Category: Seeking Common Ground

Before you go on, an article in the May 8 & May 22, 2021 issue of Science News ran with a cover "Awash in Deception: How science can help us avoid being duped by misinformation." In the lead article titled: "The Battle Against Fake News," Alexandra Witze presents five suggestions on how to debunk bad information. They come from the News Literacy Project (see the above link).

How to Debunk:

1. Arm yourself with media literacy skills, at sites such as the News Literacy Project (newslit.org), to better understand how to spot hoax videos and stories.

2. Don't stigmatize people for holding inaccurate beliefs. Show empathy and respect, or you're more likely to alienate your audience than successfully share accurate information.

3. Translate complicated but true ideas into simple messages that are easy to grasp. Videos, graphics and other visual aids can help.

4. When possible, once you provide a factual alternative to the misinformation, explain the underlying fallacies (such as cherry- picking information, a common tactic of climate change deniers.

5. Mobilize when you see misinformation being shared on social media as soon as possible. If you see something, say something.

"Misinformation is any information that is incorrect, whether due to error or fake news.

"Disinformation is deliberately intended to deceive."

"Propaganda is disinformation with a political agenda."

Sander van der Linden
Social Psychologist
University of Cambridge

Source: Science News/May 8, 2021 & May 22, 2021

Update: September 22, 2023: This is more important now than ever. Be vigilant and speak in your own way. Love Wins.

Update:  McQuade, Barbara, "Attack From Within," 2024.  New York Times best seller.

I wrote and delivered the following words at our first church service of the year on January 5, 2025. I have broached this title before, but here it is fleshed out a bit more and I have included Mel Washington and Wyatt Durrett performing the song of the same title.

Hi, my name is Bruce Halen. My pronouns are he/him.   I am a Caucasian male of average height and average weight with short silvery brown hair and a bit of an attitude.

Love is the doctrine of this church.  Love will guide us.   Make Love Visible.  Did I miss any other references to Love with connections to FUCSJ?  (Wait briefly for answers).

This place has been about love since the first day I walked up the steps and through the front door into this building.  The word is love.

For me, there are two directions that you can go in this life.  You can go in the directions of hate or you can go in the direction of love.  As a child, I was required by my parents, neighbors and teachers to go in the direction of love.  As an adult, I have chosen to continue in the direction of love.  

For over 20 years, the vehicle that I have travelled on is 160 N. Third Street, San Jose, CA.

Love is hard, love is kind, love is cold, love is warm, love is compassionate, love is cruel, love is fair, love is unfair. Love is music, Love is war, Love is peace.   The definition of love is never ending, constant, current and historical.

I can’t say that I understand all of what love is or all of what hate is.  But, I do believe that love wins.

2024 was a pretty good year for me.  Good health, plenty of travel and lots of things to write about.  Then came the election and I lumped all of 2024 in with the election results.  The election results sucked so, by association all of 2024 sucked.  Was anyone else disappointed by the election results?
  I sulked until Thanksgiving before taking my own advice on how to deal with disappointment.  Do something about it.  Get involved.  Be around people.  Start writing again.

So, I got back to writing my Blog.  I immersed myself in the music I was performing for the holidays.  I got into the Christmas spirit of giving, sang carols and songs of the season. I listened intently to podcasts, read the paper copy of the San Jose Mercury News and got the worldview of the New York Times through my wife Meredy who gets the most credit for making me to at least appear to be literate.  

I credit not one, but two epiphany-like experiences over the past five years for helping me negotiate COVID and the Trump era and to feel unabashedly hopeful about the future.  

The first one came after reading Timothy Snyder’s booklet “On Tyranny:  Twenty Lessons From the 20th Century.”  The epiphany or learning, was that we were living the middle of the 20th Century all over again.
The light bulb went on.  My lens on the state of things seemed able to cut through all the seemingly unrelated craziness going on, to see it for what it was and express my feelings about it.  We were in the midst of a potential tyrant in the making.  That was big, really big.

Epiphany #2 began when our interim minister  Rev. XK (Xolani Kacela) inspired me to write down my most current goals and objectives for my life.  It was a good exercise.  The listing of goals and objectives was a good idea.  For me, though, it stalled out when I got to the subject of Good and Evil.  I wrote as if Good and Evil were as real as baseball and apple pie.
But, on further study of religious and philosophical texts and the promptings of a Buddhist friend, I came to a new realization.  Good and Evil are titles that are assigned to people.  People are not good or evil.  Rather, like children, good and evil move through us but are not from us.  The real dichotomy was Hate and Love.

The world got a whole lot easier for me to process when this lens got added to my world view glasses.  

Throw in a little reading about the ancient teachings of Stoicism and what it can teach about worry and I am feeling pretty (within reason) good about things.

Love is everywhere in this church.  In the songs we sing, the Affirmation that we read to each other every Sunday, in our mission statement “Make Love Visible.”  Love is everywhere around here.  And that is why I keep coming back here.

So, back to “Love Wins.”  Several months ago, the marvelous musicians of our own Guitars Aloud needed substitute vocals for a song they were performing for a service here.  The title of the song?

Love Wins.  

The song inspired me to have a banner made with that message on it.  And it gave my life a theme and a theme song.
 
It fuels my optimism  for the coming year, and for the years to come.  That optimism  is born from those two personal epiphanies and, of course, this church community.

And, in case you missed the Guitars Aloud performance of this song, here it is as performed by Mel Washington and Wyatt Durrett.

Love Wins

Remember what happened on January 6, 2021. Always remember.

Before you go on, an article in the May 8 & May 22, 2021 issue of Science News ran with a cover "Awash in Deception: How science can help us avoid being duped by misinformation." In the lead article titled: "The Battle Against Fake News," Alexandra Witze presents five suggestions on how to debunk bad information. They come from the News Literacy Project (see the above link).

How to Debunk:

1. Arm yourself with media literacy skills, at sites such as the News Literacy Project (newslit.org), to better understand how to spot hoax videos and stories.

2. Don't stigmatize people for holding inaccurate beliefs. Show empathy and respect, or you're more likely to alienate your audience than successfully share accurate information.

3. Translate complicated but true ideas into simple messages that are easy to grasp. Videos, graphics and other visual aids can help.

4. When possible, once you provide a factual alternative to the misinformation, explain the underlying fallacies (such as cherry- picking information, a common tactic of climate change deniers.

5. Mobilize when you see misinformation being shared on social media as soon as possible. If you see something, say something.

"Misinformation is any information that is incorrect, whether due to error or fake news.

"Disinformation is deliberately intended to deceive."

"Propaganda is disinformation with a political agenda."

Sander van der Linden
Social Psychologist
University of Cambridge

Source: Science News/May 8, 2021 & May 22, 2021

Update: September 22, 2023: This is more important now than ever. Be vigilant and speak in your own way. Love Wins.

Update:  McQuade, Barbara, "Attack From Within," 2024.  New York Times best seller.

With the holidays behind us and time to lick my political wounds, it’s once again time to engage. After my root canal on January 2, I intend to get back on the bandwagon of life which includes expanding my involvement with Braver Angels and looking into local engagement through organizations like Indivisible or potentially other organizations where I’d be working shoulder to shoulder with my peers toward common goals of peace, prosperity, hopefulness and, most importantly, Love.

It’s time to gird our collective loins against the hate-filled incoming administration and to not cower out of a sense of fear, confusion or doubt. Be prepared for the onslaught of wrong headed, chaos inducing fear mongering that will reach a fever pitch in the month of January.

My plan to address what I think is coming is by adapting some tips that I have learned from Brigid Delaney’s book Reasons Not to Worry: How to be Stoic in Chaotic Times. I’m about a third of the way through the book, but the core premise of the book is to contain your thoughts to things that you have control over. According to Delaney, those things are:

1. Your own personal character
2. Your thoughts, feelings and reactions to outside events
3. How you treat others

I’m a newbie to Stoicism and there are lots of nuances to the three items listed above. But, since I started reading it in November, I have applied those three ideas into both pre-decision and post-decision self assessments of how to handle a given situation or consider what I should have done in a given situation.

I apply it on the road in driving situations quite regularly and am working to apply it to things I read, hear and view as well. As I get deeper into this book and Stoicism, my hope is that I will worry less, think more and love better.

Jumping back into life will require me to add these Stoic tools to help dismantle the barriers put up to separate me from democratic thought and institutions. Maybe you’ll find them useful as well.

                        A Ray of Sunshine

Best wishes for the New Year!

Before you go on, an article in the May 8 & May 22, 2021 issue of Science News ran with a cover "Awash in Deception: How science can help us avoid being duped by misinformation." In the lead article titled: "The Battle Against Fake News," Alexandra Witze presents five suggestions on how to debunk bad information. They come from the News Literacy Project (see the above link).

How to Debunk:

1. Arm yourself with media literacy skills, at sites such as the News Literacy Project (newslit.org), to better understand how to spot hoax videos and stories.

2. Don't stigmatize people for holding inaccurate beliefs. Show empathy and respect, or you're more likely to alienate your audience than successfully share accurate information.

3. Translate complicated but true ideas into simple messages that are easy to grasp. Videos, graphics and other visual aids can help.

4. When possible, once you provide a factual alternative to the misinformation, explain the underlying fallacies (such as cherry- picking information, a common tactic of climate change deniers.

5. Mobilize when you see misinformation being shared on social media as soon as possible. If you see something, say something.

"Misinformation is any information that is incorrect, whether due to error or fake news.

"Disinformation is deliberately intended to deceive."

"Propaganda is disinformation with a political agenda."

Sander van der Linden
Social Psychologist
University of Cambridge

Source: Science News/May 8, 2021 & May 22, 2021

Update: September 22, 2023: This is more important now than ever. Be vigilant and speak in your own way. Love Wins.

Update:  McQuade, Barbara, "Attack From Within," 2024.  New York Times best seller.

I view it as sort of a mission of mine to be a part of the larger beacon of light to help myself and you through these dark times. As I say that, I believe that a good deal of the darkness that brings us down is fraudulent. It is fake and manufactured to frighten us into believing that things are much worse than they are.

Is this a difficult time in human history? Of course. Monumental changes in societal norms, global interconnectedness and wealth discrepancies have set in motion a global right wing Nazi-style resurgence rooted in doubt, fear and hate.

The people behind this resurgence in hate, including those proposed to be in the next presidential administration in the United States, are trying to make us feel helpless. Let’s be clear, we are not helpless. Far from it. We have the power. Believe it, because we do.

Not the monetary power of Elon Musk, Harlon Crow, Peter Thiel, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerburg etc. ad nauseum. Not the political power or media power that they have purchased to disinform millions of Americans into accepting the flip side of reality. A higher power, a greater power accessible to all of us. A power that when collectively applied will solve any problem, heal any wound.

A power capable of toppling the rich and powerful. I see and hear it in the people around me. Also in the information that I choose to consume. I see it in the Stoicism that girds my loins to change the things I can change and not worry as much about the things that are beyond my control.

What gives me the most hope this holiday/Christmas/Chanukah/Kwanza season is that on a day when pure hate showed it’s ugly head when a car plowed through people attending a Christmas market in Magdeburg, Germany, I attended a Christmas concert by the San Francisco based choral group Chanticleer which was an experience of pure love.

Feed your soul with the love. Hate will happen, but you are not allowed to let it consume you.

My greatest hope for humanity is that we can bottle up some of the good spirit that bubbles out through this season and give a healthy dose to everyone. I guess that this bottle is each of us. Do what you need to do to pry yourself out from the fear and loathing and use yourself as a vessel of love to spread love. This Solstice time of year is the darkest time of the year. It has its place. Use it to refresh and nourish yourself as we look forward to the increasing light of Spring.

Have a joyous week and best wishes for the new year.

Before you go on, an article in the May 8 & May 22, 2021 issue of Science News ran with a cover "Awash in Deception: How science can help us avoid being duped by misinformation." In the lead article titled: "The Battle Against Fake News," Alexandra Witze presents five suggestions on how to debunk bad information. They come from the News Literacy Project (see the above link).

How to Debunk:

1. Arm yourself with media literacy skills, at sites such as the News Literacy Project (newslit.org), to better understand how to spot hoax videos and stories.

2. Don't stigmatize people for holding inaccurate beliefs. Show empathy and respect, or you're more likely to alienate your audience than successfully share accurate information.

3. Translate complicated but true ideas into simple messages that are easy to grasp. Videos, graphics and other visual aids can help.

4. When possible, once you provide a factual alternative to the misinformation, explain the underlying fallacies (such as cherry- picking information, a common tactic of climate change deniers.

5. Mobilize when you see misinformation being shared on social media as soon as possible. If you see something, say something.

"Misinformation is any information that is incorrect, whether due to error or fake news.

"Disinformation is deliberately intended to deceive."

"Propaganda is disinformation with a political agenda."

Sander van der Linden
Social Psychologist
University of Cambridge

Source: Science News/May 8, 2021 & May 22, 2021

Update: September 22, 2023: This is more important now than ever. Be vigilant and speak in your own way. Love Wins.

Update:  McQuade, Barbara, "Attack From Within," 2024.  New York Times best seller.

Somewhere back in my blogospheric past, I tasked myself with documenting my personal goals and objectives. I made a really big deal about being so clear that there was good and evil in the world. Surprise, I’m not so clear about that anymore.

In fact, if you believe the Hollywood version of how Elfaba became the Wicked witch of the West in Frank Baum’s Wizard of Oz tale, you could easily begin to doubt where the good or the evil actually do reside. Certainly good and evil is always as clear as black and white, light and dark, rich and poor, hot and cold…

Yet, if you let yourself float free from the regimentation of your own self dogma and see the world from outside your limited mental, spiritual and physical space, you will see things differently.

I’m not going to get into the allegory the Wizard of Oz story. You can read that for yourself. What I am going to get into is that the story opens up how the complex issues of the adult world can be delivered to the masses in the form of stories that appear to be for children.

I recently saw the film version of Wicked, Part 1. My true confession is that I always had believed that Glinda, all dressed in white, pretty and always smiling represented good and that Elphaba, dressed in black, ugly and scowling represented evil.

Now I’m a bit confused. Is the story trying to tell me that good and evil don’t exist? Or perhaps it’s trying to tell me that good and evil do exist and that they are not always where you are taught to look for them.

This debate will continue for me, but one thing that I believe is above question is the existence of Love and Hate. And by Love, I am referring the Biblical concept of Agape love. Hate is a bit harder to define. Part of one definition of hate that I found refers to Biblical references equating hate with evil. The question of whether there is good and evil in the world is one that I now am deeply questioning. Yet, the dichotomy of love and hate seems crystal clear to me.

It’s that crystal that the world is filtered through for me. It’s the crystal that brings clarity to words and images coming at me that make no sense to me and quite possibly make no sense to you either.

The wizard in The Wizard of Oz is a fraud. He’s a fake. He appears to represent good, but in the end, the wizard has evil intentions. When confronted with real goodness in the form of Elphaba, the wizard’s true self is exposed. He tricks her and then demonizes her. She becomes the object of scorn and retribution from the common people that he holds sway over.

The parallels between the Wizard of Oz and the world of the 21st Century United States of America is painfully clear to me. Like Oz, we have an all powerful ruling being, let’s call it the Corporate class. henceforth to be called the wizard. Since the late 19th Century the wizard has presented itself as the benevolent father figure that is there to take care of his people. He will be benevolent until he is questioned or has his authority challenged. Then his true colors come out.

Our veneer of Democracy, a model that has given us common folk the illusion that we actually have a say in how our country is managed, is now in danger of being totally wiped clean clearing the way for the rich and powerful to add total control over the political system to their control of the vast majority of the wealth and power. Removing the election process saves them money. In a system free from the limitations of representative democracy, no longer will they have to pay off politicians to do their bidding, they will simply bypass the people and make up the rules that best suit them at our collective expense.

Where was I? Oh yeah, the allegory of the wizard. Well, it looks like the wizard is winning. The Golden city on the hill is not the world of goodness, righteous and justice that we were (are?) being taught about in school. It is the home of the rich and powerful corporate billionaire class of thieves. Just like the ones in Russia. It’s not surprising that the wizard glorifies Russia. It’s Oligarchy, or as I prefer to call it “Oilagarchy” is what he wants to create here. Having those corporate thieves Musk an Ramaswamy parading around the halls of Congress before they are in power is a sham. They are doing the wizards work.

Just in: Christopher Wray is also doing the wizard’s work. In his book “On Tyranny,” Timothy Snyder outlined twenty lessons from the 20th Century. The first lesson:

                     "Do Not Obey in Advance."

That’s what Chris Wray, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, Lindsay Graham, John Roberts and Aileen Cannon, among many others, have not yet learned. They are doing exactly the opposite. They are obeying the wizard without question. Shame on them. Let it be known how history will view them when MAGA and Trump and all of us are long dead and gone. Those that could have directly prevented the wizard from consolidating his power and didn’t will have our children’s blood on their hands

Let’s not be lulled to sleep in this interim period before the the handoff to the wizard becomes complete. In this holiday season keep your eyes on the prize and channel your inner Elphaba.

A Glimmer of Sunshine

When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will be at peace. 
J. Hendrix

Before you go on, an article in the May 8 & May 22, 2021 issue of Science News ran with a cover "Awash in Deception: How science can help us avoid being duped by misinformation." In the lead article titled: "The Battle Against Fake News," Alexandra Witze presents five suggestions on how to debunk bad information. They come from the News Literacy Project (see the above link).

How to Debunk:

1. Arm yourself with media literacy skills, at sites such as the News Literacy Project (newslit.org), to better understand how to spot hoax videos and stories.

2. Don't stigmatize people for holding inaccurate beliefs. Show empathy and respect, or you're more likely to alienate your audience than successfully share accurate information.

3. Translate complicated but true ideas into simple messages that are easy to grasp. Videos, graphics and other visual aids can help.

4. When possible, once you provide a factual alternative to the misinformation, explain the underlying fallacies (such as cherry- picking information, a common tactic of climate change deniers.

5. Mobilize when you see misinformation being shared on social media as soon as possible. If you see something, say something.

"Misinformation is any information that is incorrect, whether due to error or fake news.

"Disinformation is deliberately intended to deceive."

"Propaganda is disinformation with a political agenda."

Sander van der Linden
Social Psychologist
University of Cambridge

Source: Science News/May 8, 2021 & May 22, 2021

Update: September 22, 2023: This is more important now than ever. Be vigilant and speak in your own way. Love Wins.

Update:  McQuade, Barbara, "Attack From Within," 2024.  New York Times best seller.

Singing this song at church left it etched on my psyche and me committed to its message. I’ve posted it before and will likely post it again. It is worth listening to again and again as we try to figue things out.

Enjoy and Happy Thanksgiving.

Before you go on, an article in the May 8 & May 22, 2021 issue of Science News ran with a cover "Awash in Deception: How science can help us avoid being duped by misinformation." In the lead article titled: "The Battle Against Fake News," Alexandra Witze presents five suggestions on how to debunk bad information. They come from the News Literacy Project (see the above link).

How to Debunk:

1. Arm yourself with media literacy skills, at sites such as the News Literacy Project (newslit.org), to better understand how to spot hoax videos and stories.

2. Don't stigmatize people for holding inaccurate beliefs. Show empathy and respect, or you're more likely to alienate your audience than successfully share accurate information.

3. Translate complicated but true ideas into simple messages that are easy to grasp. Videos, graphics and other visual aids can help.

4. When possible, once you provide a factual alternative to the misinformation, explain the underlying fallacies (such as cherry- picking information, a common tactic of climate change deniers.

5. Mobilize when you see misinformation being shared on social media as soon as possible. If you see something, say something.

"Misinformation is any information that is incorrect, whether due to error or fake news.

"Disinformation is deliberately intended to deceive."

"Propaganda is disinformation with a political agenda."

Sander van der Linden
Social Psychologist
University of Cambridge

Source: Science News/May 8, 2021 & May 22, 2021

Update: September 22, 2023: This is more important now than ever. Be vigilant and speak in your own way. Love Wins.

Update:  McQuade, Barbara, "Attack From Within," 2024.  New York Times best seller.

I hope it wins this week.

"Of All The Gin Joints In All The Towns In All The World, She Walks Into Mine."

"Here's lookin' at you kid."

Humphrey Bogart in "Casablanca"

I went home to Visalia, California this past weekend for a Reunion party with some of my classmates from the Mt. Whitney High School class of 1974. Of course, I will have something to say about it. And, I have been on hiatus from blogging for the past couple of months.

By the time you get to be 68 years old, you’ve had a few experiences and a significant amount of learnings. Births and deaths, marriages and divorces, illness and health, sadness and happiness, lousy golf games and less lousy golf games.

I had a revelation on Saturday night, September 28. 2024 at the Whitney Wild Oak Ranch in Exeter, California. Some of you, maybe most of you, figured this out long ago. Its not about the things that we’ve done, the places that we’ve gone or the events we have experienced. It’s not what we believe or don’t believe or how we vote

No, its none of those things.

It’s us.

I talked with George, Karen, Debbie and Debbie, Michelle, Cliff, Chuck, Warren, Tony, Gordon, Steve, Jim, Sue, Mary, Dave, Dwayne, Charlie, Art, Don, and others that will come to me as I revise this. I talked to people that I hung out with and knew really well and I talked to people that I barely ever knew. What really matters?

It’s the acquaintances and friendships that we’ve had, rekindled and maintained over the past 50 years (and counting). It’s keeping in touch with each other and strengthening the bonds that we were born into.

As kids, we really didn’t get to choose anything. Who we were born to, what schools we went to or what kind of an upbringing we had were decisions that were made by someone else and not in our control. Eventually, we grew into, let’s just say, adulthood, and we got to make decisions for ourselves about what the rest of our lives would look like.

I’ve never been good about keeping in touch with you all. I’ve at times been aloof, busy or just plain clueless about what ya’ll have been doing, living, experiencing, suffering through, celebrating through.

Well, I get it now. I no doubt missed out on some wonderful opportunities in life because I was too much into myself. I can’t get those opportunities back. But, I can learn from what I missed out on in the past. On September 28, 2024, I woke up to opportunities lost and relationships that could potentially prosper and grow with our reconnection on this evening.

In short, thanks to the people who have understood this simple truth for a long time that it is about the people in our lives. Special thanks to the Class of ’74 Reunion committee who made it possible for us to get together again and provide me with an opportunity to learn the most basic and fundamental lesson of all.

It’s the people, stupid! It’s the people.

Thanks to Michelle, Tony, Dwayne, Chuck, Charlie and forgive me if I have already forgotten the names of anyone else that served on the Reunion Committee. You folks on the committee, don’t hesitate to tell me who I missed. You guys are awesome. Thanks for the memories and thanks for giving me yet another chance to wake up and smell the roses.

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Mt.+Whitney+High+School+fight+song

Before you go on, an article in the May 8 & May 22, 2021 issue of Science News ran with a cover "Awash in Deception: How science can help us avoid being duped by misinformation." In the lead article titled: "The Battle Against Fake News," Alexandra Witze presents five suggestions on how to debunk bad information. They come from the News Literacy Project (see the above link).

How to Debunk:

1. Arm yourself with media literacy skills, at sites such as the News Literacy Project (newslit.org), to better understand how to spot hoax videos and stories.

2. Don't stigmatize people for holding inaccurate beliefs. Show empathy and respect, or you're more likely to alienate your audience than successfully share accurate information.

3. Translate complicated but true ideas into simple messages that are easy to grasp. Videos, graphics and other visual aids can help.

4. When possible, once you provide a factual alternative to the misinformation, explain the underlying fallacies (such as cherry- picking information, a common tactic of climate change deniers.

5. Mobilize when you see misinformation being shared on social media as soon as possible. If you see something, say something.

"Misinformation is any information that is incorrect, whether due to error or fake news.

"Disinformation is deliberately intended to deceive."

"Propaganda is disinformation with a political agenda."

Sander van der Linden
Social Psychologist
University of Cambridge

Source: Science News/May 8, 2021 & May 22, 2021

Update: September 22, 2023: This is more important now than ever. Be vigilant and speak in your own way. Love Wins.

In the spirit of how to debunk misinformation and disinformation, I encourage you to examine The Financial Services Forum, The American Accountability Foundation, The Epoch Times, Fox News, and One America Network(OAN), among others, using the media literacy skills taught by the News Literacy Project from #1 above under "How to Debunk."  Click on the News Literacy Project link to start your work.

I was unplugged on a backpacking trip during the first week of the Olympics. But, I made up for lost time over the last full week of the event.

It was a welcome blast of positivity and reality. In an imperfect world, our imperfections will always be on display. The American Republican Party, Right Wing, Fascist, Authoritarian , elitist billionaire movement going on right now has been working overtime to magnify those imperfections and convince people that they live in a hell hole instead of on a big, beautiful planet with big, beautiful people.

Seeing athletes compete at extraordinarily high levels and to hear the stories of how they got to this place was inspiring, refreshing and honest. I filled myself with these competitions and stories to build up a reserve of positivity to withstand the steady stream of America-bashing, fear-mongering and divisive rhetoric that we will no doubt continue to be exposed to through the coming elections.

It was the competitors that made me feel better, but it was also the outside-the-box creativity on display in every aspect of the televised Olympic coverage. The ceremonies, the events, the happiness and sadness, the successes and the failures were presented through a lens that saw the lives of these athletes for what it was. It was always imperfect and those imperfections were treated in such a way that the compassion, the love and the pure humanity showed brightly through the screen.

When all was said and done, the pomp and circumstance completed, the medals awarded and the athletes heading home, I am left with an intense sensation of hope that humanity will be ok. Those forces trying to create a world tht doesn’t exist for their own selfish desires and beliefs are the ones who should be afraid. Selfish and greedy powers will NOT get their way and regular, average good old humanity will rule the day.