It's all good...
Even when it isn't.
Writing about politics is not my gig. Writing about what’s going on in the world (my worldly tags are zeitgeist and cultural artifacts) is sometimes my gig. The current pandemic of fear, greed, and insanity in American politics cannot be ignored, and yet it also cannot frighten us so much that we lose our sense of agency. Our sense of what matters. Our faith in the deep magic of life. Because the deep magic of life, or whatever else you want to call it (reality?) will always be more powerful than the faux power being misusing by hungry ghosts.
I’m wrestling with how to approach the fucked-up bullshit that is happening now. Yes, the goddam foxes are in the henhouse. Do I have to pay close attention to every slaughtered chicken? Reading the daily news is like OMG, OMG, OMG! Nervous system… red alert!
Is there value in feeling traumatized by reading the news? Should I ignore everything that’s happening because I can’t do anything about it? Can I do anything about it? If so, what can I do?
Everywhere I look people are saying: How do we do this? How do we fight back? How do we maintain our sanity and composure in the face of insanity and chaos? How do we stop, or at least slow down, an attempted coup, a coup long in the making? There is no one answer.
A few days ago there was an earthquake off the coast of New Hampshire and Maine. I live around 70 miles inland from the coast. I felt it, slightly. Just a little rumbling shake for a few seconds. I figured it was an earthquake but it hardly rocked my world, because I was far enough away from it.
Last month the devastation caused by wildfires in LA was hard to grasp. So many people losing everything they owned. Whole neighborhoods gone. It hit ‘home’ for me when I learned that my grandparents’ house in Altadena, the house my dad grew up in, and that I spent time in as a child, had burned to the ground.
There are horrors everywhere in the world all the time. The ones that are far away, either geographically, or in their ability to affect us, are the ones least likely to have an impact. We can’t feel everything everywhere all the time. We don’t have the bandwidth.
If you looked up at the night sky, and saw a twinkling star suddenly go dark, it probably wouldn’t have much emotional impact. Maybe curiosity, maybe not. If that star were our sun, it would be a different experience (a short one).
How much effect will it have on each of us that this so-called administration (more appropriately called this ‘decomposition’) is trying to dismantle all checks and balances from our system of government? To turn it not only into a cash cow, but into hamburger. To eat it up.
At the moment we are stuck with a President who is determined to misuse power. I don’t know what he wants. I wonder if he does. Clearly he is a bottomless pit of yearning for something unattainable. When he says ‘America First’ he is saying ‘Me First.’ It is tragic that this man has projected his neediness onto the whole country/whole world, instead of sticking with tall buildings, casinos and golf courses.
The multitude of lost souls following in his choppy wake—in the flawed belief that it will be in their own best interest or their vision of a cockeyed, concocted world only achievable (temporarily) by subterfuge and force, are a showcase of embarrassingly unprincipled and servile humans. I’m not talking about the poor fools who voted for the Grand Fool out of ignorance and anxiety; I’m talking about the people who are eager and willing to do his bidding.
And the other really scary guy, who sometimes seems like a ventriloquist with the Presidential dummy on his knee, appears equally lacking in compassion or humility, equally willing to move fast and break things, equally deluded as a wannabe Lord and Master over all.
Our founding fathers did the best they could to protect this democracy from the vagaries of human nature. But hey, no-one and nothing is perfect, and there is no system that is so well-designed that it can withstand a direct desire to destroy it.
Anyway, this new year is a doozy. We are witnessing a fast motion train wreck, the train being our system of government and the wreck being the fact that the train has been commandeered by scoundrels who only want to use it for their own unenlightened benefit and not only don’t care if it goes off the tracks, they want it to go off the tracks.
Here’s how my computer’s dictionary describes ‘train wreck’ as a metaphor:
North American informal a chaotic or disastrous situation that holds a peculiar fascination for observers: his train wreck of a private life guaranteed front-page treatment.
Let’s talk about that peculiar fascination. It’s hard not to want to stare at a train wreck—at any ghastly situation. It can feel like self-protection to see/know what’s going on. It’s up to each one of us to figure out what really helps us and what doesn’t. By helps, I mean what increases our ability to act with intelligent resolve.
I encourage you, and myself, to protect our nervous systems from the constant low-grade trauma of paying too much attention to bad people doing bad things. Without putting our heads in the sand, either.
I know it’s hard when every single headline in the New York Times and elsewhere says T did this and T did that. All reports on what T did, is doing, or wants to do, cause me anxiety. How can it not be extremely disturbing that a big bull(y) is running around in the china shop crashing into everything?
I want to ignore the daily absurdities and worse, and yet I can’t. Because what these jokers are doing is not in a galaxy far, far away. It is up close and personal, even if some of us are not (yet) in the direct line of fire. We have taken for granted that, for all its failings and flaws, our government had a baseline of systemic integrity that has kept it going and allowed for evolution and change.
Even when past Republican administrations did things I knew were deeply wrong, like invading Iraq on the flimsiest of excuses, and hundreds of other less than benevolent acts, I had a sense that the system itself would not fail; that elections could change the balance of power, that the legal system had teeth. Now I’m seeing men who are trying to destroy whatever fail-safes our government has in place. This is both scary and deeply depressing.
So, what can we do that will actually help? Frying our nervous systems with 24/7 bad news will not actually help. What will help is for each one of us to face this reality in the best way we can, and work on developing the strength in our loins.
Apocalypse Now
Our times appear increasingly apocalyptic. Between the devastation wrought by natural phenomena on climate change steroids—wind, rain, sun, fire and ice, and the devastation being planned and wrought by people for whom power over others is their raison d’etre, it’s looking bad. It is bad.
It is worth noting that the devastation being planned and wrought by people for whom power over others is their raison d’etre is nothing new. Ever since humans came to town, domination and cruelty foisted by the powerful few upon the abused many follows a natural process of oppression, resistance, upheaval, and reversal. Down goes the tough and big, up comes the tender sprig. Total domination is not sustainable.
Man, born tender and yielding,
Stiffens and hardens in death.
All living growth is pliant,
Until death transfixes it.
Thus men who have hardened are 'kin of death'
And men who stay gentle are 'kin of life.'
Thus a hard-hearted army is doomed to lose.
A tree hard-fleshed is cut down:
Down goes the tough and big,
Up comes the tender sprig.
from The Way of Life, by Lao Tzu, translated by Witter Bynner
The third party speaks softly and carries a big stick
A very big stick.
We think we see two political parties on either end of the power seesaw. But that is not exactly accurate. There is a third party whose effect on the overall situation is profound. I’m talking about reality, kids. Cause and effect. Human nature and all other forms of natural process.
If your philosophy or religion or diabolical will-to-power requires you to do unto others as you would not have done to you, then eventually you will lose, even if you have convinced yourself that the ‘others’ are in a different category from yourself, and therefore doing unto them what you would not want to have done to you is okay.
It’s not okay.
It’s not okay for a lot of reasons. A big one is that it doesn’t work. Not in the long run. It amazes me that after all this time in human history, in which we have witnessed so many dreams of total domination come crashing down, there are still people who believe that it will work for them.
What the overlords of the MAGA movement want is not based on understanding or respect for the kind of natural cause and effect that keeps the tides going in and out, the earth spinning on its axis, and the stars in the heavens doing their thing. Their desires are based on fear.
How could it be otherwise? If you have to use subjugation to manifest your vision of how you want the world around you to behave, then you are afraid of what will happen if you don’t. If these daydreamers had any common sense, they would understand that if you keep pushing, pushing, pushing against fairness, kindness, against what others need to live, against what others are, what you create will not be sustainable.
I am aware that there is a short term and a long term. If I had said to all the people who were murdered by Hitler, “Don’t worry, he’ll lose in the end,” it would have been cold comfort. I know that the current mob in power will lose in the end, but they are in a position to cause great suffering before that happens. And it is up to us to do what we can to prevent or shorten as much of this suffering as possible.
An older post entirely pertinent to the moment:
Vive la Résistance
There may come a time when even old ladies with aching joints who live in the woods will feel compelled to take direct action—marching in the streets, hiding immigrants in the basement, becoming spies, or revolutionaries.
Until then, my advice is: do what you do best. If you are in a position to push back against power grabs directly—you are a politician, a lawyer, a judge, anyone in a position of worldly power, then use your power in the best way you can.
If you have the time and energy, take direct political action: Call your representatives. Write postcards, whatever seems most meaningful and helpful. Speak up, make noise.
No matter who you are and what you do, make art. By ‘make art’ I mean, whatever your medium, act from a wider and deeper awareness and acceptance of complexity and mystery than those who would rule over all. Don’t accept their terms. Change the terms. Expand the terms.
It’s all good, even when it isn’t…
Reality will always win. Whoever is willing to respect and serve reality will be on the winning side, eventually. The only real power evil has is the power of self-destruction.
The greatest acts of resistance are energetic. Upholding an entirely different set of values, of criteria, than the desperation for total dominance, is a shield against that desperation.
If all you do is sit in your room and meditate on the immutable power of love, you will be helping the whole universe.
If all you do is share love in whatever ways life asks of you, from moment to moment, you will be helping the whole universe.
If all you do is make art, from and with your heart, you will be helping the whole universe.
As awful and scary as it is that a bunch of wannabe tyrants are having their little moment in the sun, as awful and scary as it is that they have the potential to cause a lot of harm in a lot of different directions, they also are so much less powerful than they wish they were.
We will resist domination in a thousand and one ways. We will sing and dance. We will have parties. We will meditate and pray. We will laugh. We will listen carefully for our specific and personal calls to serve. We will feel gratitude. We will love ourselves and each other.
YES. YES. YES. And YESYESYESYES. Thank you, Janina.
Linda
TY Janina for your creative take on these chaotic times...refreshing and revealing from the usual info presented us. I shared with open minded people in my realm. What keeps me buoyed is knowing and following, supporting best I can, the informed and committed pro-democracy advocates that I know are out there. As one says, 'when America's people emerge from their shock they will join us in peaceful resistance'.