ammolite gem fossil in the royal tyrell museum, drumheller, alberta , canada
i keep seeing comments on dkos from other scared, angry people who, like me, are also not sleeping well and struggling with raw disbelief and depression that we are in this predicament, that nothing so far has worked to free us of this vituperative vindictive madman who holds so much power over the world.
drmpf’s own personal rasputin has said that he wants, like lenin "to destroy the state, and that’s my goal, too . . . I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment.” they have a good start with the drumbeat of insane EOs and the pyromaniac cabinet picks, obviously chosen and tasked with the destruction of their given institutions.
an african proverb says, ’when elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers.’
the grass already suffers, just in this couple of weeks. i have good friends that work with refugee vetting and resettling; my husband hired many refugees in his former work and we’ve hosted refugees in our home for several months as they eased into transition.
but it’s not just refugees and those who care about them who are suffering; i can’t think of any minorities other than the top 10% and the determinedly obtuse drumpf deplorables that aren't afraid of what is about to hit them….and that last category seems to be diminishing looking at the falling polls.
i watch the rapid proliferation of push-back groups sprouting nationally with gratitude and sheer envy. we drove for over an hour to the nearest women’s march and were thrilled that 70+ people showed up; we honestly didn’t know that there were any—certainly not that many—like-minded people this close to our dark red rural michigan home.
we live in one of the most racist areas in the nation indicated by our reprehensible number of racist google searches and racist tweets. we have been extremely isolated the two years we’ve lived here, both by my illness/disability and by what seems like a total dearth of places to plug in to find community.
i’m struggling to find more ways to cope, and to protest and resist. below the fold i’ll offer some of what is showing signs of being helpful for me but would really like to engage with others, especially on these two pivotal questions:
- what is helping you maintain mental health in the midst of relentless sustained outrage?
- what are you giving your strength and voice towards, especially if you live in areas that feel uniformly red and even hostile, and public options for protest and resistance are limited?
your thoughts and comments are appreciated.
(hmm, i was going to put the break here, but i don’t remember how to do that. you’ll have to use your imagination.)
this is where i begin, with things that help me maintain some semblance of resilience and health.
i use mahatma gandhi’s mission statement as a morning focal point:
Let the first act of every morning be to make the following resolve for the day:
- I shall not fear anyone on Earth.
- I shall fear only God.
- I shall not bear ill will toward anyone.
- I shall not submit to injustice from anyone.
- I shall conquer untruth by truth. And in resisting untruth, I shall put up with all suffering.
i will not give in to fear or the demonization of ‘others.’ i don’t want to be part of deepening the divides in this state or country. i realize that i wobble on the verge of dehumanizing drumpf supporters as i am so appalled at the blatant misogyny and racism that at first look it’s hard to identify with anything about them.
yet i’m convinced that the willingness to dehumanize, to foster contempt, is the first essential step towards any human atrocity. it becomes much easier to treat people inhumanely if you denigrate their essential humanity. i try—but do not consistently succeed—to avoid ad hominem attacks.
i think that the strength and power of gandhi’s statement lies in his being able to bind his commitment to ‘not bear ill will toward anyone’ tightly to ‘i shall not submit to injustice from anyone.’ and he is absolutely clear-eyed about his commitment to truth and willingness to suffer the consequences of truth-telling. while these are my intentions, i am far from being there.
i also realize that i have to be smart about how, where and when i expose myself. we have proudly redneck neighbors who shoot at god knows what, randomly, all year long, not just during hunting season, and whose rottweilers do not respect our property lines.
some time ago, a neighbor teen tried to set up barriers with confederate and nazi flags to scare and keep my wwII vet father-in-law out of a patch of his own woods—ha! that didn’t work, but still, it’s discomfiting. some dumb kid with a gun and bizarre romantic notions of being a nazi can maim or kill neighbors just as a stray hunting slug can. i realize that i often do not feel safe here.
i’ve been having ptsd nightmares and sometimes can’t sleep after 4am or so; eventually i give up and get up. the early morning solitude is actually a good thing and the gandhian resolution helps to ground me every morning. then i focus on what i’m grateful for, being as specific as possible, and spend some time in mindfulness meditation. i think i’d be suicidal without these things that help to root me in what is still sound, still good in my life.
humor is huge. it helps in the moment, carving out small spaces of emotional respite and freedom, and it also points a way to effectively shape protest.
the banners and posters from the women’s march are great—some just snort-liquid-out-the-nose funny. "so bad, even introverts are here." "small hands…..yuuuuge asshole." "viva la vulva." "i’m so angry i stitched this just so i could stab something 3000 times." "does this ass [photo of trump] make my sign look big?" "we are not ovary-acting."
i was frequently pummeled by bullies as a kid and i learned that if i could ridicule them with wit and make other kids laugh, i had won. even if i got punched harder, the new bruises were worth it—i came out looking stronger and my bullies looked ridiculous and weak. intuitively, i understood and capitalized on what seneca put so succinctly: "All cruelty springs from weakness."
some extremely effective counter-demonstrations against the hillsboro baptists have involved groups that came prepared to skewer them with humor and ridicule; the hillsboro bullies turned tail and left.
Srdja Popovic, key organizer in the resistance to Milosevic and one of the founders of CANVAS (Center for Nonviolent Action and Strategies) has a good article describing the same tactics: ‘Why Dictators don’t like Jokes.’ foreignpolicy.com/...why dictators don't like jokes
and here’s Robert Evans in Cracked, covering the republican convention and ‘Vermin Supreme’ last summer :
www.cracked.com/...
In case you haven't heard of him, Vermin is a perennial presidential candidate who runs on a platform of mandatory tooth-brushing and free ponies for all. He came in fourth in the New Hampshire Democratic primary, and he showed up at the RNC to ostensibly seek the Republican nomination as well. Cracked met up with him at several points throughout the event. And the more I spoke with him, the clearer it became that Vermin Supreme's real goal at the RNC was to keep things from getting all morally crunk up in that bitch.
"... when it gets intense, people start to get scared. And when they get scared, people start to panic ... so by defusing the tension with humor ... it allows people to relax and refocus about what we're doing here on the streets."
Vermin explained to me that his work is all about "avoiding crowd panic." He feels that "fear is a very potent weapon used by the police against the protesters," and he counteracts it with a "two-pronged approach." The first prong is reading excerpts from police and FBI manuals on crowd control, with the goal of making sure everyone knows how things should go. And "when it gets intense," he trots out the absurdist humor. "When the police start doing a move, [protesters] might overreact, and bad things can happen."
His jokes aren't all at the expense of the police, either. Vermin pointed out that crowd control is miserable work. Cops in riot armor get sweaty and start chafing, and that makes them more likely to overreact. "I remember one [protest] ... it was in New York, at one of the conventions, it was hot and sweaty and we were days into it ... and so I changed one of the chants to, 'Give the cops a raise!' because they were looking for a raise at the time ... and by getting the crowd on their side, it changed the whole thing ... they saw the protesters ... differently. And so sometimes it's just really about changing perceptions, and I use absurdity and humor to sort of do that."
somehow, clearing room in my own thoughts for seeing the funny side of things, especially irony, satire, parody, and gallows humor has been hugely helpful in beating back overwhelm and despair.
in addition, seeing creative ways others have used humor, both personally and publicly to generate good will and/or point out and clarify truth (i miss colbert and stewart) is empowering and hopeful. it is the very best tool for cutting inflated egos down to manageable size although outrage can make it difficult to stay away from mean-spiritedness, which isn’t really funny or helpful.
additional things:
i also bolster my mental health by venting with my spouse and a few Facebook friends, taking short breaks from the news by reading fiction and nonfiction, sciencedaily.com and other informational sources that aren't focused on the current train wreck.
i try to get out of the house, find safe places to walk on days when i can, do my limited exercise. on days when my gimpy hands permit, i pick up some of my craft work again, paper cutting, beadwork, hopefully batik and clay again soon. i look for beauty, in the sky, the birds at the feeder, the snowy landscape, the ruffled peeling birches, laughter in the eyes of my spouse. i have started listening again to the 60s folksongs of dissent and protest that nurtured my young adult activism.
we largely heat with wood and i’ve found that starting and tending the fire is very grounding—something about seeing the days and years of vanished sunlight stored in those logs spring back into light and life in vivid flame gives me a powerful set of metaphors for the cycles of transformation and change. (the warmth is very nice, too, but honestly that seems like a by-product of fire’s best worth sometimes.) we also plan to plant more trees; i just joined the arbor day foundation and we will have about 20 trees and shrubs coming this spring.
i also try to see the long and even longer view; i find myself looking for reminders of geologic time, like the ammolite gem nearly a meter in diameter in the royal tyrrell museum in southern alberta, canada. (it’s actually a fossilized ammonite; gem-quality specimens are called ammolite.)
i used to make annual treks to that museum mostly to rest my eyes on this particular wonder of the world although i love, love, love all of that museum, having first visited it when i was a tiny kid and it was just a couple of dusty rooms with fossils and stones. now it’s big and beautiful, still tucked away in a bleak hoodoo landscape far from the cities and on the opposite side of the province from the rockies where all the tourists go. it is certainly one of the best-kept secrets in alberta. (see kristinabarclay.wordpress.com/...)
i make excuses to hug my dog. she’s huge now, although still not full-grown, and strictly a working outside-with-the-livestock guardian but when i can get outside we still hug with enthusiasm. if i sit down and let her, she swarms up onto my lap, all nearly-100 lbs of her royal puppy highness. millennia of animal husbandry wisdom shine in her happy eyes; she is so smart and engaging, both with us 2-leggeds (human and duck) and the 4-leggeds (sheep) with whom she shares this farm.
i seem to also have taken up swearing. after a lifetime of (mostly) avoiding what i’ve euphemistically considered ‘inappropriate language’, i apparently have decided that in this time and place cursing has become appropriate, even vital and necessary to describe and respond to current reality. so i swear often and with vigor, although i still try to be somewhat sensitive to the when and where.…i even have some scientific justification for it; it’s a matter of honest expression: www.sciencedaily.com/...
there are some other things that help my mental health and resilience as well, but let me get on with this.
actions and resistance:
i’ll be brief here. we do the typical obvious stuff, like attending the nearest women’s march. i call, email and send postcards to our congresscritters, especially our tea party congressman, a loathsome and seemingly stupid individual (this jaundiced opinion is based entirely on his form letters and canned responses and his votes, no personal interaction although i plan to show up at his office as he doesn’t have scheduled town halls). he has not responded to anything i’ve sent now for months although i had a surprisingly amiable conversation last week with his aide.
but this stuff doesn’t remotely begin to scratch the intensity of my itch. i have to do more than sit here, do my little token things, and fume. here are some other things i’m working on:
we are extremely strapped financially but the moment i get my hands on some discretionary funds i plan to get a naacp membership and subscribe to some more real news sources. we will also continue to make our pathetic little donations to those institutions and democrats we deem to truly be ‘better.’
probably the biggest thing i’m working on is my commitment to make this as much as possible a buy-nothing-new year.
i am so outraged by this country’s fascist movement towards rule by corporations that wherever i can, i will try to simply bypass the oligarchs. we have purposefully lived simply for our whole adult lives, reducing, reusing, recycling.
it feels like time to step that up several notches, now; we have been buying secondhand, look for ways to barter time and resources, we are growing more of our own food and now fibre; we heat with the sadly plentiful dead ash trees on this farm. (solar is our dream but out of reach at the moment.)
as much as we can, we make sure that our limited funds do not support the causes of those working at cross-purposes with our values. if we have to buy something new, we look for local small-scale merchants. i’d like to see this become a movement; can you imagine how the powers that be would shake in their boots if we quit staying at their hotels and buying their crap?
i realize that this is a very individual thing and that we are fortunately placed to be able to do what we are, nurturing very marginal land into sustainable productivity….but all of us can choose to spend our money and use our resources to at least do as little harm as possible.
the thing i haven’t been able to do is find good ways of connecting with like-minded people. the only friends we’ve made outside of family here (who are mostly republicans) were probably drumpf supporters although they wouldn’t quite ‘fess up to that. we need community! just haven’t found it, yet.
viktor e frankl, survivor of the nazi death camps, seems like an appropriate person to quote in conclusion:
Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.
what are you doing in your vital, free, yet perhaps small and squeezed space? how are you keeping yourself sane in the midst of insanity and gaslighting? please jump in!
