Tag: redemption

Make America Free Again

I am disappointed that Trump won the presidency. I am more disappointed the Democrats let him win, that the Democrats were not daring, did not have the courage or vision to fight fire with fire, to have a drastic plan of action.

I wish Harris had vowed to Make America Free Again. If only she had boasted: I will dismantle the Patriot Act. Destroy ICE. You will no longer walk in fear. I will pull down America’s police state.

Aren’t you ashamed of being afraid? I will save you from America’s freedom haters and fear mongers.

And if she lost, her supporters would have been challenged to save themselves, be courageous, redeem the nation from its cowardice.

Copyright © 2025 by David Vaszko

Presidential address: The alamo

Today, March 6, is one of the most important days in our history. On this day in 1836 about one hundred and fifty Americans died fighting for freedom on a piece of property that was not theirs, as they sought to claim Texas from a nation that did not have the ambition to settle and deveolop that territory.

Many people think the battle at the Alamo was just another attempt by the United States or American citizens to steal land that belonged to someone else. They feel that the Texans lusted for a fight, that they were hypocrites for believing in slavery while fighting for freedom.

All these points might be true. But there is something important to remember: the Texans had everything to gain economically if they won, but if they lost, and they knew they would lose, they would have died fighting for freedom and against injustice.

These men had faith in freedom, faith in America, faith in each other. They had faith in destiny, faith in justice and faith in several hundred other Texans and Americans who never showed up to help them. These men kept their faith, knowing they were fighting for something greater than themselves.

It is hard for today’s Americans to think that a bunch of drunks, wife leavers and vagabonds would die for something greater than themselves. But they are heroes.

They are heroes because they did more than run away from their problems and responsibilities. If they had no intention of paying their debts or sending the family out when they got rich in Texas, the fact that they died so others could come to Texas and get rich, or at least start a better life, redeemed them.

My fellow citizens, Western Civilization is founded upon redemption and freedom. Most of the men at the Alamo abused their freedom, but made up for it when they put their future money where their mouths were and died for it.

In America today, we too have abused our freedom. We have gotten fat and sassy. But unlike the men at the Alamo, our arrogance has not tranmsformed into courage.

We need faith in each other to rise to the ocassion to fight our own battle as the chips are down, to redeem ourselves from our acceptance of the tyranny my predecessors have imposed.

Now, a moment of silence, for the men who died at the Alamo.

Copyright © 2025 by David Vaszko

Presidential address: Martin Luther King Day

On this gray day in Washington and throughout much of the nation, it is my duty to talk about Martin Luther King. Dr. King’s career began ten years after World War II, when America saved itself and the West from Fascism, Nazism and the Japanese military state.

We were ecstatic.

We percieved ourselves to be the shining light of freedom, but Dr. King made it clear that millions of Americans were not free, that America could not and would not shine until these people were free.

He led. He hoped and prayed America into a stormy and bright future. He felt pain and death were worth the essential price black Americans would and should pay to free themselves and to create a free nation for their children.

Dr. King loved America. He ached to be part of the promise he had been denied as a black man.

He was claiming his American citizenship, his right and sacred duty to stick up for others and himself. He was claiming his black manhood while refusing to hate his white brothers.

He loved the promise of America so much, all he wanted was his white brothers to be men, to let him be so he and them could glory in the freedom America brags about but had been stifled for so many since the birth of our nation.

Dr. King, he lived the ideals of our independence. The ideals are the goodness of God and the necessity of freedom.

He referred to them as a majectic sense of values. They were values black America exemplified in its struggle to be free, for black Americans had to be majestic or America would not be majestic if black freedom came violently.

We wonder today how King could have had such faith in God and America and peace after all that black Americans had been through and were going through. We must remember that most Americans of his age and older were not cynical. They had lived through the depression, fought in World War II and World War I, got beaten in labor strikes and were beaten by police and rednecks for being black.

What kept them optimistic and hopeful was their religious beliefs and their belief in America. Religion is about God. America is about work.

Americans believed that here work will make you free. In other countries without America’s promise of the future, work makes you a slave.

Dr. King had the old school work ethic. He could not have had his faith or his drive without it.

Somewhere America lost its work ethic. Not our drive. Our work ethic.

Work was no longer something you prayed to God to do well. Success was no longer pursued with a request to God to be satisfied with a humble home and a simple marriage.

Dr. King could talk about and live non-violence because as hatefilled as our country was, there was still an acknowledgement of the necessity of simplicity and humbleness. He believed this simplicity and humbleness could be tapped into by his philosophies of peace and non-violence, that America could redeem itself from its racism.

He felt that black Americans could rise to the ocassion by being simply and humbly committed to non-violence and love. He felt that the simpleness and humbleness of so many white Americans in their interactions with white people could be directed toward their black brothers and sisters because of the godly and American example of black people.

A lot of people think that Dr. King’s dream failed. We can look at statistics and say yes, the dream failed. But if the dream has failed it’s because America is arrogant and because black America squandered its real pride for false pride.

When he talked about non-violence King was not merely being poetic. He said that non-violence means no self-destruction.

Look at the destruction black America has done to itself since Dr. King lost the struggle among black activists to influence black youth. Young blacks were encouraged to be dishonest, disrespectful, profane, violent.

He had challenged young black men to look into their souls, to proclaim themselves free, to find their manhood. Today that challenge applies to all Americans.

We need to look into our souls and ask why we have such low standards, as a country and as individuals. We need to ask if we are willing to demand change from our government and business as well as from ourselves.

We are perishing. We do not love ourselves or each other. We do not love America, otherwise we would not be cynical and arrogant.

It is tragic what has happened to black America, but that is no reason for the dream to die.

It is time for Americans to cultivate something that will attract and produce a great leader. Simplicity could be one thing. Not being greedy could be another. Honesty. An unshakeable faith in God.

An unshakeable faith that we have great beauty and goodness in us that came from God. This could be our truth we desperately want to bring out, as desperately as black Americans wanted to be free from white oppression.

My fellow Americans, you are not free. It will take great will power to begin to free the nation.

We can begin by not spending so much money. We can begin by not deluding ourselves that we deserve prosperity. We can begin by not allowing the media to tell us we do not have enough stuff, but need more.

This is easy. What is not easy is getting beyond defeating our selfishness to defeating the selfishness of those who love you to be afraid, who spy on you, who want to know everything about you.

These people control a large part of the government. They want to arrest anybody for any reason. Dr. King would understand this.

All the cameras and the satellites spying on you are playing the role of God. They see everything like God. But unlike God, there is not love behind them. Only evil eyes.

You wil not be rewarded for behaving well. You might be punished for no reason. If you do a good deed, you might be arrested because your act is threatening.

As time passes, hopefully you will grow to hate our surveillance technology to the extent black Americans hated slavery and Jim Crow. The more positive you force yourself to appear when questioned by authorities, the more you will understand slavery and the more you will appreciate Dr. King’s struggle: How to turn a phony smile into a respectful refusal.

The nation will require courage to do this. Like Dr. King and the civil rights activists, you will get beaten and arrested.

Like them, you have to be courageous – sticking up for your rights, the rights of your fellow Americans and the rights of future Americans.

Are you sick of being afraid? Do you want to trust yourself and your neighbor? Do you want to feel beautiful and good and see beauty and goodness in your fellow Americans?

I too have a dream. I dream that America will regain its soul, that a great group of leaders will rise out of the ashes of our consumerism and camera by camera, computer by computer lead Americans in the risky business of dismantling our police state, no matter what the price.

Copyright © 2025 by David Vaszko

Third World Souls

You blessed America more than other countries God, but something isn’t right.
We have everything and nothing. We are no longer blessed.

I was never able to totally understand it, then I read about our declining nation.
A writer said it is true we are a first world nation as far as consumer goods
and finance, but we are a third world nation spiritually.

That did it for me.
Now I can proudly say what I have always felt. We have nothing.

I wish a poet from the Mexican jungle would write that in America
they can’t see the jaguar’s eyes flash on a distant mountain because
there are too many lights and everyone is afraid to go outside.

I know there’s a Muslim woman walking with her husband,
each of them all covered, saying to one another,
Americans are lousy lovers. They let it all hang out.
There is no mystery to love there, no understanding
that your long wait for your lover is analogous to
your long wait for God. Your lust for your lover
is only OK if you lust for God.

We need to hear it God. There is no illumination here.

There was in the eighties and nineties when graffiti artists frightened us with their
bold vision, Our country is so ugly we redeem it to the best of our ability. What
are you doing to make yourself bold and illuminating?

We refuse to shine. Our third world souls get darker, uglier, less receptive each
day.

We need more flashing eyes. Help mine to flash again, be a beacon in the night.
Give my nation a vision to turn off street lights, walk in darkness lusting over
stars, laughing when we bump into each other, talking until constellations change.

We are absolutely zilch. God: help us, and me, to step from the depths of our
poverty so our lust for you, ourselves and strangers tramples on our fear.

Copyright © 2025 by David Vaszko

Friday, March 2

Dear Jim,

March came in like a lion. It rained from midnight to 9 am yesterday and the wind blew like hell. When I woke up there was a puddle on the window sill and water on the floor.

I knew it was going to rain after I got to work, so I put a rug and thick towel on the floor beneath the sill. Then I put some buckets to catch the water below the leaking points. Then I took a heavy classy new bath towel that Sis II gave me and that I hadn’t used yet on the sill to absorb the water.

That was a brilliant move. When I got home from work there was no water in the buckets or on the towels on the floor, but the towel on the window sill was soaked.

It’s been a stressful week, more because of the weather than anything else. It’s been very cold and windy. I itched like crazy, but I was pretty good about not scratching. The rain has made me itch less.

This morning I went downtown to a quarterly staff meeting. It was boring. The organization is so full of positive horseshit it makes me ill. I felt like retiring.

Downtown is as ugly and lifeless as ever. I used to think beautiful architecture made cities great, but I don’t think so any more.

A city is great when there are lots of people walking who are too busy to be afraid, or when people are not afraid and so they come out to walk leisurely. Sacramento could build buildings and design neighborhoods to my aesthetic satisfaction, but people would continue to be afraid and lifeless and Sacramento would continue to be soulless.

The other night I listened to a Bishop Sheen program from World War II. I stumbled across his rebroadcasts a few years ago on Catholic Radio.

Mom and aunty always listened to him. Dad remembers him. Do you? Did you listen to him? At the seminary did they make you guys listen to him?

I was impressed by his sense of authority. He definitely was not positive. The current pope is, but I wish he spoke with authority about what is wrong with the West.

Bishop Sheen wasn’t cool. The current pope is. I liked Benedict because he wasn’t cool and didn’t try to be. He was full of love and respect for others, even those he felt were destroying the West.

What I like about the current pope is he loves the great poet from his homeland – José Hernández. Hernández wrote an epic poem through the eyes of the narrator, Martin Fierro. I read the first book in Spanish as best I could. It was incredible.

Fierro is a cowboy on the pampas – Argentina’s Great Plains. He talks of his struggles there, the land, the Indians. Someday I will buy the book, and the Spanish equivalent of the OED, then take my time to gain a better understanding of it.

Anyway. Sheen was speaking about godless modern man. Sheen said that man wants Eternal Life, Truth, and Eternal Love and seeks these as God; therefore God is man’s ultimate end.

He said that the reason ”Christianity does not speak to modern man is because modern man is only part man, a disconnected man.” I agree. People today want to live forever and expect to live until they are ninety. but they are not interested in a transcendent God to live with when they die.

People don’t want Truth to guide them through life. They want facts to build a career, get the prize, and become rich. People want to be able to fuck into their eighties, but they don’t want to feel or cultivate God’s eternal love or eternal mercy.

Sheen is intense. I’ll try to listen to one broadcast a week, but I don’t know if I will be able to. Nobody talks like that anymore.

Or I should say, Catholics don’t talk like that anymore. A lot of times when I am tired of listening to Radio Católica or the Mexican station from The City, I turn the FM dial all the way to the left than back to the right to tune in to public stations.

Every time, the first station I get is a fundamentalist Christian station from Oakland. I’ve always hated the pompous tone of the guy either reading from The Bible or giving a lecture. I’ve said, ”Oh please!” or ”Fuck you asshole!”, then changed the station.

But last week the narrator sounded authoritative to me, not pompous. I listened. He read from Malachi. Here’s the quote I like: ”The burden of the word of the Lord to Israel.”

Yes. Truth is a burden. Honoring God is a burden. Obeying the Ten Commandments is a burden. Loving God every second of every day is a burden, especially nowadays when God is hated every second of every day.

Listening to that guy read in an authoritative tone fit the authoritative tone of The Bible. If a positive reader read that passage, the listener would not feel the seriousness of God’s message and would not feel the heaviness and fear that Jews felt when they heard the word of the Lord to them, God’s chosen and burdened people. Now I understand what professors meant when they said you have to read the classics from the point of view of the Jews, Greeks, or whatever.

For three days I listened to that station and went to its’ website. On the website is a list of songs sung on the station. One of the titles caught me: When I Survey This Wondrous Cross.

It got me thinking of the cross and the crucifix. Which is better? When the Protestants broke from the Catholics, did they reject the crucifix? Is the crucifix too negative, too bloody?

I think with the crucifix the focus is on Jesus’ suffering. With the cross things are more abstract. We are at a crossroads. We have a burden to carry. There is hope. What exactly does one focus on?

So I got to thinking about the cross as something to see from a distance – sitting in the parking lot looking at the cross on the steeple. Or being on a hill in San Francisco seeing the cross on top of a church far away.

The cross is a beacon, a symbol of God’s suffering and our redemption. A crucifix makes Jesus’ suffering real. What did he go through for us?

Remember Mt. Davidson? I wonder how many people have surveyed that wondrous cross. I know liberals hate it. Maybe Catholics hate it too.

I like it. I’ve never meditated on it. But I’m glad it is there saying fuck you to all the godless juvenile artists. The left never sees the cross as a symbol of God’s infinite mercy, but only Western arrogance.

I don’t think you liked it, but we never discussed it. Maybe you thought I didn’t like it, which I didn’t until twenty years ago. I wonder if an artist or progressive ever buys a home because of it’s view of Mt. Davidson.

It’s funny that in a city that so many people come to with so much hope, the great symbol of hope is far removed from the neighborhoods they move to. They think it’s BS anyway.

That’s it for now Jim.

Love,

Dave

Copyright © 2021 by David Vaszko