Thread by @frodofied

1. I don't know how much cheer or genersl goodwill exists out in the world this holiday season, but in less than three weeks what's there will disappear.

Americans once used this time of year to shake off our collective national tension.

But now?

2. There are many reasons why we can't have nice things anymore, and more than a few why we shouldn't even be allowed them, but at the heart of the matter are some very basic principles that we would do best to revitalize for the sake of, well, all humankind.

3. Life becomes much harder when we lose sight of the simplest truths. Even harder when those very simple truths become purposely, almost officially even, obsfucated at every level of civic life.

But those simple truths will never disappear no matter how well they're obscured.

4. Many of these truths can be recognized in even the earliest permutations of civilization as we know it today. And they form the basis of every recognizable moral and ethical code and religious philosophy that exists.

They also form the heart of our collective social contract.

5. The differences in outcomes when we invoke these certain truths compared to when we don't could not be more stark.

A. Do unto others as you would have done onto you and yours.

The Golden Rule, it is your friend. Your very good, dear friend.

Or should be.

6. And strictly speaking there need not be a "B" because any questions about self and communal governance can almost always be answered by returning to the original principle.

I thought of The Golden Rule a lot as I watched the scene that played out in the Oval Office event.

7. It was clear while watching @NancyPelosi and @SenSchumer struggle to maintain civic decorum in front of the wider world this week, just how close to the precipice we are.

They faced off against someone who rejects the most basic tenet of morality.

8. @realDonaldTrump has completely bastardized The Golden Rule. He has forged a new version that exists in mockery of the original precept. For Trump it is simply "Do only onto self and for self."

It is a dark and dangerous way of thinking, even privately.

9. Society is at its best advantage when it embraces these universal truths and when it recognizes its role in guarding them.

It's when societies send these principles to the sidelines or abandon them outright that things fall apart.

And they always do.

10. History is more than just dates, names, or wars. History is also a map. Its a guidebook.

But the lessons it teaches us need not necessarily be learned through study of history.

That might sound strange, but only because we overcomplicate things, always.

11. History is merely a series of object lessons showing time and again how bad things get the further we stray from the original precepts on which society was first formed.

Look at Rome at the Fall, or Germany and Nazism The more extreme and excessive, the more dangerous.

12. Think of what could have been stopped or saved had enough people who lived through, shaped, and were victims of such past times had simply invoked the same principles that have always served us best.

Do onto others as you would have done onto you and yours.

13. It's so simple and yet so very hard. It requires magnanimity, empathy, and no small amount of self awareness.

There is no time like the present to help start to force the changes required to reclaim the more moral and sustainable approach from our society.

14. There are three weeks left in the holiday season. Three weeks to show someone the meaning of kindness. Three weeks to reignite civility & to be the example the world needs.

The Golden Rule has survived as a constant b/c it works.

It will always work.

#StrongerTogether