From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Reverend Reinhold Niebuhr
Born	Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr June 21, 1892 Wright City, Missouri, US
Died	June 1, 1971 (aged 78) Stockbridge, Massachusetts, US
Years active	1915–1966
Spouse(s)	Ursula Niebuhr (m. 1931)
Relatives	H. Richard Niebuhr (brother)
Awards	Presidential Medal of Freedom (1964)
‹ The template Infobox clergy is being considered for merging. ›Ecclesiastical career
Religion	Christianity
Church	Evangelical Synod of North America
Ordained	1915
Academic background
Alma mater	Elmhurst CollegeEden Theological SeminaryYale University
Academic advisors	Douglas Clyde Macintosh[1][2]
Influences	Augustine of Hippo[3]Karl BarthMartin Buber[4][5]Immanuel Kant[6]Søren Kierkegaard[6]Samuel D. PressWalter Rauschenbusch[7]Paul Tillich[3][8]
Academic work
Discipline	Theology
School or tradition	Christian realismneo-orthodoxy
Institutions	Union Theological Seminary
Doctoral students	Langdon Gilkey[9]William Hordern[10]
Notable students	Tom Collings
Notable works	Moral Man and Immoral Society (1932)The Nature and Destiny of Man (1943)
Notable ideas	Christian realism
Influenced	[show]

Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr^[a] (1892–1971) was an American Reformed theologian, ethicist, commentator on politics and public affairs, and professor at Union Theological Seminary for more than 30 years. Niebuhr was one of America’s leading public intellectuals for several decades of the 20th century and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964. A public theologian, he wrote and spoke frequently about the intersection of religion, politics, and public policy, with his most influential books including Moral Man and Immoral Society and The Nature and Destiny of Man. The latter is ranked number 18 of the top 100 non-fiction books of the twentieth century by Modern Library.^[25] Andrew Bacevich labelled Niebuhr’s book The Irony of American History “the most important book ever written on U.S. foreign policy.”^[26] The historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. described Niebuhr as “the most influential American theologian of the 20th century”^[27][28] and Time posthumously called Niebuhr “the greatest Protestant theologian in America since Jonathan Edwards.”^[29]

Starting as a minister with working-class sympathies in the 1920s and sharing with many other ministers a commitment to pacifism and socialism, his thinking evolved during the 1930s to neo-orthodox realist theology as he developed the philosophical perspective known as Christian realism.^{[30][verification needed]} He attacked utopianism as ineffectual for dealing with reality, writing in The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness (1944), “Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible; but man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.” Niebuhr’s realism deepened after 1945 and led him to support American efforts to confront Soviet communism around the world. A powerful speaker, he was one of the most influential thinkers of the 1940s and 1950s in public affairs.^[27] Niebuhr battled with religious liberals over what he called their naïve views of the contradictions of human nature and the optimism of the Social Gospel, and battled with religious conservatives over what he viewed as their naïve view of scripture and their narrow definition of “true religion”. During this time he was viewed by many as the intellectual rival of John Dewey.^[31]

Niebuhr’s contributions to political philosophy include utilizing the resources of theology to argue for political realism. His work has also significantly influenced international relations theory, leading many scholars to move away from idealism and embrace realism.^[32] A large number of scholars, including political scientists, political historians, and theologians, have noted his influence on their thinking. Aside from academics, activists such as Myles Horton and Martin Luther King Jr., numerous politicians that include Hillary Clinton, Hubert Humphrey, Dean Acheson, James Comey, Madeleine Albright, and John McCain, as well as former US Presidents Barack Obama^[33] and Jimmy Carter;^[34] have also cited his influence on their thought.^{[26][35][36][37]} Recent years have seen a renewed interest in Niebuhr’s work, in part because of Obama’s stated admiration for Niebuhr.^[38] In 2017, PBS released a documentary on Niebuhr, titled An American Conscience: The Reinhold Niebuhr Story.

Aside from his political commentary, Niebuhr is also known for having composed the Serenity Prayer, a widely recited prayer which was popularized by Alcoholics Anonymous.^[39][40] Niebuhr was also one of the founders of both Americans for Democratic Action and the International Rescue Committee and also spent time at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, while serving as a visiting professor at both Harvard and Princeton.^[41][42][43] He was also the brother of another prominent theologian, H. Richard Niebuhr.

Early life and education

Niebuhr was born on June 21, 1892, in Wright City, Missouri, the son of German immigrants Gustav Niebuhr and his wife, Lydia (née Hosto).^[44] His father was a German Evangelical pastor; his denomination was the American branch of the established Prussian Church Union in Germany. It is now part of the United Church of Christ. The family spoke German at home. His brother H. Richard Niebuhr also became a famous theological ethicist and his sister Hulda Niebuhr became a divinity professor in Chicago. The Niebuhr family moved to Lincoln, Illinois, in 1902 when Gustav Niebuhr became pastor of Lincoln’s St. John’s German Evangelical Synod church. Reinhold Niebuhr first served as pastor of a church when he served from April to September 1913 as interim minister of St. John’s following his father’s death.^[45]

Niebuhr attended Elmhurst College in Illinois and graduated in 1910.^[b] He studied at Eden Theological Seminary in Webster Groves, Missouri, where, as he admitted, he was deeply influenced by Samuel D. Press in “biblical and systematic subjects”,^[46] and Yale Divinity School, where he earned a Bachelor of Divinity degree in 1914 and a Master of Arts degree the following year,^[47] with the thesis The Contribution of Christianity to the Doctrine of Immortality.^[1] He always regretted not taking a doctorate. He said that Yale gave him intellectual liberation from the localism of his German-American upbringing.^[48]

Marriage and family

In 1931 Niebuhr married Ursula Keppel-Compton. She was a member of the Church of England and was educated at the University of Oxford in theology and history. She met Niebuhr while studying for her master’s degree at Union Theological Seminary. For many years, she was on faculty at Barnard College (the women’s college of Columbia University) where she helped establish and then chaired the religious studies department. The Niebuhrs had two children, Christopher Niebuhr and Elisabeth Niebuhr Sifton. Ursula Niebuhr left evidence in her professional papers at the Library of Congress showing that she co-authored some of her husband’s later writings.^[49]

Detroit

In 1915, Niebuhr was ordained a pastor. The German Evangelical mission board sent him to serve at Bethel Evangelical Church in Detroit, Michigan. The congregation numbered 66 on his arrival and grew to nearly 700 by the time he left in 1928. The increase reflected his ability to reach people outside the German-American community and among the growing population attracted to jobs in the booming automobile industry. In the early 1900s Detroit became the fourth-largest city in the country, attracting many black and white migrants from the rural South, as well as Jewish and Catholic ethnics from eastern and southern Europe. They competed for jobs and limited housing, and the city’s rapid changes and rise in social tensions contributed to the growth in numbers of Ku Klux Klan members in the city, which reached its peak in 1925, and to the Black Legion. During that year’s city election campaign, in which the Klan publicly supported several candidates, including for the office of mayor, Niebuhr spoke out publicly against the Klan to his congregation,^[50] describing them as “one of the worst specific social phenomena which the religious pride of a people has ever developed”. Only one of their several candidates gained a seat on the city council, and Charles Bowles, the mayoral candidate, was defeated.^[50]

First World War

As America entered the First World War in 1917, Niebuhr was the unknown pastor of a small German-speaking congregation in Detroit (it stopped using German in 1919). All German-American culture in the United States and nearby Canada came under attack for suspicion of having dual loyalties. Niebuhr repeatedly stressed the need to be loyal to America, and won an audience in national magazines for his appeals to the German Americans to be patriotic.^[51] Theologically, he went beyond the issue of national loyalty as he endeavored to fashion a realistic ethical perspective of patriotism and pacifism. He endeavored to work out a realistic approach to the moral danger posed by aggressive powers, which many idealists and pacifists failed to recognize. During the war, he also served his denomination as Executive Secretary of the War Welfare Commission, while maintaining his pastorate in Detroit. A pacifist at heart, he saw compromise as a necessity and was willing to support war in order to find peace—compromising for the sake of righteousness.^[52]

Origins of Niebuhr’s working-class sympathy

Several attempts have been made to explicate the origins of Niebuhr’s sympathies from the 1920s to working-class and labor issues as documented by his biographer Richard W. Fox.^[53] One supportive example has concerned his interest in the plight of auto workers in Detroit. This one interest among others can be briefly summarized below.

After seminary, Niebuhr preached the Social Gospel, and then initiated the engagement of what he considered the insecurity of Ford workers.^[54] Niebuhr had moved to the left and was troubled by the demoralizing effects of industrialism on workers. He became an outspoken critic of Henry Ford and allowed union organizers to use his pulpit to expound their message of workers’ rights. Niebuhr attacked poor conditions created by the assembly lines and erratic employment practices.^[55]

Because of his opinion about factory work, Niebuhr rejected liberal optimism. He wrote in his diary:

We went through one of the big automobile factories to-day. … The foundry interested me particularly. The heat was terrific. The men seemed weary. Here manual labour is a drudgery and toil is slavery. The men cannot possibly find any satisfaction in their work. They simply work to make a living. Their sweat and their dull pain are part of the price paid for the fine cars we all run. And most of us run the cars without knowing what price is being paid for them. … We are all responsible. We all want the things which the factory produces and none of us is sensitive enough to care how much in human values the efficiency of the modern factory costs.^[56]

The historian Ronald H. Stone thinks that Niebuhr never talked to the assembly line workers (many of his parishioners were skilled craftsmen) but projected feelings onto them after discussions with Samuel Marquis.^[57] Niebuhr’s criticism of Ford and capitalism resonated with progressives and helped make him nationally prominent.^[55] His serious commitment to Marxism developed after he moved to New York in 1928.^[58]

In 1923, Niebuhr visited Europe to meet with intellectuals and theologians. The conditions he saw in Germany under the French occupation of the Rhineland dismayed him. They reinforced the pacifist views that he had adopted throughout the 1920s after the First World War.

More at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinhold_Niebuhr

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Reverend Daniel Berrigan SJ
Berrigan in 2008
Born	Daniel Joseph Berrigan May 9, 1921 Virginia, Minnesota, United States
Died	April 30, 2016 (aged 94) The Bronx, New York City, U.S.
Occupation	Jesuit priest, peace activist, university educator
Known for	Anti-Vietnam War activism Anti-nuclear activism
Relatives	Philip Berrigan (brother)

Daniel Joseph Berrigan SJ (May 9, 1921 – April 30, 2016) was an American Jesuit priest, anti-war activist, Christian pacifist, playwright, poet, and author.

Berrigan’s active protest against the Vietnam War earned him both scorn and admiration, especially regarding his association with the Catonsville Nine.^[1][2] It also landed him on the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s “most wanted list” (the first-ever priest on the list),^[3] on the cover of Time magazine,^[4] and in prison.^[5]

For the rest of his life, Berrigan remained one of the United States’ leading anti-war activists.^[6] In 1980, he founded the Plowshares movement, an anti-nuclear protest group, that put him back into the national spotlight.^[7] He was also an award-winning and prolific author of some 50 books, a teacher, and a university educator.^[5] He, along with his activist brother Philip Berrigan, was nominated in 1998 for the Nobel Peace Prize by 1976 laureate Mairead Maguire.

Early life

Berrigan was^{Superscript text} born in Virginia, Minnesota, the son of Frieda Berrigan (née Fromhart), who was of German descent, and Thomas Berrigan, a second-generation Irish Catholic and active trade union member.^[8] He was the fifth of six sons.^[5] His youngest brother was fellow peace activist Philip Berrigan.^[9]

At age 5, Berrigan’s family moved to Syracuse, New York.^[10] In 1946, Berrigan earned a bachelor’s degree from St. Andrew-on-Hudson, a Jesuit seminary in Hyde Park, New York.^[11] In 1952 he received a master’s degree from Woodstock College in Baltimore, Maryland.^[5]

Berrigan was devoted to the Catholic Church throughout his youth. He joined the Jesuits directly out of high school in 1939 and was ordained to the priesthood on June 19, 1952.^[5][12]

Career

Berrigan taught at St. Peter’s Preparatory School in Jersey City from 1946 to 1949.^[13]

In 1954, Berrigan was assigned to teach French and theology at the Jesuit Brooklyn Preparatory School.^{[14][15][16][a]} In 1957 he was appointed professor of New Testament studies at Le Moyne College in Syracuse, New York. The same year, he won the Lamont Prize for his book of poems, Time Without Number. He developed a reputation as a religious radical, working actively against poverty and on changing the relationship between priests and lay people. While at Le Moyne, he founded its International House.^[18]

While on a sabbatical from Le Moyne in 1963, Berrigan traveled to Paris and met French Jesuits who criticized the social and political conditions in Indochina. Taking inspiration from this, he and his brother Philip founded the Catholic Peace Fellowship, a group that organized protests against the war in Vietnam.^[19]

On October 28, 1965, Berrigan, along with the Rev. Richard John Neuhaus and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, founded an organization known as Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Vietnam (CALCAV). The organization, founded at the Church Center for the United Nations, was joined by the likes of Dr. Hans Morgenthau, Dr. Reinhold Niebuhr, Rev. William Sloane Coffin, and the Rev. Philip Berrigan, among many others. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who delivered his 1967 speech Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence under sponsorship from CALCAV, served as the national co-chairman of the organization.

From 1966 to 1970, Berrigan was the assistant director of the Cornell University United Religious Work (CURW), the umbrella organization for all religious groups on campus, including the Cornell Newman Club (later the Cornell Catholic Community), eventually becoming the group’s pastor.^[20]

Berrigan at one time or another held faculty positions or ran programs at Union Theological Seminary, Loyola University New Orleans, Columbia, Cornell, and Yale.^[5] His longest tenure was at Fordham (a Jesuit university located in the Bronx), where for a brief time he also served as poet-in-residence.^[5][21][22]

Berrigan appeared briefly in the 1986 Warner Bros. film The Mission, playing a Jesuit priest. He also served as a consultant on the film.^[23][24]

Activism

Vietnam War era

But how shall we educate men to goodness, to a sense of one another, to a love of the truth? And more urgently, how shall we do this in a bad time?— Berrigan, quoted on the cover of TIME (Jan. 25, 1971)^[25]

Berrigan, his brother and Josephite priest Philip Berrigan, and Trappist monk Thomas Merton founded an interfaith coalition against the Vietnam War and wrote letters to major newspapers arguing for an end to the war. In 1967, Berrigan witnessed the public outcry that followed from the arrest of his brother Philip, for pouring blood on draft records as part of the Baltimore Four.^[26] Philip was sentenced to six years in prison for defacing government property. The fallout he had to endure from these many interventions, including his support for prisoners of war and, in 1968, seeing firsthand the conditions on the ground in Vietnam,^[27] further radicalized Berrigan, or at least strengthened his determination to resist American military imperialism.^[28][29]

Berrigan traveled to Hanoi with Howard Zinn during the Tet Offensive in January 1968 to “receive” three American airmen, the first American prisoners of war released by the North Vietnamese since the U.S. bombing of that nation had begun.^[30][31]

In 1968, he signed the Writers and Editors War Tax Protest pledge, vowing to refuse to make tax payments in protest of the Vietnam War.^[32] In the same year, he was interviewed in the anti-Vietnam War documentary film In the Year of the Pig, and later that year became involved in radical non-violent protest.

More at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Berrigan

By Wade Lee Hudson
(4/3/20 draft)

The COVID-19 crisis may change this nation’s character. Greater solidarity and compassion may deepen. The world we seek may soon be possible. The time for vision is here. 

A grassroots movement that addresses the whole person, the whole society, and our social system — a holistic democracy movement — can transform this nation into a compassionate community, and cooperate with people elsewhere who do the same in their country. 

The first step is a solid organizing plan. The second step is to steadily gain members with contagious joy and small, face-to-face communities who endorse the plan. The third step is to build momentum with political victories. The following scenario envisions how this can happen.

Step One: The Plan

An organizing committee that “looks like America” forms and drafts a brief set of core principles such as: 

“Draft Declaration for Holistic Democracy – 3/27/20” 

We, the undersigned, commit to serve humanity, the environment, and life itself  by promoting holistic democracy, which addresses the whole person, the whole society, and our interwoven social system. We urge the development of organizations committed to these goals whose members:

• identify as co-equal members of the human family, respect the essential equality of all human beings, affirm individuals’ multiple identities, recognize each individual’s unique personality and particular skills, and work together to weave our diverse peoples into one nation; 
• aim to overcome unconscious bias and resist discrimination based on race, gender, class, sexual orientation, or any other similar identity;
• promote partnerships, nurture democracy throughout society, empower people, support freedom for all, and oppose arbitrary efforts to dominate others;
• work to prevent social problems by correcting root causes and standing up for each other; 
• love others as they love themselves, avoid selfishness and self-sacrifice, rely on love and trust rather than hate and fear, channel anger productively, and decline to scapegoat or demonize; 
• attract people with contagious joy, face-to-face community, and caring friendships;
• honor their nation’s accomplishments, maintain its highest traditions, criticize its failures, and help build a more perfect union;
• push for compassionate policies supported by strong majorities, sustain the legitimacy of minority opinions, recognize the value of visionary campaigns focused on goals not yet supported by strong majorities, and engage in nonviolent civil disobedience and boycotts when needed;
• encourage members to improve their emotional reactions, engage in honest self-examination, support each other with their personal and spiritual growth, and avoid oppressive or disrespectful behavior;
• seek to transform their nation into a compassionate community that:
  • cultivates the development of healthy families;
  • establishes everyone’s equal rights and their equality under the law;
  • assures everyone a decent standard of living;
  • cultivates shared leadership, assists the development of worker-owned businesses, and supports workers’ rights;
  • protects free speech, makes it easy for everyone to vote, and defends individuals’ freedom to engage in activities that don’t interfere with the rights of others; lives in harmony with the natural environment;
  • respects all living creatures;forms supportive relationships with other countries, affirms their right to self-determination, promotes human rights, and advocates peaceful resolution of conflicts with mediation and negotiation.

In these ways, step-by-step, person-by-person, family-by-family, community-by-community, nation-by-nation, we pursue the eventual, evolutionary transformation of our social system into a compassionate community that serves humanity, the environment, and life itself. 

The organizing committee then:

1. Drafts a plan for how to advance these principles, establishes a fiscal home for the project, begins raising necessary funds, widely circulates the plan for review and comment, digests the comments, and updates the plan. 
2. Convenes a Community Congress (or Citizens Assembly) with randomly selected Americans who, with expenses paid, adopt, modify, or reject the updated plan.

Step Two: Organize

If the Congress adopts a plan, the organizing committee convenes a founding convention to form a “holistic democracy network” with people who support the plan. Steps are taken to assure that participants “look like America.” The convention opens with a panel of prominent speakers who help attract participation. The convention is streamed live, but only those who participate in person vote.

Toward the end of the convention, people who endorse the plan form district teams with others who live in the same Congressional district. These teams meet regularly to share a meal and in groups of ten or less conduct a “holistic check-in” — each individual reports on what they’ve been doing, plan to do, or would like to do with regard to self-improvement, community service, and political action. Each group then conducts an Open Topic Dialog concerning whatever’s on their mind. 

Throughout the rest of the month, these teams may engage in other activities, but all teams meet regularly, share a meal, and conduct a holistic check-in and an open topic dialog. This common practice nurtures a sense of community among the network. 

All members promote the network and recruit members, especially person-to-person.  Periodically team representatives meet in regional gatherings to share reports on activities, brainstorm, and provide mutual support. These gatherings select representatives to state gatherings, which select representatives to national gatherings, which select representatives to international gatherings. Video conference calls are occasionally used as well.

District teams organize support from others in their district for efforts to persuade their Congressperson to engage in a monthly Community Dialog with their constituents. These dialogs enable randomly selected constituents to address any subject, without the dialog being dominated by the Congressperson.

The project also helps to organize a Purple Alliance that pushes for compassionate changes in national policy supported by a supermajority of Americans — including a majority of Republicans, Democrats, and Independents — such as limiting the amount of money individuals and organizations can spend on campaigns and issues. This alliance includes a wide range of activist organizations that continue to primarily focus on their own priorities, while occasionally encouraging their members to support the Purple Alliance action. 

Step Three: Act

When timely, the Purple Alliance backs a campaign led by others to enact legislation supported by a supermajority of Americans that would improve living conditions. The Alliance calls on their members and others to communicate to their Congressperson about the bill. They urge representatives who have not supported the bill to do so, and express their appreciation to those who have. They may call, write, email, visit the Congressperson’s office (either alone or with other team members), participate in a Community Dialog, join a demonstration, or engage in nonviolent civil disobedience. If the Congressperson has not yet gone on record in support of the bill, they gather support from individuals and organizations in their district for a resolution urging the Congressperson to do so. 

The initial goal might merely be to gain a specific number of co-sponsors for the bill. This would give the bill more credibility and strengthen the hand of the groups that are leading the campaign. The Alliance might then declare victory, move to another issue, and return to the initial issue when it’s farther along the legislative process. Regardless, the Alliance clarifies at the outset whose leadership it will follow: the Alliance will not support a compromise or an alternative bill if the designated leader objects. Nevertheless, the Alliance retains the option to withdraw from the campaign at any time.

Periodically, the Alliance reports to its members on progress with the campaign and updates the message to be communicated to Congresspersons. Holistic democracy network members meet with supportive Congresspersons to explore what more the Congressperson can do to help advance the network’s principles.

Network members ask countless organizations to endorse the network’s principles, including local and national Republican and Democratic parties. When any such bodies endorse the principles, network members may help transform that party into an activist organization that engages in precinct-organizing year-round (perhaps using the Open Topic Dialog).

Groups that endorse the network’s principles engage in a wide range of activities to advance its principles — without gaining prior approval from the network.

+++++

This approach calls for patience and dedication. There are no shortcuts. We keep the best of what we’ve inherited and build on that foundation. We create a fairer, more compassionate, and more democratic world that has many new structures, a new character, and a new appearance — a world that is transformed.

As this global movement develops, specific strategies and tactics vary across countries. But everyone shares a commitment to holistic democracy. With mutually reinforcing personal, social, cultural, economic, and political reforms, the holistic democracy movement promotes fundamental, systemic transformation.

+++++

NOTES: 

1. The latest draft of this essay will always be here. Feedback is welcome. 
2. Stephen Gerritson, George Fowler, and Alan Levin contributed greatly to the composition of the Declaration with many comments and suggestions.
3. Those who contributed to or signed Americans for Humanity: A Declaration also helped with this effort.
4. Feel free to take the Declaration, modify it if so desired, gain signers (perhaps using Google Forms), and post their names (perhaps using Airtable). Signers could then be invited to horizontally collaborate concerning next steps.

Joe Garofoli , Tal Kopan and Matthias Gafni April 2, 2020 Updated: April 3, 2020 7:04 a.m. (SFChronicle.com)

The captain of a nuclear aircraft carrier who pleaded with Navy officials for more resources to remove most of his nearly 5,000 crew members from the coronavirus-infected warship, warning sailors could die, was relieved of his command Thursday.

Capt. Brett Crozier, commander of the Theodore Roosevelt, sent a letter to Navy leaders this week pleading for immediate help for his crew as the coronavirus spread through the warship. Navy leaders, however, said he showed “extremely poor judgment” in copying the letter to more than 20 people, saying that allowed it to become public and undermine national security.

Acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly said at a Pentagon news conference that Crozier had been relieved “at my direction.” He said the captain hadn’t let his superiors know the seriousness of the situation aboard his ship before The Chronicle revealed the contents of a letter he wrote to Navy brass, and that he hadn’t taken steps to ensure the plea would not be leaked.

Crozier was dismissed a day after top Navy officials had said he would not face retaliation for the letter asking for measures to help the crew of the aircraft carrier, which is in port in Guam.

“The fact that he wrote the letter … to his chain of command to express his concerns would absolutely not result in any type of retaliation,” Adm. Michael Gilday, chief of naval operations, said Wednesday. “This is what we want our commanding officers to be able to do.”

The send off for Captain Brett Crozier who was relieved from duty for TRYING TO SAVE THE LIVES OF HIS CREW pic.twitter.com/EEDG1U3rYE— Danny Ocean (@The_UnSilent_) April 3, 2020

The plea from Crozier, a Santa Rosa native, was made in a letter, obtained exclusively by The Chronicle, which reported about it Tuesday. Crozier, 50, asked Navy officials for resources to allow isolation of his entire crew and avoid possible deaths in a situation he described as quickly deteriorating.

“This will require a political solution but it is the right thing to do,” Crozier wrote in the letter Monday. “We are not at war. Sailors do not need to die. If we do not act now, we are failing to properly take care of our most trusted asset — our Sailors.”

On Thursday, Modly said Crozier had let his emotions color his judgment and that he had jeopardized naval operations. He said Crozier had been in touch with top military officers before writing the letter and had asked only for quicker evacuation of the carrier’s sailors.

“At no time did (Crozier) relay the various levels of alarm that I, along with the rest of the world, learned from his letter when it was published two days later by the CO’s hometown newspaper,” Modly said.

He said he did not know if Crozier had leaked the letter, but that the captain had copied the email to 20 to 30 people. He said that increased the chances it would be publicized outside the Navy’s chain of command, which showed “extremely poor judgment in times of crisis.”

“Command is a sacred trust, which must be continually earned,” Modly said, adding that he had spoken with Crozier before deciding to relieve him. “As I learned more about the events of the past week aboard the Teddy Roosevelt … I could reach no other conclusion than Capt. Crozier had allowed the complexity of his challenge with the COVID breakout on his ship to overwhelm his ability to act professionally, when acting professionally is what we needed most at the time.”

Just a day before his dismissal, Crozier wrote a letter to Roosevelt sailors and their families, also obtained exclusively by The Chronicle, in which he said he fought to “get all our Sailors into an environment more aligned with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommendations, and that is more conducive to our team’s wellness, enabling us all to get back to sea.”

He described how each sailor would get an individual room in Guam where they will be fed, have wifi access, laundry service, mail instructions and most importantly their “own space.”

“Upon completion of this process, we will return to sea and be ready to execute whatever orders come our way; healthy and on a clean ship,” Crozier wrote.

Of nearly 1,300 sailors aboard the Theodore Roosevelt who have been screened for the disease, 116 tested positive, Navy officials said Thursday. But about half the tests have not been returned. About 1,000 sailors, or 20%, have been removed from the ship, Navy officials said.

In the next 24 hours, they said, they hope to take a total of 2,700 crew members off the vessel. The first sailors were moved to a oceanfront hotel in the tourist section of Guam on Wednesday.

Retired Adm. James Stavridis, former NATO supreme allied commander in Europe, told The Chronicle this week in an email that “we should expect more such incidents because warships are a perfect breeding ground for coronavirus. … It is impossible to do social distancing” on ships where sailors live in tight quarters.

President Trump was asked at a White House briefing Thursday whether it appeared that Crozier was being punished for trying to save the lives of his crew.

“No, I don’t think so at all,” the president replied. “I don’t agree with that at all. Not at all. Not even a little bit.”

One Roosevelt sailor told The Chronicle that dismissing Crozier was “the exact wrong thing to do.”

“Taking care of your people is the first rule of leadership. Firing him betrays that,” said the sailor, who is not being identified under The Chronicle’s anonymous sources policy because he was not authorized to speak to the media. He said sailors on the ship did not know Crozier had been relieved before the Pentagon announced it.

“We’re rudderless,” the sailor said.

Elizabeth Paz of Tulsa, Okla., whose 19-year-old daughter serves on the carrier, said she couldn’t believe the news.

“My heart just sank when I read that,” Paz told The Chronicle. “That’s just not right. He did what he thought was best for his crew. … Then he did everything he could to get the help he needed. And it worked.

“I thought he would be thought of as a hero after this is all over. Well, he is a hero to me either way. But it’s completely wrong for them to relieve him of his duty.”

Leading Democrats on the House Armed Services Committee blasted Navy leaders for an “overreaction” in dismissing Crozier, although they conceded that he did not handle the matter “appropriately.”

“While Captain Crozier clearly went outside the chain of command, his dismissal at this critical moment — as the sailors aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt are confronted with the COVID-19 pandemic — is a destabilizing move that will likely put our service members at greater risk and jeopardize our fleet’s readiness,” said a statement signed by committee chair Adam Smith, D-Wash., Rep. John Garamendi, D-Walnut Grove (Sacramento County), Rep. Jackie Speier, D-San Mateo, and others.

“Captain Crozier was justifiably concerned about the health and safety of his crew, but he did not handle the immense pressure appropriately,” the House Democrats said. “However, relieving him of his command, when his crew needs leadership the most, seems like an overreaction.”

Lawrence Korb, a former assistant secretary of defense under President Ronald Reagan, said Crozier was a “real hero” who had put his sailors’ health above career concerns.

“He was trying to get the attention of his chain of command and they weren’t doing anything,” said Korb, a retired Navy captain who is now a senior fellow at the left-leaning Center for American Progress think tank. “Your main obligation is to take care of the women and men you’re in charge of.”

Joe Garofoli, Matthias Gafni and Tal Kopan are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: jgarofoli@sfchronicle.com, matthias.gafni@sfchronicle.com, tal.kopan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @joegarofoli, @mgafni, @TalKopan

©2020 Hearst

by Michael T. Klare

Image courtesy of Trinity Care Foundation

Click this link http://www.tikkun.org/avenger-planet if you prefer to read it on Tikkun’s website.

[Editor’s  Note: It was bound to happen at some historical period that the explicit warning that nature itself would rebel against human perversion at the way we’ve been treating the earth for the past several thousand years, accelerated dramatically in the capitalist societies of the past four hundred years. From my perspective, Earth is alive and our mother, and is a material/ethical/spiritual unity that cannot keep alive its conscious beings while we continue to embody unethical, evil, cruel and wildly insensitive behavior toward each other and toward nature. This theme was beautifully presented again by Deena Metzger in her recent article in Tikkun, and is stated in an ancient language in the 2nd paragraph of the Sh’ma prayer which makes the prediction that worshipping idols (which meant then and now—money and power) we humans would perish from the earth. As I and Metzger both see it, the Coronavirus is only the latest “plague” and the Pharaohs of our time continue to ignore the messages.  We at Tikkun, and thru our ESRA—Environmental and Social Responsibility Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, have proposed some steps that are more radical than the “green new deal” yet actually quite moderate compared to what is fully needed and quickly—the replacement of capitalism by a different system based (check out how you can participate in a nonviolent love-oriented movement by reading my new book Revolutionary Love—which you can get thru www.tikkun.org/lj). Thanks to our media ally Tom Engelhardt of TomDispatch for sharing this article with Tikkun. –Rabbi Michael Lerner  rabbilerner.tikkun@gmail.com] As the coronavirus sweeps across the planet, leaving death and mayhem in its wake, many theories are being expounded to explain its ferocity. One, widely circulated within right-wing conspiracy circles, is that it originated as a biological weapon developed at a secret Chinese military lab in the city of Wuhan that somehow (perhaps intentionally?) escaped into the civilian population. Although that “theory” has been thoroughly debunked, President Trump and his acolytes continue to call Covid-19 the China Virus, the Wuhan Virus, or even the “Kung Flu,” claiming its global spread was the result of an inept and secretive Chinese government response. Scientists, by and large, believe the virus originated in bats and was transmitted to humans by wildlife sold at a Wuhan seafood market. But perhaps there’s another far more ominous possibility to consider: that this is one of Mother Nature’s ways of resisting humanity’s assault on her essential life systems.Let’s be clear: this pandemic is a world-shattering phenomenon of massive proportions. Not only has it infected hundreds of thousands of people across the planet, killing more than 40,000 of them, but it’s brought the global economy to a virtual stand-still, potentially crushing millions of businesses, large and small, while putting tens of millions, or possibly hundreds of millions, of people out of work. In the past, disasters of this magnitude have toppled empires, triggered mass rebellions, and caused widespread famine and starvation. This upheaval, too, will produce widespread misery and imperil the survival of numerous governments.Understandably, our forebears came to view such calamities as manifestations of the fury of gods incensed by human disrespect for and mistreatment of their universe, the natural world. Today, educated people generally dismiss such notions, but scientists have recently been discovering that human impacts on the environment, especially the burning of fossil fuels, are producing feedback loops causing increasingly severe harm to communities across the globe, in the form of extreme storms, persistent droughts, massive wildfires, and recurring heat waves of an ever deadlier sort.Climate scientists also speak of “singularities,” “non-linear events,” and “tipping points” — the sudden and irreversible collapse of vital ecological systems with far-ranging, highly destructive consequences for humanity. Evidence for such tipping points is growing — for example in the unexpectedly rapid melting of the Arctic icecap. In that context, a question naturally arises: Is the coronavirus a stand-alone event, independent of any other mega-trends, or does it represent some sort of catastrophic tipping point?It will be some time before scientists can answer that question with any certainty. There are, however, good reasons to believe that this might be the case and, if so, perhaps it’s high time humanity reconsiders its relationship with nature. Humans vs. Nature It’s common to think of human history as an evolutionary process in which broad, long-studied trends like colonialism and post-colonialism have largely shaped human affairs. When sudden disruptions have occurred, they are usually attributed to, say, the collapse of a long-lasting dynasty or the rise of an ambitious new ruler. But the course of human affairs has also been altered — often in even more dramatic ways — by natural occurrences, ranging from prolonged droughts to catastrophic volcanic activity to (yes, of course) plagues and pandemics. The ancient Minoan civilization of the eastern Mediterranean, for example, is widely believed to have disintegrated following a powerful volcanic eruption on the island of Thera (now known as Santorini) in the 17th century BCE. Archaeological evidence further suggests that other once-thriving cultures were similarly undermined or even extinguished by natural disasters.It’s hardly surprising that the survivors of such catastrophes often attributed their misfortunes to the anger of various gods over human excesses and depredations. In the ancient world, sacrifices — even human ones — were considered a necessity to appease such angry spirits. At the onset of the Trojan War, for example, the Greek goddess Artemis, protectress of wild animals, the wilderness, and the moon, stilled the winds needed to propel the Greek fleet to Troy because Agamemnon, its commander, had killed a sacred deer. To appease her and restore the essential winds, Agamemnon felt obliged — or so the poet Homer tells us — to sacrifice his own daughter Iphigenia (the plot line for many a Greek and modern tragedy).In more recent times, educated people have generally seen coronavirus-style calamities as either inexplicable acts of God or as explicable, if surprising, natural events. With the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution in Europe, moreover, many influential thinkers came to believe that humans could use science and technology to overpower nature and so harness it to the will of humanity. The seventeenth-century French mathematician René Descartes, for example, wrote of employing science and human knowledge so that “we can… render ourselves the masters and possessors of nature.”This outlook undergirded the view, common in the last three centuries, that the Earthwas “virgin” territory (especially when it came to the colonial possessions of the major powers) and so fully open to exploitation by human entrepreneurs. This led to the deforestation of vast areas, as well as the extinction or near-extinction of many animals, and in more recent times, to the plunder of underground mineral and energy deposits.As it happened, though, this planet proved anything but an impotent victim of colonization and exploitation. Human mistreatment of the natural environment has turned out to have distinctly painful boomerang effects. The ongoing destruction of the Amazon rain forest, for example, is altering Brazil’s climate, raising temperatures and reducing rainfall in significant ways, with painful consequences for local farmers and even more distant urban dwellers. (And the release of vast quantities of carbon dioxide, thanks to increasingly massive forest fires, will only increase the pace of climate change globally.) Similarly, the technique of hydraulic fracking, used to extract oil and natural gas trapped in underground shale deposits, can trigger earthquakes that damage aboveground structures and endanger human life. In so many ways like these, Mother Nature strikes back when her vital organs suffer harm.This interplay between human activity and planetary behavior has led some analysts to rethink our relationship with the natural world. They have reconceptualized the Earth as a complex matrix of living and inorganic systems, all (under normal conditions) interacting to maintain a stable balance. When one component of the larger matrix is damaged or destroyed, the others respond in their unique ways in attempting to restore the natural order of things. Originally propounded by the environmental scientist James Lovelock in the 1960s, this notion has often been described as “the Gaia Hypothesis,” after the ancient Greek goddess Gaia, the ancestral mother of all life. Climate Tipping Points Posing the ultimate threat to planetary health, climate change — a direct consequence of the human impulse to dump ever more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, potentially heating the planet to the breaking point — is guaranteed to generate the most brutal of all such feedback loops. By emitting ever more carbon dioxide and other gases, humans are fundamentally altering planetary chemistry and posing an almost unimaginable threat to natural ecosystems. Climate-change deniers in the Trumpian mode continue to insist that we can keep doing this with no cost to our way of life. It is, however, becoming increasingly apparent that the more we alter the climate, the more the planet will respond in ways guaranteed to endanger human life and prosperity.The main engine of climate change is the greenhouse effect, as all those greenhouse gases sent into the atmosphere entrap ever more radiated solar heat from the Earth’s surface, rising temperatures worldwide and so altering global climate patterns. Until now, much of this added heat and carbon dioxide has been absorbed by the planet’s oceans, resulting in rising water temperatures and the increased acidification of their waters. This, in turn, has already led to, among other deleterious effects, the mass die-off of coral reefs — the preferred habitat of many of the fish species on which large numbers of humans rely for their sustenance and livelihoods. Just as consequential, higher ocean temperatures have provided the excess energy that has fueled many of the most destructive hurricanes of recent times, including Sandy, Harvey, Irma, Maria, Florence, and Dorian.A warmer atmosphere can also sustain greater accumulations of moisture, making possible the prolonged downpours and catastrophic flooding being experienced in many parts of the world, including the upper Midwest in the United States. In other areas, rainfall is decreasing and heat waves are becoming more frequent and prolonged, resulting in devastating wildfires of the sort witnessed in the American West in recent years and in Australia this year.In all such ways, Mother Nature, you might say, is striking back. It is, however, the potential for “non-linear” events and “tipping points” that has some climate scientists especially concerned, fearing that we now live on what might be thought of as an avenging planet. While many climate effects, like prolonged heat waves, will become more pronounced over time, other effects, it is now believed, will occur suddenly, with little warning, and could result in large-scale disruptions in human life (as in this coronavirus moment). You might think of this as Mother Nature saying, “Stop! Do not go past this point or there will be dreadful consequences!”Scientists are understandably cautious in discussing such possibilities, as they are harder to study than linear events like rising world temperatures. But the concern is there. “Large-scale singular events (also called ‘tipping points,’ or critical thresholds) are abrupt and drastic changes in physical, ecological, or social systems” brought about by the relentless rise in temperatures, noted the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its comprehensive 2014 assessment of anticipated impacts. Such events, the IPCC pointed out, “pose key risks because of the potential magnitude of the consequences; the rate at which they would occur; and, depending on this rate, the limited ability of society to cope with them.”Six years later, that striking description sounds eerily like the present moment.Until now, the tipping points of greatest concern to scientists have been the rapid melting of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets. Those two massive reservoirs of ice contain the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of square miles of water. Should they melt ever more quickly with all that water flowing into neighboring oceans, a sea level rise of 20 feet or more can be expected, inundating many of the world’s most populous coastal cities and forcing billions of people to relocate. In its 2014 study, the IPCC predicted that this might occur over several centuries, at least offering plenty of time for humans to adapt, but more recent research indicates that those two ice sheets are melting far more rapidly than previously believed — and so a sharp increase in sea levels can be expected well before the end of this century with catastrophic consequences for coastal communities.The IPCC also identified two other possible tipping points with potentially far-reaching consequences: the die-off of the Amazon rain forest and the melting of the Arctic ice cap. Both are already underway, reducing the survival prospects of flora and fauna in their respective habitats. As these processes gain momentum, entire ecosystems are likely to be obliterated and many species killed off, with drastic consequences for the humans who rely on them in so many ways (from food to pollination chains) for their survival. But as is always the case in such transformations, other species — perhaps insects and microorganisms highly dangerous to humans — could occupy those spaces emptied by extinction. Climate Change and Pandemics Back in 2014, the IPCC did not identify human pandemics among potential climate-induced tipping points, but it did provide plenty of evidence that climate change would increase the risk of such catastrophes. This is true for several reasons. First, warmer temperatures and more moisture are conducive to the accelerated reproduction of mosquitoes, including those carrying malaria, the zika virus, and other highly infectious diseases. Such conditions were once largely confined to the tropics, but as a result of global warming, formerly temperate areas are now experiencing more tropical conditions, resulting in the territorial expansion of mosquito breeding grounds. Accordingly, malaria and zika are on the rise in areas that never previously experienced such diseases. Similarly, dengue fever, a mosquito-borne viral disease that infects millions of people every year, is spreading especially quickly due to rising world temperatures.Combined with mechanized agriculture and deforestation, climate change is also undermining subsistence farming and indigenous lifestyles in many parts of the world, driving millions of impoverished people to already crowded urban centers, where health facilities are often overburdened and the risk of contagion ever greater. “Virtually all the projected growth in populations will occur in urban agglomerations,” the IPCC noted then. Adequate sanitation is lacking in many of these cities, particularly in the densely populated shantytowns that often surround them. “About 150 millionpeople currently live in cities affected by chronic water shortages, and by 2050, unless there are rapid improvements in urban environments, the number will rise to almost a billion.”Such newly settled urban dwellers often retain strong ties to family members still in the countryside who, in turn, may come in contact with wild animals carrying deadly viruses. This appears to have been the origin of the West African Ebola epidemic of 2014-2016, which affected tens of thousands of people in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. Scientists believe that the Ebola virus (like the coronavirus) originated in bats and was then transmitted to gorillas and other wild animals that coexist with people living on the fringes of tropical forests. Somehow, a human or humans contracted the disease from exposure to such creatures and then transmitted it to visitors from the city who, upon their return, infected many others.The coronavirus appears to have had somewhat similar origins. In recent years, hundreds of millions of once impoverished rural families moved to burgeoning industrial cities in central and coastal China, including places like Wuhan. Although modern in so many respects, with its subways, skyscrapers, and superhighways, Wuhan also retained vestiges of the countryside, including markets selling wild animals still considered by some inhabitants to be normal parts of their diet. Many of those animals were trucked in from semi-rural areas hostinglarge numbers of bats, the apparent source of both the coronavirus and the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS, outbreak of 2013, which also arose in China. Scientific research suggests that breeding grounds for bats, like mosquitoes, are expanding significantly as a result of rising world temperatures.The global coronavirus pandemic is the product of a staggering multitude of factors, including the air links connecting every corner of the planet so intimately and the failure of government officials to move swiftly enough to sever those links. But underlying all of that is the virus itself. Are we, in fact, facilitating the emergence and spread of deadly pathogens like the Ebola virus, SARS, and the coronavirus through deforestation, haphazard urbanization, and the ongoing warming of the planet? It may be too early to answer such a question unequivocally, but the evidence is growing that this is the case. If so, we had better take heed. Heeding Mother Nature’s Warning Suppose this interpretation of the Covid-19 pandemic is correct. Suppose that the coronavirus is nature’s warning, its way of telling us that we’ve gone too far and must alter our behavior lest we risk further contamination. What then?To adapt a phrase from the Cold War era, what humanity may need to do is institute a new policy of “peaceful coexistence” with Mother Nature. This approach would legitimize the continued presence of large numbers of humans on the planet but require that they respect certain limits in their interactions with its ecosphere. We humans could use our talents and technologies to improve life in areas we’ve long occupied, but infringement elsewhere would be heavily restricted. Natural disasters — floods, volcanoes, earthquakes, and the like — would, of course, still occur, but not at a rate exceeding what we experienced in the pre-industrial past.Implementation of such a strategy would, at the very least, require putting the brakes on climate change as swiftly as possible through the rapid and thorough elimination of human-induced carbon emissions — something that has, in fact, happened in at least a modest way, and however briefly, thanks to this Covid-19 moment. Deforestation would also have to be halted and the world’s remaining wilderness areas preserved as is forever. Any further despoliation of the oceans would have to be stopped, including the dumping of wastes, plastics, engine fuel, and runoff pesticides.The coronavirus may not, in retrospect, prove to be the tipping point that upends human civilization as we know it, but it should serve as a warning that we will experience ever more such events in the future as the world heats up. The only way to avert such a catastrophe and assure ourselves that Earth will not become an avenger planet is to heed Mother Nature’s warning and cease the further desecration of essential ecosystems.

__Michael T. Klare is the five-college professor emeritus of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College and a senior visiting fellow at the Arms Control Association. He is the author of 15 books, including the just-published All Hell Breaking Loose: The Pentagon’s Perspective on Climate Change (Metropolitan Books).

Elizabeth Gilbert|TED Connects

If you’re feeling anxious or fearful during the coronavirus pandemic, you’re not alone. Offering hope and understanding, author Elizabeth Gilbert reflects on how to stay present, accept grief when it comes and trust in the strength of the human spirit. “Resilience is our shared genetic inheritance,” she says. (This virtual conversation is part of the TED Connects series, hosted by head of TED Chris Anderson and head of curation Helen Walters. Recorded April 2, 2020)

This talk was presented at an official TED conference, and was featured by our editors on the home page.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Elizabeth Gilbert · WriterThe author of “Eat, Pray, Love,” Elizabeth Gilbert has thought long and hard about some big topics. Her fascinations: genius, creativity and how we get in our own way when it comes to both.

Chris Anderson · Head of TEDAfter a long career in journalism and publishing, Chris Anderson became the curator of the TED Conference in 2002 and has developed it as a platform for identifying and disseminating ideas worth spreading.

Helen Walters · Curator

Helen Walters is the head of curation at TED, where she has the immense privilege of overseeing the work of an absurdly talented group of specialist curators and deep thinkers to bring the very sharpest minds and ideas to the TED stage.

Drake Toosie Slide (Official Video) Director: Theo Skudra Producer: Christian Tyler Production Company: Colossale Cinematographer: Theo Skudra Production Coordinator: Alex Dall’Orso B Cam: Ali Khurshid Loader/Drone Op: Tristan Clarke-McMurchy PA: Kit Weyman and Jade-Elie Pascual SFX Company: Dynamic Effects Collective SFX Supervisor: Hudson Kenny SFX Technician: Matthew Beecraft Editor: Theo Skudra Assistant Editor: Ashton Lewis Finishing Company: Artjail Artjail Executive Producer: Leslie McCartney Artjail Producer: Caitlin Schooley Artjail Coordinator: Alison Maxwell Colourist: Clinton Homuth Assistant: Kevin Wu

Lyrics:

Black leather glove, no sequins
Buckles on the jacket, it’s Alyx shit
Nike crossbody, got a piece in it
Got a dance, but it’s really on some street shit
I’ma show you how to get it

It go right foot up, left foot, slide
Left foot up, right foot, slide
Basically, I’m sayin’, either way, we ’bout to slide, ayy
Can’t let this one slide, ayy

Don’t you wanna dance with me?
No? I could dance like Michael Jackson
I could give you thug passion
It’s a Thriller in the trap where we from

Baby, don’t you wanna dance with me?
No? I could dance like Michael Jackson
I could give you satisfaction
And you know we out here everyday with it
I’ma show you how to get it

It go right foot up, left foot, slide
Left foot up, right foot, slide
Basically, I’m sayin’, either way, we ’bout to slide, ayy
Can’t let this one slide, ayy (Who’s babe?)

Two thousand shorties wanna tie the knot, ayy, yeah
Two hundred shooters on my brother’s block, woah, yeah
Petal off the rose like I love her not, maybe not
I don’t know what’s wrong with me, I can’t stop, woah, yeah

Won’t stop, woah, yeah, never stop
Got so many opps, I be mistakin’ opps for other opps
Got so many people that I love out of troubled spots

Other than the family I got, it’s either you or me
That’s just how I think, it’s either you or me
This life got too deep for you, baby
Two or three of us about to creep where they stayin’

Black leather glove, no sequins
Buckles on the jacket, it’s Alyx shit
Nike crossbody, got a piece in it
Got a dance, but it’s really on some street shit
I’ma show you how to get it

It go right foot up, left foot, slide
Left foot up, right foot, slide
Basically, I’m sayin’, either way, we ’bout to slide, ayy
Can’t let this one slide, ayy (Who’s babe?)

Toosie slide, then I hit it double time
Then I hit a spin ’cause we spun their block a couple times
If it’s not the right time, there’ll always be another time
I’m not even trippin’, we’ll just see ’em in the summertime, woah, yeah

Can’t describe the pressure I be puttin’ on myself, yeah
Really, I just can’t afford to lose nobody else, yeah
If they movin’ shaky, we’ll just do this shit ourselves, woah
If I’m movin’ shaky, Chubbs’ll do this shit himself, yeah

Solo niggas, only YOLO, for real
Heard a lot about ya but we don’t know, for real
Next time guarantee the truth’ll get revealed

Black leather gloves, no sequins (Yeah)
Buckles on the jacket, it’s Alyx shit
Nike crossbody, got a piece in it
Got a dance, but it’s really on some street shit
I’ma show you how

It go right foot up, left foot, slide
Left foot up, right foot, slide
Basically, I’m sayin’, either way we ’bout to slide, ayy
Can’t let this one slide, ayy

Don’t you wanna dance with me?
No? I could dance like Michael Jackson (Jackson)
I could give you thug passion (Passion)
It’s a Thriller in the trap where we from

Baby, don’t you wanna dance with me?
No? I could dance like Michael Jackson (Jackson)
I could give you satisfaction (‘Faction)
And you know we out here everyday with it
I’ma show you how to get it

It go right foot up, left foot, slide
Left foot up, right foot, slide
Basically, I’m sayin’, either way we ’bout to slide
(Who’s bae?)

Letra: https://geniuslyrics.net/drake/toosie-slide/

The Michael Brooks Show Conspiracies & Political Empowerment This is free content from the weekly edition of TMBS. To support the Michael Brooks Show on Patreon and receive hours of weekly members-only content, subscribe at https://www.patreon.com/TMBS Follow The Michael Brooks Show and crew on twitter: @TMBSfm @_michaelbrooks @mattlech @davidslavick @davidgriscom

PostmodernJukebox Tune Into our VIRTUAL Music Festival April 2nd & 3rd: https://pmjlive.com/shelterinswing See PMJ Live: http://pmjlive.com?IQid=Youtube | Download: http://smarturl.it/EssentialsPMJ Sheet Music: http://bit.ly/SweetChildSheet Our friend Miche Braden returned to help us show what Guns N’ Roses “Sweet Child O’ Mine” would have sounded like if New Orleans blues legend Bessie Smith had recorded it back in the ’20s. That note at 3:58 was so powerful that the room literally shook… p.s. – those looking for the iconic opening guitar riff: it’s at 2:04 Check out Miche’s show, “The Devil’s Music: The Life and Blues of Bessie Smith”: http://devilsmusic.biz Scott Bradlee’s Postmodern Jukebox: http://postmodernjukebox.com/https://www.facebook.com/postmodernju…

(Contributed by Gwyllm Llwydd.)

Mel Rie · Feb 21 · Medium.com

Even when it’s hard to gauge, these indicators will tell you when you’re on the right path

Ifyou want your life to fundamentally change, you need to fundamentally change how you show up to it. Getting down to the core of who we are and what we want in life gets messy, but the good news is you’re probably doing better than you think.

We don’t always notice them, but the side effects of moving toward your tangible dreams and goals are good indicators you’re on the right path. You’ll know you’re killin’ it if these less “conscious” changes are taking place.

---

You’re starting to do crazy little things

Maybe there’s someone in the building at work you keep noticing. You have a sudden instinctual urge to know them. Normally you’d ignore that because it’s weird. But this time, based on a random gut feeling, you go out of your way to talk to them.

Who knows what happens next — maybe you just made a new work friend, maybe they offer inspiration or advice that changes your life. The main thing is you know how to listen to and follow your intuition.

Intuition is whispering to us all the time, but we’re usually too busy and noisy to listen. If you’re doing crazy little things you feel compelled to do but can’t quite explain, you’re tapped into something special. You’re waking up.

Your tribe is changing

That might mean you feel disconnected from people you’ve had in your life for years, and it probably feels confusing and painful. But know this — you’re moving away from people that don’t feel right anymore and you’re moving toward people that do.

Having people in your life that you consciously chose to fill it withis one of the best things you can do for yourself. Your tribe changing means your worldview is changing.

I have totally different people filling up my life and time right now than I did a year ago, and they reflect everything I love about myself and want more of. They feel right. They’re believers. They teach me things.

You laugh at your negative thoughts instead of trying to fix them

Being curious about your negative thought patterns and identifying what limiting beliefs fog your mind is great and all. Really. But if you’ve found yourself laughing at your own mind, like genuinely laughing out loud at the little fearful voice that whispered something rude to you, that’s the best “fix” there is. You’ve done it.

You know your thoughts don’t control you. They are separate from you. Keep laughing at them.

You notice your senses more often

Sometimes it’s as simple as damn, this grapefruit tastes amazing. When did these get so good? As inconsequential as it sounds, so many people are entirely unconscious and don’t notice things like this.

If you’re noticing the sun on your face when you step outside, the taste of good food in your mouth, the change in your body after you exercise and sweat, you’re not sleepwalking through life anymore.

You know to come up for air and not take this so seriously

Some people might fight me on this one.

By “this” I mean all this. You’re focusing on your side hustle, your quest for self improvement, your work, life. But you also know how to ease up and enjoy your time and the life unfolding around you without feeling the need to constantly be bettering yourself, and that means you’re doing something that a lot of people don’t know how to do. Including a lot of these self-improvement touting gurus. Sometimes… let go of the productivity hacks, alright?

Eat, drink and be merry, my friends.