Lunacy: archaic: “moonstruck”

True Believer: 1: a person who professes absolute belief in something.

2: a zealous supporter of a particular cause.

“It’s easier to fool people than it is to convince them that they have been fooled.”
(maybe) Mark Twain

On November 7 I dissolved in happy tears. Biden won the electoral count thanks to Pennsylvania. And it got better, three more states joined in. Four years of horror, uncertainty and unnecessary suffering perpetuated onto me and billions more were over. I’ve too frequently declaimed “Inconceivable!” like Vizzini in the Princess Bride. Now, a mere 80 days of Orange Ick was left. Logic and proportion would rise up from their soft death of 2016, and order and compassion would be celebrated. (ha)

A chapter that didn’t make it into the courage to trust was “Like a Moth to a Flame.” It explores why people flock to charlatans, false shamans and psychopaths. Or more quietly, continue to stay with abusive partners or bosses. The moth’s willingness to fly into a flame is driven by the need to gather by the light of the full moon in order to mate. With one clear destination, they fly from all directions to gather. The invention of artificial light screwed this up. It feels condescending to say that people with MAGA hats are deluded, so eager to be included that they ignore the obvious: the light isn’t real, in fact it is lethal. They’re not being universally rewarded with love and honor and credit for saving the nation. Rather they are locked up, pitied, feared, fired. They didn’t notice that they had become Christians who had forsaken their faith, men who were disrespecting the rights of their daughters and wives, and (mostly) Caucasians who revealed their hatred and desired supremacy of most of the world’s people, based on just 2 millimeters of epidermis.

I began writing this on January 6, after True Believers were inflamed, assured that they were righting unrighteousness. How can I view these followers who were misled by five years of untruth? I must admit that I tried out pity and revulsion, but empathy is the route I choose to explore. There is no more danger, really. “We” won, “They lost.”

In retrospect, in the 1960s and 70s I was “They.” I also wanted to overthrow the government, didn’t trust a word that fell from mouths of Johnson or Nixon, nor any of their cohorts, and was known to shout “kill the pigs” while marching. I was photographed carrying a sign that read YOUR CIA with skull and crossbones, which kept the ROTC from recruiting on my college campus. I signed a complicity statement with draft dodgers, and sheltered young men fleeing to Canada. We have learned from the mouth of Robert McNamara that we happened to be right, that the Viet Nam “conflict” was a sham created to bring gold and drugs and power, and money (lots of money) to individuals in and out of government. But at the time, all we had were the slow-poke tweets of that era: underground newspapers, protest songs, celebrity photos, and speeches shouted in huge arenas.

I trusted narcissistic leaders who would never care about me, and relied on their opinions to know what to think. Distrust of whatever was taught before 1965 was the order of the day in the 1960-70s. I felt strong and wise and cool and even popular, something that the uptight high schooler who never cut a class, broke a rule or got less than a B+ could have imagined. It’s why I took proffered drugs, quit shaving and bra-wearing, and had sex with near strangers. I became a We, and marched, and chanted “Turn on, tune in, drop out,” sneering at “My Country Right or Wrong.” Let’s not forget how we “sat-in” and took over offices and boycotted major corporations, and didn’t wear deodorant and dressed in rags. If I had believed, truly, that farmworkers’ safety, and Civil Rights and no-more-napalm would have resulted, I might have stormed the Capitol. Mainly, I didn’t eat grapes for years.

I’m glad I did it, that I broke from previous generations of rules and norms without losing the core ethic of wanting to help anyone who was hurt and hurting. This helped me avoid deep involvement in the hatred, abuse and serious drug addiction that quickly befell the movement that had freed me from one set of rigid rules, but almost cast me into another.

I’m not sure where I’m going with this, no brilliant point (or poem) being made. I just want to acknowledge that I am not so different, and to acknowledge my potential rigid and righteous Self, and to share her with you. Not trying change your mind or bring comfort--this is extremely UNcomfortable stuff. To accept without question the words of a leader in order to gather in the light, and lean toward a charismatic personality, is a pretty easy way to connect and feel loved. To forsake common sense or tenets carefully taught in childhood feels thrilling, like we are free and grown-up and brave in the embrace of the crowd. Finally, we belong, and loneliness is no more.

The antidote is not pleasant, as standing apart from others in our near culture is anathema to basic nature. Even in daily interactions with loved ones, we’re faced with the toxic choice of “Would you rather be right or be loved?” To disagree or be different evokes a feeling of danger. I have come to believe in the power of compassionate honesty, not in ONE PERSON or IDEA. My new slogan?

“I’d rather be loving than right.”

Click here to purchase my book, the courage to trust.

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DYS-BELIEVING