Shock and Fraud
The Moral Injury of Being American Right Now + The Dominant Narrative on LOVE
Connectedness is the only thing that makes anything matter. If we disconnect from all the ways we are unified by our shared space and shared experiences, we are truly adrift.
Moral injury is the “psychological impact of doing, witnessing, or failing to prevent something that goes against one's values.” The term is usually used in the context of those on the front lines of healthcare or the military where the stakes are high and at the same time, people feel morally compromised and suffer deeply as a result. I think that’s exactly how all of us are feeling right now as Americans watching the insane clown posse strip our government, our sacred institutions, and our standing in the free world as a beacon of democracy.
As we scream to the heavens, “how?! how?!”, I have two thoughts that have been circling my mind.
Tone & Manner
Back in 2005, I had an outgoing message on my voicemail instructing callers to hang up and text me instead. That’s common practice today but at the time my friend Danny told me “nobody likes to be told what to do past the age of five”. It’s true. People do not react to scolding or condescension and yet we’ve treated DEI like a lesson in sensitivity to adults who think they know how to be human beings already. It came across as condescending, scolding, and pretentious. We liberal-splained and we were called East Coast Elites. We were already in the midst of an anti-intellectual wave. This added fuel. They revolted.
I think we’ve over intellectualized the inclusion conversation making it inaccessible and, well, exclusionary. Everybody wants to be seen and heard. People want to have a sense of belonging and a role in society. Even white straight men and conservative white women. Yes, things have been pretty breezy for white men but our boys and men are in trouble and having a hard time finding their footing. Rich white men are completely fine (phew! you can stop worrying about them!) but rural and working class white men not so much.
So they become radicalized.
They become incels.
They become Andrew Tate followers.
They looksmax.
They become MAGA.
And now we are in the middle of a storm. We're being swept along screaming, ‘hey, wait, wait for me. What's going on? I did not sign up for this,’ but we are inside this thing. This is how the Third Reich started. Just little pinpricks. which leads me to my next thought.
Anger Signaling
Now that we’ve learned that unsolicited Advanced Coursework in Critical Race Theory for Adults didn’t work (to be clear: I majored in Cultural Studies, focusing on Critical Race Theory so I’m a big fan), it’s time to shift tactics. The far right likes to call liberals “NPCs”, Non Playable Characters, twisting and turning the tables to accuse liberals of being sheep. I kind of see their point. Some liberal influencer types do seem to just be out there spouting academic and gender studies jargon in a self-congratulatory and slightly insufferable way. Maybe it’s the GenX in me but even I start to roll my eyes. Some of the declarations feel a little bit too neat, too blanket, too theory-head, for the real world.
So now, I think it’s time to be plain spoken.
To be real.
To cut the shit.
Maybe it’s time to take a page out of hip hop’s clear-eyed anger, (namely, at present the boss of everything, Kendrick Lamar but Eminem is also a master of not mincing words and many others… Mos Def, Tupac, Public Enemy, Killer Mike...)
We have been polite, well mannered, intellectual, subdued in our delivery, even smug but now it’s time to get more potently angry. To take up space. To be a bit bigger in our grievances. Time to stop virtue signaling and start Anger Signaling.
We need to embrace the language of the fight. Of the warrior. Of the players that win the game.
After all, the world is at stake and fuck ideals, logic itself is crumbling to the ground.
I've been reading this book, The Rigor of Angels, and I’m on the last chapter. The book, by the Modern Languages and Literatures Chair at Johns Hopkins, William Eggington, compares the work of Jorge Luis Borges, (literary genius and one of my favorite thinkers of all time and why I picked up the book), Werner Heisenberg, German theoretical physicist, and Immanuel Kant, German philosopher.
One of the ideas that struck me to my core is this idea that if there were no objects in space, no gases, no particles, no meteors or planets, then space would be nothing. It would be nowhere. There is no antecedent to refer to when there is nothing at all. When space holds nothing at all, it doesn't exist. It isn’t anything. And I was thinking about this and I was thinking about Einstein's theory of relativity and quantum physics and its entangled bits, and Jung’s collective unconscious.
Connectedness is the only thing that makes anything matter (no pun intended). If we disconnect from all the ways we are unified by our shared space, but also our shared experience and memories, our connection to nature, the world, tradition, family, friends, if we disconnect from all of it, we are truly adrift.
But at the same time, all of these pleas for unity, reason, logic, love, they're not working. It's like a loved one in an abusive relationship and you can't reach them anymore…
Watch the episode here👇🏼 or go to this link to find the episode on the podcast platform of your choice.
One quick story though, in written form, and then onto “The Dominant Narrative”
Mom Battles MAGA in a S.C. Supermarket
My mother was in a Publix in the South Carolina town where she lives when she passed a man with a cart full of carrots. He wasn’t looking for conversation as she sidled up to him but she plowed on ahead. “I bet someone in this grocery store is going to ask you why you have all those carrots.”
He didn't say anything.
She said, “okay, I'll bite. What are all those carrots for in your grocery cart?”
He said, “the deer like ‘em.”
And she said, “ohhh, are you a hunter? You're buying all these carrots and the deer are gonna eat the carrots and then you're gonna kill the deer?”
He said nothing.
“Feed the deer, kill the deer? Feed ‘em. Kill ‘em?”
He said nothing. He didn’t even look at her.
She persisted, trying to turn it into a warm exchange, “light banter” as she called it, when he finally looked her dead in the eye and said, “no. But I shoot liberals.”
Her reaction was to burst into laughter, probably nervous laughter and move to another aisle. Her work of getting under his skin was done.
I can see that scene so vividly in my mind’s eye. My mom’s wardrobe of choice is somewhere between Burberry trench, silver carved art-to-wear jewelry and diamonds and LL Bean, but in any case, she ‘gives’ 100% New England liberal. She has a black “no war” sticker on the back of her black Volvo even though she resides right next to Parris Island where the Marines train. One time she drove me onto Parris Island for a kid’s birthday party with that sticker on her car and I just pressed into my seat and stared straight ahead a the gatehouse, wanting to melt from view. Of all the things she believes in, she had to put that on the back of her car while in her house, she has a sticker clipped to the fridge that says “no farms, no food.” Why not put that on the car and put the “no war” sticker inside the house? I mean, it’s just so on the nose. Too pointed for this crowd. Also insulting. These kids are going to war to die for their country.
I don't know why she lives in the Deep South but she just loves it there. I couldn't stand it. I was there for four years from Brooklyn because I got a divorce - a story for another day. The whole town shuts down on Sunday until the afternoon when the local restaurants flood with families in floral dresses and shiny shoes. There’s no movie theater. It's a beautiful town on the water. It was featured in The Notebook and Forrest Gump. The Big Chill house is in the neighborhood my mom lives in. (Also, Murdaugh Murders based on a crime that took place while I still was in town.) Beautiful town. Picturesque. But, not friendly. Not an un racist town. This town is the first place I heard somebody make the argument that the Civil War was about states rights. A blonde 19 year old college student ‘informed' me that the North had it wrong, that it was not about slavery after all but about state rights. I had no idea schools taught this shit because I was raised by two liberals in the hippie enclave of Coconut Grove, Miami in the 70s and then zipped straight up to Vermont and then New York City. I was cushioned in a little liberal bubble all the way through.
I didn't know what to do with it then but now we live in a world rewriting history, an alternate reality
🎧 to the rest…
Now onto
The Dominant Narrative: 4 LOVES
We all need a break from the plummet of Democracy.
I’m working on my relationship to romantic love which has suffered a bit as I have zero interest in men and want to work on that so I started to watch more rom-coms to see what different movies triggered in me. Natch, that meant the new Bridget Jones Diary. The first one years ago made me cringe and I never watched the others. I hated the self-loathing of it all but I read this one was ‘good’ so I bit. Since you know what you’re getting into, it’s actually sweet, and then there is the dream of Leo Woodall which I’ll get into in a minute but first, what kind of love is Bridget Jones?
Bridget Jones: Easy Come Easy Go Love
So convenient. She takes 4 years to get over her dead ex and zips out the door with her hair in a weird side ponytail and pajamas and finds the hottest guy in the world to save her from a tree. He’s also nice and emotionally available. Mostly. This kind of implausible storyline is actually really comforting right now. Remember when we believed in this crap? It’s so easy in fact that the minute he messes up she’s able to move on and find someone just as great but more appropriate and she doesn’t even need the app to do any of it.
This is how it should be but we all have to put our phones away and climb some trees with our kids in Hampstead Heath. Easy enough.
Now, are you fucking kidding me with this guy?
Can I be 15 for a minute? I swore off younger men 6 years ago but I would 100% generously make an exception for this dude. So I’m like dooo dooo daa daa daaa Google Google. What else had he done? I’d seen him in White Lotus but he didn’t really raise an eyebrow then but now I’m invested.
One Day: True Love Love
I saw he was in a Netflix show called One Day based on a book by David Nicholls. It came out a year ago. It has been on my watch later list but I tend to watch fewer shows starring people in their *20s, which makes sense, but I gave it another go.
Hands down, One Day is the best, most heart-wrenching love story I have seen in memory. I binged it in 2 days and have the under eye circles to prove it.
Love is real! And it’s on this show.
It’s definitely not on Hinge or Bumble where it’s a constant parade of America’s Most Wanted and other supreme Ick.
If you want to see a complex love story that really nails the subtlety of longing, self-protection, and real love built over time between two fully realized characters? Get going on One Day pronto. Bring tissues. The story really captures that post-graduation ennui as well.
Here’s Nicholls explaining his process of building the story in an Interview in The Guardian.
Running Point: Love Happens While Doing Other Shit Love
Thank god comedies are coming back. I’m getting sick of everyone murdering, scamming, spying and destroying the world (unless it’s Paradise on Hulu which is the best thing on TV right now). I want to LAUGH and see people fall in love so I can stop listening to everything terrible Donald Trump, Slimeball J.D. Vance, and Psycho speedhead Elon Musk are doing. This isn’t really a romantic comedy but so what? It’s Kate Hudson and she’s so watchable. Also, a more authentic L-O-V-E is percolating for both her and her adorable half brother on the show so I will definitely be watching Season 2.
I think love is more believable for me or more hopeful when the message is that if you relax and be yourself someone good will show up quietly. That’s a great message for people trying desperately to look a certain way or jump up and down to get attention in search of love.
Anora: Misguided Love
Anora was a great movie. I didn’t see any kind of larger, universal truth here but the movie succeeded I believe because it was the opposite. It was so specific and so well done. The acting is incredible and the pathos palpable.
Is this the love we all want? No. It’s the love that makes you shut down all the apps and call it.
P.S. Excited they are making a movie of The People We Meet On Vacation by Emily Henry. She’s my favorite author to read on a long flight. She know show to write a romance that also makes you laugh and care about the characters.
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