A Bit to Read

It’s gray and kind of snowing? I think? A small flurry but honestly it’s an insult here in the middle of March.

So. I’m not sure if it’s that white men are the only group of people who are not made responsible for their own demographic, or it’s the effort of white men not to be made responsible for their own demographic, but trump’s threat of a bloodbath seems to have triggered something like a mass compulsion to tell everyone to “calm down.”

Or maybe it’s the gaslighting reflex, that whatever a white man does or says it’s not as bad as it is, I’m sure you’ve noticed that too. I mean Jeffrey Toobin is invited to opine on things again, including the “misconduct” allegations against DA Fani Willis, and if that isn’t white man solidarity, I really don’t know what is.

But not only have I seen a flood of white men telling us we are “overreacting” to the threat of terrorism from a man who has already incited a threat of terrorism, there are men who got pretty angry at me for asking them about it.

Yes, yes, I was nice.

Some better than others, but one in particular got extremely mad. Perhaps I should have told him to calm down?

That always helps.

Instead of judging other people’s level of panic, or treating a rational reaction to a rational situation as “emotional,” it’s time to accept reality. Things are every bit as frightening as they appear.

Someone shared Pema Chodron’s words with me; she spoke of “leaning into the sharp points” of fear in her book When Things Fall Apart. And I can’t think of anything more apt.

If we allow everyone to pretend things are not as dire as they actually are, we could mollify ourselves right back into a trump in power, this one with absolutely no restraints. And if you think that’s what he had the first time, I promise you it can get worse, because he told us himself it would be.

It’s OK to be afraid. It’s OK to be as afraid as you feel. What we need to do is turn that fear into action, into making sure that not only does he not get near power, we get sizeable majorities in both houses of Congress. It’s a narrow, narrow plank but it’s our way off of this sunken ship.

Don’t let anyone minimize what is happening. Don’t let them shrug it off or normalize it because that spreads. Don’t gaslight people out of a fear born entirely out of facts and the memory of what has already been.

I wonder if some men manage their own fear through misogyny, through condescension to women, through pats on the head and that “calm down” language. That is not OK, find other ways to deal with it if that is, indeed, the case.

We were right in 2015. We were right in 2016. We were right in 2020, and we’re right now. This is serious. Treat it seriously. And let’s get this election done.

Have a good Monday.