The President Is Ruining My Life

The president is ruining my life!

-- Egocentric? You think? Well, fundamentally, aren’t we all? But note, I’m not singling out the president on this one: I’m outing myself. 

Because of all the ways the president has been ruining my life, starting from way back before he was in office — before he was even the chosen candidate of his party — what rankles most on a daily basis, repetitively and ad nauseum, is how he has stolen my friends’ attention away from the concerns of my. Own. Personal. Life. 

Do you know what I mean? Have you felt it, too?

Okay, sure, my life is ordinary. I get that. I’m not rich or famous, not a TV reality star or a notorious bankrupt or criminal perpetrator of tax fraud or a bold-faced pathological liar. Nothing in my life warrants headlines. I admit it. 

But aren’t we living in an age of democratic communication, where everyone is the star of his or her own life on social media? And don’t I deserve my three seconds a day like everyone else? 

Instead friends scroll past my most recent (admittedly mundane) posts at breakneck speed, searching for the president’s latest outrageous act or utterance, something someone else has already shared that they can decorate with their own little mad emoji. You know, the red face with steam rising from the head. Well, la-dee-da!

Once in a while someone leaves a comment on one of my posts, but even then they may drag in the president’s name! — though he was in no way connected to my post! He is intruding into my personal space!

It’s so unfair! Very, very unfair, I don’t mind saying, and if there were any justice in the world, this gross injustice would be called out for what it is. Because look. The president lives in the White House; he is surrounded for his protection by Secret Service personnel; he tweets! I don’t; don’t; don’t. He holds all the cards, dagnabit! How can I hope to compete?

Thing is, I know I’m not alone. You are out there, my fellow sufferers, you quietly responsible Americans who vote your consciences, work at your jobs, volunteer for causes you believe in, and long for the days when the people we elected to office would just do their jobs and not consume every available sound byte of global attention! You remember a time when we tuned in for the big events and kept weekly track of ongoing issues and still had time for private lives, our own and those of our friends. We had time to sleep, perchance to dream -- and our dreams, even when scary, were not political nightmares! Because yes, he has also invaded my nighttime dreamworld. So unfair! Is this a plot concocted in the White House to discourage us from any kind of political action?

Fellow sufferers, I know you exist, and I know you share my resentment, and we all know this is a very, very bad situation. It is very, very unfair, and we all know it. We want America to be America again — and more and better!

So what’re we gonna do? That’s what I want to know. Your ideas?

Mom and Pop Show: Country Mice in Big City Again

Mom: See what I mean? The city is exhausting!

Pop: That's just because we're not used to it.

Mom: Do you think we would get used to it, if we lived here?

Pop: No. Not any more. We're too old.

Distracted and Irritable, With Short Attention Span

I read my books, and passages describing the Arizona world around me leap out, vivid, while another, more faraway world intrudes via the radio, bringing news of sickness and meetings and riots in other physical places, along with surveillance and interference threats in the placeless world made up, astonishingly, of nothing but pluses and minuses — and all of it, the near and the far, seems less than fully real. 

In a hospital waiting room, perhaps more so in a room in a hospice facility, the world shrinks to the size of that room, expanding only at intervals to extend to corridors and nearby areas, and the passage of time is nothing more than the crawling hands of that clock. But when that room exists almost 2,000 miles away, it shifts in and out of focus, becoming now immediate (without warning), now distant and abstract, almost unimaginable against the immensity of limitless physical surroundings, mountains and desert and sky. 

Meanwhile, in my heart and mind I am neither fully here nor there … do not silence notifications on my cell phone, having told my son to call or text me at any time … pass along bulletins to my sisters as soon as they reach me....

I remember long ago — I was 14 — when a friend’s father died. Her mother, stunned with grief, was also irritable in a way I could not understand at the time. Her house was full of people, all trying to find ways to comfort her, but the loss could not yet have been fully real to her, and while still in shock she had to juggle parental and hostess duties, surrounded by well-meaning neighbors, because whatever happens, life goes on. Meals, errands, sleep (or attempts to sleep) all demand their time. Of course, it all might have been harder without those people there. Who knows? We do not live parallel comparative lives: our personal experience is absolute, the only experience we have. Not better or worse, easier or harder, just what is.

There are stretches of life when minds cannot remain in a single place and when there are few if any comfortable places for them to rest. I am grateful that my son is able to be with his father and others in a calm hospice setting. For myself, a drive up into the mountains gave me brief respite from sadness and confusion.

Clarification For My Unhappy Liberal Friend

Recently when I posted a few sentences on Facebook voicing disappointment and discouragement at seeing so much public name-calling there, particularly coming from liberal friends (I mean that I find it particularly disappointing and discouraging from these people, not that they are doing more of it than the opposition), those people whose general politics are in line with my own, one friend commented that he didn’t understand me at all. Was he advocating that we only talk sweetness and light? How can we voice opposition, make political points and arguments, and state strong positions without being all namby-pamby and fake-“nice”? In particular, how can he express his opposition without name-calling?

Let me say first, that yes, we have freedom of speech and are absolutely free to rage and whine, complain and blame, and to call our political opponents vile names. Examples of that kind of speech are before us daily, coming from the highest office in the land. But that very kind of talk is one thing (although minor compared with far more damaging executive assaults on environmental and worker and consumer protections) my friends and I strongly detest in the current national administration, so why would we let ourselves fall into similar inarticulate rants? 

If someone claims to despise incivility and then engages in it, what am I supposed to make of the claim? It’s bad if someone I don’t like does it, okay if I do it? 

Sorry, but that’s another attitude coming out of Washington that we have no ground to gain by imitating! If, in criticizing certain kinds of behavior and speech, I use the same kinds of behavior and speech myself, I destroy the very basis of my position. There are other ways to make objections. That is my point.

So how can I criticize without name-calling? 

(1) Name the behavior. Instead of calling a job applicant a “filthy liar,” say “He misrepresented his experience. His resume listed positions he never held.” 

Okay, you’re thinking, but this is just plain boring! Where is the outlet for my cleverness? For my astonishing rapier wit? 

(2) The argument called reductio ad absurdum was famously used by Jonathan Swift in his satiric essay titled “A Modest Proposal,” and if you’ve never read the essay, do that now, and learn that, contrary to current practice, truly effective (3) satire is much more than just saying mean things about someone. 

And really, the most biting satire these days often consists of not much more than (4) reportage. I wish I could find again one cartoon I saw. Six panels quoted Republican defenses, in chronological order, coming out of the impeachment hearings and Senate trial. That was the whole thing — nothing added. Cartoons are great, aren’t they? 

(5) Quote what you want to criticize! The stock phrase for a State of the Union address is a president’s statement that “The state of our union is strong.” We heard it again last week, and I’m afraid I can’t find a way to criticize the statement in any way that would make it amusing, but I do have to ask — "Union? Strong? Have the meanings of those words been turned on their heads since I last looked? I don't think this country was as divided during the Vietnam era as it is today." There, no name-calling.

I do not oppose strong criticism! See this post for evidence. Again, though, I repeat, (1) — the behavior, not the person.

Does this help?

No Wasted Time

Years ago, when I first read Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, by Betty Edwards, I became convinced that I -- even I -- could learn to draw under the tutelage of a teacher using the methods described in the book. I was not confident enough to try to teach myself, and it was years before I heard the name Elizabeth Abeel, and several years after that that Elizabeth finally offered a summer evening class in drawing. It was wonderful! A dream come true! For a couple years, pen or pencil in hand, I was losing myself faithfully and contentedly almost every day, and the record of those happy hours is with me still, in the pages of my sketchbooks of all sizes.

Now I am getting back into that meditative practice, which is what drawing is for me. In the photograph of a sketchbook page above, the top image is called a blind contour drawing. I begin by putting my pen on the paper and then, looking up at my subject (in this case, a pine tree across the street from where our car is parked), I look only at the subject while my hand and eye simultaneously trace its outline. No looking at the paper at all. The drawing below is a modified contour drawing, and for that I took up a pencil in place of the pen. Looking is permitted with the modified contour, attention alternating between subject and paper.

The object for me is not to "make art" but to quiet the talking voice in my head, focus my attention out upon an aspect of the world, and keep my mind out, peacefully, there for a while. Working in my sketchbook while waiting in the car as the Artist visits with a friend for 30 minutes to an hour is also a way of making the most of that time.

Electability

Could a Catholic ever be elected president in the United States of America? Not until John Kennedy.

Could a divorced man win the U.S. presidency? Not until Ronald Reagan.

Could a black man become president of our country? Not until Barack Obama won -- two consecutive terms!

When a woman wins the presidency, we will have a woman president. Nothing, it seems, is possible until it happens -- and then, clearly, it happened because it could.

Looking for Healing in a Magazine

Two people whom I love very much, two people who were once very close to each other as well as to me, have been estranged now for a full decade. It hurts.

You’d think I would have had plenty of time, in ten years, to become accustomed to and accepting of the situation, but I’m not, because one of the people continues to feel great pain over the lost relationship, and I am in permanent relationship with both. What the second person feels now, I don’t know. I probably should know, but it’s hard at a distance to find out, and for fear of the one rupture triggering others, I have not addressed the issue face to face or voice to voice when a rare opportunity presented. In fact, I must admit that, painfully disappointed myself, I have scaled back communications with the second person in general. Not a solution, I realize. I haven’t found a way to a solution. Before the holidays, hope surged and crashed.

First person is he; second is she. Although they are not a divorced couple, you can think of them that way, and it might help make sense of what I'm saying. 

In her behavior relative to the situation (very limited words and near-complete lack of action), her responses to attempted communications from the first person and from me, all I can see on the surface is avoidance. But now aow all three of us are in avoidance mode, and two of us, at least, feel stuck there. 

Meanwhile, what does she feel? Satisfaction? How is that possible? Nothing? Hard to believe. I try to imagine how it is for her on the inside. Perhaps a bit of embarrassment, maybe a touch of shame, and probably (I can only guess) some resentment over the embarrassment and shame, irritation at having any feelings at all for a situation she would rather not have to acknowledge at all? When three people have been closely connected, can two feel pain and a third be immune, unconcerned with the pain of the two others and free from any pain of her own? 

But why, in the first place, did it come to be the way it is? What is behind it all? 

My loved one in pain also feels anger and confusion (as do I). What did he do or say that was so unforgivable that he has been “shunned” (his word) so completely for so long? He hoped the two of them could meet and clear the air. I hoped that could happen! So far, though, the air-clearing, one-on-one option has not even been acknowledged as being on the metaphorical table. Instead, all that has occurred (I was going to say “all that has been accomplished” but have to wonder if “accomplishment” is the right characterization) has been a single occasion of sitting around a literal table, pretending that nothing is wrong, and then four individuals retreating from even that superficial engagement with no real improvement in the underlying dynamic. 

Lots of avoidance going on, from four people, not just three. What does everyone fear? 

This situation has been daily background for me for so long it is like my life’s wallpaper. How I would love to redecorate! But I can’t do it singlehandedly. What I fear is worsening the relationships that, so far, remain intact.

There may be more here than a simple parallel to our nation’s deep social divisions — and I use the word “social,” because “political” could be taken only to indicate voting patterns, and what I’m thinking of is the more total avoidance of “others,” in town and country, that so many Americans practice these days. Tara Westover, author of the bestselling memoir, Educated, said in an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg that the nation is divided into regional pockets of city and left-behind country, but she also acknowledged that parochialism cuts through cities, as well. (I would say it cuts through country and small towns, also. Anyway, an edited interview appears in the December 2019 issue of the Atlantic magazine.) When Goldberg asks her if she thinks of the place she grew up, rural Washington state, as parochial, this is her response:

It’s astonishingly difficult in this city [New York City] to be truly close to someone who is not in your same socioeconomic group. For me, it’s the single most striking fact about living here. Meaningful interactions are difficult to engineer. The divide is deep. And it is largely between those who sit in the front of the Uber and those who sit in the back of it. 

The Uber driver and his unemployed counterpart back in the county seat of Preston, Idaho, near where Westover grew up, share experiences that successful urban and suburban Americans do not share and do not understand. Across the divide, there is no longer a common language of experience. 

There are places in the United States where the recession never ended. For them, it has been 2009 for ten years. 

Traveling across the Midwest and Great Plains and now, here in the Southwest, I have seen this again and again. (There are a couple of examples in this post.) When I recently visited the website of the Safford Public Library, up in Safford, Arizona, county seat of Graham County, I found one of the FAQs is, “Why is the library closed on weekends?” and the answer is that the community has not yet recovered economically from the crisis of 2008-09 and cannot yet afford personnel to staff the library seven days a week. It is open Mondays through Thursdays only. In Safford, then, you might say that “it has been 2009 for ten years.”

Westover may, however, in making her case , somewhat overstate it. She cites statistics showing that the Democratic Party is most successful in successful and prosperous cities and suburbs, but it is not only impoverished communities and individuals left behind in today’s prosperity who support the current Republican president. There are plenty of millionaires, numbers of well-to-do and well-educated senators, and many ordinary people happy with the present performance of their stock portfolios in the same camp. And so, just as socioeconomic divisions run through communities, so do political divisions run right through neighborhoods. And both the socioeconomic and the political divisions have fast become social divisions, the latter probably more consciously chosen, as if it means some kind of adherence to principle. 

The question is, are we no longer willing even to talk to people whose views do not match up with our own? 

I think that’s part of what’s at the bottom of the estrangement of the two people I love, though I don’t know for sure. There are probably other factors. My estranged loved ones, despite the very different life choices they have made, are both in comfortable circumstances (largely thanks to choices made by the generation before them). Neither has much chance of ever ending up destitute or homeless. They have, however, as I say, made very different life choices, and I’m pretty sure they hold very different views on many issues. 

And so many people I know have taken this forking path! One couple actually moved from one state to another so as to live among people who think as they think! 

(One of the things I love about the part of Arizona where I’m spending the winter is that not everyone here is like me, that Willcox, Arizona, is not just a Southwest version of Northport, Michigan. But that is neither here nor there.)

Another article in the December 2019 Atlantic — so many good articles in that issue, and I have yet to read more than a couple of them, as I slowly make my way through the issue and try to take in each article, test it against my own experience, and see what I can apply in my life — is about Mr. Rogers. In “What Would Mister Rogers Do?” Tom Junod writes, 

…Fred was a man with a vision, and his vision was of the public square, a place full of strangers, transformed by love and kindness into something like a neighborhood. That vision depended on civility, on strangers feeling welcome in the public square….

How, I wonder, reading this, can we at one and the same time welcome strangers and reject someone we have known for years? How, if I am rejecting neighbors whose views are not my own, can my welcome of strangers be truly genuine and anything more than superficial? Is it that civility requires only a superficial welcoming and that deeper relationships ask more of us?

Junod reflects on the current popularity of the question, “What would Mr. Rogers say?” of this or that person or aspect in today’s national scene, but then he points out that we already know the answer to the question

…because Fred was the most stubbornly consistent of men. He would say that Donald Trump was a child once, too. He would say that the latest Twitter victim or villain was a child once, too. He would even say that the mass murderers of El Paso and Dayton were children once too…. He would pray for the shooters as well as for their victims, and he would continue to urge us, in what has become one of his most often quoted lines, to “look for the helpers.” 

The question is not what Mr. Rogers would say or do, but what we will say and do. 

I was able to make thrilling progress in a different painful situation by applying the lessons of Mr. Rogers, but I have not yet seen my way clear with this one so much closer to me. How can I be a helper? How can I bring these two people back together if one would rather not be in a relationship at all? 

-- To be continued.... Perhaps. If I don't come to regret saying even this much already.