THE MOON WHEN IT IS MADE OF CHEESE

Chapter Soundtrack: “Heaven and Hell” by Black Sabbath

What would your slogan be if you were running for President?

'Don’t Swap Horses When Crossing Streams'

We are a nation weary from being at war with itself, always on two separate steeds. Democrats insist Republicans are the end of democracy, and goodness will save our nation. All we need to do is put on our comfy, cozy rainbow sweaters of equity and inclusion, join hands, and accept each other for who we really are. 

Unless we don’t like the way you talk about women. Unless your skin color is not trending. Unless you are on the wrong side of history. Unless you are one of THEM.

 We are a nation that cancels history it doesn’t like. We celebrate our freedom of speech with our fingers in our ears and muzzles made out of masks. We only want to listen to each other when we agree. The news can be fake, for our sake. Anything to avoid the conflict of facing the truth about ourselves. 

There is no need to look into the mirror of accountability. Reflection is best served as deflection. America is the fault of the other parties, the one in power, and the one that never was. 

We watch the communities around us crumble, mumbling and stumbling over votes that give us the power to do nothing more than wash our hands of it all. The good citizens didn’t fail this country. It was our leadership. It was them white men on those statues we brought down. 

We’ve become a nation of oversimplistic, divisive extremism. If you are voting for Trump, you are a member of a cult. If you are voting for Kamala, you believe her melanin and private parts will help the rest of the repressed rise to power. 

Kamala will make us feel better, whereas Trump makes us feel worse. He is the ugly truth we can’t get away from, and she is our new Apollo. She will be the first American to walk on the moon, and once we see it, we can believe it is possible, if only for a moment. 

America is so desperate for new possibilities it will believe almost any hoax. Bill Kaysing walked on the moon. It was never Buzz Aldrin. 

“The point of Apollo was to show how powerful the American government was in terms of actually doing things,” wrote author Oliver Morton. “The point of moon-hoax theory is to show how powerful the American government was in terms of making people believe things that weren’t true.” 

In God We Trust? We are a nation that has been lied to for so long there is no reality to believe in. Science has more power than God says the Democrat to the Christ loving Republican. Science is a fact that can be proven and religion is the persecution our settlers came here to escape. Church and state are separate for the greater good of humanity. Republicans believe science is the virus we create so we can become the heroes of our own cure. If we had trusted in nature as God intended we could have avoided the plague we inadvertently created. Each party is implicitly guilty of repressing the other’s righteousness. There is no middle ground because a side MUST be chosen. Somewhere along the way we’ve lost our ability to allow more than one perspective or belief to exist in the same reality. Science has no place for God. Perhaps it should. Where can trust be built, other than in spirit? 

“It doesn’t matter who you vote for. Neither is the right choice.” 

When I sat down to write this, I did so without direction, without a prompt. My goal was to put something down on paper, to write for the sake of writing, allowing my stream of consciousness to reveal who I really am. 

Am I a Democrat? Am I a Republican? 

If I were running for President, how and why would I choose my campaign slogan? 

I would choose a slogan that is simplistic so it is easy to understand. My slogan would speak to the heart of what I hear people asking for. It would be the truth that sets us all free. 

WE THE FREE

Vote for Amber Garibay 

Our nation holds the power of a diverse collective. There is no need for us to continue living as slaves with open cages, but some of us may choose to. It’s easier to shackle ourselves to everything we already know than it is to hold hope for a vision others may never see or recognize. What if we have always been equal? 

Is there any hope that the righteousness we want to stand for as a Nation can ever actually be?

'Don’t Swap Horses When Crossing Streams' was Abraham Lincoln’s campaign slogan as he fought for reelection after his first term. Its meaning was simple: it was a request to the voting public to stay with the incumbent, to trust him despite the carnage of the Civil War he had started.

How was it possible for President Lincoln to keep and hold America’s belief in him amongst so much carnage? The American public said “Yes” to him despite 750,000 dead bodies. 

Today’s America can’t even agree on things that have already been decided. The world is no longer round and Neil Armstrong never really walked on the moon. Do we really know if our votes are counted and if they are counted do they really count? Is the system we created before our populace grew still working the way it was intended to? 

I understand why Donald Trump cannot be canceled just as I recognize why Kamala Harris will most likely be our next President. We the people have asked for change, and both candidates offer that promise. One candidate represents unpleasant transparency that disrupts the system, and the other is a beautiful flower to settle us back into the sweet disposition of agreement. 

Why choose conflict when there can be peace? I don’t believe either candidate represents what our Nation deserves. Most of us vote for the lesser of two evils because the choice we have is no real choice. How did it come to this? Has it always been this way? 

When the moon is made of cheese I wear a buttery Velveeta smile. I make a cheese sandwich. I turn the music up. I dance to the beat of my own drum.

“"That song was a chance for me to get all these things off my chest that I always wanted to say… It was a song that let me say the one statement that was most important to me. I've always felt to be somewhat of a spokesman for kids – for people who maybe lonely, looked down upon, because they like the wrong kind of music – and, more importantly, the kids who play in bands. So I made the statement that I always wanted to make, which is, 'The world is full of kings and queens, who blind your eyes then steal your dreams / It's heaven and hell.' And that all means beware of people who try to blind your eyes with promises… If you have those dreams, don't let anyone rob you of those wonderful ideas that you have by stealing them and putting them in their pocket, and leaving you lonely by the side of the road. So beware those kings and queens out there, who blind your eyes then steal your dreams. It was very important for me to be able to make that statement. And that statement has been something that I've tried to live with since that time." – Ronnie James Dio