That we are
now in an election year riven by tumult and trepidation is obvious. The
largest campus protests in 56 years go on unabated even while we are witness
to the first ever criminal trial of a former U.S. president. At the same time a
spate of restrictive abortion laws have been hatched throughout the red states. Some so draconian they seek to prosecute women attempting to go to abortion states for the procedure.. Add to that two world-rattling
wars – in Gaza and Ukraine- whose horrific daily death tolls are so often
overshadowed by domestic crises.
As a recent
piece in The Washington Post put it:
“From coast
to coast, Americans have been thrust under a cloud of chaos that seems to
thicken with every breaking-news alert. And in an already contentious and
consequential election year, there is seemingly no relief ahead.”
According to Preeti Kulkarni, a freshman at George Washington University- quoted in Sunday’s Wapo- whose campus has been riven by clashes over Gaza:
“Everything is on fire,”
That description also could have applied to those of us living in 1968. First there were the two major assassinations: of Rev. Martin Luther King in April, then of Democratic candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in June. There then followed violent attacks on anti-Vietnam War protesters in Grant Park in Chicago at the Democratic Convention in August, 1968. This saw numerous student protester heads bloodied by clubs compliments of overreacting police, e.g.
1968 Democratic National Convention: The Mess in Chicago | Retro Report | PBS LearningMedia
The rage against the Vietnam War went on for years and its nadir was likely the massacre of four students at Kent State in May, 1970,
When the National Guard Arrived at Kent State, Images From 1970 - The Atlantic
I was attending the University of South Florida at the time, completing my degree in astronomy, and had been finishing a stellar evolution research paper on May 5, 1970 when National Guardsmen burst into the dorm (Beta Hall) and searched the rooms. They were seeking any and all perps who may have had a hand in setting off a bomb at the USF Administration Building. A photo of some of the "protesters of interest" is shown at top. Also, once things had quieted down (three days later), another image emerged of a student protester talking to a politician about his pro-War stance. Fortunately, the students in Beta Hall - and other dorms - managed to get through that period with no violence, which had scarred so many other universities.
The point is that events "being on fire" doesn't mean one's brain must also be on fire. This is so long as one uses critical thinking capacity to set priorities for this time of tempest and uses mental centering techniques to avoid distraction. In the case of the USF anti-war hippie student (lower pic) it meant putting his rage against the war under control to engage with a Tampa politico. No raising of voices, just a calm exchange. An effort to reach a point of reason, beyond the unreason.
In the case of today's upheavals over Gaza it means putting down social media contact for most of the day and engaging in meditation or other mind-calming practices instead. It also means grasping that free speech does not include bombing or setting fire to administration buildings, breaking and entering into offices, and harassing or punching Jewish students.
Also being smart enough not to carelessly use genocide tropes, chants and signs where they don't apply. The use of "Genocide Joe" or similar signage in fact just makes those who employ them look ignorant, uneducated or even stupid. It shows me they have no concept of actual genocide such as occurred in Rwanda (1994) or the Holocaust. Conflating the Israelis' collateral deaths in Gaza (from their indiscriminate attacks) with a planned elimination hatched by Joe Biden is thus sheer madness and gross imbecility.
There is no analogy whatsoever and any college student using it ought to be educated on actual genocide, such as carried out by the Nazis, e.g. as shown in the excellent PBS series: The U.S. and the Holocaust', especially the last part:
This is why in a post not long ago (Feb. 28) I had written:
"Ever played three-dimensional chess? That is the rough equivalent of what President Biden is playing right now to try to get the autocratic fool Benji Netanyahu under control. It's not easy because the conflict for which Gaza is now the pivot has been going on since 1948. It will not be solved overnight or even in one election year. That means maturity of mind is needed to parse all its dimensions. Want to know what I suggest for these young twitchy Turks (who some recent polls also show that 20% believe the Holocaust was a myth): Get a hold of the book 'O Jerusalem' and read it! Then you will at least have some grasp of the issues."
I also noted that protesters today, like those in 1968, 1970, needed to educate themselves on the background to the conflict. To that end I also recommended either getting hold of the book, O Jerusalem, or watching the superb (1960) movie Exodus. Failing to do that means the college protesters have no basis in history to grasp what they are reacting to. They are simply unthinking, reacting automatons.
Back to cooling the fevers in the upset brain and its microglial cells. Hell, even outdoor tasks like gardening or weeding can still the 'beast' within the brain (namely the microglial cells) ceaselessly churning neurons into varied states of agitation. My point? No one has to be driven to mindless rage, chaos or hysteria if one can get control of one's brain and reactions to events.
Donna Jackson Nakagawa's superb book 'The Angel and the Assassin' -
On how brains can go haywire if their microglial cells get out of control and 'eat' the brain synapses, is instructive and ought to be read by everyone to grasp the mental dynamics of current events. This is especially applicable in today's superheated media (and social media) environment. Her book also includes practical methods by which to calm and control the brain. Methods which can be readily harnessed so these cells become one's allies instead of one's enemies. In what I behold happening now, too many protesters' microglials have become their enemies - hence the torrent of counterproductive actions.
Of course, no one can control events, but we always have the option or choice to control our reaction to them. So we can either let outer events wreak havoc and turn our neurons to jelly, or we can take command using ancient tried and true methods in combination with critical thinking and basic reasoning.
Let's take the last and apply to this election year, which has so many in a tizzy. Ali Velshi on MSNBC yesterday made it simple:
"This election is binary, and you are either voting to preserve and defend our democracy or to dispose of it. Whatever else is going on has no bearing on that choice, not the upheaval in Gaza, any issues with Biden or inflation or anything else. You vote to preserve what we have then we can deal with the rest after securing it."
In other words, leave out all the dog whistles and distractions. You either have the power to save our democracy by voting for Joe Biden, or the power to bring it down by voting for a lying traitor, rapist and grifter. Nothing else matters. Considering a third party vote or not voting at all as a "protest" means one hasn't grasped the gravity of the situation. And in that case shouldn't even be out and about protesting.
See Also:
"It’s Not the Economy; it’s the Constitution!' -
And:
by Carl Gibson | May 5, 2024 - 6:25am | permalink
The 2024 presidential election is expected to be another extremely close contest, with the winner of the Electoral College likely eking out a victory with just tens of thousands of votes across a handful of swing states. But control of the White House could come down to who wins Nebraska's 2nd Congressional District.
Bloomberg reported that both Democrats and Republicans are campaigning hard in Douglas County — which includes the Omaha area — in the 2024 cycle. The 2nd district is known as a "blue dot" in a typically deep-red state that has reliably voted for Republican presidential candidates in every election dating back to 1964. Nebraska is one of the two states in which individual congressional districts each cast their own electoral vote (the other being Maine), with the overall winner of the state getting two electoral votes. And with 538 Electoral College votes up for grabs, a scenario could emerge in which both President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump are in a virtual tie and the entire election comes down to who wins in Omaha.
And:
by Will Bunch | May 7, 2024 - 7:02am | permalink
— from the Philadelphia Inquirer
In an emotionally jarring and disorienting week where you might wake up to a televised, tear-gas haze of cops firing rubber bullets into a crowd of college students in the blackness of a Southern California night, the scariest thing came wrapped in the cover of a magazine.
Donald Trump, locked in as GOP presidential nominee even as he spends his days in a Manhattan courtroom in the first of his four felony trials, spoke at length to a reporter for Time magazine for a piece headlined, “How Far Trump Would Go” — aimed at addressing the growing talk that a second presidential term would look more like a dictatorship.
Trump’s way of addressing the dictatorship controversy was essentially to confirm it.
And:
Would Voters Be So Gung-Ho Voting For Trump If They Knew His Mom's Opinion Of Him?
No comments:
Post a Comment