The Unfinished Work

July 4, 2026 Jay Leonard Schwartz Occupy Karma Abraham Lincoln, America, American Values, books, Deep Thoughts, Fourth of July, Gettysburg Address, history, Holidays, Humanism, Independence Day, Life, Politics, Society, Writing

A Personal Reflection on July 4th:

Every nation has moments it chooses to remember.

Some celebrate independence. Others remember liberation, unification, peace, or the end of conflict. Whatever the occasion, these moments invite us to reflect on what we have inherited, what unfinished work remains, and what some people are still fighting for even today.

As July 4th approaches in the USA, I find myself returning to a line from Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address in 1863:

“It is for us the living… to be dedicated here to the unfinished work…”

Those words have stayed with me for years.

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Nothing in Life Is Free—Except the Illusion of Free Speech

March 15, 2026March 15, 2026 Jay Leonard Schwartz Dadaism, Occupy Karma #Occupy, capitalistic media, censorship vs influence, Cold War media, Conspiracy, Dada, Dada movement, Dadaism, Deep Thoughts, digital propaganda, disinformation, First Amendment, Free Speech, Goosey Loosey, government influence, history, Hugo Ball, information ecosystems, information manipulation, information warfare, JFL, mainstream media, mass persuasion, media ethics, media influence, MLK, MSM - Mainstream Media, narrative control, narrative framing, news, Philosophy, political communication, Politics, propaganda, public panic, public perception, rumor dynamics, satire and politics, social-media, Society, technology, Tristan Tzara, War, Warren Commission

A brief public service announcement about information, illusion, and the occasional goose.

“Breaking News! We interrupt our regular broadcast with another manipulative editorial disguised as information …”

Free speech is one of the most celebrated principles of modern democratic society. In the United States, the First Amendment to the United States Constitution is often invoked as a kind of civic talisman—proof that the government cannot interfere with public debate. The idea is intentionally simple, elegant, and deeply reassuring. Citizens speak. Ideas compete. Truth eventually rises to the surface.

That is the theory. Money in the bank.

Reality, as usual as the usual suspects, arrives wearing stranger clothes—and sometimes even no clothes at all.

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What Else Is Morality Doing Now?

January 11, 2026 Jay Leonard Schwartz Occupy Karma #Occupy, Anti-Establishment, conscience, Dadaism, Deep Thoughts, dissent, ethical refusal, Free Speech, groupthink, history, Humanism, ideological alignment, institutional morality, moral agency, moral authority, moral confusion, moral grammar, moral responsibility, moral signaling, morality, nonconformity, outrage economy, Philosophy, political morality, Politics, protest culture, sanctioned speech, silence, social conformity, Society

Some will have us believe that we are living in interesting times … or troubling times … or add-your-own-anxiety-label times. To me, these are unsettling times.

There is something unsettling about the present moral climate, and it has little to do with any single cause, country, or conflict. It has more to do with how morality itself seems to operate—how it circulates, how it authorizes and sanctions speech, how it decides when outrage is urgent and when silence is acceptable or unacceptable. There is a rush to define, categorize and label us by our choice on the menu of morality.

So, the question I keep returning to is a simple one: what else is morality doing now?

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Loitering Words

The Poetry, Prose, and Art of Jay Leonard Schwartz, writer and dadaist at large

history

The Unfinished Work

A Personal Reflection on July 4th: