There is a sad irony that after returning from my women's sangha Tuesday evening — where our focus was on themes related to wise speech, nonviolence, empathy, and active listening — I learned of this horrifying, tragic, dark, and illuminating story.
And I found myself once again reflecting on this vital question, one which I have been asking myself for a very long time now: How do we come to more clearly recognize and lower our tolerance for violence? This inquiry has empowered me to be increasingly aware that the answers do not simply begin with pointing our fingers and outrage at some Other out there. It begins within each and every one of us.
I am moved to speak to the violence which permeates our culture because of my personal experiences and conscious awareness that nothing can be healed, unburdened, and transformed until it is faced. All around us we see justifications, denials and minimization, projections and numbed trauma, and so many of us who are living in the deadly shadows of silence and ignorance and distraction. I say this with the humility and compassion of knowing that this has certainly been true for me.
Today, however, we have choices. Essential choices. Rather than just condemning these young republicans, for example, and hurling names and thus becoming mirrors for more justified dehumanization, we have an opportunity to work with our understandable triggers of outrage. This journey asks of us to go deeper and allow our hearts to be broken open by the pain and trauma which — on a continuum — has long been impacting us all. It is what we do with our pain and trauma that matters. Deeply.
Author, poet, activist bell hooks referred to this dark underbelly of our nation as imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy. From this perspective we can clearly see that the nightmare and horrors of today didn’t just begin with Trump. The sociopathic and deeply wounded and lost human beings currently in power have just brought to the surface what has always been there. These poisonous beliefs and ideologies and practices have been neglected and unaddressed since the very beginning of our nation and its roots in colonialism, slavery, and the genocide of the Indigenous Peoples. And what isn’t resolved from the past will inevitably continue to resurface in the present.
For many years I worked professionally with abused and neglected preschool aged children and with families. And for decades I’ve been addressing, unburdening, and transforming my own history of trauma. And I've discovered that this is what must be faced — the lies, the narcissism, the delusions and trauma that hide behind American exceptionalism. There is such a great cost to us all when we deny the truth of our deeply unhealthy culture — a culture which is steeped in racism and misogyny and which worships rugged individualism, predatory late stage capitalism, and the denigration of what it is to be truly and deeply human. It is this shadow side of our country and beyond, these toxins which we have inevitably absorbed, which give rise again and again and again to the roots of our individual and collective suffering.
Human beings who believe and speak and act in monstrous ways do not just fall from the sky. Once we were all born sacred and precious. And then, tragically, so many of us as tiny vulnerable children experienced and absorbed legacies of unhealed ancestral and cultural trauma. And anything that in any way severs our authenticity and our capacity to embody love and kindness and to be who we truly are is a form of deep trauma.
It is also true that we are not responsible for what crushed our hearts when we were children. However, once we get an awareness that seeks to pierce our numbness and open our hearts, it is then that we become responsible and accountable for what we do with our pain. This is what makes all the difference.
My deep prayer is that we will increasingly, both individually and collectively, come together to courageously address, heal, unburden, and transform the trauma which permeates our culture, our minds and our beliefs, our ideologies and behaviors, and our hearts and souls. We can and we must face these roots of our delusions and pain, our propensity to engage in dehumanization and hatred, and all forms of violence. May we awaken to the truth of who we wholly are. Who then can we hate? No one.
Bless us all, no exceptions...
💜🙏
Molly
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Rebecca Solnit writes: Young Republicans showed their true colors (bedsheet white/brownshirt) in private but now it's public. "William Hendrix, the Kansas Young Republicans’ vice chair, used the words “n--ga” and “n--guh,” variations of a racial slur, more than a dozen times in the chat. Bobby Walker, the vice chair of the New York State Young Republicans at the time, referred to rape as “epic.” Peter Giunta, who at the time was chair of the same organization, wrote in a message sent in June that “everyone that votes no is going to the gas chamber.” “Can we fix the showers? Gas chambers don’t fit the Hitler aesthetic,” Joe Maligno, who previously identified himself as the general counsel for the New York State Young Republicans, wrote back.... Together, the messages reveal a culture where racist, antisemitic and violent rhetoric circulate freely — and where the Trump-era loosening of political norms has made such talk feel less taboo among those positioning themselves as the party’s next leaders."
Please go here for the full post from Politico: https://www.newsbreak.com/politico-560779/4291619113095-i-love-hitler-leaked-messages-expose-young-republicans-racist-chat
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