Making sense of America’s political world today is like trying to ride a centrifuge. You can’t help but feel dizzy by the spiraling further and faster from logic, Constitutional law and actual common sense, let alone compassion.
Over the last month, in time for the Mercury retrograde, I found myself jumping off the centrifugal ride — turning off the television, switching the car radio from the news to the sports station, turning away from one more headline and walking faster up the street — just to stop the idiocy of one more talking point entering my head. I did it to prevent myself from going just plain fucking mad. At the very least, ceasing contact with the dissonance helped bring down my blood pressure.
With everything in 2011 geared towards 2012 and the general elections, today’s opposition party in Congress is doing everything it can — standing on their heads to defy even their responsibilities of office — to hamstring government and the revitalization of the economy so President Obama can take the blame for government’s dysfunction and our economic collapse.
House Speaker John Boehner handed the negotiations for the federal debt ceiling and the fate of the world’s fiscal stability to the Tea Party’s Congressional Republicans — a group that hates government and loves Medicare but can’t connect that Medicare is a government program. The fate of Social Security, once the third rail in politics and sacrosanct for over 70 years — has been up for discussion. Following Hurricane Irene, Majority Leader Eric Cantor — vying for the title of Chief National Asshole — demanded that FEMA’s shortfall of funds, needed to address hurricane damage on the East Coast, should come from existing funds covering disaster relief for the Midwest.
The Republican party wants to break government so that they can blame the rest of us for not fixing it, daring us to pry away their tax cuts for the rich from their cold dead hands, willing to deploy the nuclear option if you dare mention raising taxes to the levels paid while Reagan was in office. It wasn’t always like this.
Even though for thirty years the anti-tax revolution has been part of the national dialogue, over the last ten years, Americans have been pushed further and further back across social, cultural and economic lines in the sand. Every conservative notion, especially the more extreme ones, started taking on a hyper-profile, making conservatism unrecognizable even to Reagan Republicans. Permission was granted to flaunt existing laws regarding race and gender discrimination and voting rights. With the Patriot Act, two illegal and unnecessary wars, suspiciously timed color-coded fear level barometers, and the suspension of Habeus Corpus for ‘enemy combatants’ held in detention camps, the national conversation devolved from a two-party system to a single party and a mob.
Christian sects set Q’urans on fire without regard for the ramifications of vehement anti-American feelings ignited abroad. New Yorkers can’t place an Islamic cultural center nearby the site of the former World Trade Center without generating serious national backlash based on hard-headed ignorance. A duly-elected President of the United States has to continually be asked for his birth certificate to validate his citizenship and thus his legitimacy to office. We equate Muslims with the same vehemence reserved for African-Americans, Mexican immigrants, homosexuals and women seeking abortions. Since Bush left office, 9-11 has evolved to become not only an historic event but a syndrome: this is what happens to a society forced to live under the lash of fear. When you give people continual reason to fear, they start wanting to tear things down.
Is it really a wonder that our current political discourse is so charged and so off-kilter that it’s unable to focus on the problems at hand? The things we did, the rights we gave up, the hatreds we allowed ourselves and had permission to express in reaction to the attack have subsumed and shamed our better natures into hiding. It allowed all the monsters out of the bottle, and we gave up not only our fortune, but our future and pieces of our collective soul. It’s no surprise that aspirants for the Republican presidential nomination are vying for who has the most fervent desire for the Apocalypse — it would be an easy way out of trying to fix the financial mess we’re in.
9-11 is now as much a drug as it is an event. This week, it will probably be packaged like a news product, perhaps even a pharmaceutical. A pill venerating the 10th anniversary of 9-11 and administered in discreet dosages for large viewing audiences hooked on that riveting series pilot launched 3,650 days ago. Like with other news drugs of the current day — Hurricane Irene and the scores of reporters-in-parkas along the eastern seaboard, the sad-eyed Casey Anthony and her trial and verdict — we have potential for getting doped up to a new level of numbness.
After ten long years and the serious problems we face as a country and a world, could it be time to hop off the centrifuge? The world has changed rapidly since ten years ago when we chose as a nation to be spun off our center. Maybe, it’s time for another look.
Self-care, in the world of substance abuse and addiction, is a process where you remove yourself from the circumstances leading to the drug abuse, commit to your sobriety, and surround yourself with a strong network of support to prevent relapse. It is a conscious effort to bring yourself back to a healthier, more whole place where you’re acting with, instead of always reacting to, life itself. In the act of self-care, you make better choices. You take better care of yourself. It is not an act of selfishness to focus solely on healing yourself. It’s an act of conscious concern for yourself and your community. You stop knee-jerk reactions that lead you to back step into decline, and you watch to make sure you can tell when the same old bullshit leading down that old dark road rears its ugly head. You make a choice to stop harming yourself and others.
It’s clear for those of us who have long tired of the charade honoring the false flag event of Sept. 11 that small acts of self-care this week include turning off the television and the pundits to stop purposely triggering yourself to feel fear or even re-visit the memory of fear. This is not a denial of history but a rebuking of the fear and everything that was done in its name to us and by us. Are we able now to take further steps down that road? Can we start with caring for ourselves, and continue with caring for others? How can we retrieve our better natures, embrace our personal evolution, and grow while the wound at that piece of real estate in Lower Manhattan heals?
Are we ready to take on a new future — leaving the past and that drug called fear — forever changed yet willing to grow? Who has taken these steps? Who among us are ready to?
I wish I could keep out the TV. I do during the day; I just shut it off when DH leaves and it stays off until he comes home. Unfortunately, he uses it to “relax” after work and so the news is on while he falls asleep on the couch for a much needed nap.
I really don’t like the TV; music is my preference or even quiet.
Now that the older three females are gone four days of the week to college classes, it is just the boychild and I. He is a talker and so fun to listen to now that I can focus on him. I am so enjoying our time together.
When he is working on his school studies, it gets really quiet in here and that is something I realize I love. He and I also go outside and sit on our back porch swing or on the lawn chairs and listen to the water fountains DH put together and hear the breeze in the pine trees and the leafy trees. Such bliss.
Fe: Love your prescriptions for self-care. Your suggestions are some of the ways I stay sane, day by day. Thanks for the reminders.
Otherwise, Brendan, I’d teleport with you out there and back and help you hide the baseball bats.:>)
I read this today: ( Wall Street Journal–not TV, but almost as bad):
“Working age Americans now make up nearly 60% of the country’s poor, a record, according to census figures.”
Out-sourcing success model, we are.
Despair? Teleported bats? or, Taking care of, and safe-guarding, our own sanity and compassion, one moment at a time. Good to have choices. :>)
Thanks always and Best to all xo
+_+
Fe –
Since my dark fantasies require a baseball bat and teleportation, I flitter in and out of them quickly, realizing they ain’t gonna happen any time soon. 😉
I just want to teleport in, bonk a few heads, and then teleport out before they catch me. Pound some sense into a whole passel of numbskulls, although it might be easier to just buy those numbskulls out… 🙂
mystes —
you hit on the great opportunity of the work that you’re doing, whatever the banal job is: conversations. i worked on the phone canvass of a ‘progressive’ citizen action non-profit for 6 years. there were plenty of times i questioned what the group was doing or its strategy (though mostly i think they’re doing good work). but what was truly rewarding were the calls when the opportunity popped up to stray from the script & have a real conversation with someone with different views, or who was on the fence.
amazing the difference that a truly listening, respectful ear, coupled with some tact/art in gentle questioning and steering, can make in a person’s ability to open up and consider a new perspective. just a little crack can let some real light through.
and yes, i’m among the ranks of those without a tv for 5 years now. i watch a little occasionally when i visit my mom, etc, but i find it rather painful most of the time. and it blows me away how she tends to keep it on when she’s not even actively watching — just to have the comforting sound. i figure, that’s what music is for…
Dearest Fe – I went on a 10 day meditation retreat this summer, where there was no TV, no radio, no newspapers – and very little talk. And as I disintoxicated from a year of stress, frustration and anger – I also realised just how much we are bombarded with fearful news day in day out, it’s in the air, it penetrates our very body cells. And I delighted in the possibility of being able to unplug from it all. But while I was there, riots broke out in England(my birthplace, though I’ve lived in Italy most of my adult life). This is where my family live, and the heart of the riots in London took place where my sister lives. So I was dragged right back into fear and mayhem again. The rain (and some gentler astrology) quelled the anger and violence (hurrah for lousy British summers!) – but left everyone with many questions about it all. But this experience left me with the realisation that we need to learn to live in this world, that we can’turn our backs on it. At the same time, as you said, we need to really look after ourselves, to have moments when we can replenish our energies and frayed nervous systems – both for the benefit of ourselves and others. It’s wonderful that you teach in prisons – it’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time now.
Love
Liz xx
Mystes:
Your kid sounds pretty diamond bright. Love that he’s being completely awake about his mind-space. Completely cool.
And you, continue being well and better each day. Feed your Vesta fire. She’s earned it after all the hard work you’ve done.
Brendan:
One of the hard things about living in the Bay Area is the over-stimulation. Hard not to feel the pressure of ever-present society. Fortunately, I have a cherished abode that’s my refuge. Sometimes the stim is too much. You are lucky indeed.
One of the other things that set me off is catching people getting affected by the latest meme, borrowing the clothes of that fake morality: Anthony Weiner, Casey Anthony, the stupid debt ceiling standoff. It’s hard staying sedate, let alone polite, after years of what we’ve been through. But stay out of the dark, bro. We need your sanity as well.
Thank you, darling Fe, for reinforcing the good example set by my teenager a couple of weeks ago… He came home and announced that he was excluding tv, radio and any ‘netnews from his feeling/thinking space for a couple of weeks. “I’m tired of being told how to feel about the fantasies of the mainstream media. They even lie about their lies. I just want to have one thought, just one, that isn’t designed to sell me something – a product, an ideology, a drug.”
Knocked me out, I tell ya.
As I am in creative recovery, so obviously the prescription is much the same.
One more thought, though… When my study subjects begin telling me how mad they are, how much they hate Obama, the gubmint, damn socialists/hippies/demoncrats, I persist in gently asking them: who benefits from getting you this riled up? As we build rapport I am able to point out that we all prime and lead each other, so the question is, why would someone want for you to feel powerless and angry? If the discourse is couched in religious terms I ask: Are you not the friend of your Lord? would He want you to feel this way?
The work I do is pretty banal, but the relationships it opens are rare and interesting. Maybe there’s a way to meet these people on some kind of neutral ground.
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Fe –
I think your call for national therapy/healing is spot on. The “lash of fear” needs to be destroyed once and for all. It may destroy our political system as we know it, but that may not be much of a loss at this point. Redefining American democracy is the answer, but will everyone recognize the question?
I don’t have TV out here in the desert: the only way to get it is by satellite. You can watch some things on the net, so that is one way to ‘watch’ the news, but I can read so much faster anyway…
If I watched TV on a regular basis I would be grinding my teeth so bad I would have only stubs left. What I do do is listen to an excellent classical station from Tucson that has NPR a few times a day: just enough news to keep up appearances and remain less ignorant. Mostly I use the net to stay on top of things around here.
I haven’t had a TV for three years now. It’s starting to take hold too: in June, visiting my parents, I didn’t watch much at all, despite their having cable and all that. I just was not all that interested.
I remain angry of course, perhaps even more so, since I’m reading what is said, and not taking it in sound bites. There are times when my thoughts turn very dark indeed…
But then, there’s PW, our island of relative sanity, and for that I give thanks.
Len:
Thank you again for your support. Perhaps 9-11 is so woven in our frame of reference we’ve forgotten it’s there, like an old scar.
I recognize that I can and should continue to nurture and teach, not just here but out in the world and in the prison system where I continue to teach writing and theater. It’s working with those living on the very swerve of existence — hard hard work — and very rewarding, not in dollars but spirit.
Fe,
Take heart. First of all there is the wonderful synchronicity between your blog today and the “Chiron Files” subscriber edition and the Daily Astrology thread. You are picking up on it and expressing it. Next, i’m sure that you can point out at least one organized effort in your community or support network that started as a creative response to 911. For my part, it has been nine years of assisting my Reiki teacher with the teaching model he developed ten years ago for exactly that purpose (i was the inept slacker who nearly got expelled from his second class). So where are we? Doing the real stuff, not the stuff for which there currently is a market niche to be filled by some enterprising profiteer – real stuff with real dharma.
You are among the most powerful examples of that integrity – take heart just as so many of us take heart from you.
Thanks Len, though I feel a little at a loss right now.
Where are we? Are we being creative through all this distraction? Are we tuning out like way out, subsumed or don’t care? Are we still wounded from the events of 10 years ago? Or have we been told we’re wounded and at cognitive dissonance?
Fe,
Excellent prescription. Less time watching pharmaceutical-sponsored exploitation of grief. More time tending to our nourishment and growth. Could catch on. Thank you for recognizing the analogue protocol, illustrating the solution and setting the example.