Conversation Starter: Never Meet Your Heroes…

Last night I had the opportunity to watch the new movie remake of He-Man, and I really enjoyed the tongue-in-cheek writing. Like many of you, I grew up on Saturday Morning cartoons. I had an itemized schedule of Mystery Machine’s and Purple Gorilla’s in dune buggies, a Waskilly Wabbit and a hunter with a stutter all listed out starting early in the morning and ending at 11:00 when I was finally kicked outside to act out all those story lines. And, among them was this cartoon “He-Man”! I was a bit old for it when it came out, and from an adult standpoint it was one of the most ridiculously named storylines ever created, but dang I loved the idea of having a hero come to the rescue.

Perhaps there is just comfort knowing who the good guys are and easily identifying the bad guys to settle a heart and mind. The bad guys were always portrayed monstrously by their actions, their words, their appearance. The heroes were strong, pure, caring, and always helped people by opposing evil. The bad guys always wanted people hurt, dominated, exploited. Scooby-Doo always came out the hero and the bad guys always lost. Saturday morning Ethics were easy to understand.

Then, I grew older and I realized that the morality of reality seemed extraordinarily flexible. I was told that the weak were weak because they chose to be weak, the poor were poor because they chose to be poor. The sick were sick…. you get the point. Somehow the absolute ethics of my Saturday morning education didn’t reflect in my life or experience outside that television, no matter how much I longed for it.

In time we are asked to change our heroes. Superman is crushed by cryptonite, Hulk is ruined by his temper, and as much as I want to believe that there is something greater than this world, God still somehow has babies born with defects, children who live in pain, parents who lose their will to go on in this world. But we yearn for that hero who made everything ok in the end that we loved on Saturday morning television.

We yearn so much that we forget that those stories were just stories for children. The people we lift up to solve all our problems are just skin and bone humans, and if they tell us they are our answer to all that hurts, well…

I’ve struggled to understand how relatively smart people could fall for a leadership that has visited the depredations upon the world that this one seems to enjoy. I’ve thought them idiots, racist pigs, deplorable trash and fools, especially as the truth of this man’s toxic morality comes more and more to light. He’s raped, stolen, and killed to cover his crimes and yet he is loved by a troubling number of people. It’s not logical, it’s not rational.

But outside the horrible scum that have latched onto his leprously-stained skirts in this bid for power at any cost administration follow a horde of broken and hurt people who somehow thought this con-artist cared about anyone but himself. They are the children who sat before the television on Saturday mornings and believed somehow that the blond-haired hero with the great propaganda was here to save them. They drank the cool-aid, bought the shirts – and the hats, they believed the hype because they believed the hurt. They are not going to release that hope easily once given and because of that any atrocity is forgiven.

I fearfully believe this Land of Liberty is lost for an inability to understand right or wrong. The utopian hopeful are mocked by a populace that have come to love their chains as they fight to defend those who would make them chattel because they fear that the people hoping to release those bonds have ulterior motives. I share their fear, in part, because I know that they who thirst for power will shed their skin to walk amongst the hopeful seeking a new path. Morality is cheap for those who mock ethics, and people broken and drowning will destroy anything for hope of salvation.

-Randy

Tired, page 2

In the previous post, I spoke on how I was so very tired of the political climate. One of the issues that I described was this constant stress of chaos that the drumpf administration purveys upon the American public and the world in general. Stress is debilitating. It leaves a person living in a constant state of fight/flight, questioning what we should be doing to survive the madness that is maga and a perpetual attack upon our empathy for those not so fortunate to only be stressed.
There is a saying that goes generally that if you can’t do anything about it, don’t stress over it. But, I’m stressed.

Much of my stress is my own personal life challenges, but a lot of my stress comes in the realization that while I may hope to ignore those things that are beyond my control, others are not so free. How many lives have been destroyed in the turmoil of one man’s pursuit of totalitarianism? How many deaths do we lay at the feet of this conman? And worse, however reluctantly and contrary to our wishes, he is our leader and we are responsible for the atrocities he commits.

Let’s face it, he told us who he was before being elected – for the second damned time! He showed us he was a fraud, a rapist, a serial adulterer, a racist, a criminal. He stole from children, from his workers, from his wives.

So, right or wrong, earned or borrowed, stress presses down on me and many like me. And that chronic stress severely impacts our health by keeping us in that fight or flight reflex, leading to our burnout, mental impairment and physical illness. We struggle with chronic pain, insomnia, high blood pressure and a weakended immunity. We are anxious, depressed, and can’t remember why we came into the damned room!

Is this what it means to be an adult, or just an adult in the drumpf era? My god! I watch the news and find myself in line for ptsd treatment! What could be next? What ball will I drop next? What emotional eruption is next in line for me?

I’m so f’ing tired of being tired; I’m so f’ing tired of being depressed; I’m so very f’ing tired of being anxious.

Today one of my workers asked me if I was ok. He saw that I was angry, I guess. I laughed for a moment, told him I was fine and that my back was just hurting, that it was a typical Monday. He just stood there, in front of my desk and waited. And somehow I found myself very quietly saying no. I’m not ok.

I don’t really have the freedom to be anything but ok. I am the one that has to be there making sure things get done. I am supposed to be watching out for the morale of the team. I’m charged with the continuity of employment. I’m supposed to be the strong one, the boss. And there I was realizing that everything was broken, and there isn’t a damned thing I can do about it.

I don’t have answers to a damned thing, but today someone stopped what they were doing long enough to demonstrate that they cared, and I realized just how powerful that could be. It didn’t solve my problems, the sun didn’t shine any brighter and the birds weren’t singing overhead, but for a moment my burden was shared. For a moment I didn’t feel quite so alone. That made a huge difference. I hope I’m strong and wise enough to emulate that, and perhaps together we can outlast this too. Hugs.

Straight Month?

I saw this clip and it reminded me about this weekend. Here’s the clip:

Have you ever noticed that people are quite happy with what they have right up until they see someone else have something they deem greater than their lot? Give one kid a cookie and they dance, give their sibling a larger cookie and tears run like desperate rivers – and far too many of us seem to hold on to that right through “adulthood”.

I was visiting with my parents this weekend and Dad had to tell me about a great comedian he heard. This great comedian made such a great point: Why is it that Abraham Lincoln, the man who freed the slaves, only gets one day of recognition. Worse, he asks, is that he has to share it with George Washington! How unfair, he says. I don’t really see him honoring Lincoln and Washington, but perhaps he does it quietly. But, in keeping with this comedian’s bit, if only they’d sucked off each-other, they would get a full month! Why isn’t that just humorous?

Some days I really don’t know what to think about people. Isn’t it bad enough that people who say they love us vote for those who’d choose to outlaw us, to kill us, to disenfranchise us, to relegate us to obscurity back into the closet? These same people hate, denigrate, despise… and I guess in Rob Schneider’s case, make jokes. He’s funny, don’t you know. I was rolling. Anyway … and those who say they love us vote for them, patronize them, clap for them, and tell their gay son just how that comedian is so very funny and wise.