Acknowledging Reality
IF you’ve tuned in to my online content in recent years, you will know the name Reality Winner. I’ve thought about her, corresponded with her a little, and made contact with her family and a few of her friends. She’s a person of deep conscience who’s been betrayed by the United States government. Like 45, Reality houses (& invites us to think honestly about) our own contradictions. She's like a living, scandalously truthful symbol at the heart of the American fairy tale. I wish the American bandwidth had as much room for her as it does for him. Time's the revelator. She’s been denied the right to publicly defend herself or address the American people for over three years.
The above image is from Robben Island where, most famously, Nelson Mandela served most of his twenty-seven year sentence. The building you’re looking at is where the activist-philosopher Robert Sobukwe was kept in solitary confinement for six years. His free speech was deemed so dangerous by white supremacist authorities in South Africa that he wasn't allowed to speak to anyone. Sound familiar?
I’ve referenced Reality in my writing for a long time now, but I have yet to offer anything lengthy. Very little has been written about her, and to my knowledge, no elected official other than Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has publicly acknowledged her existence at all. This has me especially moved by this piece by Jillian Cheney. It humanizes her by drawing in people who know her well and chronicling many of the times she’s been mentioned by famous people and quickly passed over. One of the people who’s done that, without saying her name, is Donald Trump. He referred to her act of conscience as “small potatoes,” but avoided further comment.
Cheney’s work also highlights the alarming fact that my government stole her Bible. I’ve been trying to alert some of the people who make their coin talking about God and/or America and/or freedom and/or conscience to this violation of her rights, but, so far, most have proven eye-rubbingly uninterested. Perhaps this piece will change that. We live in hope.
UPDATE:
UPDATE:
There's a little symbolism in her name, don't you think? We all could afford to win/gain a more realistic picture of what's going on around us.
Great article David.