How are we Dealing?

The Question as posed:

As we settle into life after the coming return of Darth Vader, how have we each been responding? Have we stopped watching the news? Or, as Mary-Ellen asks, "...where and how we are staying informed about news events. Has your personal choices of information been altered by the most recent events in this country?" Who are we turning to to help understand what may seem beyond understanding for those of us who have lived our lives in the midst of what we perhaps thought was an unstoppable progress of liberal democracy?

Are we meditating more? Taking longer walks? Looking to spend more time with friends and community? Looking for places to contribute money and time to support those most at risk?

Or have we decided the world is going nuts and the best thing to do is to enjoy the moment, the sunshine, fresh air, and a good drink?

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A week ago I wrote these Observations for 12 November 2024:

Everything changes
and you're in a new world that you deeply deplore
and won't cooperate with
BUT you're irrelevant anyway.

"Go outside and play"
is good advice.
Stay out of sausage factories and theatres of cruelty,
and don't attract the attention of brown shirts.

And don't bother to pine for
The Good Old Days
when everything seemed to make sense
and now nothing much does anymore.

Mutter amongst yourselves
Watch Monty Python
and don't skimp on the paté

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The paté is not just Chopped Liver, but rather a smörgåsbord of dainties to nibble. This morning I collected a suite of Notes to Oneself to extend the Observations and lay out some personal prescriptions —some of which will Resonate ...and some will Puzzle. A few may even Offend, Mencken-like. And another day there might be a completely different array. Each begs to be fanned out into more detail:

seek apothegmatic guidance
(attend to the terse, the witty, the maxim-like)

read and write

make things

strive to be Authentic

cleave to the real
but live in the Imagination

curate the passing stream

seek perspective, and perspectives

learn to recognize Kool Aid and nostrums

eschew whingeing

Cultivate your Garden

sauve qui peut

(said Napoleon at Waterloo)

Be kind. No excuses.
(Dianne Oelberger)

and as my brother John was wont to say:
Be Of Good Cheer

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To read for guidance and inspiration:

• Heather Cox Richardson, Maria Popova, Timothy Snyder (On Tyranny, and his new On Freedom too), Montaigne and other Improving Texts;
• serious History (William McNeill, Immanuel Wallerstein, Amitav Ghosh, David Graeber... )
• commentaries on American society (Colin Woodard, Sarah Smarsh)
• cartoons (Edward Koren, George Booth, Steinberg, Edward Gorey, Abner Dean, Walt Kelly, Bill Watterson, etc.)
• the best of fiction (Ursula Le Guin, David James Duncan, Barbara Kingsolver, Jane Austen... William Gibson... )
• Balm and Analgesic: Robin Wall Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgrass, Gathering Moss, and The Serviceberry (the latter just arrived today. See Emergence Magazine for a preview); and Elizabeth Gilbert's The Signature of All Things (others could surely be added)

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So what am I not doing, or trying not to do? For now, not listening to NPR news. Not reading obsessively the various pundits who try to explain what happened. Not making lists of enemies.

We need to recognize the dimensions of our own bubbles, and accept and recognize and evaluate the deficiencies in our understanding of America (and, indeed, the Earth itself) in 2024. A tall order and great challenge.

In The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt noted, "In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and that nothing was true. Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow."