Love lies bleeding...

This song, by Newport Beach, California singer/songwriter extraordinaire Kerry Getz, is about a vampire.  I've met a lot of people in the entertainment and action sports industries over the years, and I believe Kerry Getz is the single most talented person I've ever met.  She's a major triple threat in her world, incredible at singing, guitar playing, and songwriting.  In this song, I think she captures the soul of what it would be like to be a vampire, driven nightly by the darkest forces on Earth. 

Sparked by the horrific news of the child separations happening to immigrants on our Mexico border, I started on a huge drawing to address the issue the day before yesterday.  The theme of it was how it is possible for a country founded on personal freedoms (yes, I know there were hypocrisies then and now) to "suddenly" have our president and A.G. Session implement a policy that's something right out of Nazi Germany and similar authoritarian states.  This morning, it became clear to me that I could do more for this situation by blogging and decided not to finish the drawing.

I listened to a bunch of music to try and get into the mindset of how evil can take over a whole country.  It didn't happen suddenly, what's happening now has been in the works for decades.  We've seen much of it, piece by piece, and largely ignored it.  We, as Americans, were not "eternally vigilant" against the corrupt forces that our founding fathers warned us of. 

So now we have immigrant families being separated, we have children in concentration camps, as a matter of U.S. policy.  We also have "baby jails" now, euphemistically called "tender age shelters."  For those wondering, the term "concentration camp" was used because those camps housed "cocentrations" of certain parts of the overall population.  In Nazi controlled Germany, that started with the homeless (which is now forgotten) then went on to include the Jews, intellectuals, gays, political prisoners, Gypsies, and others.  When a prison-like facility is housing a concentration of children, it becomes a child concentration camp.  The prisoners don't have to be killed for that term to be applicable.  In the worst cases in history, that come later. 

Is this who we are as Americans?
Unfortunately, right now, it IS who we are.  We let things slip this far.  But we don't have to continue to be a country that allows atrocities like this continue.  Average, and not so average, Americans are waking up, standing up, and raising Hell about this new policy by President Trump, A.G. Sessions, and their cohorts.  This fight is just getting going.

I will be writing a series of blog posts about how we got to this point, why immigrants from Meixco and Central America are considered "illegal" but folks like Melania Trump were not, and how societies slip into the Dark Side that Yoda warned us of years ago. 

But for now, I'd like you to listen to Kerry's song above.  She wrote this incredible song about a vampire for her own reasons 20-some years ago.  But she captured what it must be like to be driven by the darkest forces in the world.  We can't appeal to the conscience of people who no longer listen to their conscience.  Right now, many "vampires" are in positions of great political and business power in many power in this country, and many of them are networked with each other.

 If you've ever watched a vampire movie, you know that doesn't end well.  I think this song captures the mentality of the people who find a way to rationalize horrific atrocities.  This mentality of great darkness is what we are up against right now.  If we get a sense of this mentality, I think we'll have a better idea of how to bring the United States of America back to the principles it was founded on, and what most of us believe it stands for.

More thoughts to come soon...

For those of you who want to hear more of Kerry's music, here are a couple of my favorites, both covers of songs you probably have heard before:

Kerry Getz sings "Landslide" and "Walk Away Renee."