Dahlia Lithwick: The Only Way to Navigate the Election Storm Ahead

[Nevilledog]

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Mary McDonnell

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How to survive the coming storm of election lies and midterm misinformation.
I’m tweeting this again because it’s simply ( or not simply at all ) uplifting, heart unfreezing, fear cracking ⁦⁦@Dahlialithwick⁩ continues to lead bless her…

slate.com
The Only Way to Navigate the Election Storm Ahead
The descent into a world in which people who are fundamentally unethical and unserious hold too many levers of power is not normal and it’s not funny.
5:52 AM · Nov 5, 2022

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/11/election-lies-2022-midterms-misinformation-survival.html

It is easy to feel despair. The folks who keep disparaging those who worry about the future of democracy seem uninterested in the fact that one party refuses to accept election results, inflames election violence, admits the entire plan is one-party rule, and brushes off and even jokes about vigilante violence. Those same people have been adept at pushing us into semantic arguments about whether we’re using the right words to describe what we see happening right before our eyes. The problem with wasting our time fighting about whether the best word to use in this particular situation is “authoritarianism,” or “fascism,” or “vigilantism,” or “lawlessness,” is that such things can often only ever be empirically established in retrospect. We can hold the I Told You So Olympics in 10 years. Let’s get that on the books.

Call it whatever you like, but this speedy descent into a world in which people who are fundamentally unethical and unserious hold too many levers of power is not normal and it’s not funny. Even for the people striving to find meaning and purpose in the ugliness, the temptation to cede ground, give up, and go small is alluring. That they want you to cede ground, give up, and go small is in fact the problem we can name right now.

My rabbi recently reminded me of a useful way to think through the fog. Citing another spiritual hero last weekend, Aurora Levins Morales, she reminded me that there is always a difference between the weather and the stars. Morales, teaching in 2017, warned that it is too easy to be buffeted by the changeable weather, and in so doing, to lose sight of the immutable stars. The stars, in this telling, are a “constant to steer by, sometimes hidden by storm clouds, but high above them, untouched by wind or rain.”

The weather is different. Weather, Morales conceded, can be “violent, drenching, harsh.” But it isn’t constant. If we do nothing but chase and feel the weather, she wrote, “we could spin forever from emergency to emergency, shouting no to each new crime—but that would be steering by chasing clouds.”

*snip*

[BumRushDaShow]

1. IOW

"Eyes on the prize".

[elleng]

2. Perfect!

'there is always a difference between the weather and the stars. Morales, teaching in 2017, warned that it is too easy to be buffeted by the changeable weather, and in so doing, to lose sight of the immutable stars. The stars, in this telling, are a “constant to steer by, sometimes hidden by storm clouds, but high above them, untouched by wind or rain.”'

[calimary]

3. I love Dahlia Lithwick!

She spoke at our Democratic group a few weeks ago. She was terrific, and so approachable afterwards. Evidently she lives here in Oregon. I did not know that before.

I was already a fan. Now I’m a bigger fan!