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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThis Presidency is Killing Relationships--and We're All Grieving
https://johnpavlovitz.com/2020/08/06/this-presidency-is-killing-relationships-and-were-all-grievingThey dont explain once rational, otherwise decent, educated people fully taking leave of their senses: people Ive grown up with, served on mission trips with, families whove had my kids over for sleepovers, older relatives I spent decades aspiring to become, ministers I once respected for their compassiona rapidly growing army of people who I was sure knew better than this.
Nothing adequately explains their complete rejection of Science.
Nothing completely accounts for them instantly embracing the most nonsensical of conspiracies.
Nothing truly prepared me for their social media explosions of racism.
Nothing fully connects the dots between their past goodness and this present ugliness.
magicarpet
(14,155 posts)Grasswire2
(13,571 posts)Fully brainwashed.
Blue_true
(31,261 posts)Very few people change.
Those people were always racists and believed the most outlandish conspiracies.
The difference now? Trump gave them permission to vocally express what they are.
Native
(5,942 posts)EarlG
(21,951 posts)Right now the nation needs a strong, consistent message from the top -- "here's what we need to do to save lives, let's all do it, here are the results" -- and not only that, but expressed as an act of compassion. "America is strong because we care about each other, let's do the right thing."
Remember that footage of bedraggled, shell shocked New Orleanians standing outside the Superdome while Bush and co. had their thumbs stuck up their asses? That was a vacuum of leadership. This is on a whole other level though. Living through the Trump administration is like watching the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina happen every single day, while the President continues to do nothing about it every single day.
Without somebody to point us in the right direction, regular people are just going off in any old direction they like. Nobody is telling them to do otherwise.
Skittles
(153,169 posts)fact
But it hurts just the same
Mariana
(14,858 posts)Considering that, it is very hard for me to believe that he had no idea whatsoever what these people are really like.
Skittles
(153,169 posts)but it's harder to ignore when they're so open about it
dlk
(11,569 posts)Never underestimate the power of hateful propaganda. The Republican neutering of the FCC has caused deep and lasting damage to our country.
Mariana
(14,858 posts)Pavlovitz knows about that firsthand, having been an preacher in white Evangelical churches for many years. As such, he helped to create the situation we have today. Now, here he is pretending he had no clue in all that time that his fellow white Evangelicals were so full of hatred. I don't believe him.
dlk
(11,569 posts)The important thing is to determine where we go from here.
johnnyfins
(823 posts)And he couldn't care less because there isn't an empathetic cell in his body.
diane in sf
(3,914 posts)well-educated.
JI7
(89,252 posts)none of this would be a surprise.
Buckeye_Democrat
(14,855 posts)Everything Schwartz said about Trump during this 2016 interview has been confirmed, and the evidence matched strongly even back then:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/07/25/donald-trumps-ghostwriter-tells-all/amp
An exception might be that Schwartz worried about Trump ending all civilization, but he's not out of office yet.
renate
(13,776 posts)... who doesnt know, and wouldnt care, about their existence.
Its so pathetic.
Buckeye_Democrat
(14,855 posts)Her FOX-watching husband can kiss my ass, though. I just haven't said such a thing to her, another part of the effort to keep the peace.
At least my sister isn't mean, and she takes the virus seriously.
It just blew my mind that, after I had a lapse in judgement about her extreme religious beliefs and I mentioned how some evangelicals actually think God chose Trump to lead us, she AGREED with them. She said that Ben Carson is "obviously" a devoted Christian, and that's what HE said about Trump.
ancianita
(36,100 posts)Once it's validated, or not restrained, it poisons public faith and trust, and one's integrity.
Social roles of church, school, parenting, work can all easily hide the inner irrationalities that reject rational systems; science, for example. That's the John Calvin church part about the permanent inner condition of depravity.
The modern psychology part:
Social roles are trained in, and because social roles don't require real intimacy, very little can be learned about what another really thinks, feels, believes, except when big environmental stresses hit everyone equally, and roles don't work under stresses.
People often believe about themselves, that because they've been trained into "good roles," that they themselves are good people. (Good church/home training, etc., etc.) Because society validates "good roles" -- as in a life/work script -- they believe their own personal goodness is validated by society.
And so they believe that they themselves can't possibly do anything to directly hurt or harm others -- at least the ones they most closely resemble, those with "good roles." They can't possibly be wrong about personal or social labeling of others, or organizing inclusion and exclusion, personal or group pre-judging, or discriminatory policy. They believe that any difference is a deficit, not simply a difference.
Often, once people are seen outside their roles, we who are in roles, too, often tell ourselves that we are seeing the "real" person, and that their role(s) masks their realness (or we think they're fake). They often can and will say the same of us.
If under rapid or constant external stresses, roles break down because they can't be practiced or performed. Humans, without their roles, often don't even know themselves any other way, and so they are just as surprised, pleasantly or not, to learn about themselves and others, outside of roles they've played together. Without roles, different degrees of depravity and/or morality come out as rational or irrational talk, feelings, behaviors, and more or less so, because no one is all one or the other; everyone is some combination of both.
Grieving for a loss of role isn't grieving for lost self. It's grieving for a trained or habitual self. It's grieving for loss of what one believed as true. It's grief for the comfort of familiar ways of life, grieving for losing the comforting belief that what/roles they were used to wouldn't have to change.
Even in a bigger sense, having to say goodbye to structures that provide roles, doesn't mean that only bad can happen, or only ugliness.
It means that we have a chance to develop better, more humane and civilized roles, not just transactional ones, or hierarchal ones beset by rules, power, and ego (in social, political, economic, spiritual leadership).
We can have roles formed more authentically by morality and true equality, and leave the comfortable old ones -- appearance of it for purposes of "law and order" or "might makes right" and even "race status" -- leave those behind.
After grieving, a better world is possible.
ego_nation
(123 posts)there are two completely different parallel universes overlapping simultaneously. We look at them and are wholly unable to wrap our minds around the views they have, and they in turn likely feel exactly the same about us. I am at a complete loss at the gap that exists, and have pretty much given up hope that anything can be bridged. We simply have to outnumber them and hope for the best.
Nay
(12,051 posts)Republican since the Bushes) and we both agreed that we hadn't really realized how many
Racist
Mean
and
Stupid
people there are in this country. We both are appalled at the mask bullshit, people acting like it's some sort of litmus test for freedumb and patriotism to not wear one. It's all such a clusterfuck.