Title : I Should Have Known Better
link : I Should Have Known Better
I Should Have Known Better
(1) Fighting with people the internet and; (2) lashing out at my fellow citizens. By 10:00 p.m. last night, I'd already violated two of my four key precepts for Being My Own Light in The Age of Trump, and it was 1:00 a.m. before I was finally able to fall asleep.My anger overwhelmed my tiredness and my better judgment, as well as the advice my husband, Geoff, always gives me: Your writing speaks for itself. Fighting on the internet is a stupid, contrived form of entertainment. Focus on other things.
But it was irresistible this time.
The nation had just witnessed some epically venal conduct by the United States Senate, including my own Senator who I’d been contacting endlessly.
She and her colleagues had just enacted a tax overhaul that was more retro than Duran Duran in a DeLorean, and that many Very Smart People know for a fact will have dire consequences for our society. All to sell out the public interest to corporations and the ultra-rich in new and unprecedented ways.
Of course this is nothing new: corporate ownership of our democracy began decades ago, and continues unabated. But only now--with 71 year-old Donald Trump and 75 year-old Mitch McConnell--two white, male, ultra-rich, Baby Boomers--did my rage come into stark relief.
These two hideous-in-every-possible-way men are the most visible public face of this legislation for two of the three branches of government, as well as the current economic and planetary crisis we are in. So I tweeted something about how Baby Boomers were responsible for this mess, and people were pissed.
Baby Boomers on Facebook and Twitter (the same ones who drag millennials for getting trophies, by the way) blocked me, called me a "selfish ungrateful shit" and reminded me that they were the architects of the social justice movement, the civil rights era, and the opposition to the Vietnam War.
My 72 year-old mother is an old hippie who was one of ten women in her medical school class. She has spent her entire career in public mental health. She kept doing that work, watching as more and more of her colleagues started shilling for Big Pharma and moving to huge houses in the suburbs.
She lost friends. Real friends. My parents lost real friends to money and politics. So I get it. I know there is a schism in the Baby Boomer generation, and that it's not fair to "paint people with a broad brush" based on when they were born.
But just as I know my white skin and good education give me advantages and privileges, the time and place of my birth does as well, and I think it is okay to admit that those privileges exist, and that they have consequences, without taking personal offense.
After all, my mom doesn't get mad at me when I tell her that part of why I don't live in New York City anymore is that I can't afford to. I don't have the kind of pension she has. Those don't exist anymore. I don't own valuable real estate that I bought cheap. That doesn't exist anymore, either, especially there. My dad resents being lumped in with his generation, though, and I should have known that people would be mad and wouldn't get what I was saying.
I'd assumed folks would be able to handle this point--however crudely expressed--because I certainly don't take offense. I'm usually not offended by all the vitriol I get just for speaking my mind, with everything from my ideas to my looks picked apart and maligned. If I was, I couldn't have this blog.
And yet yesterday I felt offended by other people being offended, and round and round you go. Being offended is a waste of time, because it shifts the focus away from community and ideas, and back to individual defensiveness in self-indulgent, narcissistic ways that don’t move society forward.
I found myself guilty of this, and it sucked.
That's when I decided to just calm the fuck down and return to the two precepts of not engaging anymore and not turning on my fellow citizens as a way to express anger about where our country is right now.
I woke up to a beautiful snowy day and the opening weekend of skiing at Eaglecrest, our municipal ski area and a local treasure in my opinion. I ran an indoor 5K with Paige for Girls on the Run, an amazing organization that works to promote confidence, self-esteem, physical and mental health, social consciousness, kindness, and assertiveness in girls.
There were leaders there. The future leaders of our community. I’m sure of it, just as I'm sure that a future President of the United States was at a women's march somewhere in 2017, or maybe even running that 5K in Juneau today.
Of course this is nothing new: corporate ownership of our democracy began decades ago, and continues unabated. But only now--with 71 year-old Donald Trump and 75 year-old Mitch McConnell--two white, male, ultra-rich, Baby Boomers--did my rage come into stark relief.
These two hideous-in-every-possible-way men are the most visible public face of this legislation for two of the three branches of government, as well as the current economic and planetary crisis we are in. So I tweeted something about how Baby Boomers were responsible for this mess, and people were pissed.
Baby Boomers on Facebook and Twitter (the same ones who drag millennials for getting trophies, by the way) blocked me, called me a "selfish ungrateful shit" and reminded me that they were the architects of the social justice movement, the civil rights era, and the opposition to the Vietnam War.
I know this, of course.
My 72 year-old mother is an old hippie who was one of ten women in her medical school class. She has spent her entire career in public mental health. She kept doing that work, watching as more and more of her colleagues started shilling for Big Pharma and moving to huge houses in the suburbs.
She lost friends. Real friends. My parents lost real friends to money and politics. So I get it. I know there is a schism in the Baby Boomer generation, and that it's not fair to "paint people with a broad brush" based on when they were born.
But just as I know my white skin and good education give me advantages and privileges, the time and place of my birth does as well, and I think it is okay to admit that those privileges exist, and that they have consequences, without taking personal offense.
After all, my mom doesn't get mad at me when I tell her that part of why I don't live in New York City anymore is that I can't afford to. I don't have the kind of pension she has. Those don't exist anymore. I don't own valuable real estate that I bought cheap. That doesn't exist anymore, either, especially there. My dad resents being lumped in with his generation, though, and I should have known that people would be mad and wouldn't get what I was saying.
I'd assumed folks would be able to handle this point--however crudely expressed--because I certainly don't take offense. I'm usually not offended by all the vitriol I get just for speaking my mind, with everything from my ideas to my looks picked apart and maligned. If I was, I couldn't have this blog.
And yet yesterday I felt offended by other people being offended, and round and round you go. Being offended is a waste of time, because it shifts the focus away from community and ideas, and back to individual defensiveness in self-indulgent, narcissistic ways that don’t move society forward.
I found myself guilty of this, and it sucked.
That's when I decided to just calm the fuck down and return to the two precepts of not engaging anymore and not turning on my fellow citizens as a way to express anger about where our country is right now.
I woke up to a beautiful snowy day and the opening weekend of skiing at Eaglecrest, our municipal ski area and a local treasure in my opinion. I ran an indoor 5K with Paige for Girls on the Run, an amazing organization that works to promote confidence, self-esteem, physical and mental health, social consciousness, kindness, and assertiveness in girls.
There were leaders there. The future leaders of our community. I’m sure of it, just as I'm sure that a future President of the United States was at a women's march somewhere in 2017, or maybe even running that 5K in Juneau today.
I chose instead to focus on that, and suddenly I felt a whole lot better about the world.
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