A Joyous Juneteenth
By ice rivers
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From the moment that Jefferson altered the concept of inalienable rights by changing John Locke's concept of "life, liberty and property" to "life liberty and the pursuit of happiness", America perhaps more than any other country has been ferociously seeking happiness since its declaration of independence. I'm speaking here of male Caucasian landed Americans who found a tremendous amount on happiness in seizing property and owning it. Women and blacks were more or less considered to be a form of property and they should be "happy" as long as the landowner was happy. Life was very simple as white patriarchy wasn't too hard to figure out.
Very slowly we became aware that slavery was not exactly happiness for the slaves and we began our slow expansion of moral imagination which eventually led to the Civil War which led to the end of slavery in the Confederate states. It took a full two years from the Emancipation for the slaves to realize that they were "free".
Tehn in a flash of imagination, we realized that women should and could vote as they began to become the majority gender. Prfetty soon, we even came to the conclusion that they had a right to make decsions about thier bodies.
Today we have a brand new federal holiday to celebrate that day, a day that black folks have been celebrating for the past 150 years that has only recently become a point of reference to the white folk in America.
In the past four days, we have experienced Father's Day, Juneteenth and the beginning of Summer. What a wonderful stretch of happiness. We love to celebrate our happiness on holidays. Everything is "happy". Happy 4th of July, Happy Thanksgiving, Happy New Year, Happy Valentine's day, Happy Martin Luther King Day, Happy St. Patrick's Day, Happy Hannukah, Happy Pride on an on and on.....Happy happy happy.
The only exception used to be "Merry" Christmas which has now retreated to Happy Holidays.
Are we so obsessed and insecure with our happiness that we have to blab about it every "holiday" while exercising our lack of vocabularic expression and imagination. Paticularly we white heterosexual males who have been rightly happy about the big head start we have enjoyed in the race to pursue our happiness.
Maybe we can change that perspective with our new holiday.
Some folks are already sensitive to sayng "happy" about anything that includes a remider of our original our original sin of slavery. I get that.
Who exactly was happy on that day? Who has been celebrating it for the past 150 years? You know who. Our brothers and sisters of color. Their celebrations have often been described as joyous with widespread singing and dancing.
Yeah, that's the ticket.
Joyous for a start.
Have a joyous Juneteenth.
Maybe with more joy we'd have even more happiness.
Maybe we should have more holidays. Maybe even election day so that everybody would have time to vote and less of an excuse not to vote. We could wish each other a Peaceful election day, which is exacly what we need to undivide our states. Peace joy and happiness.
We're all in this together.
But not rilly.
The Supreme Court is about to overturn Roe vs Wade and we take another step backwards.
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Comments
Juneteeth*
I read this... and then..
I just saw video clip of the festivities over there, parades, concerts, history snaps shots +.
A rich, vibrant culture, often recognized, romanized, misunderstood, dramatized, characterized, celebrated, discriminated, globally influential, trend setting and allot of love and passion, that now has its national holiday in the US......
I'll take a knee for sure..... Good one Ice... and a very cool photo... Congrats!
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Roe v. Wade
Ice... I just want to take a moment and issue a <non political statement> A European view, from a person, that used too, (past tense) and presently councils/ advises, from time to time, former work colleagues, operations in - asset management- in leading, operation(s) specializing in emerging markets, commodities and the build out of infrastructure to serve those goals/operations.
The key word here is asset(s) (=2) control, ownership, productivity, liability, functionality, risk & de-risk. I'm not a lawyer, I was surrounded by them, keeping them focused, factored into the burn rate in operational cost. In that; if they over lawyer'd stuff, it cost in real cash, productivity, quality & risk-liabilities forward in time.
If you can grasp that picture, its a type pre-amble as to my point herein.
The US operates on a evolving version of Anglo Saxon Law, inherited from the British, born out of a revolution.
In mainland Europe, evolved into the EU, we are governed under a more Romanicsh/ Rumactsch legal system. ( I speak Romanicsh)...
Note: This is what most Americans overlook- misunderstand about us, and I spent some years locking horns with London lawyers in EU courts, that missed that point, or understood it but over lawyer'd it, before the UK left the EU.
The European POV, is a question, observing from a Romanicsh system ;
If you strip a productive set of operating asset(s) ( by legal decree - by default- govern it as property) of rights increasing the liability and cost to other functioning/productive assets at present, upping the risk forward in time= months & years;
Who inherits that cost, governs it, and insures it has the same quality to remain as productive as it was or currently is, moving forward, in cost, liability and time?
(Its now a two class asset risk system that previously did not exist)
I'm not going to attempt to answer that question in this case.
What I see here in, as to Roe v. Wade.?
A judicial system that took on a governing body role, creating a new risk in asset(s) classes and transferred it back to provincial regions (states) to govern and manage that incurring cost, upping the risk to other existing liken assets not governed by the same set rules, in the long term they, provincial governments, cannot afford to govern, service, control, and in some cases, enforce by penalties and limitations. In that; the Provincial governing bodies have too, or will at some point, go back to the main governing body for funds to manage it by default costing the entire operations, in time, money, productivity and quality, trying to hedge; deal with a created risk, in a macro sense.
+ legal fees.
Creating more inequality that is already vying for equality- in productivity / opportunity.
Looking at this through a prism:
If I, and/ or my former team, created a set of risky public assets, a derivative from already productive public assets, now an unequal property that did not exist before-treating it as of lessor value, and lawyer'd it and parlayed it to off to regional governing bodies;
I would go to jail. Your Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) would be all over my ass and your Department of Justice (DOJ) would reach out and tag me, cuff me & I'd be doing the perp-walk.
Squaring this; in the sense from a EU/Romanisch prospective....
In the end its woman that bear the burden... and the public pays for it. In the sense a part of woman's anatomy is now a regulated public property on a provincial level, viewed as a discounted, declining asset value, not worth maintaining, so strip the services that keep it productive to control it and maintain its discounted value.
With that said, I remain optimistic the situation will right its self, tragically it cost time and money and breaks hearts and souls........
Kris......
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