Author: davidreedwatson

Although I do agree with this headline, her forgiveness of one another doesn’t account for the lives lost, the jobs lost, the businesses destroyed, livelihoods, addictions, suicides, shaming to extremes I’ve never seen in my lifetime, and the outright denial, nor accountability from those that led us into this.

This was a MAJOR setback and saying, ‘I didn’t know’ was the same thing that the German’s in WWII said when it happened to the Jews. It wasn’t that they ‘didn’t know’, it was that they didn’t care to know. They didn’t care to look into it because they, themselves might get persecuted. The truth was always out there. Just like today

She ends the article by saying that ‘The standard saying is that those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.’ I agree with this statement as well… unfortunately, most people never looked back in history to see that this had been done before, and before that, and before that. We’ve been warned that something like this would happen by President Eisenhower in 1961. I’ll let you do the research on that one. Again, unfortunately, most of you won’t.

I pray that we all learned something from this.

I pray that we CAN actually grow from this.

I want to leave you with this…

We are all mirrors of each other. When we are ‘against’ someone else we are really ‘against’ ourselves. Do unto others as you would have done unto you. That statement summerize it all.

Here is the link to the article so you can read this yourself.

Covid Response Forgiveness

Article written on globalcitizen.org

1. The world’s 10 richest men more than doubled their fortunes during COVID-19

The world’s 10 richest people (yep, they’re all men) more than doubled their fortunes from $700 billion to $1.5 trillion — at a rate of $15,000 per second or $1.3 billion a day — during the first two years of the pandemic.

According to Forbes figures cited by Oxfam, those men are: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Bernard Arnault and family, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Ballmer, and Warren Buffet.

2. If they lost 99.999% of their wealth tomorrow, they would still be richer than 99% of all the people on the planet

According to Oxfam International’s Executive Director Gabriela Bucher, if these 10 men were to lose 99.999% of their wealth right now, they would still be richer than 99% of all the people on the planet.

In fact, a 99% windfall tax on the wealth they’ve gained since the start of the pandemic could pay to make enough vaccines for the entire world, help fight climate change, and address universal health care and gender-based violence, while still leaving these men $8 billion better off than they were before the pandemic.3. They now have 6 times more wealth than the poorest 3.1 billion people

The 10 richest men in the world own more than the poorest 3.1 billion people. In fact, they have six times more wealth.

4. The incomes of 99% of humanity fell because of COVID-19

As a result of the pandemic, 99% of the world’s population are worse off because of lockdowns, lower international trade, less international tourism, and other factors.

5. 160 million more people have been forced into poverty

It is estimated that 160 million more people were living below the poverty line — defined by the World Bank as living on less than $5.50 (£4.02) in upper-middle-income countries — than would have been without the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.6. A new billionaire was minted every 26 hours since the pandemic began

The world’s small elite of 2,755 billionaires has seen its fortunes grow more during COVID-19 than they have in the whole of the last 14 years — 14 years that themselves were a bonanza for billionaire wealth. This is the biggest annual increase in billionaire wealth since records began.

7. Inequality contributes to the death of 1 person every 4 seconds

A lack of access to health care, gender-based violence, hunger, and climate collapse is contributing to the death of at least 21,000 people each day, or one person every four seconds. What’s even worse? Oxfam says that’s a conservative finding.

Despite whatever my family and friends might think… I am not a Conspiracy Theorist. I am not Right Wing, nor Left Wing. I have voted predominantly Green Party most of my life. I am a United States Marine (There are no Ex-Marines.), and I’ve canvassed for GreenPeace, worked with Amnesty International, protested a War, and participated in a War. Subconsciously, I believe, I’ve put myself on both sides of the fence, mainly out of curiosity… or possibly naiveté. When somebody starts talking about ‘their’ party I blow them off like I would with somebody talking about ‘their’ team. I guess you could consider this my disclaimer or that you can’t label me that easily.

The Cancel Culture loves labels.

They love to say who is bad, or who is good when we should be taking each and every person on this planet on an individual basis. Contrary to popular belief… we are all individuals. Everybody has their own ideas, their own dreams, their own beliefs. Some of us were born middle class, some upper middle, some of us rich, and some of us in extreme poverty. Some have been on welfare in hard times only to rise above that, go to college and become successful entrepreneurs. Some have stayed on welfare because they never believed they were enough. Some struggle and work their whole lives. Some follow their dreams at all costs.

You can see that there are infinite variables that make up a human. So why then do we try to label people, or put others in a box of what we believe others should be?

F.E.A.R. (False Evidence Appearing Real)

We are afraid that if somebody isn’t on our team and we don’t gather enough people on our side that maybe the other side might be right? We are seeing this right now with vaccines. Half of the United States believes that the COVID-19 Vaccines are going to save us all, and that the unvaccinated are killing those who got vaccinated.

[I’m going to sidetrack here for a moment.]

When I was growing up, my Mother sent my brother and I to a Born Again Christian Camp called Word of Life. I remember the pressure at this camp to become ‘Born Again’. I succumbed to the pressure and got saved back then only to come home and find out that my team wasn’t that popular in my neighborhood. I ripped up my born again access card and never really looked back. I realized the implications at a young age of how teams work. It’s not that I wanted to be on the other team, it’s more the fact that my gut was telling me a different story. I realized that my gut feelings were what I needed to follow, not other people. This kind of made me an outsider, and contributed a lot to addiction and depression. Maybe I’ll write about that in the future, but right now I need to stay on track.

There ain’t no good guy, there ain’t no bad guy. There’s only you and me and we just disagree. — Dave Mason

I see the Cancel Culture the same as when I went to Word of Life all those years ago. You just have to be on their team or you’re the problem. You’re the one creating all of the problems and once you agree with them then the world will turn correctly again.

Being on the winning team is an illusion.

I realized this when years later I found myself in other Countries. I saw really nice people with completely different beliefs. The Christians. The Jews. The Muslims. The Buddhists. The Hindu. All of them had their extremes. All of them had their different sects. I realized that they were all the same if you looked at the big picture. They all want to be loved. They all want their families to prosper. They all want to leave the world better than it was before they incarnated here. I would venture to say that people that don’t get the opportunity to experience other cultures are far more easily persuaded to join a team that thinks they are better than anybody else.

You can’t be objective in 280 characters.

We live in a world now where we don’t take the time to read past the headline. We base our opinions on headlines alone. Most of you that follow me know that one of my many hats that I’ve worn has been that of advertising. Shock value is huge in that industry. The more shocking, the more emotion. The more emotion, the more sales. Nobody remembers boring headlines. How many of you have read a headline and then read the whole article only to find out that the headline had nothing, or little to do with the actual content? Social media platforms have basically trained people to not take the time to look into things more deeply, and unfortunately it has created this culture that we live in now.

What is the solution?

Unfortunately, there isn’t an easy fix. It will take time and patience. It will take all of us collectively to slow down, take the time to understand each other, and be ok with somebody believing something else. A Conspiracy Theory is nothing more than people wanting the truth. When we’ve been lied to and deceived by Big Pharma, Corporations, Banks, Politicians, Social Media platforms, Lawyers, headlines… its human nature to want to see who is behind the curtain or as the band Zebra once wrote…

Who’s behind the Door?