Tag: politics

In Troubled Times: Numbing Out

personby Deborah J. Ross
schedulePosted on

I first posted this on December 12, 2016, right after the presidential election. I’m putting it up again as a reminder of how important it is to take care of our mental well-being in troubled times.

I have long understood the dangers and seductions of overwork. I’ve frequently coped with stress by balancing my checkbook or going over budget figures. Or reading and replying to every single email in my Inbox. It needn’t be intellectual work: scrubbing bathrooms or reorganizing closets works just fine. All these things involve attention to detail and (to one degree or another) restoring a sense of order to an otherwise capricious and chaotic world. I come by it honestly; when I was growing up, I saw my parents, my father in particular, plunge into work in response to the enormous problems our family faced. He and I are by no means unique. We live in a culture that values work above personal life and outward productivity over inner sensitivity.

“Work” doesn’t have to result in a measurable output. Anything that demands attention (preferably to the exclusion of all else) will do. Reading news stories or following social media accomplish the same objective and have the same result: they put our emotions “on hold.”

As I’ve struggled to detach from the waves of upsetting news, I have noticed an increased tendency in myself to overwork. It occurs to me that I reach for those activities in a very similar way other folks might reach for a glass of liquor or a pack of cigarettes (or things less legal). Or exercising to exhaustion, or any of the many things we do to excess that keep us from feeling. There’s a huge difference between the need to take a  breather from things that distress us and using substances or activities in a chronic, ongoing fashion to dampen our emotional reactions. The problem is that when we do these things, we shut off not only the uncomfortable feelings (upset, fear, etc.) but other feelings as well.

The challenge then becomes how to balance the human desire for “time-out” from the uncertainties and fears of the last few weeks and not numbing out. In my own experience, the process of balancing begins with awareness of what tempts me, whether I indulge in it or not. Is it something that can be good or bad, depending on whether I do it to excess? (Exercise, for example.) Or something best avoided entirely? (Some forms of risk-taking behavior, like unprotected sex with strangers.) If it can be both a strength and a weakness, how do I tell when enough is enough, or what a healthy way to do this is? Continue reading “In Troubled Times: Numbing Out”…

Predicting the Future?

personby Nancy Jane Moore
schedulePosted on

Over twenty years ago I wrote a story about a young man who gets arrested on a trip to New Orleans for Mardi Gras because a blood test shows he has XX chromosomes even though he appears to be male. The Louisiana of that story’s time – which was more or less right now – had passed a law making it a crime to present yourself as anything but your “natural” gender.

He ends up in a jail cell with drag queens, a lesbian wearing male clothes, a trans person who is taking steps toward transition, and a woman not unlike himself – someone born with all the appearance of a woman, but with XY chromosomes.

I told it from his – very clueless, in the beginning – point of view because I wanted the story to be about someone who had never even considered the possibility that he was anything other than a cis man being forced to confront the situation.

It was a great story, but I was never able to sell it. I’ve looked at it over the years and seen a couple of things I’d change as I’ve increased my understanding of these matters, but it’s still a good story.

It’s just too late to publish it, at least as science fiction. It’s basically real life now. It’s obvious that many places are going to be punishing people for being trans or even – shades of the past – for dressing in a way that belies your assigned gender.

Maybe I should make the revisions and try it on a non-genre fiction magazine or anthology. Isn’t realistic a hallmark of literary fiction?

I’m not usually someone who writes science fiction that can be seen as predictive, but it was clear to me more than twenty years ago that there were places in the United States that might well pass laws against people for not fitting into prescribed gender roles.

Of course, I wrote it as a warning. That’s why most people write dystopias, after all. However, given the current fetish of the broligarchs for stupid takes on science fiction and fantasy, it’s easy to believe people would have taken it as a good idea.

I don’t want to live in Margaret Atwood’s Gilead or William Gibson’s Jackpot, but apparently a lot of people do. Continue reading “Predicting the Future?”…

In Troubled Times: Facing the Problem Squarely

personby Deborah J. Ross
schedulePosted on

Back in 2016, I posted a series of blogs entitled In Troubled Times. Today it seems fitting to remind myself that I survived then and will survive now. These thoughts are from Monday, December 5, 2016.

A few days ago, John Scalzi wrote in his blog, Whatever, “…the Trump administration and its enablers are going to make a mad gallop out of the gate to do a whole bunch of awful things, to overwhelm you with sheer volume right at the outset.”

Pretty shocking statement, huh? That was my first reaction. My second was that Scalzi is very likely correct. All the signs are there…all the signs that in my panic-stricken moments, I want to ignore so hard they go away.

My next reaction was to surrender my mind to a gazillion chattering monkeys, each with her own idea of What Must Be Done Right Now. I can work myself into a downright tizzy in no time this way. Not only that, I can paralyze myself with too many alternatives and no way to prioritize them, jumbling actions I might take with those that are impossible or unsafe (crazy-making) for me.

Any of this sound familiar?

It’s all based on a false choice. I don’t have to either prepare now for the logically impending “awful things” or play ostrich on the river in Egypt. But in order to see other, saner alternatives, I must first evict the Monkeys of Panic so I can regard the situation calmly.

We’re in for some hard times, and knowing that is a relief.

At first, it seems counter-intuitive to say that acknowledging we are in for some dark times comes as a relief. The relief is because instead of nebulous fears running rampant, bursting into exaggeration and melodrama at every turn, vulnerable to any sort of fact-free hype, I’ve stepped away from the emotional storm. I’m facing the problem squarely, as my tai chi teacher used to say. We’re in for some tough times, and likely there will be a whole slew of bad news in the early months of 2017.

When I’m no longer trying to deny or distort the way things are (for example, Trump’s cabinet choices and what is known about them, or what he has said he will or won’t do) I not only become calmer, but better able to see things I might do, alone or in solidarity with like-minded folks.

This is based on a simple truth that in order to act effectively, I need to be sane. I can’t be sane if I’m bouncing off the walls at every headline on social media. I could, of course, disengage entirely from social media and refuse to read or listen to any sort of news. But I don’t want to do that. I want to stay engaged, but in a mindful way. I want to know what I’m up against. Once I stop fighting the reality of what that is, I free myself to use my energy and time in productive ways. I don’t know exactly what form these tough times will take, but I don’t need to prepare for every twist and turn. I can trust my ability to respond appropriately and creatively.

 

Some Days

personby Gillian Polack
schedulePosted on

I’m writing this late on my Monday evening because I was so worried about what was happening in my hometown. Not where I live now (Canberra) but where my family has lived since 1858. Outside a synagogue not at all far from my own childhood one, and half a suburb away from where my mother lives, there was going to be a pro-Palestine demonstration. Given what happened in Montreal over the weekend, I did not like this at all. Given what happened a few minutes away last year, during a Friday service on the anniversary of Kristallnacht, where my mother’s first cousin was one of the people ‘evacuated’ into a violent anti-Jewish crowd… I was very worried.

I’ve just seen the video clips of what transpired and Australia can sometimes be quite uniquely itself. Before I saw the video clips, however, I realised the angry crowd might be a bit smaller than last time. This notice was circulated on the interwebz shortly before the event:

Protesters still came. They were thoroughly covered, except for their eyes, and while this might have been sensible to hide their identities, it wasn’t such a good idea. Melbourne was not as hot as Canberra today, but Canberra was in the thirties… so these poor blokes must have been seriously uncomfortable.

I saw a bunch of clips of what happened after they arrived and there was no violence. Two of the pro-Palestine protesters were gently ushered into a police van and I’m pretty sure I heard someone say “Have a good day.” The angry violent Jews shouted “Go home. Leave us alone” in unison. well away from where the protesters stood.  I interpreted this (since I come from that community, I trust my interpretation) as “You’ve driven half an hour or an hour to be a pain, now just turn around and drive back, please.” They waved Israeli flags and Australian flags. They sang Hatikvah (mostly off-key) and several of them used the great Australian salute to the group of protesters.

No-one was hurt. Everyone got their point across, including the police. The worst loss was to the dignity of those who were scared of the young woman who led the “Go home” shout.

I wish more protests were like this.

When Events Collide

personby Gillian Polack
schedulePosted on

This is the year of many confluences. I want to note just three, because those earlier in the year were more confluences of grief and do not need revisiting.

The first one is tomorrow, that is to say, November 5.

First, there is the US election. I am hoping that the US turns out and votes in massive numbers and that the outcome is one of the better ones. This is not an easy election and I’m very glad I don’t have to deal with some of the issues everyone’s handling right now. I hope things improve and that clever voting opens the door to US lives being significantly better. I also hope that the idiots learn to listen and understand what rampant fools they can be, but this is probably a pipe dream.

The election is, obviously, the biggest thing tomorrow. The second biggest is a rather fraught historical memory. Australia mostly doesn’t celebrate Guy Fawkes Night any more, but I found out yesterday that New Zealand does. We never burned figures, even when we had bonfires and fireworks and for this I am so very grateful. I have to admit that it’s kinda appropriate that there is a history memory on the same day that the US is busy creating its own history memory.

The third thing tomorrow is a race. Not the same type of race as the US one, but a horse race. Victoria (the Australian state, not the city a long way from me) gets a public holiday and most of Australia stops to watch. Tomorrow I won’t, because the friends I usually drink with (because it’s a drinking festival, really) are busy and I have a lot to do and…

I feel as if I’m betraying my childhood with no race and no fireworks, but at least I don’t have to worry about supporting something that really is not kind to horses or an historical event that, in the way it’s celebrated, isn’t that kind to Catholics.

That’s tomorrow’s confluence: the election, Bonfire Night, and the Melbourne Cup.

The next one is on November 11. I might leave it until next week and tell you about it then. Let me just say that only one of the events that collide is celebrated in the US and the UK. Watch this space…

The other collision is a bit longer. December 25 is Christmas this year (as it always is) and, for a wonder, it’s also the start of Chanukah, thanks to a handy leap month last Jewish year. New Year is also Chanukah. So are all the days between the two. I feel it’s a bit of a cheat to call this a confluence, but it’s a fun one because it’s going to tangle all the folks who were finally accepting that Chanukah and Christmas are not on the same dates. The Christian calendar is solar and fixed to the sun. The Jewish calendar is lunar/solar, that is fixed to the moon with solar adjustments. This explains the leap month – the adjustments are a bit bigger because, really, the Moon and the Sun don’t talk to each other and make everything work in harmony.

The shape of the year gives you something to think about if you really, really don’t want to spend more thoughts on the election. The fact that I’m supposed to be frying food in midsummer (for Chanukah) is another useful distraction.

Good luck with your Tuesday confluence!

Embracing the Contradictions

personby Nancy Jane Moore
schedulePosted on

In November of 2020, right around the US election, Master Li Junfeng, with whom I studied Sheng Zhen (a practice related to Qigong) while in Austin, offered an online meditation workshop for – if I remember right – 17 days in a row.

I signed up, even though it was at 6 am Pacific Time, since Master Li was in China and they were trying to set it for as reasonable as possible a time for people all over the world. And I made every class.

It was a very good decision, despite the fact that getting up to do something at 6 am is not one of my favorite activities. I sailed through all the election nail-biting and even lessened my pandemic anxiety.

I did keep it up for awhile, but since then I haven’t been all that regular with meditation. I’m trying to get back in the habit now. What with the election, the multiple climate-change-caused disasters, and the fact that even with sane people in our government we haven’t even come close to dealing with public health crises – not to mention what all this stress does to my blood pressure – I need to take time to breathe deeply and find my center every day.

I do Tai Chi daily, but I need the meditation as well.

I’m a bit eclectic at the kind of meditation I practice. I’ve picked up some Zen Buddhist techniques over the years. Master Li’s approach comes out of Taoism, I think. Some days I just focus on my breath. Other days I watch the Qi or Ki (depending on whether I’m channeling Chinese or Japanese practices) flowing through my body.

Sometimes I recite this verse that I believe I learned from a book by the Zen Master Thich Nhat Hahn:

Breathing in, I feel my body.
Breathing out, I smile.
Living in the present moment.
This is such a beautiful moment.

And sometimes I try to imagine all the elements of our planet – from the tectonic plates to the oceans to the forests to all the creatures and people – and then go on through the Solar System to the Milky Way to the Universe.

When I do that last version, I remember that I am a part of the universe, and so are all the microbes living inside me as well as everything around me.

I am a tiny speck of the universe and whatever happens or doesn’t happen to me is part of that whole. Continue reading “Embracing the Contradictions”…

Presidential Ambitions

personby Nancy Jane Moore
schedulePosted on

Back in my pre-teen years, when I first started paying attention to politics, I thought I might want to become the first woman president of the United States.

That was about the time when my parents started encouraging me to consider law school. I remember traveling through Texas on vacation at one point and asking my father who he knew in the county we were in who could help me get elected governor (governor being a stepping stone to the White House).

When I got out of law school, the state representative seat for my parents’ district was open and they wanted me to move back home and run. I thought about it, but in the end decided against it.

While it was a labor-liberal district in those days, I would have had to ignore racism while soliciting the (mostly white) union vote and would also have had to pretend I loved the appalling development going on as Houston continued to sprawl.

Which is to say, if you want to be elected to public office in this or many other countries, you’ve got to compromise on something. And while I’m actually pretty good at working together with other people in good faith to come up with something we can all live with, the kind of compromises that involve my basic values are much harder for me to do.

I am very glad I made that call back then. I was still lurching around, trying to figure out my way in the world. Politics would have been a path, but I don’t think it would have made me happy.

And I don’t want to be President of the United States.

Presidents are the front person, and while they do their best to put people they can work with in key positions, they really have to trust that the people doing the core work are approaching it in a way similar to what they would do in that job.

Also, they inherit decisions made in the past, particularly on foreign policy. A new president has to tread with care around relationships with other countries and their advisors may well be telling them to do things they don’t personally agree with, but don’t see any way to change.

If I were in that job, I would never get a decent night’s sleep because I’d wake up at 3 a.m. every morning second guessing myself or cursing the fact that I had to do something I really didn’t want to do because of a lot of decisions made twenty years ago.

What gets me are all the people who do want to be president. I don’t mean the actual politicians with a shot at the job, the people who have spent their lives in various elected offices and see the chance to advance once again. Those are the people who really like the political life, the ones who don’t wake up second-guessing themselves, who don’t mind asking people for money, who really like political games.

No, I’m thinking about the people who run as third party candidates, not to mention the individuals with no organization who just decide to run. Continue reading “Presidential Ambitions”…

Meditating on the Writing of Postcards

personby Nancy Jane Moore
schedulePosted on

Like many other people in the United States, I’ve been writing postcards to voters in other states as a way of doing something about the election. I’ll vote, of course, and I’m sending a little money here and there as well.

Given the number of postcards I can reasonably write and the amount of money I can afford to send, not to mention the value of my single vote, all those things only matter if a lot of other people do them as well.

But the stress of “the most important election of our lives” is weighing on me. I don’t call people, because I despise getting such calls and cannot bear to do that to others. Postcards I can do without having to talk to a stranger who doesn’t really want to talk with me.

In general, while I worry a lot and always vote – the last time I skipped an election was a runoff between a dishonest Democrat who was going to win anyway and a well-intentioned good-government Republican whose ideas on how to run a city were disastrous – I am not excited about electoral politics. I prefer to put my energy for change into building something that might grow into better systems. Co-ops, for example.

I came to that after being active in the antiwar movement back in the day when I realized that I preferred making things to protesting them. Not that I haven’t done a lot of protesting as well – it’s kind of like voting: you gotta do it from time to time.

Anyway, I’m trying to do my small part to fend off fascism – and yes, there is a right and wrong side in this election and not just in the presidential race. I don’t think the United States survives as a nation if we don’t stop this latest effort to create an authoritarian state.

And though I can think of reasonable arguments for the dismantling of the United States, it would be hell to live through that period and while I’m old, I’m not so old that I won’t have to.

Also, I’m pretty much in favor of getting a sane base in place and trying to fix the country’s problems from there. See above, where I mentioned I preferred building things to protests.

I mean, we already had a civil war over how the country should be governed. As someone who has read a bit of history, I contend that we wouldn’t be in this mess if we hadn’t abandoned Reconstruction after that nasty war. The Civil War Amendments to the Constitution gave us a way to build the country we ought to be, but we haven’t used them as well as we should. Continue reading “Meditating on the Writing of Postcards”…

Do Not Murder In My Name: The Rush to Execution

personby Deborah J. Ross
schedulePosted on

Today it feels appropriate to repost my essay on my opposition to the death penalty as a family member of a murder victim. This is from 2020.

 

Now, in the waning days of 2020, the criminal in the White House has pushed through a string of murders. I realize I have used inflammatory language, but nothing less conveys the intensity of my outrage and revulsion. Simply put, someone who initiates and demands the ending of a human life is a criminal. The deliberate, calculated, cold-blooded taking of a human life is murder.

 

From the BBC: 

As President Donald Trump’s days in the White House wane, his administration is racing through a string of federal executions.

Five executions are scheduled before President-elect Joe Biden’s 20 January inauguration – breaking with an 130-year-old precedent of pausing executions amid a presidential transition.

And if all five take place, Mr Trump will be the country’s most prolific execution president in more than a century, overseeing the executions of 13 death row inmates since July of this year.

The five executions began this week, starting with convicted killer 40-year-old Brandon Bernard who was put to death at a penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana. The execution of 56-year-old Alfred Bourgeois will take place on the evening of 11 December.

I am the family member of a murder victim, and I speak from personal experience of the impulse to revenge the taking of my mother’s life. I also know that this is a natural expression of grief, and that with healing, it passes. To me it is essential that those left behind be given the support and time to process that loss and to re-engage with their lives. To focus on killing someone else freezes us in retaliation mode.

Over the years, I have spoken out against the death penalty, telling my story to groups as diverse as city councils, law students, death penalty abolition activists, and state legislators. In 2012, I was invited to participate in an international conference put on by Murder Victim Families For Human Rights. Then I met others like me, who had lost a single family member to violence, those whose loved ones had been executed or were on death row, and those who experienced both. Every single person who had experienced both was Black. There is no escaping the racial injustice in the way the death penalty is applied (or the way crimes are investigated and prosecuted). Yet the most moving part of that weekend was listening with an open heart to mothers weeping for their executed sons — and realizing their grief and loss was no less than mine. 

If you, who are reading this, take away nothing else, remember this: every person who is put to death is or has been loved by someone, and is grieved by someone, and missed like an aching hole in the heart by someone.

In 2019, I penned a blog for Death Penalty Focus, called “When we focus on revenge instead of healing, we never heal.” You can read it below.

Continue reading “Do Not Murder In My Name: The Rush to Execution”…

Of Politics and Time Zones

personby Nancy Jane Moore
schedulePosted on

I’ve been paying some attention to the Democratic National Convention this week. I didn’t watch the whole thing – I know too much about politics in this country to be able to watch a lot of political speeches – but I did listen to Kamala Harris’s acceptance speech.

While I don’t agree with everything she said, I am excited about her candidacy. I’d be thrilled to see her as President even if she weren’t running against the criminal grifter and even if she wouldn’t be the first woman in the job.

Plus she has brought a new wave of effective political action into the mix, which also makes me happy because frankly I have no more stomach for Democrats running as Republican Lite.

So I’m hopeful that the Democrats will soundly defeat the convicted felon and force the Republican Party to either remake itself or fall apart.

I checked on the convention earlier in the week and was highly amused when I saw complaints online from various political writers about the fact that the Democratic National Convention was running behind schedule and President Biden wasn’t going to be onstage during “prime time.”

By “prime time” they meant not just broadcast-television-dictated prime time, but broadcast-television-dictated East Coast prime time, which is to say between 8 and 11 pm EDT.

I had several reactions to this.

First of all, I started paying attention to U.S. political conventions in 1960 – I was a nerdy kid and my parents were both journalists and liberal Democrats – and I have never heard of a convention not getting behind schedule.

I mean, you give politicians a mike and they’re gonna talk. Plus if there’s enthusiasm – and this year there is a lot of enthusiasm – there’s going to be applause and standing ovations and other things that slow the schedule down.

And while I’m sure there were speakers that no one would have missed much – say the governor of New York – one of the purposes of a convention is to allow as many players as possible to speak as well as bringing in some folks that beef up your presentation.

Secondly, the convention is being held in Chicago, which is on Central Time. Now I grant that CDT broadcast-television-dictated prime time is actually 7-10 pm, but it still was an hour earlier in Chicago.

Thirdly, it was 8:30 pm in California when I saw these complaints. That’s just the most populous state in the union, with the sixth largest economy in the world.

I note that Vice President Harris’s acceptance speech ended a little after 8 pm PDT – 11 pm EDT. Maybe that was close enough to prime time for those doing the griping.

Every once in awhile it’s nice when something important happens on the West Coast’s schedule instead of the East Coast’s.

Continue reading “Of Politics and Time Zones”…