Lessons from a shouting match
MAGA and WOKE in the ring together
Weeks ago I meant to distill a impassioned Substack dialogue/shouting-across-the-chasm conversation. Better late than never. My worthy opponent, Erin “started it” by calling me “woke” on my Going Local Journal 4 post. And I essentially responded… bring it on.
It’s taken this long to wrap my arms completely around it.
The volleying raked my sensibilities over the coals. I felt raw inside. And riled. I shouted back, but without the ad-hominem snark that in her circles is normal - welcome even.
She told me: “Among us Unwoke (a motley crew of conservatives, staunch right-wingers, and escapees from the woke left), a free-for-all type of discussion is commonplace. It means one sometimes encounters unpleasant points of view, but I firmly believe that bad speech is best countered by free speech. It’s also amazingly enlightening, when people speak from their being, warts and all, rather than walk on eggshells.”
After a number of volleys in which none of my points, nor my style, made a dent in her disdain for my point of view, I wrote this set of insights on Faceplant.
Eureka! I've been in a friendly spar with a reader on my Substack who took a jab at my "woke"ness. It's been fascinating. It's worth a whole essay, but today I want to share a small insight.
Erin and I clearly live on different media planets and speak such thick dialects that it's a strain to understand one another. We have not thrown links at one another, but today, to show her how "we" creatures speak and the historians who inform us, I sent links to this morning's Heather Cox Richardson and to John Lithgow reading Timothy Snyders post On Tyranny.
As I did it, I remembered a friend who'd been a progressive and then "did his research" (listened to bloggers/podcasters with a different slant) and became to like Matt Taibbi, RFK and Tulsi. In our similar sparring, he once sent me a link to Tucker Carlson, sincerely trying to show me what I was not seeing. Tucker sounds like a snide gotcha prep school boy who knows his father is richer than yours. I find his tone and his skewing of "facts" so obnoxious I could not finish it, and was humbled by how far apart my friend and I were.
I'll bet Erin is repelled by something in the tone and language of my two historian references, and has a "what-about" response to every line.
That we are trying to understand one another's dialect is a victory in itself.
But then I remembered that my friend had been a passionate progressive, but, as he learned new "facts" saw the dark underbelly of the liberal consensus... the globalist neoliberal agenda.
It's like learning the "truth" about your loving family, or your spiritual teacher - the lying, sexing and cheating - and being shocked out of childhood. You then hunt for facts that confirm this revelation, and re-see as fake your whole experience with those you revered. Rogan was a progressive, but then,,, the pandemic.
Perhaps some cling to right wing narratives because they underscore the betrayal felt in your family and you can never forgive your father or your spiritual teacher for taking your ideals and dreams and shredding them. Unforgivable! And that justifies the mud slinging, taunts, meanness that comes from decent people who speak MAGA.
Their views are ever tinged by the deep shame at having ever believed in the many Santa Clauses they believed in, and the deep embarrassment that they were conned. (Pause, now, to ask when this has happened in your life).
And perhaps I/we sound like we are reciting nursery rhymes and still believe in Santa and that Oswald operated alone and that the twin towers pancaked perfectly just because they did.
BTW, this could be said of *angry* progressives
Enough said. I'm going to cogitate on this, because Erin has given me an insight that helps me see deeper into the political chicken unto death that's sending our lives off a cliff.
I’ve cogitated. I needed a “time out”. I messaged her:
So I'm hitting pause on this volleying, with gratitude for the workout. As we used to do in Aikido, I bow to you, worthy opponent, and I tap out when I'm pinned, and bow again.
And she answered:
Been thinking...
That is the most gracious thing anybody has ever said to me. Wow.
BDSM and the Safe Word
People who engage in BDSM need a safe word. I’ve dabbled so I’ll put the rest in first person singular. I could engage fully right to the edge of tolerance because there was a safe word. In Aikido speak, I could “tap out.” If your partner continues to crank on your arm when you are pinned, the dance is over and the danger has begun.
The common term for it now is *Consent*. You need to be able to withdraw consent if you feel unsafe. If you can’t, the game is over and abuse has begun.
In boxing there’s a bell that breaks up the brawl. In most sports there’s a referee who can stop the action when the rules are broken.
In the current political climate, though, there is no safe word.
No bell (until the next election). No referee who calls foul and the action stops and penalties are enforced. Well, yes, the courts are working overtime to deal with the current administrations transgressive behavior, but it looks like the court can call foul and the action doesn’t stop.
(A personal aside: I was in a relationship where the safe word stopped working. The cognitive dissonance between what was promised and what was later done was too great for my tender mind and heart, and i froze rather than flee. Once frozen, it took a very long time to unfreeze, to call foul, to assert my sovereignty. From #MeToo I learned how many other women - including the famous, powerful and influential - froze in the face of the Patriarchy asserting itself through men they trusted. And felt alone in their fear. And didn’t call foul.)
I see many people who didn’t vote for Trump, who are now confronted by the Gatling Gun of Executive Orders executing cherished institutions and hard won laws, in the same freeze, fight, flee dither)
In the USA, the Constitution is the agreements we are bound to as a nation. It is our vows to one another.
The Declaration of Independence even says it:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed
Democracy is our safe word. That’s why we keep shouting it.
MAGA and Erin didn’t consent either
Listening to Erin, and then scanning the media she probably consumes, I can see that many on the right feel they didn’t consent to what people on the left, out of our values + righteousness, “imposed” on them. Yes, maybe it’s a revenge party. Yes, maybe it’s based in mis- and dis-information, but the feelings run hot and that’s the truth.
Can we agree that our country is on the wrong track?
Do we agree that there are people here who lie to attain or retain power? Do we agree that laws designed to protect our rights also violate the rights of others, depending on interpretation of the law? Do we agree that what we thought America was when we were 9, say, is not the America we see around us now? Can we have compassion (even tolerance) for the half the country that doesn’t agree with us, even if we think they are dead wrong. Can we acknowledge we are all embroiled in the trauma of America?
Erin and I did agree on something, and it changed the tenor of our exchange. We discovered that we’d both battled a terrible cancer, taken healing into our own hands and won. We even both discovered that we’d discovered a secret from the German centers for the intractably ill: immersing for at least 20 minutes in the hottest water you can stand.
I think we do agree that something, somewhere is off.
I asked Erin if she saw me differently after our long exchange. She said:
“Do you mean have I changed my first impression that you are woke? No. :-) You seem to live in a bubble that your side accuses us of living in. But throughout I have appreciated your open, self-disclosing, and non-invective-ridden style., and your willingness to listen Thank you for it all. May such exchanges spread.”
Where any of us can stand
How, then, shall we live together, over 3 million of us, with obscene wealth disparities, corporate capture of party politics, an almost majority “minority” population, and eroding “safe words.”
One value that Erin and I demonstrated, as best as we could, was curiosity and a (grudging) agreement that even if we don’t agree, we agree that we have a right to our opinions.
Later Erin wrote, and I agree…
Vicki, I have been following Derrick Jensen who's been writing about this destruction for at least 30 years. The Unabomber went criminally insane in the late 70s when they cut his favorite remote woods. They have ALL been doing it! When will the left stop the anti-Trump hysterics so we can all unite against this evil?
I spent a chunk of my weekend knee-deep in the brouhaha regarding autism. A substack helped me toward some understanding of an issue I did not know much about. So I would like to add, when will the left stop the anti-Kennedy hysterics so we can all be on the same page regarding another big evil of our world? I mean... this man is a lefty who wants to right ag, right food, right autism. But the pro-Pharma left is shrieking NAZI! In saner days, he would be praised for bipartisan collaboration...
…yet notice we share some of the same fears and outrage… but put blame on one another. It’s like a marriage gone bad. Even though the tit for tat long ago lost the original inciting incident, the trauma goes on, and the effort to resolve it has become a demand that the other person budge. They need to cry uncle. I need to win.
Something’s gotta give. Someone has to give. Give what? The blame game that hides the fact that we both, all, live in an unfair world that, IMHO, is politically going to sh*t - and that hurts. And then, without pardoning the insults before real regret and remorse arise, give up the need to blame the other.
This is some of the hardest work of coming of aging in a dying empire.
Saner Days?
As I hopscotch around the opinion game board - from indignation to shock to “how can they” to “is that really true” to “what if anything can I do?” -I find one square that I often overlook because none of this is at all funny, right? That’s humor. Irony. Absurdity. As my friend
points out, sanity lies with recognizing that it’s all WEIRD.When you are upset and someone laughs, it rubs salt in the wound, right? But somehow, we have to lighten up. We have to find the absurd in it all. In the corners we’ve painted ourselves into. I’ve found myself defending agencies that I vilified in the past for their waste, fraud and underhandedness. We have to stop being corralled into hate - especially when the uber rich have turned us against one another while they sashay off with all the loot.
Therefore, I’ve joined Trillionaires for Trump, defending the rights of the .001% to grift us all. Here I am as my alter-ego, Contessa Richas F’oque.
I’ll see you on the streets somewhere chanting, “Whose streets, our streets (and real estate and politicians, for that matter).
I’ve had a similar experience. Perhaps even with the same person, as the name is the same. But perhaps not. And she also brought up Derrick Jensen. One of the aspects of now that is so divisive, is t himself, and the idea that there are only two sides here. We’re acting like that, but the reality is far different. If we could get rid of the names and labels and talk about actual issues, actual actions being taken, perhaps we would tease out the actual nuances and actually agree on something. Erin, (yours, mine, or ours) is correct about a lot she says. But “her side” doesn’t seem to understand the idea of keeping what’s working and expand on it, while ditching what isn’t, while “our side” seems to have forgotten that big pharma, big ag, the revolving door between all the lettered agencies and corporate CEOs, actually exists and have actually had a very negative impact on the work of the agencies.
It was strange to me to see all the so-called “left” suddenly loving on USAID! And suddenly accepting everything big pharma (the chemical companies in truth) has to say about vaccinations (and other things too but especially vaccinations that have been - and should NOT have been, politicized). I mean really? When I was having my kids, I was aware that vaccinations were a mixed bag of good and not-so-good, and maybe even bad. So I read a lot and took my time getting my boys vaccinated, and those were the days when there were many fewer vaccinations than today. Today? My personal feeling is that the schedule, the lumping so many in one shot, overloading baby immune systems, is potentially criminal. Yes. I said criminal, and I mean that. BUT that does not make me anti-vax. It simply makes me a concerned mother who struggled to figure out what was best for my kids. I think, too, as time passes (assuming we have time to pass), we will tease out the actual truth/reality about the covid vaccinations, and likely we’ll find out it, too, is a mixed bag.
Just like it shocks me to see people who love Earth, who do not support more clear cutting, mining, water extraction for profit, or certainly selling off our national parks and other national lands, simply accept that the EPA, the FDA, the USFS, the USDA, etc. are ALL bad and ALL a waste of money and that it’s a good thing to defund them! Certainly they have not lived up to their purposes, and way too often I’ve asked, “with friends like them, who needs enemies”. Like trying to stop clearcutting of old growth, or prevent mining and clearing in the Arctic (how many times have we fought agains that, won, and then we’re back fighting it again?) Then fighting GMOs. And lab grown “meat”. These are things the so-called left should be up in arms about, but they aren’t. At least not any more.
Mentioning FEMA, NOAA, Social Security, the frayed and soon to be totally destroyed safety net, USPS, all get shrugs. Obviously if they’re being defunded there has to be a good reason, right? Either that or I’ll hear - that’s just fear mongering. They haven’t actually cut anything yet. Totally ignoring the fact that there isn’t any way to give billions of dollars to the billionaires without eviscerating the programs that all of us rely on at some point, to keep us safe, to be there when we retire (that we actually paid into which seems to be forgotten in the discussion), etc. And, as you know, even if someone doesn’t get Medicaid help, their hospitals and other medical offices/services DO depend on it and those doors will be closed. I still wonder what will happen to all the seniors who had to spend down their savings and assets in order to qualify for Medicaid for their nursing homes, that they (and their families) expected would take care of them for life. When I’ve asked that question, they just laugh. Like I’m so crazy to worry they’ll actually put these disabled, sick, dementia struck people in the streets. Well . . . what WILL happen to them? They don’t all have families, and those who do probably don’t have families who can handle their many needs, including 24/7 staff.
In my conversations with my Erin, I know without a doubt there are things we can and do agree on. And the only way we can reach those agreements is to drop the politics, drop the buzz words, drop the personalities, and instead focus on the actual issues, the actual reality on the ground. There are some of the “opposition” who are able to do this. There are plenty who can’t or won’t. But for those that can, if we can engage respectfully about values and vision and what we love, it may make a difference in the next election (the midterms) . . . if we make it that far.
The real tragedy of the commons is how power brokers have so cleverly inserted division via classification via simple and surface-level thinking via insults and name-calling among the commoners, while the elite strip the land, our culture, our laws, and norms to the barest of threads. The alternate facts, the retelling of history, the baseless arguing, the clickbait media, the embellished distortions, the outright lies, and the othering of everything alive are the propaganda playbook of the powerful. I don't have any Erins in my immediate circle, but I live in a MAGA county, and it is getting scary. The far-right sheriff has gathered a posse and refers to Democrats as "woke, brain-dead liberals." Last week, we stopped by a gun shop and purchased ammunition. Relatives and friends are a bit appalled. But my partner served as a US peacekeeper in the Bosnian War, where neighbors turned on neighbors because they didn't like their beliefs.