Making it Through the Summer
This is the fifth Presidential election cycle I've watched through the Democratic Underground lens. If you count the mid-term general election cycles (and some of them have been dillies) it's the tenth election cycle altogether.
They have more in common than you might think.
We're passionate about our beliefs, our issues, and our candidates. DU includes a spectrum of Democratic voters, Party members, and citizens that varies quite a bit on several axes (the plural of axis, though sometimes it does feel like the chopping tool...)
The things we care about matter to us, a lot. And they are important things generally. Certainly you cannot call climate change, economic security, human rights, the future of democracy, national security, or even many of their component issues trivial.
But there are a lot of them. And while most of them matter to most of us, our perceptions of priority, urgency, and feasibility vary greatly.
And then there are the candidates. Issues of trust, confidence, character, experience- when the stakes are high, where do our priorities align? Can we allow that people make legitimate changes in their beliefs, and reflect growing understanding and experience? Or do we mistrust "I know better now" as end-justifies-the-means pandering that will inevitably go back to old patterns once they're in office?
How much can we trust what a candidate we like says? How much can we trust any news source or media outlet to accurately relay information? What about a candidate we're doubtful of?
The most disturbing change I have witnessed over all the election cycles DU has shared is the extent to which information creation and distribution channels have been weaponized in the service of amoral, tacit or downright covert agendas.
The dangers of having a core of 'mainstream' or 'establishment' media are familiar to all of us. They are not new, as those of us who lived through the 'invisible propaganda' cycles of post-WWII western anti-communist bloc maneuvering can attest.
The new dangers of having NO core of accepted 'news of record' media that could be held to minimal shared standards of accuracy, reliability, and transparency feel different. Things fall apart, the center is not holding...
We are facing a reckoning with the First Amendment, and it's a lot easier to see the potential harm than the possible good of reassessing the risks and benefits of unregulated communication that uses shared commons for dissemination. Yet there are no certain remedies- and to do nothing is to enable continuation and increasing damage to self-government.
Believe it or not, here at DU we have it pretty good in some ways. This site has and enforces Terms of Service that include basic norms of adult interaction and politeness in disagreements and differences. We're not always perfect, sometimes not even very good, at applying that enforcement, but we retain the goals. We keep trying. We try to find a balance between questioning our own performance, and maintaining our convictions.
And we have learned over the years that election cycles make thing pretty lively. And increase the difficulties of maintaining those standards exponentially. We've implemented tools to help- the Primaries forum and Candidate fora, places where members interested in a higher level of passionate threshing of my beliefs against yours can interact within the focus of those candidates and contests.
But inevitably they leak. Because as the season grinds on, so many of us become increasingly certain that the stakes are now apocalyptic and that ONLY our ideas, ONLY the things we KNOW, for SURE, with PASSION, can save us, can save you, can save our nation.
And anyone who doesn't agree with that is an idiot, a troll, or part of the problem.
Stress mounts. People take breaks. GBCW posts become part of the landscape. The blue Jury Duty header seems to pop up every time we refresh the browser. Deja vu all over again.
Here's just a few suggestions for making it through the summer with sanity intact:
Stop trying to control what you can't control- i.e. other peoples' beliefs. They will either get it or they won't, and the more you try to make them, the more they won't. This is a reality of human nature.
Study a little history. Believe it or not, the stakes have been higher. We've faced down nuclear annihilation in the offing, candidates getting murdered here in the U.S., major riots in major cities, whole generations of young people getting conscripted into save-our-capitalist-oligarch wars. Yes, climate change is urgent and real and an existential threat. It's not the first. It may be the last, but making yourself crazy about it won't help keep that from happening.
Keep reminding yourself of the common ground we share, rather than the differences that divide us. Us here on DU, first, but there's a bigger problem of disunity and if we can make progress here, we'll be doing something that might have a larger effect where it's needed.
Practice deep breathing or mountain hiking or whatever helps you de-stress. And look at two things: How much you don't know (my word, the world is complicated and change is multi-layered and fast and people have all kinds of concerns I didn't even know were concerns, and interests I never even heard of, and they MATTER to the people who have them as much as mine matter to me...) and what's really important to you and the people you love, TODAY. Remember that death and chaos that may have nothing to do with politics are always out there waiting, and that you are alive and well and able to hug a loved one, walk a dog, enjoy a sunset is no small thing.
And remember, if you can, how much changes how quickly in an election cycle, and how little anyone knows about anything THIS time. Whoever was right last time is pretty much guaranteed to be wrong this time. What we think we learned has already become obsolete. You can't stop the current, the breakers will keep rolling. Learn to surf.
And vote blue.
No matter who.
meditatively,
Bright
= new reply since forum marked as read
I'm really down right now, recovering from last week's total knee replacement that's supposed to make my life better eventually, feeling like someone in Plato's cave looking at the lights and shadows, hearing the echoes, and wondering where this season's politics will take us.
And here's your essay. Thank you.
Bookmarked ..... for every moment I need reminding.
