Abe Lincoln was a Dick

And other ways to start conversations

After my husband and I had a lovely buffet at an Indian place owned and operated by Nepalis, I had the nudge to go on my own to the coffee shop down the hill from where we live. After dropping off my wonderful partner in life and love, I drove the short distance, parked down the street and marched myself into the coffee shop with an Alana Fairchild journal, a pen and an open heart of wonder. When I get an intuition to go somewhere at a certain time, it’s always fun to watch how it unfolds. I was standing around, not quite feeling led to go up to the register, when the woman working there came around over to my table and told me she’s missed me. We’ve had some great conversations about surveillance and Jung (spoiler - I critiqued him and she was open to being disillusioned,) and self-acceptance and presence and art. She is studying to get her masters in art therapy, I think. We hadn’t seen each other in a long time, and I had been thinking of her too, though I didn’t expect to see her today! She asked how I’ve been and I realized in the moment I was/am really good, even though it is also true that over the span or months (or even if you asked me during the intense energies of last evening) I might not have given that as my authentic answer. I told her in some short hand I can’t remember precisely, exactly that, which opened the way for her own authenticity to flow: told me about her divorce this past December. “I feel like it’s only just hitting me now.” I shared with her about my own early marriage and subsequent early divorce and how I totally get that it can take time to move from shock to integration. There a few things from that early marriage that I am still integrating and fully releasing, although I must say my divorce was great. That is a story for another time. Eventually she had to return to helping other customers, and I made my way up to the counter to order my drink when I felt it was the right time to do so. When I did, my friend, we’ll call her Anne, was eager to continue the conversation but this time she wanted to know what I was currently up to, so I told her about writing and about some of the things I’ve been learning. I opened with, “Did you know that Abraham Lincoln was a dick?”

It’s funny because on the way to brunch, I was going to make a certain comment to my husband but waited until we were in the car out of ear range of our neighbors. I told him, “Contrary to what some people think, I do have a filter. It just doesn’t filter that much stuff.” We shared a laugh. I love that he appreciates and sees me for who I am.

Behind Anne at the counter was a young fellow who looked to be a sophomore or junior in high school, but one of those lovely souls who also is clearly beyond the sophomoric we often seen in far older individuals and group-think-tanks these days.

The young man overhears me talking to Anne and speaks up: “I know! He’s responsible for slavery continuing through the prison system. It’s amazing how few people know that about him,” says the young adult.

How synchronous is life! I was just led to post that exact thing in a note here on Substack last night.

Thoughts the young man and I exchanged: What if black and brown people realized Abraham Lincoln wasn’t their hero and realized that the Papal Bulls from the fifteenth century that are often associated with the Indigenous Land Theft, Assimilationist Policies, both at gunpoint and via boarding schools, was also the foundation for the African Slave trade being justified on moral and legal grounds within a Christendom at all costs framework? What if Indigenous Peoples realized they have common cause with Black and Brown People and Vice Versa, and that Socialists and Libertarians and Anarchists all have common cause in seeking justice, loving mercy and finding freedom based on sovereignty unity consciousness? What if the Puritans and The Anabaptists who were persecuted realized they were guilty of the same thing toward the Indigenous and later toward Black and Brown People through slavery and its subsequent expressions in Jim Crow laws, the 13th amendment that supports slavery in the form of mass incarceration and the virtue signaling without actual change that happens within institutions today? What if Jews realized that supporting Israeli policy toward the Palestinians is the Victim becoming the Victimizer?

If we undid the Papal Bull-based legal precedent for the many atrocities committed toward Indigenous Peoples and POC, it would be the lynch pin undoing all of Colonialism.

Anne, my friend at the coffee shop said she was loving this conversation but had to get to work urgently on a paper she was about to start writing for school on psychopathology. She wondered if there was a way to weave together what we were talking about with her paper, but said she didn’t have time to reflect on it.

In my head popped this shorthand for the psychopathology of humanity within and in relationship to our earth, our beloved planetary mother. The scientific term for Mother Earth is Gaia Theory - the idea that she is a living, sentient organism, a body that self-regulates just as we human beings do. Implicit in that theory is that she ought to have rights, just all of us ought to have them, and not just white land owning males, or subsection of more diverse groups who agree to represent dominant interests as token “faces” for an agenda that is entirely corrupt.

“Family systems within a Gaia framework.”

“Got it?” I asked. “Yes, I do,” came the smiling reply. Then she said something about how glad she was I came in.

Kindwhile, the young man and I continued to chat. He told me about the history teacher who first shared with him about the real history of Abraham Lincoln and all the horrible things he actually did that impacted negatively both Black and Brown people and Indigenous people/Peoples, and a security guard at his school who did an awesome rap on injustices toward people of color. We talked about how all this stuff - patriarchy, white supremacy, gender wars - all the isms - is ultimately not about race or gender, but about the energy of domination itself. We talked about how if you go far enough right, or far enough left, you find yourself disillusioned with the system and, if you’re coming from a place of love, open to realize it’s only about a tiny itsy bitsy % who want to separate Humanity and keep us fighting, whilst our real interests lie in common cause with one another.