Being Shocked Is Not Strategic

“Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.” - Philippians 2:3-7 (ESV)

“We spent the weekend feeding USAID to the wood chipper. Could have gone to some great parties. Did that instead.” - Elon Musk

In just the last few days, I talked to a dear friend who is scared to death that he won’t be able to protect his child who is trans and only wants to be left alone to live her life. Another friend is trying to make her elementary school safe for her students so that, instead of being worried about their parents getting taken by ICE at drop off or pickup, the children can do their best to learn to read. Still another friend’s sister was told that a program to provide clean water and improved sanitation to the neediest people on planet Earth has been shuttered without notice by a man fixated on using other people’s money to send himself to Mars.

I know that giving too much energy to the cruelty of others can feed unkindness in myself. And I am trying to have grace. I really am. But I have to be honest. I dream about telling that man into which orifice I think he ought to launch his next rocket.

These guys are sitting on a perch of unimaginable safety, picking off the most vulnerable among us one by one, and asserting themselves as tough guys who aren’t afraid to do tough things – just like a couple of spoiled brothers in clean, pressed safari garments, smiling with thumbs up for the camera, a lion who never had a chance held up dead as a trophy between them. And the millions of people cheering them on have no idea they are next on deck. It is so hard to not succumb to rage, or to even know what to do.

In her book Standing At The Edge, the beloved Buddhist teacher Roshi Joan Halifax tells the story of serving in a medical outpost in Nepal when a little girl who had been severely burned was brought to clinic by her father. The child’s wounds were infected badly, so much so that some of them had been overtaken by maggots. Roshi Joan found herself getting overwhelmed by the pain and horror she was witnessing and felt like she might pass out. In order to stay in service, in order to not turn away from the suffering of the child, she focused on the little girl’s courage and on the people who were working to save her life.

Many of us are reading this from a place of considerable comfort, and only learning about the horrors of this world through pixels on a screen. We are being made to feel that our circumstances are hopeless. Or that the only hope we have rests in poll numbers which seem very close to always wrong. But there are people everywhere, who didn’t ask for this fight, but are nevertheless finding courage to stand strong with what is right. We need to anchor our attention in them.

Because people who are supposed to inform and lead us conflate facts with feelings, focus on spectacle over substance, and favor conflict over accountability. All of which has contributed a great deal to our collective confusion. I have to imagine someone has developed a Botox treatment specifically designed to counteract the effects from politicians and pundits auditioning their shocked faces more or less non-stop for going on almost ten years. If breathlessly agreeing with each other about how bad this President and his enablers are was an effective strategy, it would have worked by now. What we are doing is clearly not working.

We need to quit getting repeatedly provoked by bad actors like some 50s box office dud about a trifling husband and his long-suffering spouse. The wife confronts him with his philandering. He tells her she is nuts. She says, “Then explain this!!!” He says he doesn’t know what she is even talking about. Back and forth. Back and forth. Until she finally launches a lamp at his head. At which point he says, “I can’t deal with you when you are like this,” feigns exhaustion, and walks out of frame, victorious.

We are not trapped in some pre-sexual revolution marriage revered by the New Right with no agency or ability to shape how this conversation takes place. We did not take a vow to reflexively defend the institutions of government unequivocally ‘til death do us part. Everyone knows that there is waste in government, and also instances of corruption. This is news to no one. There is every reason to feel government should be more responsive, and that there must be a better way. Our leaders should openly embrace innovation and good ideas from all quarters.

That is very different than giving illegal access to the nation’s bank accounts to a man who lives by the ethos “move fast and break shit.” That might work with assembly lines and app iterations funded by VC investors who know the risks. But this is an extremely complex government that serves 330 million people and is still for the moment the leader of the free world. We can do better than someone who claims with no evidence that the world’s largest source of humanitarian aid is “a criminal organization” and with no authority summarily decides “it is time for it to die.” He is a henchman trying to keep the focus on the people least able to defend themselves so he can empty the safe in broad daylight. We are being treated like a bunch of chumps.

The great Alice Walker once said, “the most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.” This country is filled with good people from all incomes, backgrounds, and walks of life who want to do right by each other in this precarious time. I know with every ounce of who I am that is true. We are not helpless citizen subjects in the kingdom of King Baby. This country is not his. We cannot be commanded to believe nothing can be done. Just because they are rich, doesn’t mean we are going to let them do it.