When the stock market takes a 600 point dive and there is no depression and there is no war… and there is also NO REASON… EXCEPT????
Time to get out the old movie from 1997, Wag the Dog. Simply put it is about a President just prior to election time becoming embroiled in a sex scandal. The brilliant spin doctor of the administration and a major Hollywood producer collaborate to create and promote a war against Albania. This will take the heat off the Scandal and the oversexed President will be elected.
It is a brilliant movie and ridiculously relevant.
From the door of the Saudi Arabian Embassy in Turkey, which the Crown Prince’s assistants walk through with their body saw in full view, to the Campaign of Bombs on Broadway, to accusing Democrats of doing-in Democrats.
They’re coming at us along with every other trickster. Wait a minute! Two weeks before the mid-term election???
This is very familiar. Did this happen before? Wait, let me think! Two weeks before the election 2016, the guy from the FBI… forgot his name. Didn’t he do something similar concerning Hillary Clinton which the next day he took back… something like that.
If you remember what it was, would you remind me?
Could it be happening again?
If you believe you cannot fool all the people all of the time, please, have a good laugh, and then go out and VOTE!
Typically when I write a blog post I receive responses about what I have written. This time there were very few responses. Perhaps my friends didn’t agree with my take… not necessarily about the body language. You’d have to be blind not to see all the frozen Stepford bodies behind the man and how all the women, Including his wife, sat immobile, staring into space, not even looking or connecting with the man.
My last blog post, The Body Talks, was also about anger… women’s anger. And how slapping back doesn’t always work and isn’t always satisfying.
I think it was the lack of reaction to what I said about anger that has caused me to write this addendum.
The article concerns a slew of new books that challenge the notion that rage is a danger to self and to society. How propitious is that?
As I am reading the article, I think that Casey (I choose to think we could be on a first name basis) is refuting my argument that anger and rage can be detrimental to the personal and the political .
But I read on and now I am going to quote from her article:
Illustration by Golden Cosmos
“…Traister writes that she does not wish “simply to cheer” anger, and acknowledges that rage that fuels insurrections “has the power to burn them up.” But her case for ire is undermined by a rampaging elephant in the room: anger knows no political persuasion. For every Maxine Waters, there’s a Michele Bachmann; for every Gloria Steinem, a Phyllis Schlafly.
“All of the books do, however, acknowledge a fact that undercuts their attempts to valorize women’s anger: one of the angriest demographics in America before the 2016 Presidential election was white women, and the majority of them voted for Donald Trump.”
“That the words “President” and “Trump” came together anywhere outside of a Mad Lib is itself perhaps the most straightforward argument against anger as a political virtue.”
“…many people were so furious about immigration, the economy, the election of a black President, the potential for a female one, Black Lives Matter, the War on Christmas, and any number of other real and phantasmagorical issues that they voted for Trump. Was there ever a better example of blind rage?”
“That blindness is one of the oldest objections to anger.”
“The civil-rights marchers and the Freedom Riders were the ones with calm clarity…, while their white neighbors were the ones who looked and sounded like the Furies.”
“Repressed emotions are dangerous, but, as countless medical studies have shown, sustained anger is both physically and emotionally destructive.
“Women have every reason to be livid right now, and our anger should not be mocked, censored, or punished. But that does not mean it must be celebrated…”
“…What you build is infinitely more important than what you tear down.”
“Anger is an avaricious emotion; it takes more credit than it deserves. Attempts to make it into a political virtue too often attribute to anger victories that rightfully belong to courage, patience, intelligence, persistence or love…”
“What is powerful isn’t so much women’s anger as their collective action. That is what has changed most radically since this past election, hopefully not in a burst of rebellion but in a revolution of lasting consequence.”
My dear friends, if I was able to write all this instead of quoting my new best friend, Casey, I might have made my position on anger clearer… I am just grateful Casey read the books and wrote the book reports quoted from. And I wanted to share it with my friends. I have displayed enough anger and rage in my lifetime to make for physical and emotional and mental discomfort.
Imagine, at my age (85…thank goodness I shall stop counting after this birthday) coming to understand that there is another way to be in and of the world and I want all of you to join me.
Those of us who struggle to be accepted, acknowledged and heard (and, personally, I think that is a forever struggle) are hanging low since the Saturday vote on Kavanaugh.
How could someone who cannot control his words and his emotions be judge of anything?
Shake my head, wring my hands, breathe deeply…
I am too aware how easy it is to shower vitriol and venom on opposing ideas and thoughts.
As a kid, when I felt crossed or abused (and being one of eight I felt that often) if I was able to, meaning if I was not being physically held down by one of my sistren or brethren, I would bellow, scream, smack and, yes, even bite.
In my so many years on this planet, one thing I have learned is that there was and is no satisfaction in slapping back. Not when I was a kid and not now.
So how do I calm the savage beast in my heart and mind? And it came to me.
I stopped looking at Kavanaugh and focused on his wife and the women he carefully appointed to be his chorus of acolytes. My dear friends, I couldn’t believe it. They sat there like the Stepford wives they were being asked to portray. Their bodies didn’t move. Their faces didn’t change expression. It was very scary.
And then I watched Mrs. Kavanaugh and I felt so very sad. Her expression, or lack thereof, was worth a thousand words.
Immobile! Tragic! Unreal! A prisoner!
Oh, my friends, however sad I am about what happened last week-end, for this moment, I am free and my women friends and the women in my family, are free….no one has asked me to sit as testimony to the lies and stumbles of a questionable life.
Please, look at these women, and tell me you are glad you do not belong to their club. My face and my body connect to my heart and my mind and my thoughts. Believe me, there are plenty of times I would love to control my body and my face to hide my thoughts. For good or for ill, not a possibility. What you see is what you get.
Someone smarter than me once said: “You can hide some thoughts from your body and face some of the time… but you cannot hide all of your thoughts from your body and your face all the time.
ie and ridiculously relevant.
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