accountable to no one. It's the corrupt businessman the created the corrupt politician in the first place.

the only way I can figure it is that those of you who voted for Trump in the beginning, and those of you who are still supportive of him are not actually supporting Trump but rather the idea that seemed so appealing in the beginning. You continue to, somehow, look beyond the man behind the Twitter handle and you see an idea in front of you, you are capable of seeing through Trump and into the reality where we voted for a decent businessman - for all intents and purposes you don't see Donald Trump, you see someone else entirely; unless, of course, you're as rotten or bigoted as he most assuredly is. 

Because how else could he possibly be explained!? 

Hell, I like the idea of an elected official who is the product of anything but our political arena, I'm libertarian for Christ sake! But I cannot ignore the man: the vile, the disgusting creature that is Donald Trump. The unimpressive list of Presidential accomplishments does not reprieve him of his inhuman pitiless arrogance. 

So I ask those of you that still support him today, in an attempt to help me understand: why?

If you are a decent, accepting, understanding American what on earth is willing you to support this man? I would like to know how you are capable of looking beyond the things he says and does, hell I'll even dismiss what some of you might call hearsay in regards to what some of you might not see as blatant racism or sexism, how about just his complete lack of decorum in stature of Presidential (a representative of world affairs) projection. 

How are you capable of looking past that? I'm asking fervently, I need to know...

One of my favorite poets, slam poets, spoken word artists, is Buddy Wakefield, his words have been a comfort to me inasmuch as a guide, he has inspired me to challenge myself beyond my comfort levels and to express myself in ways that I have either never considered before or that seemed impossible, to me. 

Most of us never allow ourselves the time to explore our boundaries, we don't acknowledge what we believe to be our limits, and we definitely do not dare ourselves to press them, to redefine our limits, and then to continue to shatter them. For most of us, we live content in watching or reading the stories about other people testing themselves. While we dwell in the comfort of our limits. We never challenge our religious or political ideologies, we simply argue the same points and perspectives that parents before us have and their parents before them, we associate ourselves with people who already agree with our rigid untested worldviews and we pride ourselves in our irreproachable cementitious morality, without even the audacity to force ourselves to think critically. 

"Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought." ~ John F. Kennedy

I happen to see this as one of our biggest failings. And we look past it, no: we actively ignore it, and in proxy we employ the surrogates of political dissonance - we blame others, we point fingers, and when we do so from the comfort and the welfare of the privacy of our homes we inherently blame those that think differently than ourselves, because instead of constitutionally looking inwards at our own role we presuppose the ill-will of what we cannot relate to. 

"This is not a showdown or a shootout, we are not facing off but I can feel the rumble between dusk and dawn as if the chance to come clean with myself will be outlawed unless I relax" ~ Buddy Wakefield

Every conversation I can recall having regarding politics and, when I refer to politics I am talking about the whole of human interaction, we are always - always - speaking as if we were in some sort of conflict, we think of life as something that we have to acquire or secure, and its apparent in everything: the way we are educated, its prevalent in our careers, our interactions, the way that we campaign and vote, how we worship but life does not need to be a conflict day-in-and-day-out, we are not here to climb over the backs of the people who might be "in our way..." there is no template for the manner in which we live our best life, or who we have to overcome in order to get there. That is all a part of the standard from which we limit ourselves, the standard in which our social infrastructure has been misshapen. 

"If there was one life skill everyone on the planet needed, it was the ability to think with critical objectivity." 

"Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such think as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshiping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship—be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths or some inviolable set of ethical principles—is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat your alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million death before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It's been codified as myths, proverbs, cliches, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness...because the really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day.” ~ DFW

So this is my first column w/ Communitea Books. Here I'll discuss more personal perspectives, as well as worldview analytics, from, again, a place deeply-rooted in my perspective and life experience. First, however, I think it's important to illustrate the differences between a column and a blog or, at least, as I see it because I'm sure there have been a great many conversations about the issue exactly, and to no conclusive end. 

The format of this column vs. my blog will be considerably shorter, which is to say that there will be a smaller word count. Granted, a few of my blogs lately have been fairly short which is part of the reason why I decided to adopt a column as well. My blogs will be 1,000 words or more, and in the blogging community it is widely considered better for your blogs to be between 1,000 and 3,000 words. Columns on the other hand are notoriously shorter, ranging between 500 and 800 words. That will be the greatest noticeable difference between my columns and my blogs. There are a couple of blog series that I started writing, most of which will be picked up, and continued via this column, such as my series on Communication, for example. 

The key elements to Blogs, as the internet would have you believe (and the following list is something I agree w/ in terms of the philosophical differences) are listed below:

1. Highly interactive
2. No set deadline or publishing schedule
3. Relies on comments
4. More casual in tone
5. Continuous conversation

This column, although I welcome reader interaction, will follow the elements listed above. By that I mean, there will be a set publishing schedule; I will post a new column every Thursday afternoon, although the beauty of writing a column online is that I am not limited by going to press weekly, so I will likely also post columns throughout the week, with that said there will always be a newly posted column every Thursday afternoon. The intent of this column will be to influence and/or to inspire, I will eliminate diction that gives an indecisive or blaise-faire tone. The rest may present itself to you in time. 

I look forward to writing for you, and to your readership. 

Thanks so much,
​James