Enough is enough
Here's the deal: For literally millions of years, a fear of the “other” defense mechanism has been programmed into our DNA which facilitated our increasing long-term survival as a species. Republican conservatives are today poisoning the well by rhetorically painting everyone who is not white, Christiaan and ideologically – asleep, not “woke” – aligned with them, as a dangerous “other.” Every day there's a new idiocy from bookbanning to refusal to consider reasonable gun policy leading to record number of mass shootings everywhere, even in schools. Taken individually, each day, drop by drop, the aim is to create continual and collective disruption to the social order, which, in turn can and does generate anxiety and fear among the members of the democracy.
Democracy is messy, always has been, and requires a modicum of critical thinking to maintain it, to rise above the “other” programming. This is why the “culture wars” are being fought around public education and science. Anxious and fearful people are easier to manipulate with the rhetoric of a promised fixed-state control via autocracy. To maintain that false order in the demented minds that insist on seeking it requires killing off all “others.” Today's Republicans are fascists in every way fashioned by and standing with the philosophy and actions of Adolph Hitler and the increasing autocracies across the world. Latest examples in the Watcourse mailbox:
There have been 134 mass shootings since January 1 this year, accounting for 194 dead and 470 additional wounded. At this rate, and it easily could increase, over 1,000 will have been killed and some 4,000 wounded.
Ah, “but wait, there's more!”
Attempted book bans and restrictions at school and public libraries continue to surge, setting a record in 2022, according to a new report from the American Library Association released this past Thursday.
More than 1,200 challenges were compiled by the association in 2022, nearly double the then-record total from 2021 and by far the most since the ALA began keeping data 20 years ago. Last year, more than 2,500 different books were objected to, compared to 1,858 in 2021 and just 566 in 2019. In numerous cases, hundreds of books were challenged in a single complaint.
Do we even want our children to survive? Who and what will guide them?
A liberal democracy can put a stop to this insanity if, and only if, YOU show up and vote to reject fascism in all its seemingly – it is not – random forms. When is enough, enough? You tell me.
Thomas Merton entered a Trappist monestery in 1941. Nearly 20 years later in a journal entry, he wrote: “I have not yet even begun to write, to think, to pray, and to live and only now I am getting down to waking up.” – Thomas Merton, journal, June 22, 1958, in A Search for Solitude: Pursuing the Monk’s True Life, ed. Lawrence S. Cunningham (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1996), 207. Posted as part of Fr. Rohr's Meditations.
I can find common ground with just about anyone, but cannot understand those who show no empathy. – Grace Weldon
Riverbank Ceremony: Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio
Step out on mossy water’s-edge rock,
let the river’s rush take you
beyond yourself.
When you’re ready, kneel,
and select a secret
from the heavy chandelier
inside your chest.
Whisper to the water.
She will carry it in her molecules
around the bend, out of sight.Your secret will
steam from tea sipped in Vietnam,
slide down an antelope’s throat
trickle from a glacier in Greenland,
hurl from cumulonimbus clouds
onto cobbled streets in Belgium,
trill through secret underground paths,
rise up a redwood’s trunk,turn into a silver helix
twisting from your bathroom faucet,
translucent, transformed,
washing over you.– poem by Laura Grace Weldon, posted with her permission as the April Poem (2022) on the website A network for grateful living.
… we have nothing to lose
but the death of the earth.
Troubling individuality
In Tew's day's mailbox this 11th day in 2023 April . . .
78 years ago today, in1945, the Buchenwald concentration camp near Weimar, Germany was liberated by the U.S. Army. It was the first camp to be liberated by U.S. troops at the end of World War II. Among those liberated was Elie Wiesel, who went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986.
The Canadian/American poet Mark Strand was born on this date in 1934 Summerside, Prince Edward Island, Canada.
FYI: Having recently discovered Sophie Strand (no relation to Mark Strand, above), I've been posting occasional pieces here in support of the theme of the Watercourse Way. So, what is Ms. Strand up to? Herewith a note from St. John's College in Santa Fe, NM, in support of an invited lecture scheduled for Earth Day on April 22nd:
Tracking the vegetal gods of the Mediterranean as a case study, [Ms. Strand explores] modern advances in biology, mycology, and forest ecology to resurrect the forgotten root-system of earth-reverent mythologies suppressed by current paradigms of domination.
[D]eath is reborn and sent into the world as a gift,
So the future, with no voice of its own, nor hope
Of ever becoming more than it will be, might mourn.
– by Mark Strand in "Orpheus Alone" from The Continuous Life: Poems. Alfred A. Knopf, 1990.
[A]rtists and writers and thinkers . . .must trouble our ideas of individuality. We are walking Matryoshka dolls, nested swarms of being . . . Stories don’t belong to human beings. But human beings belong to stories. – Sophie Strand
Awareness and the lack thereof . . .
In the Monday mailbox . . .
As the American Civil War drew to a close after Lee's surrender of his forces to Grant (yesterday in 1895), southern politicians continued to espouse the belief that white men were a “superior race.,” and within that superior race, some men were better than others. A significant number of Americans today – estimates at high as 30% – still believe this anti-democratic assertion, ignorant and opposed to both the Declaration of Independence and The Constitution.
Just because our world doesn't treat women better, it doesn't necessarily mean that it doesn't feel good about them. An implicit bias in favor of women is shaping our world view. Don't take my word for it.
Society teaches us, from a young age, that our bodies are a great source of shame and guilt, so why would we want to talk about that? Even worse, the medical community has further stigmatized normal sexual desires and practices, pathologizing them simply because they deviate from what is socially acceptable to acknowledge. – Dr. Jolene Brighten
Novelists and poets are always calling our attention to things that matter. They often zero in on truth, even when expressing it in myth and metaphor. One such writer is writer Anne Lamott, who was born on this day in 1954 San Francisco.
And then, there's Emily Dickinson, whose birthday is in December, but who is on my mind this morning, thanks to Maria Shriver.
Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul
and sings the tune without the words
and never stops at all.
– Emily Dickinson