Societies don’t collapse from being too fair, equitable, or caring—they collapse because of greed, bias, and intolerance. 26.01.4
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True friends are solid rock under your feet. Those who befriend for personal gain are shifting desert sands.
You’re born into a family. There’s a bond there; sometimes warm, sometimes strained, but it exists whether you asked for it or not. Friends are different. Friends are chosen. You choose them, and more importantly, they reciprocate that choice.
Some friends come from our reckless, impetuous youth. Some from our careers. Some from neighborhoods, teams, projects, and the accidents of geography. Time and distance shuffle the cast, but the real ones don’t become strangers. They steady you. They don’t demand a performance. They can disagree without turning you into a defendant. You remember them fondly, and when you see them again after years, you can still pick up mid-sentence, as if time never got a vote. That’s friendship. Not constant contact. An unshakable bond. These are the people you brought into each other’s lives, not for gain but for mutual support.
But there are others. People who orbit you for their own advantage. Their support is there—until it costs them something. Their loyalty is conditional. Their kindness comes with a receipt. They keep score, question motives, and disappear when you’re inconvenient or irrelevant. These relationships can be helpful, even mutually beneficial, but they’re transactions, not friendships. The difference between them is where people get hurt. With transactional allies, trust is offered in exchange for leverage.
Choose wisely, not selfishly. Choose friends for support, and benefits will often follow. Choose people for benefit, and deception shouldn’t surprise you. NeverFearTheDream simplebender.com
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Awakening means observing what truly is—not what you wish it to be—over and over until the truth becomes obvious. Awake from your dreamy slumber and embrace life’s reality. 26.01.3
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The Monroe Doctrine was meant to be a shield for a fledgling country: no European empires in the Americas, no more carving up this hemisphere by outside powers. It sounded like a defense of sovereignty and self-determination. Two centuries later, that shield has been reforged into something else—a license to police the hemisphere and enforce an American Hemispheric Order on our terms.
We claim to oppose foreign domination, yet we have become the dominant foreign power in other sovereign countries. When a government in the region dares to stray from our economic dogma or security script, we don’t send in Redcoats—we threaten and impose sanctions. Loans are conditioned. Sanctions are tightened. Diplomats whisper, intelligence agencies “assist,” and suddenly regime change appears not as an invasion but as a “restoration of democracy.” The vocabulary is polite; the outcome is familiar. Governments that cooperate survive. Governments that don’t are labeled unstable, extreme, or illegitimate. It isn’t about drugs, oil, or national security—it is about ego, power, and distraction from domestic failures and salacious files.
Flip that. Imagine a coalition of Latin American nations deciding that our politics are too corrupt, our inequality too obscene, and our elections too tainted by money. Imagine they declare an “Inter-American Responsibility Doctrine” and openly call for regime change in Washington to protect “hemispheric stability.” Picture them funding opposition groups, manipulating our media, freezing our assets, and threatening intervention—“for the sake of democracy,” of course. We would be apoplectic. We would call it aggression, pure and simple.
The hypocrisy deepens when you look at security. We pressure neighbors to crack down on crime, migration, and drugs, as if their failures are the source of our problems. Yes, trafficking networks and corrupt officials exist everywhere. But the demand, the guns, and much of the money flow from our side of the border. Rather than confront the discomfort of our own consumption, our own political greed-induced paralysis, and our own profit structures, we cast the neighbors as the problem and ourselves as the savior sheriff.
We insist on the right to shape their regimes while insisting no one has the right to shape ours. We dress intervention in the language of freedom while guarding our own system—flawed, gridlocked, and heavily purchased—as untouchable. It’s a double standard that everyone can see, whether we admit it or not. So here’s the uncomfortable mirror: if the rest of the hemisphere treated us exactly as we treat them—economically, politically, and rhetorically—would we still call it “promoting stability,” or would we finally call it what it feels like to them: unwelcome domination dressed as doctrine for ego and power? NeverFearTheDream simplebender.com
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People who stop overanalyzing the past have better odds at a successful future.
There is value in embracing the past and looking to the future simultaneously—to practice the philosopher’s “Janusian mindset”—while staying present in the moment. Yet, as we age, whether as individuals or nations, we tend to focus more on our past. We romanticize times when we felt invincible—periods of vitality, learning, and growth. We were finding our strengths, supporting and hiding our weaknesses, all the while learning to see the same in everyone around us.
Now, here we are—a little older, slower, and weaker, but much wiser. And therein lies the key to our future. The secret is not to dwell on who we were, but to leverage our accumulated knowledge and experience for the good of those around us. Greatness is not measured by what we’ve done, but by how we uplift others. As individuals, it’s in how we help our communities; as a nation, it’s in how we inspire global respect for democracy and human dignity. This is the message that philosophers, teachers, and prophets throughout history have conveyed. Greatness was never about personal glory—it was about collective well-being.
Let’s focus less on what we were and more on what we can become, using our experiences to encourage, not oppress. Let’s leverage those experiences not to oppress but to encourage and uplift. The sacrifices of the “Greatest Generation” showed us that we should stand up for those who suffer and support the vulnerable, both locally and globally. We, too, can inspire by looking back as we move forward, coaching the next generation to be better. We must be mindful of what we teach and how we act; the next generation and the world are watching — everything. Our ability to influence and guide them is directly related to our credibility.
Staring in the rearview mirror is a great way to have a wreck while driving forward. As this year ends and we begin another lap around the sun, glance back with gratitude, acknowledging the memories, but keep your eyes focused on the future—for all of us. NeverFearTheDream simplebender.com
First published in Bend Bulletin 1/7/26
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When not based on ego or anger, genuine compassion is a fearless emotion. 26.01.2
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There is a union among self-discipline, self-deception, and self-forgiveness. Within that space, you will find yourself. 26.01.1
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Democracies don’t die when people stop agreeing; they die when people stop dissenting. The loud, awkward, sometimes offensive voices are not a nuisance in a free society—they’re proof the system is still breathing.
We like to think “decency” means keeping things calm and polite. But genuine decency involves the courage to say, “This is wrong,” when power would rather you stay silent. The “decent” citizen who never questions authority isn’t truly decent; they’re just obedient.
That’s why dissent is always the first target of any controlling system. Not murderers. Not fraudsters. Not the genuinely dangerous. No, the temptation is to start with the inconvenient. Today, that often means immigrants, students, and visa holders. ICE and DHS don’t just police borders; they’re increasingly policing opinions—trawling social media, flagging protest, and turning lawful speech into a quiet risk factor for deportation.
On paper, the First Amendment belongs to “the people,” not just citizens. In practice, the easiest place to test new forms of control is with those who have the weakest political footing. If you can punish an international student for a tweet, you’ve just built a working model of speech control that can be scaled later. The laboratory is immigration; the product can be rolled out to everyone else.
That’s where the “protection of dissent” comes in. If decent people, like us, sit this out because they dislike the protesters’ slogans or hashtags, they’re missing the plot. The issue isn’t whether we agree with the content of dissent. The issue is whether the government can quietly attach a price and a punishment to dissent, leaving only the reckless or the desperate willing to speak.
History is blunt: once it becomes dangerous to disagree, it eventually becomes dangerous to be different.
The accurate measure of our decency is whether we will stand up for the right to dissent for those we disagree with, before the machinery to silence them turns on us. NeverFearTheDream simplebender.com
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You arrive with nothing and leave with nothing—but what will you leave behind? Don’t let your perceived insignificance keep you from doing something significant. Now it’s your turn.25.12.5
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Better to look the fool than be someone else’s. Don’t take yourself too seriously—the mighty and the meek share the same final chapter. Before you start your journey, ask if you’re prepared for the hardships or if you’re chasing the glory. 25.12.4.1
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