ponderings on the world we live in…….Nothing is known to be absolute…some thoughts may touch you others may not…take what is useful and ponder the rest …..Never Fear The Dream
There is a difference between must do and want to do. One is an imposed arduous duty, the other a pleasant, valued opportunity. It’s your choice on perspective. Don’t climb over people on the succession ladder of life because you never know who you will meet on the way back down. 25.07.5
NeverFearTheDream simplebender.com@simplebender.bsky.socialStand For Truth
If you’re looking for daily thoughts and insights you will want to start the morning with:
Lap Around the Sun: Daily Steps Forward
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Joy in Alzheimer’s: My Mom’s Brave Walk into Dementia’s Abyss
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When federal agencies are defunded, are the states prepared to bear the burden? What if they falter, fail, and unravel under the weight? What if the unraveling of local governance isn’t a consequence of poor planning—but a feature of executive design?
Imagine a government waving the banner of “smaller federalism—drain the swamp,” slashing national programs in the name of efficiency and state empowerment. Medicaid becomes a block grant. Public housing and food subsidies are cut. Regulation and environmental oversight rolls back. Disaster relief is “restructured.” Methodically, the burden shifts to state and county governments, which are already stretched thin. Local taxes rise, services crumble, and local bureaucracies balloon in a vain attempt to compensate.
One town staffs its clinics. The next can’t keep its water clean. Some mandate gun control, others abortions, and others endorse sex work and gambling to increase state revenue. Air quality fluctuates by zip code. One region welcomes immigrants, the next sponsors agents for deportation. Resulting in dysfunctionality, geographical injustice, and discontinuity. The news media is mistrusted and declared ‘enemies of the State’. City, County, and State governments begin to crumble and fail under the weight of their new obligations.
Resentment festers—as inconsistency breeds inequity and confusion. Citizens demand relief, but help doesn’t come from local government, only more indecisive directives. Citizen uncertainty, polarization, and outrage against the policy void yield unrest. Not everywhere—but in enough places to make the headlines—just enough to be used as an excuse.
We’re already seeing a preview. Federal troops were deployed to California—not for disaster relief, but to enforce immigration policy, overriding the state’s will. FEMA faces cuts while climate disasters rise. Communities are left broken, ripe for corruption and manipulation.
And as the ground shifts, so do the guardrails. The Department of Justice leans in, and the Court tilts the scales. Recent rulings—many of which were urged by the Executive—have expanded presidential power by disregarding or reinterpreting laws passed by Congress and previous court decisions. Scholars once warned of an “imperial presidency.” It’s no longer theory—it’s precedent. The President need not wait for Congress. The office can act—or undo—with little more than a pen and a thin legal pretext.
And so, the same hand that dropped the burden returns—not as a partner, but as a “protector.” Protests are reframed as threats. Dissent becomes disorder. Disorder becomes insurrection.
Elections are postponed “for public safety.” Ballots are secured behind walls and counted by select administrators. Local authority is preempted. Emergency declarations morph into permanent policy.
Federal power consolidates—not with a coup, but with a shrug, and tacit approval, marked by deafening silence.
This isn’t prophecy—but it’s no longer just a thought experiment. It is no longer just possible it is verging on probable. It’s unfolding. If federal power can be withdrawn at will and restored at gunpoint—backed by a court with no limits—what does democracy even mean?
If this is the road ahead, it’s not the failure of states we should fear most. It’s the success of the plan—and our failure to notice.
“Love thy neighbor as thyself.” That wasn’t a suggestion. It wasn’t conditional—based on citizenship, health, or ideology. It was a commandment. And it’s not a value exclusive to Christianity. In Islam, the Prophet Muhammad declared, “None of you truly believes until he loves for his brother what he loves for himself.”(Sahih Muslim 45).
Yet here we are—deporting the desperate, dismantling Medicaid, trimming food assistance—while proclaiming Judeo-Christian values and shouting “God bless America.” If “faith without works is dead”(James 2:17), then what is belief without basic compassion? Are we still our brother’s keeper—were we ever?
All major world religions share a call to love, share, and care. To walk with the downtrodden. To clothe the naked, feed the hungry, and welcome the stranger. These aren’t metaphors. “I was a stranger, and you welcomed me.”(Matthew 25:35). But today we build legal walls and bureaucratic barbed wire, often in the name of sovereignty or security. It’s hard to square that with the Quran’s instruction: “Do good to parents, relatives, orphans, the needy, the near neighbor, the distant neighbor, the companion at your side…”(Quran 4:36).Neither scripture suggests checking someone’s documentation before offering mercy. In Hinduism: “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.”(Bhagavad Gita 3:19, interpreted)
And what of the sick? Medicaid—flawed, but vital—was designed to catch those who would otherwise fall. Yet many leaders now seek to shrink it, as if health were a luxury item. Would Jesus have denied healing because of a lack of insurance? Would the Prophet have charged the sick? “Whatever you did not do for the least of these, you did not do for me.”(Matthew 25:45). Moral clarity doesn’t get much plainer.
The same goes for hunger. SNAP isn’t charity—it’s survival. Reducing it isn’t fiscal responsibility—it’s spiritual failure. “He who oppresses the poor shows contempt for their Maker.”(Proverbs 14:31). And Islam reminds us: “He is not a believer whose stomach is filled while his neighbor to his side goes hungry.”(Sunan al-Kubra). If we take these words seriously, cutting food aid isn’t just bad policy—it’s hypocrisy.
Meanwhile, the rhetoric hardens. Hate has grown bold—voiced not only on fringe platforms but from seats of power. Immigrants are labeled as invaders. The LGBTQ+ community is cast as a threat. People experiencing poverty and the foreign scapegoated for systemic failure. The Bible warns: “The tongue has the power of life and death.”(Proverbs 18:21). Islam teaches: “A kind word is charity.”(Sahih Bukhari). Words are not just sounds—they are signals of the soul, or sledgehammers to the weak.
Some maintain that compassion is a private duty, not a governmental one. But when our policies punish the very people our faiths command us to protect, what exactly are we defending? Government doesn’t stand apart from morality—it reflects it. And right now, the reflection is disturbing. You cannot wave a Quran, Bible, or any other religious doctrine in one hand and slam the door on the vulnerable with the other. You cannot preach abundance and legislate scarcity and discrimination. If we are to be judged by how we treat the least among us—and all major faiths, say we are—then we are not just falling short. We are failing. We can be better.
*This was first published in the Bend Bulletin 7/25/25
NeverFearTheDream simplebender.com@simplebender.bsky.socialStand For Truth
If you’re looking for daily thoughts and insights you will want to start the morning with:
Lap Around the Sun: Daily Steps Forward
If you know someone who is facing any facet of Alzheimer’s they might gain some insight from:
Joy in Alzheimer’s: My Mom’s Brave Walk into Dementia’s Abyss
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Once you know what you’re committed to, ask yourself why. Do you do what’s right because it is right—or for praise for doing what you should have done all along? 25.07.4
NeverFearTheDream simplebender.com@simplebender.bsky.socialStand For Truth
If you’re looking for daily thoughts and insights you will want to start the morning with:
Lap Around the Sun: Daily Steps Forward
If you know someone who is facing any facet of Alzheimer’s they might gain some insight from:
Joy in Alzheimer’s: My Mom’s Brave Walk into Dementia’s Abyss
Please consider following simplebender, you’re reading makes my writing more fun..…
Comments and thoughts are always welcome and feel free to re-post …..
Isn’t the difference of opinion the very thing that built this country?
We weren’t founded on sameness—but on dissent. The thirteen colonies didn’t rise up because they agreed with the power, but because they dared to question it. That impulse—audacious, messy, courageous—is what the First Amendment was written to protect. And yet, here we are again, toying with the dangerous idea that some speech is more tolerable than others. That some viewpoints belong, and others must be silenced and erased.
Shouldn’t that make us uncomfortable?
When tax-funded public institutions—schools, libraries, boards—begin removing books because someone doesn’t like what they say, that’s not preservation of order. That’s viewpoint discrimination. It’s not protecting children. It’s insulating and cuddling weak ideologies. And it’s a blade that ultimately cuts both ways.
You may cheer today when a book you dislike is banned. But what happens tomorrow, when the next board turns its gaze toward the ones you cherish? What makes you think your shelves won’t be next?
We have been here before. In the 1950s, it was Communists. In the 1930s, it was Jews, dissidents, and “degenerates.” Ideas were labeled threats. Libraries were sanitized. People fell silent. Is that the direction we want to revisit?
And what of free speech? Have we forgotten that the First Amendment isn’t just the right to speak, but the right to receive, to read, to explore—especially the uncomfortable truths?
A candidate who once shouted from podiums about the sanctity of the First Amendment, to get elected, now wields it like a partisan tool—defending it when it serves him, abandoning it when it doesn’t, and threatening retaliation, retribution, revoking citizenship, and deportation. Isn’t that the ultimate hypocrisy? To claim allegiance to liberty, but only on your terms, isn’t democracy; it is authoritarianism.
Let’s ask plainly: If a public school or library removes a book about a Muslim child exploring faith, or an LGBTQ teen navigating identity, or a historical critique of systemic injustice—while allowing others that affirm dominant religious or political norms—can that possibly be considered neutral? Can it promote learning diversity and inclusion, or only foster selfish isolation and the illusion of greatness?
And if the government—through policy, threat, or performance—signals what speech is safe and what is not, can we still call ourselves a free people?
Pluralism is not about liking every voice. It’s about letting them speak. It’s about understanding that in a nation where taxes are paid by atheists and Baptists, Muslims, Mormons, and immigrants, the public square must be open to all—or none.
If one religion is given space in a publicly funded institution, then all must be. If one ideology is allowed to teach, then all must have a place at the table. If one set of values is protected, then all must be. Or else what we are protecting is not freedom—but control.
So, we must ask ourselves: Do we still believe in a country where debate is encouraged, not silenced? Where a library or a school is a place of discovery, not conformity? Where the power of ideas—not the fear of them—leads us? Because if not, then we are no longer the land of the free—we are simply the land of the approved, bowing to fragile egos. We, and the world, have been there before and rejected viewpoint discrimination; we can, have, and must do better.
NeverFearTheDream simplebender.com@simplebender.bsky.socialStand For Truth
If you’re looking for daily thoughts and insights you will want to start the morning with:
Lap Around the Sun: Daily Steps Forward
If you know someone who is facing any facet of Alzheimer’s they might gain some insight from:
Joy in Alzheimer’s: My Mom’s Brave Walk into Dementia’s Abyss
Please consider following simplebender, you’re reading makes my writing more fun..…
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Independent thought is bold to some, seductive or even dangerous to others. Be bold anyway. Make your thoughts your own—don’t regurgitate the ideas of others. Life’s path is a conundrum: follow the rugged trail of Truth is Knowledge, rather than retreat to the comfortable path of Ignorance is Bliss. 25.07.3
NeverFearTheDream simplebender.com@simplebender.bsky.socialStand For Truth
If you’re looking for daily thoughts and insights you will want to start the morning with:
Lap Around the Sun: Daily Steps Forward
If you know someone who is facing any facet of Alzheimer’s they might gain some insight from:
Joy in Alzheimer’s: My Mom’s Brave Walk into Dementia’s Abyss
Please consider following simplebender, you’re reading makes my writing more fun..…
Comments and thoughts are always welcome and feel free to re-post …..
The right thing is often obvious and usually the hardest, but it yields the best outcomes. Yet, what is “right” depends on perspective—and perspective shapes everything. Even the ranting of the insane makes sense to them. Strive to see the world through their eyes, not to agree, but to understand. 25.07.2
NeverFearTheDream simplebender.com@simplebender.bsky.socialStand For Truth
If you’re looking for daily thoughts and insights you will want to start the morning with:
Lap Around the Sun: Daily Steps Forward
If you know someone who is facing any facet of Alzheimer’s they might gain some insight from:
Joy in Alzheimer’s: My Mom’s Brave Walk into Dementia’s Abyss
Please consider following simplebender, you’re reading makes my writing more fun..…
Comments and thoughts are always welcome and feel free to re-post …..
There is no place for hate in our homes, our faiths, or our government—none. The grievances of Palestinians, Ukrainians, and displaced peoples around the world may be deep and justifiable—and may very well usher in generational hate. But we Americans have no excuse to let hate in. Not in our hearts, our homes, our places of worship—and definitely not in our policies.
Yet hate has become almost reflexive—normalized, even celebrated. It’s hoisted like a banner, waved by those clinging to lost causes and imagined enemies. It grows in minds and festers in rhetoric, often without genuine cause—and with no end goal beyond destruction and domination.
Those who lead or campaign on hate do so to divide, not to solve. Hate is a wedge—driven between communities to create illusionary superiority and incite rage. It doesn’t clarify; it confuses. It doesn’t elevate; it manipulates. When leaders resort to hate, they expose their inability to persuade, to unify, or to understand. Their bluster masks weakness. Their venom reveals fear. They seek the power of the mob, not the strength of dialogue or the courage of compromise.
Listen carefully: hate speech is no longer fringe. The denigration of individuals—by race, gender, belief, political group, or origin—has become a strategy. Its purpose is not discourse, but dominance. Not freedom, but control.
This country cannot be governed by contempt. We must reject those who exploit division. Hate has no place in a nation built on liberty—and none in a future worth striving for. America is stronger because of our diversity, not despite it. We are more mature—intellectually and emotionally—because of our historic willingness to understand and compromise.
Look neither backwards with anger nor forward with hate.Don’t give hate any space. Not here. Not now. Not tomorrow.
NeverFearTheDream simplebender.com@simplebender.bsky.socialStand For Truth
If you’re looking for daily thoughts and insights you will want to start the morning with:
Lap Around the Sun: Daily Steps Forward
If you know someone who is facing any facet of Alzheimer’s they might gain some insight from:
Joy in Alzheimer’s: My Mom’s Brave Walk into Dementia’s Abyss
Please consider following simplebender, you’re reading makes my writing more fun..…
Comments and thoughts are always welcome and feel free to re-post …..
Beware of those who promise glory without the effort it requires. In nature and life, sudden transformation is a myth. How you handle small setbacks reveals how you will face true adversity. Don’t avoid the truth because it’s unpleasant—face it because it’s necessary. 25.07.1
NeverFearTheDream simplebender.com@simplebender.bsky.socialStand For Truth
If you’re looking for daily thoughts and insights you will want to start the morning with:
Lap Around the Sun: Daily Steps Forward
If you know someone who is facing any facet of Alzheimer’s they might gain some insight from:
Joy in Alzheimer’s: My Mom’s Brave Walk into Dementia’s Abyss
Please consider following simplebender, you’re reading makes my writing more fun..…
Comments and thoughts are always welcome and feel free to re-post …..
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