I don't know if I have anything meaningful I can contribute to this thread but I feel compelled to share my thoughts. I do not want it go darker - I cry out in fear and pain because I want life to get better - for all of us. When I was a little girl I survived serious trauma and abuse - when I look at photos of myself then and see my cute little face and innocent eyes I don't understand why my parents wanted to hurt me so much. I too have been suicidal, I too have struggled to move forward. Throughout my life I loved history and read voraciously - for most of my life (I was born in the late 80's) I believed that I lived in a world where the evils of the past were over and a society that was fundamentally fair - I really believed this. I was shaken out of that in 2014 when Putin invaded Ukraine. I was shaken even worse in 2016 when Trump won the election. I do what Laura does, put one foot in front of the other and just try to keep going. The last few years have been tough, my husband has lost friends because of Trump, I have lost my hope in people.
I want to believe that the darkness will teach us a lesson - because it certainly has taught me. But experience tells me otherwise. My Russian family continues to worship the ground Putin walks on and believe conspiracy theories against the west (like the one that claims that flight MH17 was full of mannequins instead of actual people and was downed in an attempt to make Russia look bad), no amount of evidence will shake their faith. I have relatives in America who are Trump supporters, and the same rule applies - there is nothing that convinces them to change their minds. In both instances there is a concerted effort to ignore uncomfortable things, like the plight of the children in the camps or the plight of LGBTQ people in Chechnya and Russia - it's always the same - ignore the problem and if forced to confront it find some justification for why the evil being committed isn't so bad (they shouldn't have come to the United States in the first place etc.....).
I watched a documentary a little while ago about an American soldier of Jewish German descent who went around Germany right after the end of the war and talked to people he had known and strangers about their ideologies and whether they regretted anything. It was horrible - everyone he spoke to, from the kindergarten teacher, to a random young woman were Nazis - convinced of the ideology and lacking any empathy for their victims. His verdict was that that generation of Germans would never change, change would only come in future generations.
I recently finished reading the Pendulum by Julie Lindahl - it's a book about how she discovered that her grandparents were prominent Nazis and war criminals. She described the kindness her grandmother showed her throughout her life and then when at the age of 100 she was confronted with the truth of her past she denied it (she always maintained the holocaust was a fiction) and then justified it - no where ever was there an ounce of remorse. This is humanity - the virulent Trump supporters will still be here 10, 20, 30 years from now. Just as the confederates were still alive and passing down their hate in the 1890's.
We failed to learn from the last great war - why? We are repeating for what ungodly reason - because enough of us failed to learn. How can we be sure that we will learn this time? Many of us will, I certainly have, but not everyone.
I see the marches, the movements, the protests and it gives me hope. The pain people feel and how they act on it to try to create a better world. I cheer them on, I want so much to believe that we can be better, we can create a better world. And I personally think that we will create a better world, one inch at a time we will, but not everyone will follow. And those that don't will always threaten to drag us back to an age of brutality, a lust for violence and an emptiness of the soul, these people aren't going anywhere.
Is there a meaning in all this? I want so much to believe so. But then what was the meaning of the last world war? Did we learn anything? All I can do is be kind and give love freely, knowing that it is an unlimited resource and not something to be hoarded.
I'm so so sorry for how depressing this post is. I don't want to upset anyone, it's just what goes through my head when I think of it all.
Natalie - my current view of humanity right now is very dark. I think we're just a bunch of murderous chimpanzees with opposable thumbs. That altruism is the exception, not the rule, and that in this time cruelty is a feature, not a bug. Some of us are evolving, but the majority are not. And so the wheel spins...
Here's the thing.....and maybe it is a nod to us all.
It seems incredibly dark to us, because we are enlightened and "in the light". For the less evolved, this darkness isn't nearly as dark.
While we are screaming and wanting the darkness to stop, it hasn't gotten DARK ENOUGH yet for the balance of the collective to be ready for enlightenment.
The price we pay for being kind, compassionate, spiritual people.....kinda makes you want God to go back to the days of smiting people....doesn't it? The turds don't deserve better. Yet, we suffer and endure so they can learn......reminds me of parenting....and we don't even get a Mother's/Father's Day form of acknowledgement <or breakfast in bed>....
Clearly something is wrong in the universe when the enlightened folks don't get breakfast in bed! I think we should direct positive energy in that direction....<God, I hope someone smiles at my silliness>
My husband regularly gives me breakfast in bed on Sundays. I never ask for it but he loves doing it. So I guess I'm spoiled.
I can't believe you are all making me laugh with this subject.
Natalie you are not depressing me. You are showing that you are struggling, and also brilliant in your thinking. When someone is telling the deep truth, it doesn't drag down.
Your outlook and Laura's current description of humans reminds me of John Steinbeck's letter on New Year's Day 1941. Lifted from Maria Popova's Brain Pickings blog:
Steinbeck (author of Grapes of Wrath and other masterpieces) championed the poor and the disenfranchised. He loved the little guy. He'd lived through WWI, and so on New Year's Day 1941 after the Nazi's had successfully swept through Europe, he lamented:
Speaking of the happy new year, I wonder if any year ever had less chance of being happy. It’s as though the whole race were indulging in a kind of species introversion — as though we looked inward on our neuroses. And the thing we see isn’t very pretty… So we go into this happy new year, knowing that our species has learned nothing, can, as a race, learn nothing — that the experience of ten thousand years has made no impression on the instincts of the million years that preceded.
But he also points out that not only will the good will return again, but that we need the dark in order to have the light and in order to be human:
Not that I have lost any hope. All the goodness and the heroisms will rise up again, then be cut down again and rise up. It isn’t that the evil thing wins — it never will — but that it doesn’t die. I don’t know why we should expect it to. It seems fairly obvious that two sides of a mirror are required before one has a mirror, that two forces are necessary in man before he is man. I asked [the influential microbiologist] Paul de Kruif once if he would like to cure all disease and he said yes. Then I suggested that the man he loved and wanted to cure was a product of all his filth and disease and meanness, his hunger and cruelty. Cure those and you would have not man but an entirely new species you wouldn’t recognize and probably wouldn’t like.
FINALLY, I agree with you that just as there will always be Nazis, there will always be avowed Trumpers. But a time will come when they are not running the government. When they will be reduced to a fringe where they belong. Remember the Germans were known for their efficiency and technological achievements. They were pretty intimidating in the same way that the Thuglicans and dark money oligarchs are intimidating in their power.
But the Germans lost and they lost big. Humans will not be caged and controlled for long. We are animals, natural beings, and being forces of nature, we need to be free. Just watch us over time. We will overthrow these thugs.
I had never heard of John Steinbeck or his books, but two weekends ago we were up in Maine with my in laws when I was looking at an old bookshelf and found a hardcover copy of his complete works. I took it out and started reading the grapes of wrath. My mother in law was impressed and told me take the book home with me, it originally belonged to my husbands grandmother.
"Grapes Of Wraith" is on TCM tonight 7 central time. I always disliked that movie about Okies going to California. I don't like being called an Okie because of that movie. My family didn't go.
The movie is not even a close approximation of the book but it is long. Cannery Row and Mice and Men are also wonderful but all of his books are masterpieces. He wrote about the poor and the disenfranchised and saw their dignity. In his books are the key to the basic goodness of humanity.
Every day, I struggle to put into words how I am feeling. I believe I am an empath, and as one, the chaos I feel is so great that I sometimes think my head and/or soul will break apart. Yet, the words I need to express how I feel, how most of us feel, have not been invented yet.
When he was elected, I cried so hard that my nose started to bleed onto my carpet in my apartment. I fell to the ground. I collapsed in grief, as many people jumped up and down in joy. My aunt, who I overcame the fear of flying to visit, said I had no intelligence because I didn't vote for him. This was and is devastating. Her husband, knowing my issues with gender dysphoria, said Michele Obama is really a man, and it's no big deal that Mrs. Trump posed nude.
I can no longer do the mental gymnastics I need to do to have them in my life.
I can't risk seeing family who support him in anyway. I can't put myself through it. It's not simply a matter of not agreeing with a specific policy; it's trying to maintain some mental health for myself.
Even now, 2.5 years later, the only way I can keep some semblance of peace is to be in denial. I have to avoid all news, which, admittedly, I fail at. I have to avoid any family members or friends who support him. If I am friends with anyone on Facebook that support him, I have to unfollow so I don't see it. I try to get my news heavily digested, usually through psychics and others of the more spiritual nature.
I was thinking how much of a coward I am. We often think about how we'd act in Nazi Germany, and I would like to think I'd be out fighting Nazis, protecting those they sought. But I'm a fraud; I'd be in my little apartment, hiding to protect myself.
I'm sure there were people in Nazi Germany who would say I had Hitler Derangement Syndrome, or I'm just a snowflake with a bleeding heart. How can one feel so much chaos and pain from a man who still has 40% of American support? Then, it makes me question my sanity; if 40% of people think he is great, or least, better than a Democrat, then maybe I'm the one who is crazy.
There is a tiny part of me, the part of me who is terrified, who wishes I had some sort of Stockholm Syndrome, where I identify with him so I can at least feel at peace, regardless of what he does and how much damage he inflicts. Once again, I'm a coward.
I have the privilege of being white and American-born; I have the privilege of sitting in my little apartment, watching TV and reading. And that makes me feel so fraudulent, so pathetic.
Even these words I write don't seem adequate. I am safe in my little space while children are being separated by their families, while those who seek safety are being traumatized, probably worse than they were in their homeland.
I know that Jesus says to forgive. But I don't think I can. I don't think I can forgive those who still support him. I cannot forgive those in Congress who are bending over for him...I really don't blame him, as you don't blame a rat for being a rat. But our Founders, the deeply-flawed but visionary men who created this country, gave us a process for this. We have a process for removing him. We have it. It's spelling out in black and white. It's THERE! But it's not being done. It's being ignore. We are being gaslit; Up is Down; East is West.
I also want to add--the few guys who gave me the most trouble in high school are huge Trump supporters...and it feels like it's a re-traumatization for me. I know that's how those who were actually raped/assaulted by him feel as well. Whether they harassed me due to my appearance, acne, or weight, I feel like my bully is now the President...but I'm just a snowflake, what do I know.
I'm sorry for my rambling.
regarding the dark, regarding the upheaval, radical changes etc. I honestly believe we don't have a choice in the matter. These are the influences under which we live. There is good and there is evil within the hearts of all men (and women). It is our journey or dialectic that tilts that wheel back and forth.
I think to look at the wholeness of it, just is so intimidating, overwhelming. How can anyone look to rectify all the wrongs, untie all the knots, put things right?
I used to think that we needed some big revolution but I was young and impatient then. I see now that instability can cause larger more irreparable problems. There are always vultures waiting for a weakness and we have to admit, Trump, by violating so many norms, he also made some radical changes that has made us all feel very disoriented and afraid, as if our society and government is going to crumble-- those big changes to us seem very monumental and we all crave normalcy and stability. So I have come around to incremental changes improving with each cycle. If you can look at families, I think that is a small unit (of society) that is a good example of how each generation improves a bit more than the previous.
So my idea is that as individuals, we may not all be able to do great big things. Many of us don't believe we could run for dogcatcher and win... so Congressman and President are well out of our ken. We are not necessarily titans of business that can model some great breakthrough in compassionate capitalism. However, there is always something we can do to improve and tilt the balance whether it is just to smile and be kind to others day to day, meditate on love and peace, pray, sing, show love to others, give what we can to those in need, vote for important things, give of ourselves (our time), even if we don't have time, we see people in our lives at work or in our neighborhood and can be inspired to help (being the helper, the ally, the mentor, the friend). I think that all counts.