When I saw this video, I burned with anger. My father lost some of his hearing from being bunked next to the engine room on a troop ship that took him to the island of Tinian. He was there when the Enola Gay took off for its fateful mission to drop the atomic bomb. Dad’s brother, my uncle, was at the Bulge. That meeting was revolting, as disgusting to me as the one where Zelenskyy was humiliated by those fascist Putin-loving goons.
Ok, I finally watched it ... It's a clip. It would be nice to get the whole video of the meeting. That said ... Yeah, that's where we are. People put that man into that office. People still support him. The party is still behind him, providing cover by claiming an imaginary catasthropy as the alternative.
If the past 16 months haven't moved the needle, this certainly won't.
A snapshot should be sufficient to jerk from the room, to go build the coalition to remove this travesty ASAP and forge an administration that responds to the time, is qualified, competent, prescient, prepared, and forever reaching for deeper, farther truth.
Grief is warranted for sure but other emotions are warranted too. I celebrate the Italian PM’s response about “begging.” I feel disgust for NATO leader. And I feel many other emotions about the larger picture. BTW, ADMITTEDLY I am chicken about watching the whole interaction. I spend such time when I expect to learn something. I already have enough grief—though thanks nonetheless for this post.
You tapped into my creeping mind as I vacillate between resignation, fear, anger, looking for hope. You addressed the simple fact that we have been bludgeoned into a stupor. The nights I have insomnia over this situation I swear off news to get sleep. Then my reasoning mind is drawn to events and the anger that inevitably appears. A cycle perhaps akin to functioning alcoholic or a functioning zombie. You are right that the feel is the thing we can never swear off because it is always there anyway. I have several family members that are narcissists and even if this isn’t the only cause of this ‘situation’, the degradation of the country is a well-suited project to a ‘black hole’ of a leader whose sole mission in life is to destroy.
It is destruction and a death wish. The man knows his own death is coming and since he doesn’t believe in life, in life fulfillment, in the joy and the privilege of simply being born on a living planet and existing as humans- since he abhors life on its own merits, then he wants none of it for others. He is evil and mentally sick.
These are just a few of the words you wrote that for me are the call to heed and I thank you for this, and actually every word. Nothing is good, or right or normal, in point of fact it’s really bad — I know it, and I know I am not alone, and yet there is no change, no momentum. But I know I have to be there when the call is made.
I needed to read this and I know when my faith flags and it feels I walk alone — you will have defined the sense — the call I need to hear. And here it is. Thank you
“This is the situation.
It is bad. It is much worse than the daily texture of our consumption of it suggests. The discrepancy between the actual severity of the situation and the felt severity inside the population that is living through it is the central political fact of our moment.”
“Closing the discrepancy is the work. Not closing it once, in a moment of inspired response, but closing it as a daily discipline, by deliberately refusing the protective reflex, by allowing yourself to feel what the situation actually warrants, by maintaining the capacity for response that the strategy has been designed to anesthetize. The discipline is not pleasant. The discipline costs energy. The discipline produces, in the people who undertake it, a chronic low-grade exhaustion that is not the exhaustion of doing too much but the exhaustion of feeling at full strength what most of the population around you is no longer feeling. The exhaustion is the price of remaining responsive. The price is high. The alternative is higher.”
“Refuse the impulse. Sit with the video. Let it work on you. Let yourself feel that this is the country you live in. Let yourself feel that this is what it has come to. Let yourself feel that the institutions you grew up understanding as the load-bearing structure of the world’s stability are being held together by one foreign politician’s willingness to publicly humiliate himself on their behalf. Let yourself feel that the man at the desk is the man whose hand is on the alliance. Let yourself feel the grief.”
“The intervention is to be the person, in your circle, who does respond. Who watches the video and lets the grief arrive. Who says, out loud, this is not normal, I refuse the protective reflex, I am going to feel this in proportion to what it is. Not as performance. Not as social signaling. As an act of preservation — of the response system, of the moral immune system, of the capacity to register that something has happened, that this is not how things should be, that the institutions you love are being humiliated and that the humiliation should hurt.”
“…This is the country. This is what it has come to. This is the room and the posters and the man and the easels and the alliance held together by one Dutch politician’s willingness to be undignified in public for our sake. This is the news. This is the texture. This is the daily life of a civilization in decline that has been trained not to notice that it is in decline.
Notice.
Feel.
The feeling is the resistance. There is no other resistance available. Everything else follows from this one.”
When I saw this video, I burned with anger. My father lost some of his hearing from being bunked next to the engine room on a troop ship that took him to the island of Tinian. He was there when the Enola Gay took off for its fateful mission to drop the atomic bomb. Dad’s brother, my uncle, was at the Bulge. That meeting was revolting, as disgusting to me as the one where Zelenskyy was humiliated by those fascist Putin-loving goons.
I've been grieving for this country since that fuckhead rode down the escalator.
I refuse to deaden my outrage, disgust and heartbreak.
It’s a tragedy. We are sad for the promise of America and also fucking pissed.
Ok, I finally watched it ... It's a clip. It would be nice to get the whole video of the meeting. That said ... Yeah, that's where we are. People put that man into that office. People still support him. The party is still behind him, providing cover by claiming an imaginary catasthropy as the alternative.
If the past 16 months haven't moved the needle, this certainly won't.
I just felt that room needed more gold gewgaws.
Don’t they all. 🤣
John Cleese once said that it always cheers him up when he sees trump playing golf 'cuz it reminds him that Hitler shot himself in a bunker 🤓
My first emotion was shock - is this what we've come to? - I say that a lot. Then anger. Yes, this is what we've come to.
Rutte should have brought crayons too. Utter madness and degradation.
A snapshot should be sufficient to jerk from the room, to go build the coalition to remove this travesty ASAP and forge an administration that responds to the time, is qualified, competent, prescient, prepared, and forever reaching for deeper, farther truth.
If you insist on dreaming, goddammit, dream big!
Grief is warranted for sure but other emotions are warranted too. I celebrate the Italian PM’s response about “begging.” I feel disgust for NATO leader. And I feel many other emotions about the larger picture. BTW, ADMITTEDLY I am chicken about watching the whole interaction. I spend such time when I expect to learn something. I already have enough grief—though thanks nonetheless for this post.
The experience of grief and pain is not in and of itself a countermeasure.
The important step is to awaken others to it.
And the others are not fellow readers of this newsletter who already know the score and view it appropriately.
The urgent task is to put this in front of people whose habits of partisanship and cultural affinity have rendered them blind.
It is THEY -- our relatives, neighbors, and colleagues who must view this and answer: Is this acceptable? Is this not a shame on our country?
It is not sufficient that we feel things more intensely. It is necessary that targeted others feel things at all.
You tapped into my creeping mind as I vacillate between resignation, fear, anger, looking for hope. You addressed the simple fact that we have been bludgeoned into a stupor. The nights I have insomnia over this situation I swear off news to get sleep. Then my reasoning mind is drawn to events and the anger that inevitably appears. A cycle perhaps akin to functioning alcoholic or a functioning zombie. You are right that the feel is the thing we can never swear off because it is always there anyway. I have several family members that are narcissists and even if this isn’t the only cause of this ‘situation’, the degradation of the country is a well-suited project to a ‘black hole’ of a leader whose sole mission in life is to destroy.
It is destruction and a death wish. The man knows his own death is coming and since he doesn’t believe in life, in life fulfillment, in the joy and the privilege of simply being born on a living planet and existing as humans- since he abhors life on its own merits, then he wants none of it for others. He is evil and mentally sick.
Grief might be one proper reaction.
I would submit that shame would be more fitting in this moment.
I still think that since 2021Jan06 it's been too late to start feeling mere shame. (Or embarrassment.)
But in relation to the cultivated numbness Mike describes, agreed.
These are just a few of the words you wrote that for me are the call to heed and I thank you for this, and actually every word. Nothing is good, or right or normal, in point of fact it’s really bad — I know it, and I know I am not alone, and yet there is no change, no momentum. But I know I have to be there when the call is made.
I needed to read this and I know when my faith flags and it feels I walk alone — you will have defined the sense — the call I need to hear. And here it is. Thank you
“This is the situation.
It is bad. It is much worse than the daily texture of our consumption of it suggests. The discrepancy between the actual severity of the situation and the felt severity inside the population that is living through it is the central political fact of our moment.”
“Closing the discrepancy is the work. Not closing it once, in a moment of inspired response, but closing it as a daily discipline, by deliberately refusing the protective reflex, by allowing yourself to feel what the situation actually warrants, by maintaining the capacity for response that the strategy has been designed to anesthetize. The discipline is not pleasant. The discipline costs energy. The discipline produces, in the people who undertake it, a chronic low-grade exhaustion that is not the exhaustion of doing too much but the exhaustion of feeling at full strength what most of the population around you is no longer feeling. The exhaustion is the price of remaining responsive. The price is high. The alternative is higher.”
“Refuse the impulse. Sit with the video. Let it work on you. Let yourself feel that this is the country you live in. Let yourself feel that this is what it has come to. Let yourself feel that the institutions you grew up understanding as the load-bearing structure of the world’s stability are being held together by one foreign politician’s willingness to publicly humiliate himself on their behalf. Let yourself feel that the man at the desk is the man whose hand is on the alliance. Let yourself feel the grief.”
“The intervention is to be the person, in your circle, who does respond. Who watches the video and lets the grief arrive. Who says, out loud, this is not normal, I refuse the protective reflex, I am going to feel this in proportion to what it is. Not as performance. Not as social signaling. As an act of preservation — of the response system, of the moral immune system, of the capacity to register that something has happened, that this is not how things should be, that the institutions you love are being humiliated and that the humiliation should hurt.”
“…This is the country. This is what it has come to. This is the room and the posters and the man and the easels and the alliance held together by one Dutch politician’s willingness to be undignified in public for our sake. This is the news. This is the texture. This is the daily life of a civilization in decline that has been trained not to notice that it is in decline.
Notice.
Feel.
The feeling is the resistance. There is no other resistance available. Everything else follows from this one.”
YES ABSOLUTELY
I’m so sick of it. Bubbling with anger !