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.
I am probably burnt out. Or slow. I didn't take much from the video; I watched it twice. That reporter irks me though, so I may have a predisposed knee jerk reaction and not be the best audience for this take.
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.
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 refuse to deaden my outrage, disgust and heartbreak.
I've been grieving for this country since that fuckhead rode down the escalator.
It’s a tragedy. We are sad for the promise of America and also fucking pissed.
I just felt that room needed more gold gewgaws.
Don’t they all. 🤣
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've felt it every day. What should we do? Also nope. CNN
I am probably burnt out. Or slow. I didn't take much from the video; I watched it twice. That reporter irks me though, so I may have a predisposed knee jerk reaction and not be the best audience for this take.
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.
I’m so sick of it. Bubbling with anger !
Owŵwww.......noooooooo
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.
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.
I would watch it if the link worked.
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