Standing up For What Right, is Never Wrong

When our honor was worth dying over

Yesterday I wrote about a time when men like Burr and Hamilton dueled to the death over words that today would hardly cause a ruffle. I went on to talk about bullies who demean, ridicule, and humiliate people in public settings.

Dealing with bullies

This got me thinking about my own life and the time I was confronted with a bully. They had threatened me, chased me and harassed me at every opportunity, till one day when I was in the band room, and one of them came up to me while I was sitting at the piano and put his hand on my shoulder, and I snapped. I stood up, and before I knew what I was doing, I hit him hard enough to knock him out.

This was summer school long ago, so I don't remember much about what happened immediately after that. But I do remember what happened a few weeks later when I was waiting in line to see a movie, and they approached me. They wanted to be friends. When I think about that moment in my life, I shake my head in disbelief.

Standing tall

I remembered that day when I saw Trump congratulate Harris for her debate performance when they were together in NYC for the 9/11 commemoration. He didn't want to debate her again, with good reason. She knew how to stand up to a bully.

Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like any of her advisors did, nor anyone in Congress or the rest of the democratic party. That is really what my blog was about yesterday. It was about not giving up your dignity to an ingrate who is doing everything in his power to rob you of it, both in the eyes of his followers and our own people.

As Harris demonstrated in the debate, Trump is easily baited, and his response is predictable. His self-proclaimed "genius" at diplomacy is simple: He sides with the party he thinks has the most power and can most easily win an armed conflict. He sides with the ones he sees as "winners" who can benefit him in some way.

Fighting Back

The only way to lose a fight with a bully is to not fight back. Like almost every problem we face as a nation, we wait until it is almost unsolvable before we address it. The good news? We've had a pretty good track record so far of digging ourselves out of the messes we've gotten ourselves into.

Too many stories today tell you about what's wrong and leave you at the end of it feeling like there is nothing you can do. This isn't one of those stories.

Band together: Humans are social animals. We band together; it's in our nature. So use that. Seek out friends, family members, and local organizations and marry your voice with others.

Advocate for a Unified message: Once part of a group, advocate for that group to align itself with others.

The message: Here is the challenging part: with so many things going wrong and so many worthy causes that need defending, where do we start? How can we have just one message? There really is only one message: The current administration doesn't represent our values, or recognize us as citizens that they represent. that is not acceptable. We need our representatives to actually represent us and understand how the words coming from the president affect us. If they did, they would never be able to sit in a joint session of Congress and listen to a man who embarrassed us as a Nation by brow-beating the leader of a Country who is fighting for their life and spewing lies and half-truths to us for over an hour.

It starts with getting our representatives to represent us, to stand up for us, to defend our honor with the same kind of resolve that Hamilton and burr had over 200 years ago. Contact your representatives by calling, writing, or visiting their offices and public events to share your thoughts! Your voice is vital in guiding them to better represent our interests. Engaging directly, empowers you and holds them accountable, creating positive change in our community. Together, we can make a meaningful impact!