Stay Out of the Colosseum
And here's the wind up for 2018 and the pitch for 2019...
This morning, driving to yoga, I heard a gentleman being interviewed on MPR talking about President Trump's disturbing description of Dr. Christine Blassey Ford's testimony during the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings. He used the analogy of the President speaking to a crowd at the Roman Colosseum as they cheered on his belittling words.
This seems like a particularly adept way of looking at how we can react to the President's diatribes and verbiage. We can simply stay out of the Coliseum, not buy into what he is saying. Doing so give his words unwarranted power--and besides, they change within minutes (if not seconds) of spilling out of his mouth.
Does this mean we give him a free pass? He of 7,644 falsehoods in 2018? (Washington Post)
Of course not.
It is our civic duty to pay attention. (One end of the year wrap up article thanked all politicians for the crash course we're receiving in civics, which was one of my all time favorite classes in grade school and again during American History in high school.)
It is our responsibility to make our voices heard in venues where they will not be mushed together like cheers in the Colosseum.
And here's where it gets a bit dicey for me.
I admit I don't have a boat load of faith in the Democratic leadership coming in 2019.
Often their verbiage echoes as mean spirited as their Republican counterparts. Because we, as a country, appear to have lost any spirit of bi-partisanship (short of the prison reform bill recently passed), if our Democratic members of Congress develop their agenda based on how they can stymie and aggravate the Republicans, how is this any better than the current torrent of Tweets from the White House? I must admit that I am flabbergasted by the Republicans Standin' By Their Man so steadfastly and agree with those pundits who write that nothing will change until at least some Republicans break with what seems to be blind support of the President.
Over two years ago I wrote that the 2018 election results caused me to wonder what role I played who won, given my dismissal of many people who make up his base. And continue to sit in the stands of the Colosseum.
I keep attempting to listen; as a lifelong Community Educator, that's my role. My job, if you will. To listen with the intent to understand, not to respond.
As I wrote a couple posts ago, the best I can come up with, through listening, is that I really, really, really don't get it. I hear the underpinnings of mean spiritedness. A belief system that dictates who is worthy and who isn't. Values that dismiss entire groups of people, sometimes based on little more than the feeling that their existence adds nothing to what allegedly would Make America Great Again (which, by the way, is not even a new slogan. cf:Ronald Reagan).
I've tried the response, "Tell me more about that" and other than what feels to me like a broad brushed, surface retelling of the Republican doctrine, much hasn't been added. At least not enough for me to begin to develop a better understanding.
And certainly not enough for me to say I'm willing to even wait in the wings in the Colosseum.
This morning, driving to yoga, I heard a gentleman being interviewed on MPR talking about President Trump's disturbing description of Dr. Christine Blassey Ford's testimony during the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings. He used the analogy of the President speaking to a crowd at the Roman Colosseum as they cheered on his belittling words.
This seems like a particularly adept way of looking at how we can react to the President's diatribes and verbiage. We can simply stay out of the Coliseum, not buy into what he is saying. Doing so give his words unwarranted power--and besides, they change within minutes (if not seconds) of spilling out of his mouth.
Does this mean we give him a free pass? He of 7,644 falsehoods in 2018? (Washington Post)
Of course not.
It is our civic duty to pay attention. (One end of the year wrap up article thanked all politicians for the crash course we're receiving in civics, which was one of my all time favorite classes in grade school and again during American History in high school.)
It is our responsibility to make our voices heard in venues where they will not be mushed together like cheers in the Colosseum.
And here's where it gets a bit dicey for me.
I admit I don't have a boat load of faith in the Democratic leadership coming in 2019.
Often their verbiage echoes as mean spirited as their Republican counterparts. Because we, as a country, appear to have lost any spirit of bi-partisanship (short of the prison reform bill recently passed), if our Democratic members of Congress develop their agenda based on how they can stymie and aggravate the Republicans, how is this any better than the current torrent of Tweets from the White House? I must admit that I am flabbergasted by the Republicans Standin' By Their Man so steadfastly and agree with those pundits who write that nothing will change until at least some Republicans break with what seems to be blind support of the President.
Over two years ago I wrote that the 2018 election results caused me to wonder what role I played who won, given my dismissal of many people who make up his base. And continue to sit in the stands of the Colosseum.
I keep attempting to listen; as a lifelong Community Educator, that's my role. My job, if you will. To listen with the intent to understand, not to respond.
As I wrote a couple posts ago, the best I can come up with, through listening, is that I really, really, really don't get it. I hear the underpinnings of mean spiritedness. A belief system that dictates who is worthy and who isn't. Values that dismiss entire groups of people, sometimes based on little more than the feeling that their existence adds nothing to what allegedly would Make America Great Again (which, by the way, is not even a new slogan. cf:Ronald Reagan).
I've tried the response, "Tell me more about that" and other than what feels to me like a broad brushed, surface retelling of the Republican doctrine, much hasn't been added. At least not enough for me to begin to develop a better understanding.
And certainly not enough for me to say I'm willing to even wait in the wings in the Colosseum.
I want to finish with a few words of support that I often hear from the yoga instructor, as I think they are applicable as we roll into 2019.
"Shaking is good." Many times we feel shaky. We attempt new things and it feels shaky. We do the same old thing, over and over and over, and it feels shaky. We expect too much or too little of ourselves or others. Shaky. Remember. Shaking is good.
"If you fall, do so with a smile on your face and give yourself credit for trying." I think that one's pretty self-explanatory.
"Yoga is not a competition. Don't compare yourself to what the person on the mat next to you is doing." I'm always norming myself against the world around me. This year I'm going to try to keep my focus more internal than external.
May All Beings Be Happy and Free
"Namaste." According to Wikipedia, namaste is used is both salutation and valediction. In Hindu, it means, "I bow to the divine in you." I end this post saluting, validating and bowing to the divine in you. God love you in 2019. Namaste.
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