We’ve talked about this before, but apparently it’s something we all need to keep top of mind as we head into yet another toxic and hideously ugly US election season.
Those haters, nasties, man-splainers (even when they are women), underhanded, lyin’, cheatin’, dirty rotten scoundrels are up to the usual buffet of skullduggerous antics, blowing up social media with fear, fear, FEAR!!! And the response of the other side is always to scream, howl, beg, admonish, guilt-trip and attempt to fill our inboxes with shock, shame and horror.
“Can you BELIEVE it?” “This is the END!!!” “MSNBC OFF THE AIR???!!!” And so on.
I’ve been religiously unsubscribing to anybody who uses panic as a means of raising money. How utterly manipulative. If that’s how you’re going to reach out to me, I don’t want you or anybody associated with you getting elected because you are part of the problem. Thanks for playing, buh-bye.
When we fight haters with hate, panic with panic, fear with more fear, haters and fearmongers win, and everybody else loses.
It’s friggin’ hard to refuse to play, to remain calm and remember that what we’re seeing is deep, intense fear that would be paralyzing if it wasn’t turned into hatred. Why the fear? Well, we’re told by every news outlet in the US to be very afraid of everything all the time. We’re bombarded with this message, from the time we develop ears in the womb. Some of us get lucky and have access to education that allows us to become more confident, more rational, to understand what’s going on from a broader perspective–all of which adds up to less fear. Some others . . . not so much.
So compassion has to be the default response to anything, and that is, pardon my Klatchian, fucking hard to do sometimes. Responding to hate with anything less than sarcasm is a monumental effort for me. But I have to try, every time, because we need far, far less anger and division and far more understanding and kindness in this increasingly ugly country.
But you can’t feel sorry for them, and you can’t pity them. That just pisses ’em off more. You have to be kind, firm, gracious, and calm calm calm. You have to trust and believe that we are all oceans of light making our way through who knows what Karma, and everybody came here without knowledge or memory of any of that stuff (unless you’re the Dalai Lama or Jesus or somebody like that which most of us are definitely not), and we’re all having to find our way to where the maps are–without, obviously, any maps. Some of us get lucky and have opportunities to experience numerous cultures, read lots of books, see live theater and live music, travel, have friends from different backgrounds with a diverse range of life-styles . . . and the more we open to possibilities the less we fear the “Other.”
It makes me angry and sick to see all these addled old White men clinging so desperately to the power they think they have. They are so weak, so pathetic, so disgusting to observe. They are so used to being the oppressor that they can’t imagine any other dynamic; if they aren’t the oppressor then they will be the oppressed. They go from perpetrator to victim in half of an eye blink. They fear that if they “give up” their so-called power then women or brown people will start doing unto them as they have been doing unto us.
Got news for ya, guys: we have so many better things to do than persecute you. We might prosecute some of you, but persecute? Nah. Can’t be bothered.
If we want equality, which we very much do, we have to treat others as equals, even when they don’t deserve it, because that is the only way to normalize equality. I know. It sucks. We want to grind the Patriarchy beneath our heels. We want to crush them like cockroaches. But we can’t. We have to treat them as equals.
And in the process of treating them as equals, we will begin to chip away at the idea that we aren’t their equals. Without demanding it or having to fight for it. When we behave with an expectation of being treated with dignity and respect, we are way more likely to get it than if we set an expectation–and intention–to be treated like second or third class citizens.
And what about the absurdly, obscenely rich, you ask. Are we supposed to love them, too?
Even though they do nothing to really contribute to the economy or the well-being of 99% of the other people on the planet, except maybe the makers of useless luxuries like yachts and stretch limos and truly ugly clothes?
Yes, even them. And you’re quite right, it seems like they did absolutely nothing to earn their riches, those inheritors of insane wealth. But here’s the deal; neither did Siddhartha. And if you zoom out a few light-years you’ll see what’s going on. These folks signed up for a test to see if they could transcend the trappings of out-of-control wealth–and most of them, most, not all–are failing miserably. Instead of using their wealth to help people, or to fund things like solar and wind farms or research into unprofitable diseases, they are stewing in their wealth and doing nothing whatsoever to work toward their own enlightenment.
What is there in Buddha’s name to envy about any of that? Nada.
“What about misogynists? Rapists? Child-abusing priests? Date-raping politicians? Do we get to hate them?”
Nope. Their behavior is flat out wrong, and there is nothing anyone can say to justify any of it, and unless they are sociopaths or narcissists, they know it is wrong. Sociopaths have no conscience at all, narcissists don’t have the capacity to tell right from wrong when it comes to their own behavior. We may as well hate a tornado, it will do about as much good. But most of these others, they know that there will be consequences, and that there is music that must be faced. Karma will not be denied, and subconsciously, these perps know it which is why they try so hard to hide and deny their wrongdoings, why they threaten and blackmail, why they pay enormous sums of hush-money. They know. They absolutely know.
It’s hard to make it a habit to look at petty behavior from a light years-high perspective, but once you see things from that level, it’s impossible to see these things in any other way. This is why somebody like the Dalai Lama can have compassion for the oppressors of the Tibetan people. This is why Ghandi was able to create such significant change for his people, because he understood what was happening from a much larger, more eternal perspective. You don’t have to be a saint or a holy personage to get it–but getting it just might get you a lot closer to being one.