The listening post during war was an intelligence gathering station focused on monitoring transmissions. That’s what I’ve been doing for the last month – gathering information. I’ve been reading heavily, eating up news sources left and right, reading in-depth articles. I’ve reached the conclusion that we’re truly screwed as a species. That seems facile. Perhaps I could massage it a bit – we’re in challenging times. Spin it up another notch – it’s a great time for creative thinking.
I’ve circled back to a novel idea that I had a couple of years ago and am now putting my nose to the grindstone and churning out words. The sense of urgency is heightened by the upcoming election. This election is probably the most important election of this American’s lifetime. Not just about who wins or loses, but about the very legitimacy of voting in our American democracy.
The voter suppression tactics, some long in the making (gerrymandering), some that have shown up in the last few years (availability of polling stations), and the more recent, blatant sabotaging of the postal service may break our system. And yes, white people, we’re a little late to this game. People of color have been dealing with voter suppression tactics since 1866.
Anyway, these times right now might be later viewed as the good times. Who knows where we’ll be in a year? Writing must happen now.
I just finished reading Margaret Walker’s Jubilee. It is shocking that this book, written in 1966, did not receive more attention and accolades. The author is a black woman who heavily researched and wrote a semi-fictional historical novel based loosely on her grandmother’s stories. The book, which covers roughly the same period and location as Gone with the Wind, is written from a slave’s perspective. It makes me angry that this masterpiece never once showed up on the recommended reading lists in college or in any other predominantly white literary space.
Like a lot of white liberals right now, I’m knee-deep in books about racism. Many were already on my shelves, because my trek towards deliberate expansive reading began a few years ago. I began reading more works in translation, more works by people who had different lived experiences.
As a white woman, it’s hard not to be depressed by the Karen and Becky tropes. Or the 53% who voted for the load in the White House. Or the ones who are now throwing temper tantrums in stores about masks. I never knew entitlement had created so many whackadoodles. And of course, the Whackadoodle-in-Chief talking about those mythical suburban housewives, of which I could be considered one.
I call him a whackadoodle, but that makes him sound less dangerous than he is. Mostly because I think it’s the enablers that bear my wrath. He’s just an organ grinder monkey. Set up to perform, to distract, to entertain the slack-jawed masses while our rights are being impinged upon, our votes suppressed, our pockets picked clean.
So here we are, in the middle of a global pandemic, with a jackwagon at the helm. I am angry nearly all the time. But it’s an anger that has become tempered, redirected, and incisive. This might be useful. Or it could just be more negative energy out in the world, I don’t know. I often say that emotion without action is just so much noise. Perhaps I’ve written less publicly because it is already so noisy out there.
Despite, or because of, this constant seething state, I’ve become wildly productive. The paralysis in the early months of the pandemic has worn off a bit. Perhaps I got bored with being in that lethargic state. Maybe I’ve got live free or die zipping about in my head. The people who use that mantra, usually gun-waving anti-maskers (sorry New Hampshire), would be surprised how easily that phrase can be adapted to an entirely different ethos.
My adaptation is that I don’t want to live in a prison of my own anxiety or fear. I’m going to be louder, more political, intolerant of views that compromise the health, dignity, or rights of my fellow humans. For people who prattle on about divisiveness, it’s an easy muzzle for those of us who have often valued civility over justice, manners over standing up for others. I’ve always been relatively quiet and introspective, but the alchemy of anger and age is creating an element of fearlessness. It’s go time.
It’s go time for all my creative urges as well. In addition to taking 5 million pictures of annoyed birds, I’m practicing/working on The Green Study Podcast. It’s not going well. I’d hoped to give it a try for September, but when I listened to the first episode, I realized how incredibly boring I sound. How’s that for self-promotion? Anyway, it’s still in the works and at some point in the future, you’ll be able to briefly listen to and then abruptly mute, the dulcet sounds of my musings. I might rename it The Sleepening.
How are you doing? That’s such a loaded question, isn’t it? What’s your mantra? What are your days like? What gets you through the day?
I’m still reading Donna Cameron’s book 
There is life beyond the power-grab-swap-meets every few years. All politics aside, we still have to look ourselves in the mirror and ask “Am I a decent human being?” After tuning into social media and seeing the mindless droning of insults and labels, I realized very quickly that I need to check myself, away from the din of politics. I know that I have a moral center and personal integrity, but it’s become so fuzzy of late. What do I stand for? What am I willing to fight for, believe in, support? Notably this is not a “who” question, because principles and values are not fungible depending on who is in charge.
The joy of this is that I’m trying some things I haven’t tried. I was inspired after reading 
Politics have, over the last year, infected practically every venue of discourse. I’ve engaged in local activism over the last couple of years and I’ll vote next Tuesday. The next couple of years are going to be worse. It’s going to require more work, more attention to the details of government and more effort to stop human and civil rights abuses. It will require the ability to research news stories and suss out the truth. It will require more tests of character and personal integrity. There are no laurels, regardless of the midterm outcomes, to rest on.
Still, the first surprise to me was how many people I knew at that breakfast. Despite my antisocial inclinations, I’m also a huge believer in community and civic duty, so I knew a lot of people from various volunteer gigs I’d done over the last twenty years. In these contexts, many people assume I’m a person of faith. It’s only in the last few years I’ve been more upfront about being a nonbeliever of religious dogma. People are sometimes taken aback, but part of me hopes that it broadens their perspective. Religion does not confer inherent goodness and eschewing religion doesn’t mean that one is without a moral compass.
Perhaps it was a reminder to someone like me who is constantly in critical thinking mode. I can easily suss out problems with the intent of finding solutions. But it’s important to teach the brain to see the good as well, to acknowledge that we humans are capable of great love and kindness and that we need to pay attention more to those who model decency, rather than to those who don’t, regardless of political or religious beliefs.
The president is taking a third of the population down this road – a road that has a future of unmitigated violence against those who do not embrace this single-celled version of our country. Of the remaining two-thirds, we see complicit behaviors out of either fear or a slobbering thirst for power through association (hello Congress). We hear the people whose mouths protest but whose actions belie something else entirely (Senators Sasse, Collins, Flake, et. al.).
While people protest that this period in history is not like 1930s Germany, they’ve ignored the fact that at some point, there will be a recession, a terrorist attack, a natural disaster that will be the tipping point. This president and his lackey mouthpieces (FOX included) have set the stage for blame and viciousness and violence. They have set the pot to simmering, so that with a little more heat, it will boil over.
I am so often baffled by the need to see the world this way. I would find an unchanging world of similar people to be claustrophobic and uninteresting. I am grateful to live in a country that has such a wide range of beliefs, religions, languages, and cultures. This is the country that I feel patriotism for – the country that shines BECAUSE it holds such variety, not IN SPITE OF it.
What these nationalists, these self-declared cultists want is sameness, predictability, the bland whiteness of a culture built on stealing that of others. They want the social rules that governed their grandparents to govern their grandchildren. They want pink and blue. The devout and the godless. The easily labeled and easily condemned. They want people to look at them with reverence because they just happened to be born pasty white in a country that reveres pasty whiteness.
But I’m like a lot of Americans. I served my country, voted regularly, paid taxes, volunteered in my community, raised my progeny to be a kind, respectable citizen. When my luck has fallen, I’ve come up with a different plan. I was raised with the idea that life is inherently unfair, but that I must do my personal best, work hard, constantly learn, and to not waste time blaming others – that blame is not an actual solution.
After the corrosive Supreme Court process, some people are crowing and bragging. Others are blaming and giving out unsolicited advice. Mostly, it’s just more noise. A good portion of it is online, but to paraphrase Soylent Green, it’s people. Trolls are people. Politicians are people. Republicans and Democrats, racists and snowflakes are people. They all were born and they will all die and they each get to decide what kind of person they want to be in between those milestones.
Last night, I vetted audience questions for a school board candidate debate. It meant screening out snark and partisan comments, rewriting questions to have broader application, etc. It was a polite process, even when there were tough questions on the table about an upcoming levy referendum, the achievement gap, and other education-related questions. No one shouted. People didn’t storm out.
cruelty for strength. I don’t confuse “telling it like it is” with truth or decency. I am not led astray by those who would condemn entire swathes of people to being evil, especially by those who say they are Christians or patriots or freedom-lovers. Liars. Your behavior betrays you. Your self-identification is an empty vessel. Your representation is false.
Fierce civility. It’s not acquiescence. It’s not complicity. It’s not silence. It’s the ability to understand that violence and unethical behavior has a temporary quality, but a permanent stain. It’s courage to be decent humans in the face of blatant rage and fear. It is our character under fire that defines us. Those fires are going to get hotter. Practice civility and courage now and often. We will be tested as individuals and a nation. It’s a test I want to pass.
rless Fridays are about lives lived in spite of our fears, living a life that is about curiosity, compassion, and courage. If you just got published, something wonderful happened to you, you witnessed an act of kindness or bravery, or you have someone in your life who amazes you, drop your story into my contact page or email it to TheGreenStudy (at) comcast (dot) net and I’ll run it on a Fearless Friday. If you’re a blogger, it’s an opportunity to advertise your blog, but this is open to anyone who would like to share. These will be 100-300 word stories, subject to editing for clarity and space.
do you maintain that in the face of everything happening now? She’s been working for decades on these issues. And there I was, feeling all depressed and grumpy about the whole two years I’d been actively engaged in local politics and voting rights. What a dilettante! I realized that I’d been seeing too many of the schmucks in the news and not paying attention to the leaders and fighters among us right now.
The Green Study 