Don’t Miss the Meditation Bell of Crickets: When the Nerves of Life are Fully Sensitized, and the Song of Life is Played so Beautifully

Every year, the sound of crickets acts as a reminder. They’re almost like a meditation bell for me. They bring me here, to this moment. When I was teaching, and it was a late August evening, I’d go out on the deck of my rural home and just listen. I’d feel the summer ending⎼ the time of warm weather and flowers, the time of my youth when summer meant vacation; the time of my adult and teaching years when it meant relaxation and renewal⎼ this time was getting short. It was passing so quickly.

 

It can feel like we didn’t make the most of it, so we need to make the most of it now.  Maybe every day, every moment, we can have this sense. This moment is our only time, maybe our last time, to just relax⎼ to hear the song of crickets⎼ to hear the song of life played so clearly and beautifully. We don’t want to let distractions steal too much of the day from us.

 

So, maybe we can sit quietly with ourselves or our children, and listen not only to the crickets, but birds, and other voices. We can hear the earth breathing in the wind, the rain, and in the expanding and contracting of our lungs, or in the hum of cicadas or traffic.

 

Henry David Thoreau famously said: “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.…. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life…”

 

This was quoted by the main character, a teacher, in the movie The Dead Poets Society, which my high school English and drama students embraced one year. Questioned. Sucked out the marrow of meaning. Chanted Carpe Diem.

 

This is distinctly different, even opposite to FOMO, the Fear of Missing Out, which can cause us such anxiety. It involves, yes, a type of seeing, understanding, and experiencing, basically on social media platforms. But it arises from constantly comparing our self with others; comparing what I am, know, have and have experienced, with what I imagine others feel, value, think of me. And then our sense of self-worth becomes dependent on that comparison, so we always come up short, lacking. There’s a sort of commodification of one’s life here, an adding up of one’s experiences as one would add up money in a bank.

 

With Thoreau, who lived from 1817-1862, there was no such comparison involved, and a notable reduction in anxiety. He lived about 140 years before social media was introduced. And if he was alive today, I can’t imagine him spending much time on a cell phone. He favored ponds, lakes, and forests as his soul places. Each moment of life was to be lived for itself, for quality and depth, with no separating of oneself from the reality of ourselves, of others, or from the woods to make comparisons with others.

 

The crickets also remind us of all that might pass if we don’t notice it and act⎼ and not just of summer. Each noticed ending is the now of a beginning.

 

This fall is particularly poignant, frightening, and intense. Our minds, our nerves are fully sensitized and awake….

 

*To read the whole article, please go to The Good Men Project.

Worried About Your Finances and Your Future? He’s Just So Incoherent, So Racist, and So Weird

This question can give me nightmares: how can people follow him? Economic matters, high costs, have been of such concern for so many of us. But which Presidential candidate might best help reduce these burdens? And which candidate would protect our vote, our power and rights so we could influence government policies to serve our needs? Wouldn’t that take someone who cares about the quality of regular people’s lives?

 

DT said the following on 7/26/24: “Christians, get out and vote, just this time. You won’t have to do it anymore…. [For in] four more years it will be fixed. It’ll be fine. You won’t have to vote anymore…” In other words, vote for me now, and you’ll never be able to vote again?

 

He said of V.P. Kamala Harris “She was Indian all the way, and then she became black.” And “She is a DEI hire.” As if a woman, or someone black just isn’t talented enough to earn on her own merit any important position, for example as a prosecutor, Senator, Vice President or President?

 

He even told his own nephew, whose son has a physical disability, “these people (with disabilities), all the expenses…they should just die.” And a few years later he literally told his nephew he should just let HIS OWN SON die because of his physical disabilities. Would this person care at all about the majority of us except to get our votes?

 

Commentator Brian Tyler Cohen added⎼ DT threw his own VP candidate under the bus by saying: You’re not voting for a VP candidate—you’re voting for me. This reminds me of how he treated his former VP, when he stood by watching the Jan. 6 insurrectionist mob chant “hang Mike Pence”? Only I am important. And maybe DT’s right to dismiss his new VP choice, who said in 2021, the nation is run by a bunch of “childless cat ladies,” who have no stake in America and are miserable at their own lives. America must go to war against the idea that women don’t have to have children. And: people without children are “psychotic,” “deranged.”

 

Over the last 5 years, many people have had to face awful choices due to high prices for purchasing a home, food, or other goods. But: Will a person who cares only for himself improve the economic situation for most of us if he ever became President again? Or: Would we be better off now if he had lost his influence once he had lost the 2020 election?

 

DT boasts about his great economy. From the distance of 4 years, the past might seem better than the present. We might forget the harmful chaos of the DT administration. And who really benefitted, especially in the long run, from his economic policies? Did his economy help cause the pain many of us now feel?

 

The only big economic legislation he helped pass was the 2017 tax act, which heavily favored the rich. “As a share of after-tax income, tax cuts at the top — for both households in the top 1 percent and the top 5 percent — are more than triple the total value of the tax cuts received for people with incomes in the bottom 60 percent.[2]” Most of us had a temporary tax cut; corporations (and thus rich executives) had a permanent one, from 35% to 21%. As a result, government income was greatly reduced, and a heavily increasing debt was created.

 

In testimony to The Senate Committee on Budget and Policy Priorities, Samantha Jacoby, a tax and legal analyst, said:

Cutting corporate taxes costs significant revenue, and evidence is sorely lacking that the benefits have trickled down. Executives, disproportionately wealthy corporate shareholders, and highly paid employees have reaped virtually all the economic gains from the corporate rate cuts, research suggests.

With less money going from the rich to the government, the rest of us pay more, for schooling, to maintain infrastructure, to finance health and science organizations, for the military, etc. By 2019, DT was leading the nation into a total downfall that had begun even before the pandemic….

 

 

*To read the whole article, please go to The Good Men Project.

Biden v DT: What is the REAL Debate? Only Action by All or Enough of Us Can Save Us

Even before a word was uttered, it was difficult to believe what we saw. So much hype. So many emotions. So many watching. So much on the line.

 

When he first emerged, I couldn’t quite read DT. He seemed a bit unsteady but determined. President Biden looked stiff, like he was fighting something internally.  With the first question, he hesitated, couldn’t get his words out clearly. With his stumbling, it seemed, at first, that I was witnessing the destruction of our future.

 

At the end, a commentator on MSNBC, as well as former Obama campaign strategist David Plouffe, called it “kind of a Defcon 1 moment.” The fate of democracy, this election, had reached a threat level of DEFCON 1. Some called for Biden to step aside.

 

Meanwhile, columnist Scott Dworkin said Biden won the debate by a landslide and DT should’ve stayed home. He had good reasons to say so, but a landslide? No, or at least not at first look.

 

While Biden was giving his first, halting, almost indecipherable response, looking like he had a cold or the flu, DT seemed to be smirking. Like he had caught the opponent he had long dreamed of. Like he had his enemy in a trap and was salivating at the thought of attack. And attack he did. That was all he did all night. Attack. He showed he was good at attacking. But we all knew that.

 

He showed that he was just familiar enough with truth to know how to fashion the most outrageous lies. He knew he was a criminal, so he called President Biden a criminal. He knew he was an incompetent President, so he accused Biden of being one. He knew he disparaged soldiers and the military as “suckers and losers”; he knew he had said of Senator John McCain, a captured war hero, “He’s not a war hero…I like people who weren’t captured.” So, at the debate he denied calling soldiers “suckers and losers,” and attacked Biden’s use of the military.

 

In contrast with Biden, who shows empathy and concern for others, DT cares almost nothing about anyone but himself. So, in the debate he said he had a gigantic heart. Come on. He knew he struggled with mental acuity, so he claimed he had passed competency tests. Look at me, the genius. The genius who avoided more questions than he answered. A genius who had sacrificed millions to COVID through his malignant incompetence and lies.

 

A genius who used lines modeled on or borrowed from Hitler. A genius who pushed tax cuts to the rich, calling them a tax cut for all. But it resulted in a tremendous increase in the debt, and a tremendous shift of wealth and power to the rich, leaving the rest of us to pick up the bills. A genius at deception, at lies, yes.

 

In fact, the section of the debate on the economy was, according to Dworkin and others, one of Biden’s best moments. “There was no inflation when I became president,” Joe Biden said. “You know why? The economy was flat on its back. He decimated the economy. Absolutely decimated the economy. That is why there was no inflation at the time. There were no jobs.” Biden mentioned DT’s new tax plan for the rich which would, according to most economists, cripple our economy and raise the de facto tax burden for 99% of us up to $8300, while reducing the burden on the superrich….

 

*To read the whole article, please go to The Good Men Project.

A Convicted Felon, Finally: When the Language of Democracy is Used to Destroy Democracy, Or the Language of Legal Matters is Used to Destroy the Rule of Law

It’s been almost 2 weeks, and I’m still amazed to know DT was convicted, and so quickly and definitively by the jury. I heard the news just as I was worrying about the possible effects of a not guilty verdict. What a relief!

 

Yet, it was disturbing to hear GOP politicians continue to or even increase their desperate attempts to defend him from his conviction. Who knows what chaos and instability they might yet create? They echo DT’s baseless claim of a justice system “rigged” against him and the GOP, despite the blatant example of Hunter Biden’s guilty verdict being announced less than 2 weeks after DT was convicted. They do this despite the fact DT was given such special treatment, and treated so gingerly, and fairly, with breaks and delays that no one else would ever be given.

 

During the trial and afterwards, the GOP who tried to protect him did not spend much time presenting evidence of his innocence or pressuring him to testify in his own defense. Instead, they focused on attacking, seeking vengeance against anyone who tried to hold him responsible. Many GOP either lied about or attacked the justice system itself, the judge, his family, witnesses for the prosecution; and now they’re going after the jurors. One pro-DT forum accused Judge Merchan of treason and suggested that he should be hanged.

 

DT’s followers just revealed a blind obedience to their leader and a craving for power, calling for politically motivated investigations of Democrats. They cover their own weaponization of government (for example, using the power to investigate supposed wrongdoing by House committees) by accusing others of weaponization. For over a year they searched to find, or to create, something illegal to accuse President Biden of doing; and they found nothing. They recently went after Attorney General Merrick Garland, and for two years, they pursued Dr. Fauci, and they looked foolish in the face of witness testimony.

 

These GOP do this not only for retribution, but to undermine the rule of law itself. They want to hide the facts of this obviously fair jury trial behind clouds of distortions or lies. Maybe they hope to make this fair trial seem as suspect as their own investigations.

 

I should be inured by such acts by now, after 8 years of hearing DT and his followers spout ridiculous and malicious claims. On the street, they can get away with lying or saying almost anything that pops into their heads. In the courtroom, to say anything they must first meet a burden of proof.

 

Each of us who cares about having the vote⎼ or having the freedom and right to speak our minds⎼ the right to control our own healthcare, our own bodies⎼ the right to clean air and water and a livable planet⎼ the right to have free public education, not enforced religious indoctrination⎼ the right to have a jury of our peers and to be presumed innocent unless proven otherwise, instead of being presumed guilty unless we support a DT dictatorship⎼ each of us needs to do all we can to speak up and get out the vote in November if we want to stop the DT/GOP from taking all of this and more from us.

 

No matter how compassionate we are or try to be, it can be difficult to even look at him….

 

*To read the whole article, please use this link to The Good Men Project.

Healing Divisions, Both in Ourselves and With Others: The Brittle Weakness Exposed by Not Compromising

There’s the old, oft-repeated story, that if frogs are placed in a pot of water that is gradually heated, they will not realize the danger of eventually being boiled alive until it’s too late. However, says psychologist and science journalist Adam Grant, frogs will leap out as soon as they sense the heat. But we human beings are feeling the increasingly hotter world temperatures caused by climate change but are not leaping out and are not doing all we can to turn the heat off.

 

Maybe frogs are more intelligent than humans. Or maybe we are just too good at imagining reality as being other than it is?  At creating “alternate facts” and diversions? Or are too many of us just afraid of change? Or too traumatized?

 

How do we loosen the boundaries in ourselves? How do we let go of rigid ideas of who we are or must be or of what is real? And how do we help others do the same?

 

One of the biggest obstacles to changing anyone else’s mind, or our own, is realizing not only it can be done but it’s happening all the time. For example, before 2012, the country was opposed to gay marriage. In 2013, the majority supported it. In 2015, the Supreme Court struck down all state bans on same sex marriage.

 

Another science journalist, David McRaney, in his book How Minds Change: The Surprising Science of Belief, Opinion, and Persuasion, argues we evolved to work to consensus, to helpful adaptation. But it can happen in punctuated spurts, times of great argument and division and no clear change, then a sudden burst of change. Hopefully, we’re near such an evolutionary adaptation now.

 

And lately, I’ve found in myself this same resistance to facing people with rigidly held opposing ideas. It seems impossible to reach or even talk with those who disagree with me about climate change, or the “Big Lie,” for example. With the global earth and ocean temperatures rapidly reaching such high levels, the increasing number of dangerous weather events, wildfires, droughts, and floods all make climate change seem so obvious. And I saw the 1/6 attempted coup and the big lie enacted live on national tv. It just feels like what seems so clear to me should not be so hard for others to see.

 

But part of that difficulty comes from the fact that for all of us, our beliefs and even rationally constructed understandings of the world are the ground our lives stand on⎼ or appear to stand on. To question those views can feel like we’re washing away the ground under our feet; it can feel like abandoning our sense of ourselves.

 

In Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know,  Grant points out we often prefer the “comfort of conviction over the discomfort of doubt.” We resist rethinking, or talking with those with different views, not only because of the time and energy required, but because it would mean questioning ourselves. Such questioning might add more unpredictability to an already unpredictable, often threatening world. We need to recognize that what we believe is not who we are. We’re a universe infinitely larger than our worst opinions. It takes courage, not only to face those with diametrically opposing beliefs, but to unlearn what we believe, or think is true.

 

Especially now, it’s become difficult to change our minds. It can even be dangerous. Politically, acts mislabeled as flip-flopping are considered by many cowardice, or a sin….

 

*To read the whole article, please go to The Good Men Project.

An Experiment We Perform on Ourselves: Our Heart is Shaped Not Just by What Happens to Us, But the Stories We Create About What Happens

 

I felt very anxious today, like so many other people I know. Anxiety is becoming a national malady. Years ago, if someone said they felt very anxious about the state of the world, it was often considered “not normal,” as an indication of underlying pain, trauma; of a psychological or medical state contributing to the person being “overly” sensitive to social-political conditions. Not anymore. Now, we’re all facing some degree of trauma. If someone doesn’t feel anxious, it might be considered not normal.

 

And I decided I don’t want to live like this. I don’t want to spend this whole election year so anxious it interferes with enjoying my life.  So, I resolved to do experiments on myself. To try different mindfulness, artistic, and other practices to see what really works to help me feel some joy along with the fright. To notice, “if I do this, then that occurs.”

 

I’m not so much in a search for something like an idea of a desired goal, but for how to turn the light inward to create an awareness of what’s already there and perceive all that lies beyond it. The former creates a distance between me and the goal, now and some possibly future time. The latter involves an awareness, a curiosity about what’s intimately there, in myself. Now. To be present. This curiosity fosters clarity of mind and a readiness to act.

 

I realize that to even do such an experiment, I need to keep reminding myself that anxiety might even be helpful if I could interpret it as helpful.  If I could allow it to simply wake up awareness and be mindful of it. To try to hide it away adds fear to the emotion. Susan Murphy, in her book A Fire Runs Through All Things:  Zen Koans for Facing the Climate Crisis, points out our anxiety is one way the world tells us it needs something from us; and that what is needed is “already forming.”

 

But it can get heavy when I allow it in. Anxiety can take over my attention. Letting go can be difficult. So, I started periodically stopping what I’m doing and saying to myself, “hello, universe. Hello moment.”

 

I also notice that when I feel anxious, I think nothing will work. When I feel good, there are so many possibilities. So, what often works for me?

 

I close my eyes. Stand still where I am; and feel my breathing. Sometimes, I do a “square breath practice,” which entails counting to 3 for each exhalation, each pause, inhalation, pause. This develops focus, clears the mind and heart, to do nothing else but feel the breath. Without trying, I let go, for a moment or ten. But even for one moment, the chain of fear, of rumination stops. And I learn a valuable lesson: I can be free. I can feel what clarity is like and be it.

 

But my basic practice is breath counting, a simple practice of curiosity. Many traditions teach it. And I find it usually works for me. I sit in a quiet room, on a supportive chair, eyes maybe closed, open, or partly open. Hands resting in my lap. And I breathe in and do nothing else; then breathe out and say to myself “one.” My attention is placed, as completely as I can, on breathing the count. Not hurrying to get to another number, not pushing aside any thought or feeling. But just being there with one breath. Aware of that moment of breath counting, present with whatever is there. And if I lose the count, and I do it often, I just notice it and return to “one.”

 

Something indescribable, sort of like a clear blue sky, arises when I do this. Paradoxically, it’s also sort of what’s always there, except in the forefront instead of animating the background. If words do come to me, they’re like trees simply observed. Emotions that arise are like wind. They’re there, but do not possess me. Then there’s a pause; then a breath in. Then a count of “two.” This counting continues until I get to “ten,” and then goes back to “one.”

 

But breath meditations don’t feel right for everyone. We all need to experiment for ourselves.

 

Years ago, I learned another meditation, using artwork as a focus, or a natural object, like a pinecone or stone. This is based on an exercise I first learned from psychologist Lawrence LeShan. One object I found particularly fun and wonderful was a painting of a Buddha on a piece of slate.  It’s a copy of an old painting discovered on a cave wall in Asia. It came with a metal holder, so I could place it on a small table in front of me and sit with it.

 

After taking a few breaths, sometimes with my eyes closed, I then open my eyes and look at the whole piece. Allow my eyes to flow over it. To not only see it but feel it. To welcome it. I then shift and look at specific points in the painting, or the stone. One segment at a time. Slowly. After a few minutes, I then close my eyes and bring up the whole artwork. See it in my mind. Then see details, one after another. Then I open my eyes and enjoy it anew. I look at the details, to see if or what I had forgotten or not seen the first time. When I do this, I feel like I’m in that cave with the Buddha.

 

Sitting with a work of art, or a waterfall, stream, the ocean or a lake, a tree or mountain…..

 

*To read the whole article, please go to The Good Men Project.

Whole Generations Fearing the Horrors of the Past Might Be Repeated in the Future: Facing What’s Difficult

How do we face what is difficult?

 

My wife greets me with a friendly, “Good morning,” and I can’t help but smile in response. One of my cats rubs against me. Outside, a cardinal sings its spring song, despite it being early March. A raven and blue jay join in.

 

Yet, in my head, not my ears, I hear the latest news. California experiencing winds up to 190 miles an hour with ten feet or more of snow. Texas suffering its biggest wildfire ever, and it could get worse. I realize these are further examples of the threats of the climate emergency.

 

The cruel, devastating wars in Gaza and Ukraine continue. DJT gave another deranged speech, dehumanizing immigrant people of color, lying about them, calling them invading criminals “released from jails and insane asylums,” “from countries nobody heard of,” “having languages nobody ever heard of.” Lying about his great border policy, which was in reality a cruel mess, while, according to a CNN fact-check,  President Biden gave a highly factual, rational speech. His speech was not what I wanted to hear but was probably the best we could expect considering he faces a DJT controlled House.  On the other hand, Biden’s State of the Union address was more what I wanted to hear, comforting in his clear, energetic, fiery defense of democracy and our rights. Some say the “media” exaggerates the threat posed by DJT, or they say it until they hear his words.

 

Under DJT’s leadership, the Maga GOP derailed bipartisan border legislation, legislation they previously thought a necessity, and they continued to threaten our rights and freedoms in so many ways. Some GOP controlled states added to their attacks on women’s health and freedoms with limitations on IVF treatments. And, in the same week or so, the Supreme Court forced delays in the prosecution of DJT for his crimes against the nation, and threatening democracy itself.

 

It can feel like we’re in a race. Will democracy win or authoritarianism? Fascism? Will DJT be tried and convicted for all his indicted crimes before the election, or will he go free?

 

I think about World War II and the Holocaust. I was born just after the war ended, so I didn’t know that time firsthand. But I felt immersed in it nevertheless. I read about it, listened to and attended talks by Jewish people from Germany and Poland who had been rounded up by the Nazis, sent to death camps but somehow survived. For years, I had wondered what I would’ve done if I had lived there then. I wondered how Jewish, LGBTQ+ and people of color could have stayed in Germany while Hitler was happening. While too many Germans and others allowed and embraced the hate, grievance mentality, and delusion, or just closed their eyes and hearts.

 

Why didn’t the Jews leave? Or fight back? Of course, many did fight. Many did leave. But so many stayed⎼ and died.  And now we have whole generations fearing the horrors of the past are being manipulated into the future.

 

Am I learning the answer to that question right now?…

 

*To read the whole article, please click on this link to The Good Men Project.

Don’t Think of An Elephant: When Gollum Sells Sneakers

This is going to be a very different type of tale, a different type of blog, a different type of creation. It’s going to be about love and hate, finding answers and humor, protecting democracy and freedom⎼ and saving everyone’s lives, even those, maybe, who have no idea their way of thinking about others is driving all of us to a cliff edge.

 

It’s about wonder. Creativity theory can be applied to create art and wonder. We all know that. It can be used to help us make decisions, discover possibilities. I wrote a book about how it can help us educate ourselves and others and think critically about anything. Maybe it can help us defeat a person who thinks being a white nationalist, a fascist concerned only with himself, is the only way to be. Maybe it could help us discover how to turn the variety of threats we face into the energy for constructive action.

 

A neighbor and friend shared on FB that we shouldn’t post even unbeautiful images of the American Voldemort. It would just reinforce his likeness in our mind, make him stronger. We should just ignore him. Let him die in oblivion. And there’s truth in that. But then I think of the saying, don’t think of an elephant. If we try to not think of an elephant, we think of an elephant. It’s a hypnotic technique. Tell ourselves don’t think of a jellyfish, don’t think of someone trying to buy the very air we breathe, and we’ll think of it.

 

George Lakoff, a linguist, and cognitive psychologist wrote two beautiful books using that quote in their titles. One of them is The ALL NEW Don’t Think of An Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate. We can’t not think of what we’re thinking about, not think of the public leader of those trying to own the planet, own all of us, without thinking of him. Think of a beautiful sunrise instead.

 

Imagine someone turning on a switch inside us to all our worst qualities, or all our resentments, grievances; turning on all the lies we tell ourselves, while subverting all truths. Or even worse, turning off our ability to discern the truth in ourselves, or others. Which means our very ability to feel our own bodies. A lie just feels wrong in our gut. Turning off our ability to feel the wrong in our gut destroys our ability to know what to think or eat. It makes us sick. And we project that wrongness in the wrong place, onto others.

 

Once people don’t allow themselves to feel the hurt and pain they cause, how could they ever hear the truth? How could they ever allow someone else to tell the truth? It would hurt them too much; it would shatter them.

 

But this is what might be happening with DJT. Just imagine the pain he might be feeling, and isolation. The only ways he knows to deal with his feelings involve denial and inflicting them on others. Soon he’ll be telling people the Democrats are aliens from Jupiter who have taken over the government, and President Biden is an alien tyrant. Alien to DJT because he can’t believe anyone really cares about others. Oh, maybe tyrant is too big a word for him. DJT does struggle so much with big words. Or not just big words. It’s thinking that he struggles with. Stereotypes are his forte. Lies. Hate.

 

And sales. He successfully blinds millions of the willing by selling hate and grievance. But recently, he desperately tried to sell sneakers at a sneaker convention and was loudly and repeatedly booed. Is his effort laughable⎼ or terrifying?

 

He constantly mouths untruths because his mind is a lollipop land created by Gollum. DJT wants to be the Lord of the Rings, but all he can manage is Gollum….

 

*To read the whole article, please go to The Good Men Project.

What is Personal Strength? One Way to Demonstrate Who We Are

What is strength? Weakness? It’s not just aerobic capacity. It’s not just physical. It’s not how much weight we can physically lift but maybe how much reality we can allow ourselves to feel, consider, and act upon.

 

How would any of us like it if we were mistreated? If our children didn’t respect us and quarreled even with each other? If the schools our children attended were filled with people perpetually angry, constantly looking for revenge, and ready to attack before being attacked? Who held grievances they wouldn’t let go of and wouldn’t listen to anyone that expressed an opinion different from their own?

 

Or imagine a workplace like that, where no fellow worker would compromise or work on solving any problems or disagreements, and then spent their time and energy blaming someone else for the failure to get anything accomplished or a workplace filled with mistrust. And then they used fear and intimidation to get what they wanted⎼ their agenda or no agenda. These are not places filled with people I’d consider strong.

 

This is the US GOP led House of Representatives. They quarrel not only with Democrats but each other. Who could forget that, in a historic situation, it took them four days and 15 rounds of voting to elect Kevin McCarthy as Speaker? The Hard-Right GOP later removed McCarthy for the sin of working with Democrats to keep the government functioning⎼ and took 22 days to replace him. Too many threaten opponents with violence instead of trying to talk or negotiate.

 

Too many don’t care about governing as much as seizing power, attacking President Biden, and saying no to legislation proposed by Democrats, even if the proposed legislation will help the nation. What have they done besides holding up funding the government? Or starting an impeachment investigation into President Biden with an accusation of fraud, despite the fact that there was no evidence of fraud? Even their own witnesses in their investigation proved nothing except the corruption of the GOP accusers. Or they threaten to remove President Biden from the ballot in GOP states in order to stop or make meaningless Colorado and Maine removing DJT from the ballot for his involvement in the January 6th violent insurrection.

 

Too many accuse others of fraud to distract from the prosecutions of their own leader(s) for fraud and to make the reality of corruption and its destructiveness meaningless⎼ or to make it seem that all leaders, all of us, do it. I don’t know about anyone else, and I’m not always successful, but I do my best to be sincere and honest, not corrupt.

 

Too many use hate and violence as tools of manipulation. But hate is a way we distance ourselves from others, blinding us, or anyone, from what we’re doing to ourselves and others. It is moral weakness and pain masquerading as strength. It deprives these GOP of the character, patience, or ethical system required to work on the substantive issues we face as a nation, or to care about the pain and difficulties our fellow Americans face. Such work requires the strength to listen to and respect other people as being important. The ability to self-reflect, be patient, and feel empathy illustrate what I think is true strength.

 

The world is suffering deeply right now. Many of us in the US have so much compared to others in this country, and world. There is a great concentration of wealth causing immense poverty. Too many people worldwide are suffering from disasters caused by the climate emergency. Too many are suffering in Palestine and Israel, Ukraine, etc. The GOP just try to deny the threat the climate emergency and wars are to us; yet the threats continue. As an article in the Atlantic Monthly put it, we (our environment) can’t afford another DJT Presidency. We, all the people on the earth, can’t afford another DJT presidency. During the DJT administration, they scrubbed data on global warming, undermined the EPA and environmental laws, pulled out of international agreements, etc. etc.

 

We might cry out in anguish, “What can I do? What effect can I, alone, have?” As if, in a democracy of millions one person should have such an effect. As if each of us was an isolated being, uninfluenced by or incapable of affecting others, and independent of the earth….

 

*To read the whole piece, please click on this link to The Good Men Project.

An Illusion None of Us Can Afford: An Opportunity All of Us Can Embrace

We humans have many biases, but one that often asserts itself is the negativity bias, or a propensity to select, or attend to negative instead of positive information. We often expect the worst. We do this so the worst won’t happen, or so we can take steps to avoid it.

 

But often, the bias can do the opposite, and lead us to inaction. It can cause depression, or a sense of powerlessness. We can tell ourselves we can’t do anything to avoid whatever we fear will happen or to stop the dismal future we fear is inevitable⎼ even when the only thing making it inevitable is our inaction. We might hide from feeling the reality of the danger because we fear that even the thought is too much to bear; but the reality would be so much worse to face.

 

This is happening to our nation, and maybe our species, right now⎼ in the US, with the dangers of a DJT administration. We might know intellectually how awful he is but ignore what he’s telling us he will do if he wins, because we can’t believe it. Somewhere inside us, it feels impossible that such a destructive result could occur. We can’t, I can’t, believe that our world could change so drastically and get so much worse⎼ and not just the human world in the US but everywhere. But, of course, it can. If DJT somehow becomes president again, NATO would be undermined, and dictators would have even freer rein than they do now to undermine democratic nations.

 

DJT said he would invoke the Insurrection Act on day one of his imagined new administration, and use the military to make him a dictator. He’d suspend the constitution, suspend the rule of law, round up thousands, and initiate rule by him alone. It’s illegal, unconstitutional, but that has never stopped him before. We must stop him.

 

I’m not making this up. We know this. Read the 2025 Project. Listen to his speeches if you can stand it. He copies Hitler, Mussolini, etc. in his language and emotion, promises to “root out” all the “vermin,” imprison those who oppose him. He might end social freedoms, freedom of speech, voting rights, legal rights, abortion rights, workers’ rights, end legal concepts of gender, racial, and religious equality. He’d give ever more preference economically and otherwise to the rich and diminish or end government programs that serve and help most of us ⎼ he’d end Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security, end protections in health care, end the Biden reductions in drug costs, end the EPA, privatize the US Post Office, possibly end public schools, etc. ⎼ and make the poorer 90% of us pay the costs of running his dictatorship.

 

Corruption would flourish. Incompetency. I remember when I was younger and traveling in other nations ruled by dictators. In such nations it was common for people to pay not only fees but bribes to officials to get anything done, to get a license to drive a car, to fish, to build a house, whatever. DJT has already shown a propensity for fraud and corruption. He promises to replace civil service workers, who must show competency for the position in order to get the job, with those whose only noteworthy attribute is being a blind follower of his campaign. Imagine the inefficiency of a whole government bureaucracy controlled and populated by people who’ve shown no competency in their jobs. If DJT somehow gets in office again, whatever restraints on him that were in place before would cease.

 

On Christmas, Rachel Maddow spoke with Chris Hayes about the threat posed by DJT Fascism ⎼ and the need for all of us to act, to vote, and help get out the vote ⎼ and speak to our neighbors. To speak not just to share information, but to get to know them. Create a connection, a community. Because this is our time. Not all generations are called upon to act so significantly….

 

*To read the whole post, please click on this link to The Good Men Project.