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The Drama Triangle

As neatly as we may try to package our ideas about people, the fact is, people do not fit into neat little packages. A human being is a constantly changing bundle of thoughts, fears, emotions, values, hunches, impressions, judgments, hopes and insights, all tumbling over one another with lightening speed, in no particular order and with no apparent purpose. Yet to understand this jumble, we must first pick it apart and then try to blend it all back together in a coherent whole. This process of picking apart/blending together (or isolation/integration) is as necessary to the living of our lives as it is to the understanding of psychology. Sooner or later, we must gather together our mind-boggling bundle of thoughts, feat, et cetera, and use it as something to operate from. Integrating is a crucial step. It occurs in that most vital of all places, your core. It takes in all you have learned and all you know intuitively. It is the equivalent of master. Integration involves first recognizing the differences between the master and the manipulator, and then allowing the master to take over—effortlessly. The result will be not necessarily a victory for the master or a defeat for the manipulator, but merely an armistice in our own little internal civil wars. Insights come slowly, fitfully, over many months, and in many therapy sessions. Once an insight or a breakthrough is achieved, it is common for the person to return to his or her old pattern of manipulation again and again before developing a new, more productive, pattern. #RandolphHarris 1 of 26

Developing eternal values will help us become all our Heavenly Father wants us to be. In contrast, crime is considered destructive and expensive because it not only directly harms victims through physical injury, property damage, and financial loss, but also creates significant indirect costs for society, including the need for extensive law enforcement, court systems, and incarceration, as well as the negative impacts on community safety, economic productivity, and quality of life for residents due to fear of crime. In a piece of literature called, The Man Who Watched the Train Go By, we have a conscientious clerk, subdued in his home life and in his office, apparently never thinking of anything but doing his duty. Through the discovery of the fraudulent maneuvers of his boss, with the resultant bankruptcy of the firm, his scale of values crashes. The artificial distinction between superior beings, to whom everything is allowed, and inferior ones like himself, to whom only the narrow path of correct behaviour is permitted, crumbles. He too, he realizes, could be “great” and “free.” He could have a mistress, even the very glamorous mistress of his boss. And his pride is by now so inflated that when he actually approaches her, and is rejected, he strangles her. Sought by the police, he is at times afraid, but his main incentive is to defeat the police triumphantly. Even in his attempted suicide this is the chief motivating force. #RandolphHarris 2 of 26

Much more frequently the drive toward a vindictive triumph is hidden. Indeed, because of its destructive nature, it is the most hidden element in the search for glory. It may be that only a rather frantic ambition will be apparent. In analysis alone are we able to see that the driving power behind it is the need to defeat and humiliate others by rising above them. The less harmful need for superiority can, as it were, absorbs the more destructive compulsion. This allows a person to act out his need, and yet feel righteous about it. It is of course important to recognize the specific features of the individual trends involved in the search for glory, because it is always the specific constellation that must be analyzed. However, we can understand neither the nature nor the impact of these trends unless we see them as parts of a coherent entity. Alfred Adler was the first psychoanalyst to see it as a comprehensive phenomenon, and to point out its crucial significance in neurosis. There are various solid proofs that the search for glory is a comprehensive and coherent entity. In the first place, all the individual trends described above regularly occur together in one person. Of course, one or another element may so predominate as to make us speak loosely of, say, an ambitious person, or of a dreamer. However, that does not mean that the dominance of one element indicates the absence of others. #RandolphHarris 3 of 26

The ambitious person will have his grandiose image of himself too; the dreamer will want realistic supremacy, even though the latter factor may be apparent only in the way in which his pride is offended by the success of others. Furthermore, all the individual trends involved are so closely related that the prevailing trend may change during the lifetime of a given person. He may turn from glamorous daydreams to being the perfect father and employer, and again to being the greatest at intimate passions of all times. Lately, they all have in common two general characteristics, both understandable from the genesis and the functions of the whole phenomenon: their compulsive nature and their imaginative character. Both have been mentioned, but it is desirable to have a completer and more succinct picture of their meaning. Their compulsive nature stems from the fact that the self-idealization (and the whole search for glory developing as its sequel) is a neurotic solution. When we call a drive compulsive, we mean the opposite of spontaneous wishes or strivings. The latter are an expression of the real self; the former are determined by the inner necessities of the neurotic structure. The individual must abide by them regardless of his real wishes, feelings, or interests lest he incur anxiety, feel torn by conflicts, be overwhelmed by guilt feelings, feel rejected by others, et cetera. #RandolphHarris 4 of 26

In other words, the difference between spontaneous and compulsive is one between “I want” and “I must in order to avoid some danger.” Although the individual may consciously feel his ambition or his standards of perfection to be what he wants to attain, he is actually driven to attain it. The need for glory has him in its clutches. Since he himself is unaware of the difference between wanting and being driven, we must establish criteria for a distinction between the two. The most decisive one is the fact that he is driven on the road to glory with an utter disregard for himself, for his best interests. (I remember, for example, an ambitious girl, aged ten, who thought she would rather be blind than not become the first in her class.) We have reason to wonder whether more human lives—literally and figuratively—are not sacrificed on the altar of glory then for any other reason. John Gabriel Borkman died when he started to doubt the validity and the possibility of realizing his grandiose mission. Here a truly tragic element enters into the picture. If we sacrifice ourselves for a cause which we, and most healthy people, can realistically find constructive in terms of its value to human beings, that is certainly tragic, but also meaningful. If we fritter away our lives enslaved to the phantom of glory for reasons unknown to ourselves, that assumes the unrelieved proportion of tragic waste—the more so, the more valuable these lives potentially are. #RandolphHarris 5 of 26

Ego and l’atutre moi can be seen as one or split into two. Often ego overlooks the wild utterances of its other side. Worse yet, it may fight against them. All psychopathology seems of this nature. What is not accepted as truly one’s own returns to plague one as a psychic or psychosomatic symptom. It becomes a thorn in the side made thorny by one’s rejection of it. Schizophrenia is an example of the revolution of l’autre moi. It musters force and descends on hapless ego, buffeting it with hallucinations and misperceptions so that vaunted ego can hardly find the rea World anymore. The chronic schizophrenic is a sad and comic picture of a tiny ego claiming victory while all the while pronouncing the very words of l’autre moi. One schizophrenic aptly saw a giant beast wearing pants like a man, having in its long snout-jaw a tiny man which it endlessly tossed around, neither spitting man out into the World nor swallowing him in death. Such a monster I can appreciate and respect. This was an accurate picture of this man’s state—a hapless victim of a monster. This is the end result of the long road of the little ego that cannot meet or learn from its other side. The servant who shares in the wealth of his master enjoys peace. The ego self is a small segment of self, merely the self of public places in a World that is mostly private. #RandolphHarris 6 of 26

If ego and l’autre moi are seen as one, then the conception of self is enlarged. In spite of extensive training to express one’s self in a language, one would need to accept an inner native ability and predilection for representing one’s state in another primal and even archaic language. In this older language, endless images of the World or phrases of the World language are used to faithfully represent one’s state. Here the difficulty lies. Can I speak a language not taught me, a rich language, faithfully showing myself even when I am relatively lost and ignorant? And how can I do this effortlessly? To do this one has to let go of a conventional picture of the self to permit this effortless, wiser one to stand forth. Were I a primitive, I might pray to the inner one, seeking its guidance in signs. However, as a psychologist, I stand in awesome respect for its richness and its spontaneous wisdom. It is appropriate perhaps simply to notice, describe and respect what lies beyond the bounds of struggling ego. Gabriel Marcel describes a mystery as what transcends the data given us. Is the innermost faculty a symbolic mirror which can but represent? Since it lies at the threshold of what we know ourselves to be, and it implies more than can be understood, this faculty deserves respect. There is much more than could be said, some of it requiring many images and dreams to substantiate. One is that this inner self seems to have different values from the ego. #RandolphHarris 7 of 26

What these inner values are cannot be described easily though they seem to involve inner truth, inner worth, and inner uses that transcend ordinary values in the World. Certainly, the inner can be more critical of ourselves and our motives than we are inclined to be. The pursuit of nonviolence in the international field is like the pursuit of politico-economic utopia—a dream. It is laudably idealistic but, unfortunately, it is also ill-founded. The pacifism which preaches a total and absolute nonviolence, applicable all the time and in all situations, fails to recognize what is written all over the universe—the law of opposites. It is their balance which holds all things in the World, all creatures in Nature, together. In human life their conflict breeds violence, and their recession, peace. War can change its form, can lose its brutality, can be lifted to a higher level altogether where words displace weapons, and this will certainly happen. However, war at worst friction at best, will not disappear so long as the ego in man with its negative emotions is his ruler. The common attitude which thoughtlessly proclaims that everything on one side of a case is good and everything on the other is bad, cannot be adopted by a philosopher. For it is dictated by the unconscious complexes of egoism. It brushes aside what is unpleasing or unselfish. It is not honestly concerned, as he is, with truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. #RandolphHarris 8 of 26

 A wise student, therefore, will not accept the demand to choose between two extremes. He will take something from each but tie himself to neither. The part of a fanatic who forces all questions into an “either-or” steel frame is not for him. These sharp divisions into two opposite camps are uncalled for. There is a third alternative which not only combines their own best features but also rises superior to them both. Philosophy seeks this higher view as the outcome of its refusal to take a partisan one, for partisan views contain truth but, because they are too prejudiced or too exaggerated or too one-sided, they also contain untruth. Thus, he will never make the common and harmful error of confusing sentimentality with spirituality. The propagation of the doctrine of pacifist nonviolence as a universal ethic arises out of such an error. Pacifism is a dream. The only practical rule is to meet force with force, to deal firmly when you are dealing with ruthless men, and to renounce the use of violence only when you are dealing with nonviolent men. So it is that while mystical ethics lend themselves to conscientious objections to war, such an attitude is defective from the philosophic standpoint. The philosophic student must be guided by the ideal of service and should not hesitate about the form of service whether it be soldiering or otherwise. Nevertheless, it is necessary to be tolerant and respect the inner voice of others. #RandolphHarris 9 of 26

Certainly, the surrealists wanted to profess materialism. “We are pleased to recognize as one of the prime causes of the muntin non board the battleship Potemkin that terrible piece of meat.” However, there is not with them, as with the Marxists, a feeling of friendship, even intellectual, for that piece of meat. Putrid meat typifies only the real World, which in fact gives birth to revolt, but against itself. It explains nothing, even though it justifies everything. Revolution, for the surrealists, was not an end to be realized day by day, in action, but an absolute and consolatory myth. It was “the real life, like love,” of which Eluard spoke, who at that time had no idea that his friend Kalandra would die of that sort of life. They wanted the “communism of genius,” not the other form of Communism. These peculiar Marxists declared themselves in rebellion against history and extolled the heroic individual. “History is governed by laws, which are conditioned by the cowardice of individuals.” Andre Breton wanted revolution and love together—and they are incompatible. Revolution consists in loving a man who does not yet exist. If he really loves, however, he who loves a living being can only consent to die for the sake of the being he loves. In reality, revolution for Andre Breton was only a particular aspect of rebellion, while for Marxists and, in general, for all political persuasion, only the contrary is true. #RandolphHarris 10 of 26

Mr. Breton was not trying to create, by action, the promised land that was supposed to crown history. One of the fundamental theses of surrealism is, in fact, that there is no salvation. The advantage of revolution was not that it gives mankind happiness, “abominable material comfort.” On the contrary, according to Mr. Breton, it should purify and illuminate man’s tragic condition. World revolution and the terrible sacrifices it implies would only bring one advantage: “preventing the completely artificial precariousness of the social condition from screening the real precariousness of the human condition.” Quite simply, for Mr. Breton, this form of progress was excessive. One might as well say that revolution should be enrolled in the service of the inner asceticism by which individual men can transfigure reality into the supernatural, “the brilliant revenge of man’s imagination.” With Andre Breton, the supernatural holds the same place as the rational does with Hegel. Thus, it would be impossible to imagine a more complete antithesis to the political philosophy of Marxism. The lengthy hesitations of those whom Artaud called the Amiels or revolutions are easily explained. The surrealists were more different from Marx than were reactionaries like Joseph de Maistre, for example. The reactionaries made use of the tragedy of existence to reject revolution—in other words, to preserve a historical situation. The Marxists made us of it to justify revolution—in other words, to preserve a historical situation. Both make use of the human tragedy to further their pragmatic ends. However, Mr. Breton made use of the revolution to consummate the tragedy and, in spite of the tile of his magazine, made use of the revolution to further the surrealist adventure. #RandolphHarris 11 of 26

Evolutionary agent Werner von Braun was born of a noble family in Silesian Germany. Members of predom castes born to aristocratic gene pools at times of technological advance are unusually free to attain stage thirteen Me-generation Self-indulgence and stage fourteen self-actualized status and this choose—id est, are allowed to follow DNA intuitions—to select their robot-role. Von Braun’s mother, another Evolutionary Agent, encouraged her son to study the stars. “For my confirmation,” confided von Braun, “I got a telescope. My mother thought this would make the best gift.” According to biographer Shirley Thomas, “Through this hobby, he happened upon an article in an astronomy magazine that crystallized the patterns his life should take. He relates, ‘I don’t remember the name of the magazine or the author, but the article described an imaginary voyage to the moon. It filled me with a romantic urge. Interplanetary travel! Here was a task worth dedicating one’s life to! Not just to stare through a telescope at the moon and the planets but to soar through the heavens and actually explore the mysterious universe. I new how Columbus had felt.” Reflect on this amazing statement. This preadolescent larval understood how an Evolutionary Agent, who lived 450 years before him, felt about his genetic task. Columbus was clear about his destiny, his obligation to the species. However, the significance of his genetic clarity is, of course, lost upon most biographers. That the young von Braun responded to the genetic imperative behind the Columbus mission is comforting evidence that pre-programmed nervous systems can be activated in preadolescence to extraordinary futique missions. #RandolphHarris 12 of 26

During the period if maturity, the dramatic nature of the script is brought into full flower. Drama in life, as in the theater, is based on “switches,” and these switches have been neatly summarized by Stephen Karpman in a simple diagram her calls “The Drama Triangle.” Each hero in a drama or in life (the protagonists) starts off in one of the three main roles: Rescuer, Persecutor, or Victim, with the other principal player (the antagonist) in one of the other roles. When the crisis occurs, the two players move around the triangle, thus switching roles. One of the commonest switches occurs in divorce. During the marriage, for example, the husband is the persecutor and the wife plays the part of the victim. Once the divorce complaint is filed, these roles are reversed: the wife becomes the persecutor, and the husband the victim, while his lawyer and her lawyer play the part of competing rescuers. In fact, all struggles in life are struggles to move around the triangle in accordance with the demands of the script. Thus, the criminal persecutes his victims; the victim then files a complaint, and becomes the plaintiff or persecutor with the criminal now the victim. If he is caught, the police also become his persecutors. He then hires a professional rescuer, a lawyer, who persecutes the policeman. In an interrupted rape, there is a race around the triangle. The criminal who is persecuting the girl or boy victim becomes the victim of the rescuing police man. The criminal’s lawyer tries to rescue him by persecuting the girl or boy victim and the policeman as well. #RandolphHarris 13 of 26

Fairy tales, treated as dramas, show the exact feature of the drama triangle. Little Red Riding Hood, for example, is a victim of the persecuting wolf until the hunter rescues her, when she suddenly becomes the persecutor, putting stones in the belly of the now victimized wolf. Minor roles in script drama are the Connection and the Patsy, who are available to all three of the main characters. The Connection is the person who supplies what is needed for the switch, usually for a price, and is fully aware of his role: the man who sells liquor, drugs, influence, or guns. A gun, for example, often called an “equalizer,” turns a coward (victim) into a braggart (persecutor), or switches the defensive into the offensive. The Patsy is there to be conned into preventing the switch, or speeding it up. The classical Patsies are juries, and the most poignant are mothers who pay to keep their sons out of jail. Sometimes the Patsy is passive and merely acts as bait for the switch, like Little Red Riding Hood’s grandmother. Mr. Karpman has many interesting variables in his fully developed theory, besides role switches. These include space switches (private-public, open-closed, near-far) which preceded, cause, or follow role switches, and script velocity (number of roles switches in a given unit of time). Thus, his thinking reaches far beyond the original roles as described for the game of “Alcoholic,” and brings fascinating insight into numerous aspects of life, psychotherapy, and the theater. Marriages can sometimes also seem like a drama triangle, as mentioned above. What a great many men and women must learn is that they cannot achieve the pleasures they both want until they realize that the most effective relationship is one where a couple views each other as equals. #RandolphHarris 14 of 26

This deceptively simple truth points to one of the most valuable contributions a woman can make to a man’s ability to function effectively, from which she, of course, benefits. The liberated woman learns, among other things, the importance of being free, as men have always been free, to express openly the full range of her intimate excitement and involvement—the delight of wanting and being wanted, being intimate, seeing and being seen, hearing words and uttering them of fragrances and textures, silences and sounds. Her spontaneous feelings, spontaneously communicated, stimulate her partner and heighten his tension, impelling him to act on his own impulses. Whatever she gives him returns to her and whatever he gives her comes back to him. More than half the pleasures of the experience of intimate passions depends on a partner’s response. If there is virtually no reaction at all, or at best passive acceptance, the emotional current steadily weakens and eventually flickers and goes dead. In too many marriages the wife may never say no but never really says yes—and then is puzzled later in life that when she does to bed, her husband stays up to watch television. However, even when saying yes—and meaning it—is not the answer. Active participation does not consist of merely initiating matters which the man is then expected to complete. The woman who wholeheartedly commits herself as an equal in a union of pleasures of the flesh is involved in continuous response to her husband’s changing needs and desires, as he is involved in hers. #RandolphHarris 15 of 26

Like him, she values freshness and variety and from time to time willingly experiments with the many modes of arousal as an expression of her personality and mood of the moment, not as an artificial contrivance to resuscitate flagging desire. The responsiveness of both partners is based on their mutual acceptance as vulnerable human beings with unique needs, expectations and capabilities. The wife does not assume that her husband wants what all men are supposed to want. Sensitive to what he says or reveals without words, she responds to his actual feelings at a specific moment—and she counts on him to do the same for her. Emotional needs, which vary with the mood, time and place, are not labeled “masculine” and “feminine.” If he enjoys it when she manifests a strong urge for pleasures of the flesh, that is fine; and if—as inevitably happens at times—their needs are not complementary, they will gently make their way to the best solution they can negotiate, not as representatives of two different genders but as two separate partners united by a mutual concern. Together they succeed or together they fail in the encounter of pleasures of the flesh, sharing the responsibility for failure, whether it is reflected in his performance or hers. While conclusive proof is still lacking, there are firm grounds for believing that the female who esteems herself as something more than a collector’s item, who has a beneficial appreciation of her biological nature and enters into pleasures of the flesh as a free and equal partner—and who is as responsive to her partner’s needs as she wants him to be to hers—will do more to eliminate male fears of functional failure than all the therapy in the World. #RandolphHarris 16 of 26

One way for persons to rid themselves of the body is to pretend to be somebody else. In so doing, they are “in” neither their actions nor their bodies. If they can obliterate the experience of the body, this pretense is abetted. Such obliteration is carried out through repression of unwelcome somatic experience. Persons will repress any dimensions of their experience that terrify them, or that have led to unbearable pain. Thus, when parents observe children masturbating, they may punish them severely. To avoid future pain, the children may repress all pleasurably body experience. It is as if they have divested themselves of their genitalia to avoid rejections by parents who cannot love a child with urges for pleasures of the flesh. Chronic repression of body experience must manifest itself in some way. Subjectively, repression of bodily experience is experienced as no experience, as a “hole” or an absence in the person’s experience of being. Thus, one person complained, “I feel numb, like a robot.” Objectively, somatic repression manifests itself as character structure, or muscular armour—a peculiar configuration of muscular tonus and flaccidity, which results in a person’s characteristic bodily posture, style of movement, and tone of voice. Somatic repression has profound effects upon autonomic functions of the body, such as breathing, elimination, circulation, and rest. #RandolphHarris 17 of 26

Wilhelm Reich was adept at looking at a naked body and “reading” from it what impulses a person was repressing, and what kinds of conflicts the person likely had with parents. There is no magic in this. If persons have been obliged to live dutiful, unpleasurable lives, and dare not experience, much less express, their rage and resentment, then they must hold the rage in. If you will clench your teeth, tighten your neck, pinch your buttocks tightly together, and then look in the mirror, you will improve your ability to empathize with others who are repressed. A person who has repressed his or her sense of vitality may inhibit the vitality of another person who, before the encounter, felt “full of beans and juices,” very much alive. On making contact with the unembodied one, the individual begins to feel diminished in vitality and zest for life. T is the faculty of reason which differentiates human beings from all Nature’s other creatures. It is this which sets man beyond the animals. However, reason untouched by the finer promptings of the heart, and unillumined by the sublimer intuitions of the mind, degenerates easily into selfish, cunning, and degrades instead of dignifying man. It may be they find it too hard to make the crossing from the older way of thinking to what is demanded of them by the new knowledge: a willingness to accept paradox. For otherwise, they get only a half-truth. Reason gradually becomes paramount as man develops through life after life. #RandolphHarris #RandolphHarris 18 of 26

Unit readiness in the Sacramento Fire Department begins with physically fit firefighters and EMT’s because emergencies drain people physically, mentally, and emotionally. Physical fitness, while crucial for success in the fire department, is important for all members of the team. Physically git people feel more competent and confident, handle stress better, work longer and harder, and recover faster. These attributes provide valuable payoffs in any environment. The physical demand of the job, prolonged hours, and continuous operations can erode more than your body. Physical fitness and adequate rests support mental functioning and emotional stability, both essential for sound leadership. You must be prepared for deprivation. It is difficult to maintain a high level of fitness during fast-paced, demanding operations. If you are not physically fit, your mental and emotional fitness will suffer as well. Sacramento firefighters and EMT’s operate in difficult terrain, extreme climates, and at high altitudes, and this requires extensive physical preconditioning. Once you are in the area of operations, you must make every effort to sustain physical readiness. Preparedness for operational missions is the primary focus of the Sacramento Fire Department’s physical fitness program. Fitness programs that merely emphasize top scores on the Fire Department Fitness Test do not prepare firefighters for the strenuous demands of firefighting and rescue. As forward-looking leaders, the Sacramento Fire Department has developed a balanced physical fitness program that enables fire fighters and EMT’s to execute the department’s mission-essential task last. #RandolphHarris 19 of 26

Ultimately, the Sacramento Fire Department’s physical fitness requirements have a significant impact on the team’s personal performance and health. Since their decisions affect their organization’s response times and performance, health and safety, it is an ethical as well as a practical imperative to remain health and fit. “I got married after I got into the fire department. I met my wide when we were both in college. We have one child, a baby girl, two months old. My wife doesn’t like me being in the fire department, and since I got hurt, she is really kind of scared. But she knows that it’s what I want to do. I’m sure she wouldn’t want our girl to be a firefighter when she grows up. I’d just like her, the baby, to do what she wants to do. When my wife had our first child at the hospital, I went in there and helped deliver it. It was a lot of fun, and I assisted. I was trained in Lamaze classes. I was there with our second child also. It’s a tremendous feeling to be there, bringing a new individual into the World. They teach in Lamaze class that it creates a bonding effect between you and the mother, and you and the child. I believe that 100 percent. My kids are real special. And as you grow up as an individual yourself, you see mistakes that you made, and you want to make sure that your child doesn’t make those same mistakes. You want to the best for your children. They are too young to have an interest in the fire service. My little boy’s only seven. They like going to the station. I just want them to grow up happy, to live a good life and live long, and be happy in what they do. Material things aren’t important. It would be nice if Nicholas became a firefighter. #RandolphHarris 20 of 26

The Sacramento Fire Department is older than the City of Sacramento. Today, 5 February 2025, the Sacramento Fire Department is celebrating their 175th birthday. This is a very important milestone. Understanding the expectations and applying the attributes and competencies prepares the Sacramento Fire Department for situations they are likely to encounter. Fire fighters who gain expertise through operational assignments, institutional learning, and self-development will be versatile enough to adapt to most situations and grow into greater responsibilities. All members of the Sacramento Fire Department are loyal, dedicated to duty, respectful, selfless, honourable, possess a great deal of integrity and display personal courage in the face of danger and adversity. You can save lives by making a donation to the Sacramento Fire Department. The proud members of the Sacramento Fire Department are committed to providing the highest quality and highest level of courteous and responsive services to the residents, businesses, and visitors of Sacramento. This is accomplished by implementing comprehensive strategies and training in fire prevention, fire suppression, emergency medical services, and all risk mitigation, including human-caused and natural disasters, emergency preparedness, emergency services and community-based fire services. The Sacramento Fire Department physical requirements for the firefighters and EMTs state that you must be medically and physically fit, and able to pass the Occupational Physical Assessment Test. Therefore, physical and mental toughness are just the basic requirements. You achieve excellence when you habitually show discipline and commitment to the department’s values. Individuals and organizations pursue excellence to improve. #RandolphHarris 21 of 26

Citizens, remember to give the right-of-way to any law enforcement vehicle, fire engine, ambulance, or other emergency vehicle using a siren and red lights. Failure to pull over may result in a ticket. Drive to the right edge of the road and stop until the emergency vehicles(s) have passed. When approaching a stationary emergency vehicle with flashing emergency signal lights (hazard lights), move over and slow down. If you are in an intersection when you see an emergency vehicle, continue through the intersection. Drive to the right as soon as it is safe and stop. Obey any direction, order, or signal given by a law enforcement officer, or a firefighter. Even if they conflict with existing signs, signals, or laws, follow their orders. When their siren or flashing lights are on, it is against the law to follow within 300 feet of any fire engine, law enforcement vehicle, ambulance, or other emergency vehicle. If you drive to the scene of a fire, collision, or other disaster, you can be arrested. When you do this, you are getting in the way of firefighters, ambulance crews, or other rescue and emergency personnel. Moral courage is the willingness to stand firm on values, principles, and convictions. It enables you to stand up for what you believe is right, regardless of the consequences.  The concept of professional courage does not always mean being as tough as nails, either. It also suggests a willingness to listen to other peoples’ problems, to go to bat for them in a tough situation and it means knowing just how far they can go. It also means being willing to tell the boss when he or she is wrong. #RandolphHarris 22 of 26

As a reminder, parents, pleasure teach your children love America and be patriotic citizens and to buy goods and services made in America. It is also important to respect law and order and treat your elders with respect. Having the Southern American boarder open and not having American farmland protected, not producing beef, poultry, fish, fruit, produce and dairy in America, and without American goods and services being our number one manufactured and selling items, America has created a dangerous and significantly elevated risks to national security, national economic security, and national public health. Some people may believe that these claims are overstated, but by not routinely monitoring Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CEVs) or other security relevant alerts, such as end-of-life of machinery is how the Oroville Dam Crisis occurred in 2017. Other crises that have occurred due to neglect of critical infrastructure is the 2025 Palisades fires because Southern California ran out of water, when they are located next to an ocean and they could have simply created desalinating plants to help with the water shortage. The water is so plentiful that it is currently eroding land and causing homes to fall into the sea. American government should know all exploitable vulnerabilities and fix them prior to the situation becoming a crisis. Failure to take such mitigating actions is dangerous and significantly elevates risk to national security, national economic security, and national public health and safety. The American government must understand that significant time and resources must be invested in America. They must also encourage corporations to plan for both mitigating safety vulnerabilities in the short term and eliminating them in the long term. For instance, a company might begin by reaching out to the federal, state or local government and requesting tax incentives to provide security to dangerous communities, to help the government repair bridges and potholes. #RandolphHarris 23 of 26

America needs an approach to eliminate safety vulnerabilities in American cities. There needs to be a road map by the end of 2025, outlining a prioritized approach to eliminate crisis situations in America. There is enough money to send aid to foreign nations, but the American government does not have enough money to care their infrastructure, provide adequate resources, nor end the affordable housing crisis. Nor is there enough money to fund other national critical functions (NCFs). These bad practices of putting America and Americans last is considered exceptionally risky, particularly to national security, national economic security, and national public health and safety. In 2024, Americans spent $100 billion on Japanese cars. In an effort to help America pull through the massive national deficit, please buy American made cars. American made cars used to be the envy of the World and because American car brands are offering a wide range of options, from family SUVs to electric vehicles and luxury sedans, we are now seeing a resurging interest. American made cars are equal or superior to those made overseas. The Chevrolet Trax, for instance, is a well-designed, fuel efficient, and safe SUV. And as you know, there is no better car on Earth than 1950-1970s American Muscle Car. Americans make sure superior product, but we are buying things from other nations. American food imports have risen by 300 percent since 1999. American farmland declined by nearly 20 million acres between 2017 and 2022. As of 2022, there were 880.1 million acres of land dedicated to farming, compared to 900.1 million in 2017. The data shows there are now little more than 1.9 million farms in the country.  Americans and American corporations spent $136 billion on food and beverages from other countries. It is a national security risk to lose American Farms and farmers. If there is a war, and most of our meat, produce, poultry, dairy, and fruit is coming from foreign counties, we stand the risk of starving. #RandolphHarris 24 of 26

With war breaking out all over the World, in these uncertain times, it is very important to bring American farms back. Las Vegas is running out of buildable land and is expected to reach its maximum number of homes in 2032. So, home prices are expected to rise dramatically. Much like the land crisis in Las Vegas, we could also run out of land to farm and will not be able to grow or cultivate our own food. We can protect American farmland and support American farmers by buying American made beef, poultry, dairy, and produce. Also, country of origin labeling is very important so Americans can know where their food is coming from and have the ability to support American farmers and ranchers. As money flows, it influences further investment. Save the land that sustains us by protecting American farmland. Once the land is built on, we lose it forever.  And in the future, there may be food wars. Also, to ensure that we have farmland and buildable land for future use, we need to start limiting the number of people allowed to immigrant to America. Perhaps with the immigrants we do allow into America, there needs to be a diversity program to make sure we have a population that equally represents all races of people. If Americans continue to spend money on American products, then more need to be made to keep up the inventory. When investors notice these goods are selling, it gives them the confidence to pour more money into that local business. It shows that people want these goods made in America and pressures investors to keep these goods and services in America. The jobs stay here, the business stays in American, wages naturally increase, and more money is invested to keep up with demand. This reduces the burden on the taxpayer. When you support American businesses, that money stays in our economy and can help to reduce the national debt. The government creates debt by borrowing from businesses in the private sector or from foreign countries. It also increases the national debt by spending more than it gains in tax revenue in a fiscal year. When people shop locally, more tax money stays in the economy and goes to the government. This way, it keeps more money in our national economy and keeps more jobs located in American which also sends more taxes to the government, which can again help to reduce the national debt. #RandolphHarris  25 of 26

When you buy foreign goods, these companies usually have lighter tax loads or exemptions, meaning less money for the nation debt, plus you are helping to strengthen these foreign nations by send more money overseas. Buying American made products is also better for the environment and helps to reduce the carbon footprint because these products do not have to travel nearly as far. Furthermore, American companies and manufacturers are held to much higher standards in regard to pollution. American companies have to be more careful about air, land, and water pollution and have proper ways to dispose of waste. Moreover, please remember to respect law and order and treat your elders with the utmost dignity and kindness possible. And take your education seriously so that you will be successful in life and make your family proud. It is inborn in the human minds to wish to know. If this begins with the endless surface questions of a child’s curiosity, if it continues into deeper questions of a scientist’s probing investigation, it cannot and does not stop there. For the higher part of the mind will eventually come into unfoldment, that union of abstract reflective thought with mystical intuition, which is true intelligence, which needs and sees a view of the whole of things. And so, the knowing faculty enters the realm of philosophy. As a reminder, parents, pleasure teach your children love America and be patriotic citizens and to buy goods and services made in America. It is also important to respect law and order and treat your elders with respect. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic, for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. #RandolphHarris 26 of 26

The Winchester Mystery House

The Winchester Mystery House is full of surprises. What was your favorite, “Oooh!” moment during your visit at the mansion? (And for those of you who still have to check it off your bucket list… we will hopefully see you soon.)

Experience an unforgettable journey back to the time of kings and queens with this entry ticket for The Winchester Mansion in Santa Clara, California which was the residence of Sarah L. Winchester. Take advantage of this fascinating experience. After tour, there will be time enjoy the mansion’s splendor at your own pace. You might even discover secret passages.

Please come and enjoy a delicious meal in Sarah’s Café, stroll along the paths of the beautiful Victorian gardens, and wonder through the miles of hallways in the World’s most mysterious mansion.

For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/

Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase. https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/