Tracking Truth

I returned home Sunday after a lovely time at the Presentation High Alumnae Luncheon in Berkeley to hear of another mass shooting, this time in Orlando, Florida. In the name of ISIS a gunman entered a gay bar and opened fire. 

It is odd that the liberal press isn’t more concerned about ISIS in our country, that they don’t seem to connect the dots, that Muslim extremists desire to destroy Jews, Christians, and gays, probably in that order. They desire to cleanse our world of what they consider blasphemy. Those of us who defend our right to exist, to speak, to worship, to live as we choose freely within the borders of law and order, are targets of radical Islam, be it homegrown or ordered by foreign terrorists. 

We freedom-loving Americans are in this together. We have a national election coming soon. Let us vote for the person who understands the threats to our country from within and from without. Let us vote for the candidate who will support our right to practice our religion and to speak freely, who values life from womb to grave. 

The Presentation luncheon was a reunion of ladies from many backgrounds. They were the lucky ones who attended an all girls’ school in the fifties, sixties, seventies, early eighties. I have long been impressed with the cross-section of society represented by Catholicism, a faith for all peoples everywhere in all times. I am not an alumna but wish I was. I went to public schools, co-ed, and often wondered what it would have been like to have the experience of an all-girls school and one that taught a code of ethics and hard work. 

The history of Berkeley, the Presentation Sisters, and Presentation High is considered in my newly released novel, The Fire Trail, and so the ladies had a unique interest in the story. But they were also appreciative of other themes, the fires of our culture jumping our borders of law and order, devouring liberty and silencing speech. It is a story that considers how we can keep barbarians on the other side of our borders, how we might define, encourage, and safeguard our precious and disappearing civilization. For even definitions seem to have been forgotten. The Fire Trail is a tale that takes a second look at church-state issues, issues of persecution (yes, in the twenty-first century), re-examining the value of religious schools that teach right and wrong and the dignity of every person, what it means to be civilized.

I was glad to chat with the lovely ladies of Presentation High Berkeley, over sandwiches and fruit, wine and sparking water, about their experiences in a Catholic high school. Some said they worried about today’s crime, the inability to walk the streets of San Francisco to get to the office without fear. Some said they didn’t understand what was happening to our culture. 

It made me think of a recent article that asked once again (how many times is this asked?) what was the appeal of Donald Trump? Joseph Epstein writes that folks feel they’ve lost their country they want it back. They don’t embrace the agenda that progressives have slipped into their world through a back door. The Trumpistas aren’t haters or bigots, but they would like to see the rule of law applied equally. They would like public safety. They would like their sons and daughters to be safe on campus and given better role models than pornographic novels and violent movies enshrine. They would like their grandchildren to survive the womb to breathe the air of freedom. 

Indeed. I would too. 

And as I pray for the victims of the Orlando massacre, I pray that we tell the truth about what is happening in America. I pray that the media correctly reports the words of our candidates so that I don’t have to verify every speech on YouTube. Mr. Trump said something quite different about the judge that is presiding over his trial than what was reported by the media. At least as far as I could tell by listening and watching his speech, with real words coming from his lips. His phrases were conflated by both the right and the left, inferences underlined, truth abandoned.

I am waiting to see the media accuse Mr. Trump of the Florida shootings. The culture of violence is not caused by Mr. Trump’s free speech or even his simple diction. It is caused by the silence of good men and women, and the rabble who are allowed to set fires in public forums. 

Each of us must do our homework and sort truth from lies. Each of us must vote for the candidate that will prevent the next massacre on American soil. The truth is there, under the media rubble, in the ashes left by the press, and hopefully in The Fire Trail, carried home by the lovely ladies from Presentation High.

EVENT coming up: I will be reading from THE FIRE TRAIL along with six other adventurous ladies tomorrow at 11 a.m. (Tuesday the 14th) at Curves Walnut Creek, 1848 Tice Valley Blvd. (near Rossmoor). There is a chapter set at a facility similar to Curves. For a $10 donation to Blue Star Moms receive a copy of THE FIRE TRAIL. Come on by!