There is Nothing Worse

It’s difficult to write this. The girl who spurred this post is gone and unable to approve. Her parents, my friends, are not public people and this is certainly a private and unsettling time. And as the parent of four daughters, I can’t stop crying.

I didn’t know my friends’ daughter, really. I remember when her mom was pregnant with her back in 2000 but I don’t remember if I even met her. I might have. And because everything must change, her parents and I drifted apart. They got divorced. The mutual friends who introduced us got divorced and stopped hosting awesome parties. Our relationship was relegated to Facebook posts. But I always liked them and hoped they and theirs were happy and healthy. (They have – had – two daughters.)

One of them was not happy at all.

The daughter to whom I’m referring died last Wednesday by her own hand. She was found by her mother. Those are all the details that I’ll share here. But I feel a need to write about her, about this. I feel obligated to. So here goes:

She came into the world on December 12, 2000. She attended a magnet school through eighth grade and transferred to a local high school (which, I’ve heard, has a problem with bullying although I don’t know if bullying was a factor in this case). She was a YMCA counselor, was known for her artistic talent and was in charge of a natural playscape project at the local nature center where she volunteered extensively – the same nature center, it turns out, where my own 16-year-old volunteers. She attended her first winter formal at her high school just last month.

And now she’s gone. I don’t know why. And I can’t even write more than a single paragraph about her.

I remember being depressed as a kid. (I rely on antidepressants to this day.) I was small and slight and lacked athletic ability. I didn’t have many friends and knew how it felt to be bullied. I didn’t do well in school, had braces and pimples and wasn’t receptive to my loving parents’ efforts to help me navigate the rough waters of youth. But I made it through. I can remember wanting to run away and start over and even to hurt my tormenters but I can’t remember thinking about ending my own life. I can’t remember being in such unrelenting pain. I don’t know why some kids see this as their only way out, the solution to their problems. It’s so….permanent.

I know my friends are loving, intelligent, attentive people. I’m sure they didn’t see this coming or they would have done everything possible, pulled out all the stops to make sure that their little girl didn’t stop living at the so-damn-young age of 15. They, like all parents, probably assumed there would be a high school graduation and college and marriage and maybe grandchildren. I would bet that they never, ever thought it could come to this, that their beloved firstborn could be with us for just a decade and a half. Most loved ones who experience this probably didn’t. I know I didn’t – until I learned what happened last Wednesday. Now I’m not so sure, so insulated and cocky and closed to the possibility that this could happen in my family.

Maybe that’s my friends’ daughter’s legacy. I know I’m going to think twice about how firm and impatient I am with my kids, including – and perhaps especially – the one who raises my blood pressure and gives me sleepless nights. In the whole scheme of things, my friends’ daughter made me realize, it’s not important if my kids sneak food upstairs or argue with each other or leave their backpacks on the floor of the foyer or neglect to say “please” or fail to put their dishes in the sink when they’re finished. Maybe their happiness is what matters, their mood, their frame of mind, whether they feel loved or alone, confident or confused. Maybe I need to think more about what’s important to them, how they’re feeling, what they’re experiencing when they’re not under my roof.

No, not maybe. Definitely.

I’m sorrier than I can express for what happened. I know my friends are in more pain than I can imagine (and I’m a pretty imaginative guy) and it’s actually frustrating that I don’t know what to do for them. I do know this happens all over, every day, and now I have a slightly better understanding of how terrible that is. I just didn’t expect it to happen to any of my friends, and to such a beautiful girl who had so much potential and so much to offer and her whole life in front of her. The words “staggeringly awful” and “devastatingly unfair” were invented for just this occurrence.

Thanks for the lesson, SEZ. I wish you peace. I’ll keep an eye on your parents – and my kids.

Willow

We play with sticks treating them as swords

And we train with them when we are bored

We listen to the soft cool breeze

There is no going back so the world is ignored.

I feel the bark on one of the trees

And sigh because I'm now at ease

The place that I will forever protect

I cherish all the amazing memories.

When I sing, I care not if the words are correct

For this is where the lines connect

A happy place where I'm free to fly

And bullies haven't any effect.

A place where no one tells a lie

A place just for she and I

A place where peace will come and stay

A place where my soul will never die.

~ By Sydney E. Zaban ~

Dedicated to The Whole World

President Barack Obama

This Will Be - Natalie Cole

Pieter J. Van Niel on POTUS and Guns

“People who say Obama fake-cried are essentially accusing him of being as indifferent to mass killings as they are. ‪#‎StopGunViolence‬”

~ John Fugelsang

The following was shared in Facebook on the same day that President Barack Obama announced his gun safety proposal (see clip below). In just the first three days of 2016, according to a group called “Occupy Democrats,” 97 people died and 219 were injured as a result of gun violence.


Today, we were privileged to witness an extremely intelligent, deeply human, profoundly decent, gently witty, brilliantly far sighted and visionary POTUS, Barak Hussein Obama – a real man – define, promulgate, and demand needed change in gun laws and practices.

With professorial Iogic and clarity, our President outlined necessary and appropriate steps to improve dealer licensing practices, background check and registration procedures, expanded attention to mental health issues, and the like. He asserted his authority as an esteemed constitutional scholar, as well as our President, to take these initially mild executive actions on the part of our citizens; he utilized specific and undeniable examples, anecdote and testimony in order to buttress his well developed argument; he revealed, with the tears of a compassionate, deeply Christian and moral leader, the depth and intensity of his anger, his sadness, his frustration, and his disgust vis-a-vis this difficult issue of gun control; he carefully confronted Second Amendment hyperbolic and illogical rhetoric and underlined that our declared guarantees of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness do not allow anarchy and trumped-up and over-exaggerated individual rights false arguments to subvert the declared rights upon which our nation was founded and by which we must continue to be guided.

In sharp contradiction, the cold and bullying comments from the NRA-owned Republican party, its incompetent, unqualified, and criminal clown car of pretenders to the presidency, and the bribed and over-lobbied Teapub-dominated Congress emphasized the morally bankrupt, cruel, venal and hate-filled essence of the far right bagger and Repub party of Nazism, white supremacism, misogyny, Randism, anarchistic stupidity and off-target politics of racism, hatred and greed.

The contrast between our POTUS and the Teapublican Party of nothing – with its low, white trash, bullying, insulting, fourth grade talking Trumpitler; crazy Christofascist, illegal alien Cruz; criminal Rubio; treasonous and grotesque bus of hypocritical, greedy and stupid State Governors like Abbot, Scott, Brownbeck, Walker and the rest of the Teapub gerrymandered state legislative bodies – resounded at every level as our POTUS forwarded his presently modest, ameliorative measures combined with an open-ended invitation and demand for long term gun control action at every level from local to state to national.

President Obama has gained a seat at the table of our greatest Presidents like FDR, TR, Ike, Lincoln, Washington. Despite the braying of the far right, this President of ours has profoundly altered the political and ethical milieu and landscape of our nation. He has righted an upside down ship of Republican greed and elitism; yanked us out of a depression; pulled us out of wars for profit; established a verifiably successful health care system; paid down the massive debt caused by Repub voodoo trickle-down economics and Cheney/Bush war profiteering; worked to articulate and institute his 21st Century national and world vision; supported our military like it has not been supported before; expanded human and civil rights; confronted the obstruction of the racist and arrogantly cold far right....

That so many of the American sheepublic continue to accept the fallacious positions of the Goebbels-like, dumb, propagandized vomitus of the Teapublicans; that so much racial hatred continues to infect local, state, national and world politics; that the extreme and limiting actions of fundamentalist Christofascists and an incompetent far right majority of the SCOTUS have inflicted real damage to our nation; that the unforgivable obstructionism and treason of the Teapublican party legislatures has denied infrastructure repair and growth, tax fairness, needed appointments, gun control, and on and on – in short, that we continue to be forced to struggle against false rhetoric and appeals to fear, ignorance, and cliché – all this and more will be seen as a despicable and embarrassing era of decades-old Republican greed, elitism, cynicism, selfish and grotesque über capitalism, fascism, misogyny, racism and Birchism and the like.

I am so deeply grateful for our chess master POTUS. President Obama has my deepest respect and profound admiration. The preordained reactionary response that spewed forth from the far right shills and idiots even before POTUS' speech demonstrated and highlighted the feckless, disgusting venality of the ruined Teapub Repugnicant party of pathetic jackassery. 2016 must elect democratic and reasonable leaders and regain our government bodies from local to state and national political venues.

History will show the truth of the matter – not the lying Nazi Fox Faux News, nor the corporate- dominated far right media, nor the compromised and bribed Congress of treason and obstruction, nor the seditionist and greedy actions of bagger Governors, nor the pompous braggadocio, bullying and bloviating grotesqueries of Trumpitler and the Teapub clown train of stupid.

2016. Then 2018, 2020 and 2022. I am an American, and I want my country back from the hands of the evil baggerism, Randism, Nazism, Christofascism and Repugnicant stubborn stupidity that is hindering and destroying our egalitarian democratic principles. I intend for America to continue the vision, integrity, decency and morality of President Barack Obama.

Pieter J. Van Niel

This essay was authored by Pieter J. Van Niel of Redlands, California, and was reposted with permission.


“Thank You, Mr. President, for Executive Actions to Prevent Gun Violence,” January 4, 2016.

"Will Obama's New Gun Proposals Make a Difference?," January 5, 2016.

"Fact Checkers Say the Facts are on Obama's Side When It Comes to Guns," January 5, 2016.

Sources: PBS, Lonnie and Sandy Phillips (parents of Jessica Ghawi, a victim of the 2012 mass shooting in Aurora, Colorado), PoliticusUSA.com.

Peace from Gaza

Paint It Black - The Rolling Stones

The Real Identity of Israel

I'm not able - obviously - to devote as much time to "What's the Diehl?" as I would like. If any of my readers is interested in writing a guest essay or forwarding a piece worthy of reposting, please send it to my e-mail address. I can't pay you and I reserve the right to edit but I welcome the chance to help other writers share your talent. Now, for your consideration, here's a compelling script/video about the Israel/Palestine fiasco (the author is unknown):


I am Israel. I came to a land without a people for a people without a land. Those people who happened to be here, had no right to be here, and my people showed them they had to leave or die, razing 480 Palestinian villages to the ground, erasing their history.

I am Israel. Some of my people committed massacres and later became Prime Ministers to represent me. In 1948, Menachem Begin was in charge of the unit that slaughtered the inhabitants of Deir Yassin, including 100 men, women and children. In 1953, Ariel Sharon led the slaughter of the inhabitants of Qibya, and in 1982 arranged for our allies to butcher around 2,000 in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila.

I am Israel. Carved in 1948 out of 78% of the land of Palestine, dispossessing its inhabitants and replacing them with Jews from Europe and other parts of the world. While the natives whose families lived on this land for thousands of years are not allowed to return, Jews from all over the world are welcome to instant citizenship.

I am Israel. In 1967, I swallowed the remaining lands of Palestine - the West Bank and Gaza - and placed their inhabitants under an oppressive military rule, controlling and humiliating every aspect of their daily lives. Eventually, they should get the message that they are not welcome to stay and join the millions of Palestinian refugees in the shanty camps of Lebanon and Jordan.

I am Israel. I have the power to control American policy. My American Israel Public Affairs Committee can make or break any politician of its choosing, and as you see, they all compete to please me. All the forces of the world are powerless against me, including the UN as I have the American veto to block any condemnation of my war crimes. As Sharon so eloquently phrased it, "We control America."

I am Israel. I influence American mainstream media too, and you will always find the news tailored to my favor. I have invested millions of dollars into PR representation, and CNN, the New York Times and others have been doing an excellent job of promoting my propaganda. Look at other international news sources and you will see the difference.

I am Israel. You Palestinians want to negotiate “peace!?” But you are not as smart as me; I will negotiate, but will only let you have your municipalities while I control your borders, your water, your airspace and anything else of importance. While we “negotiate,” I will swallow your hilltops and fill them with settlements populated by the most extremist of my extremists, armed to the teeth. These settlements will be connected with roads you cannot use, and you will be imprisoned in your little Bantustans between them, surrounded by checkpoints in every direction.

I am Israel. I have the fourth strongest army in the world, possessing nuclear weapons. How dare your children confront my oppression with stones. Don’t you know my soldiers won’t hesitate to blow their heads off? In 17 months, I have killed 900 of you and injured 17,000, mostly civilians, and have the mandate to continue since the international community remains silent. Ignore, as I do, the hundreds of Israeli reserve officers who are now refusing to carry out my control over your lands and people; their voices of conscience will not protect you.

I am Israel. You want freedom? I have bullets, tanks, missiles, Apaches and F-16s to obliterate you. I have placed your towns under siege, confiscated your lands, uprooted your trees, demolished your homes, and you still demand freedom? Don’t you get the message? You will never have peace or freedom, because I am Israel.