I often reflect, before sending something out to my subscribers, is this helpful or thought provoking, or at least offers a It’s not just me who thinks/feels this way, benefit? Or is it something better kept in a journal?
While it’s a valuable question it can easily turn into overthinking, result in to too much self-consciousness and/or lead to self-censoring. There’s also the part of me still attached to outcome who doesn’t want to disappoint and that easily becomes paralyzing.
Expression itself has value, sure, but I don’t want to waste anyone’s time.
Fine lines.
I come across a lot that feels redundant and even irrelevant lately. Of course what feels irrelevant to me, isn’t, to someone else. Vice-versa.
Here’s a glaring example: Last Wednesday, I sat in a room of strangers. Ten of us, including myself. This was in a nearby library that holds a weekly discussion group on current events and government. I thought I’d go check it out.
It took about seven seconds to realize they were a primarily left-leaning bunch, (given the articles disseminated) which is to be expected in my neck of the woods and nearly guaranteed in university towns. A room I would have folded into as effortlessly as chocolate chips in batter, 15-20 years ago.
They discussed Trump’s indictment, utilizing articles tracking this, that had been emailed in advance, (I got the printed ones) and whether this would finally lead to his demise. As a non-consumer of what many still call news, I was caught fully under-aware of the magnitude of the threat this man, apparently, continues to occupy over our country, our very democracy, indeed, our very freedom. (Not to mention our minds.)
It took me a little catching up. While I quietly listened, and focused on my best poker face, I also had time to catch my own initial assessments of the group, flow through my mind, in a series of adjectives: idiotic, suffocating, dead-energy, hollow, stupid, (don’t forget the poker face) embarrassing, small… you get the idea.
I’d like to say I had kinder impressions fill my mind, but that would not be true. I physically felt like I’d been placed in a small space and wanted to push everything way OUT in a BIG way.
If this group is aware that most of what Trump has been accused of, has been proven false, it was not included in their discussion. If all the previous Trump lies they ingested were sitting uncomfortably in their guts, they didn’t say so. There was no verbal questioning on the source of the news they gathered - was it biased, reliable? None of that. (One from the still apparently credible NYT’s.)
Sadly, I felt they were a bit like children chasing new ‘clues’ (called articles) in a game called GET TRUMP which they followed, hopeful still that it would result in him being stopped which would mean of course, a win. Or something.
If GET TRUMP is mainly a distraction, well, brilliant. His pull, in this group, is blackhole level. I don’t even follow the normie news, and I’m bored with Trump. They are not.
I’ve under-estimated the continuing pull the manufactured reality-generators have on others. I’ve been in my own world. It was good to get out and gauge the gap.
I often write about the (at least) two realities going on. It’s a long time since I sat in a room with that many people firmly lodged in an alternative reality, let alone with the sole intention of discussing current events. There were no easy detours to scurry down - like Oh did you see that movie? or Have you been to that restaurant? that my friends and I resort to when those realities butt-heads.
And I was the newbie in this normie gathering. I entered their world. I wasn’t there to judge (did some of that) I wasn’t there to disrupt (did some of that) and I wasn’t there to put more distance between us (hope I did not do that). I was there to make connections in a local community. To find inroads and bridges, build on common ground.
After updates on GET TRUMP someone wanted to discuss a new study on loneliness and a bill Senator Chris Murphy was introducing to create a new Office of Social Connection in the Whitehouse, as a way of addressing it. While the loneliness piece is something in need of addressing, the bill sounded like more of the same to me: another layer of bureaucracy; more money to get lost or laundered.
After a brief discussion on the role cell phones have played in isolating people, most agreed this bill was a good idea since loneliness is on the rise for pretty much all ages. A compassionate thing to do, and a sign of Murphy’s good intentions. At this point I spoke up and said something about it perhaps being the least effective way to address loneliness that I could imagine. Create a new office in DC to address loneliness in Connecticut? Don’t we already delegate way too much to the federal government? And isn’t it obvious to all that nothing in DC is actually working anymore?
Mostly silence. Though one man in the group, I noticed nodding in agreement. A potential ally.
Sure enough this man (let’s call him Frank) said something - when the conversation made its inevitable way back to Trump - that suggested he was not so tightly bound to the right/left stranglehold we call our political system. He said something along the lines of “What did Trump do, exactly, that was so horrible?”
After a pause, and a couple lame responses (IMO) later from the choir, Frank shifted gears and mentioned Sinead O’Connors death, and the ‘parade’ of people dying lately.
I thought - could it be? Could this be an opening for the elephant-in-the-room taboo subject of jabs causing illness and deaths planet-wide? An opening to speak about that which shall not be named?
A flash of hope ran through me.
I was nodding along with Frank, noticing the deep worry in his eyes. But just as quickly as that hopefulness flashed, it was just as quickly snuffed out. By Frank himself, no less.
Paraphrasing, Frank said he was concerned and wanted to know why so many people were dying, many far too young. We should know. And then he added that it was really too bad that some people on some platforms were suggesting some pretty awful answers.” (Uh-oh) He finished with: “Why can’t they be the ones to die?”
Ouch.
And then the only other woman in the room, contributed the only thing she would say all meeting, adding quietly, “Yes, why can’t they just die?”
Double-ouch.
(Note to self: too soon to bring up Ed Dowd’s latest numbers.)
Knowingly or not, intentionally or not (I don’t think it was intentional) the message came through. Were I (or anyone) to dare speak up on that subject, and suggest the jab is responsible, well: We’d prefer you dead.
Just minutes earlier they agreed on the importance of compassion in government. (Clearly that comes with exceptions.)
To be fair I don’t know if everyone in the group felt that way. No one spoke up. Myself included; I think I was absorbing the shock of it. For all I know they think I feel the same way as Frank. For all I know, they don’t feel the same way as Frank. But what was perfectly clear was that Frank (and the other woman) were comfortable saying something so egregious in this group.
About 45 minutes into our hour discussion, a younger man, (30’s) very overweight entered the room wearing a mask and sat on a chair - not at the table - against the wall. His labored breathing made a case for removing the mask, of course, but the obvious has no place in our world.
The moderator (mid-seventies) introduced the late-comer as someone he met at cardiology therapy. (Increasingly common theme, but we won’t go there; not with GET TRUMP still being played.)
The latecomer was interruptive, to me, obnoxious even. Arriving three-quarters way into the one hour meeting, he seemed to want to make what was left of the time about him. He soon mentioned that he ran a blog. Trump was a favorite subject and he noted he had articles taken off his blog because he offended some Trump supporters. He was clearly proud of this.
I took this as opportunity to bring up censorship more generally and the revelations from the Twitter files, and the current case against the Biden administration. No one argued a position (how could they?) that the government should be shutting down political opinions they don’t like, but they also didn’t voice their agreement that censorship is wrong.
I asked the group if this was a political issue? Shouldn’t all citizens in a democracy be concerned about censorship?
Someone piped in with an example of DeSantis criticizing Disney. It wasn’t on point, of course, but he was trying to defend his “side” I guess, and inadvertently modeling the point I was trying to make: censorship shouldn’t be about sides.
Literally no one else verbalized that the government should not be censoring or collaborating with social media to elevate some voices and silence others.
Deflating.
On my drive home I thought well, this isn’t gonna work. But then I challenged myself to reconsider. If I want them to make room for me, and views that will not always be welcome, then shouldn’t I extend the same? How does the gap get smaller if we can’t even stay in the same room and listen to each other?
The ‘death-wish’ comment for those who advocate (reasonably) jabs as cause for the alarming increase in actual deaths, I considered - while outrageous and indefensible - exaggerated statements fueled by fear. The jabbed are confronting their own mortality when this link is made. Their reaction is visceral and irrational because they fear it’s true.
I can have compassion for that. Even if it still pisses me off.
The people who sat around that table, could easily have been me, had I not veered off the normie track and started questioning. I too, was once an insufferable NYT’s reading libtard who thought she knew. When you’re ‘in’ it, you can’t see it. More to the point, what might I be ‘in’ now that I can’t see? I don’t want to become insufferable in another way.
Yes, they - the normies - are victims (in one context) and they are also the upholders of the lies; the perpetuators of the narrative; the willing pawns of the agenda-makers who are being sacrificed in real-time. It still makes me both sad and angry.
Also true, they are good people, on balance, whose minds have been captured. Prisoners of war, really. They are trying to make sense of things, using the barely standing paradigms of this dying world to do it.
The longer they hold on, the wider the gap grows, the greater the leap, and the fewer who will make that leap to land safely. That wears on a person; the simple human desire to help and not being able to. It’s tiring.
I reminded myself that I went to the group looking for ways to find common ground with others in my community. A very human thing. And they’ve done the same. (I assume.) We already share that in common.
I don’t know how things progress. Someone in the group may google my name, find this stack, and decide I don’t belong there. Maybe I don’t.
But I’ll go back. Ruffle some feathers no doubt, just being me, but I won’t aim to do that. I’ll still look for common ground and gentler ways in to expand the discussion. I don’t want to self-censor, but I also don’t want to alienate potential connections.
Fine lines. Maybe it’s a fool’s errand, I’ll find out.
It also occurred to me that most of what we communicate is non verbal. As I’ve written about before, we each put out our own unique frequency signal, and consciously or not, we read each others. They are the ‘content’ of our being, energetically speaking.
This is where information-exchange primarily happens. And since that’s happening without words - just being in each other’s fields will have effects. Sometimes saying less is accomplishing more.
I wonder if “Frank’s” comments were in fact the result of an unconscious read on my field, and so an unconscious, preemptive response on his part? He laid down a boundary. (Earlier he’d mentioned he was an artist, so it makes sense to me he would be sensitive to those invisible currents we swim in.)
Good to remember.
Maybe just showing up will be enough for me to shift some of them into questioning, and enough for them to shift me into more compassion.
One can hope.
Thanks for reading. 😊
Buy me a cuppa. https://ko-fi.com/kathleen87247
Respectfully, because I care very much about you, suggest that you do not ever speak to those people again. I study democide, group dynamics and mass hysteria. If they find out that you are unjabbed your life is in danger during the next crisis or state of emergency. They will turn you in or turn on you without a second thought. They do not belive the unjabbed are human.
Go to a farmers market, church, range, off-road club, caravan club, darts, bar, anywhere but there.
I know I'm being redundant but let me once again profess my undying love for you, Kathleen.
Living as I do in the knee-jerk liberal capital of the world, second only to Oakland-Berkeley, I've calculated how long I can stay (and how much I can drink) in any social gathering without getting into trouble. About a half-hour and a half-glass of wine.
I admire your stamina and your intellectual honesty in saying "This was me." It certainly was me too. I got in trouble other ways--asking if it was morally right to get donations for our kids to go to gymnastic competitions when the same money could mean a third world child's survival. I blame that on the two glasses of wine I'd had with dinner.
It's too much work keeping myself muzzled in public. I've come to be grateful for the vaxx passes because it gives me a reason to drop out of all the social obligations I used to put on myself. I go to dance and I go visit daughters. When I'm here in Cumberland, I take myself out to dinner and have 'chance' conversations about A Course in Miracles or I meet Sherri Tenpenny's colleague, purely because I stopped to compliment his wife's dress but she beat me to the punch in complimenting mine!
What I'm reminding myself to do is enjoy the process. Whether it's responding to comments, making new video/ episodes, working on this old house, or finishing up a jigsaw puzzle before I leave here. There are no 'shoulds'. It will work out. If you're not enjoying it, don't make it a burden. In a way, I think we're biding our time while the mystery works its magic. You are, without question, doing your part to bring that about. Don't put yourself in the path of those flailing out, who don't yet know what they're fighting.
But I'm glad you did so I could get this experience without having to go through it. These are good people. There will come a time when they might remember what you said, even if it seemed to fall on deaf ears. I've had people (including my daughters' friends) come back decades later and say, you were right about this and I couldn't see it. And even if they don't, it's somewhere in the back of their heads that there was a perfectly reasonable, friendly articulate woman who said something about this. It all makes a difference.