The rescinding of Biden’s executive orders was expected, but then came the slew of Presidential Actions and the direct attacks of hate through executive orders. Though his bullying behavior isn't a shock, the outright cruelness of them was striking and shocking. Though that was the point right? Yes, that was the point: To engineer a series of traumatic events with a shock and awe approach that leaves people stunned…. frozen… and then while people are frozen in fear and confusion double down on the initiatives for more rounds of trauma to leave people in an even more confused state. Rinse and Repeat. I believe we are about to see a lot of Repeat.
I’m actually going to start with a positive comment about Trump: I give props to his marketing chops as they are quite impressive. I’ll even go so far as saying he is a bit of a marketing genius. Sometimes genius and crazy balances on a fine line. If nothing else, this administration is more organized and skilled in PR and marketing and Trump’s first few days in office have been nothing short of exciting….. If you like a continual rush of adrenaline pulsing through your body, that is. That feeling of adrenaline we are all walking through our days with is similar to another experience that we as Americans all know too well: Trauma.
We all know that Fight, Flight and Freeze are the main responses to trauma and what the vast majority of Americans are doing at the moment is to… Freeze. Everyone is trying to make sense of what is happening since January 20th and the Administration is working at such a fast pace that just when you try to reconcile one thing the next trauma bomb gets dropped.
Is dropping trauma bombs what an American President is supposed to do? To engineer radical proclamations knowing that it will induce suffering for much of the population? That doesn’t sound like the expectations of a US President as I have known it. I thought a US President was to fight for the freedom of ALL people, not just those who voted for him.
We are flooded and overwhelmed….. And that is exactly what this Administration is going for: For us to be so inundated with content that we can’t quite figure out where to focus our time and energy to be of help and service. Should we feel compassion for the immigrants or the refugees or the LGBTQ+ population or for women or for everyone impacted by DEI reform? Should we try and fight the anti-trans ideology or support the immigrants or try to restore DEI?
There is so much that we can do and that we should do and it builds and builds to the point that we do….nothing. We freeze because that is a normal response in trauma. Yet, what is happening is NOT normal and we need to train ourselves to have the opposite response that is needed in a moment like this: We need to train ourselves to Fight for Change. We must fight like first responders that arrive at trauma scenes. We must fight the way police officers are trained and the way that firefighters are trained….and the way social workers are trained. To fight with our words and advocacy and action.
We can’t bury our heads in the sand. We can’t pretend it isn’t happening and hope things get better. We can’t assume positive intent from people clearly showing us the opposite. We can’t freeze. We need to pull ourselves together and start somewhere. Start small. Start big… but start something. There will always be hope for change, but we have to remember that hope is not an ideal that comes for free. Hope and opportunity are things that are hard earned.
“People speak of hope as if it is this delicate, ephemeral thing made of whispers and spider’s webs. It’s not. Hope has dirt on her face, blood on her knuckles, the grit of the cobblestones in her hair, and a tooth she just spat out as she rises for another go.” – Anonymous.
There is nothing liberal about fighting against hate and oppression. It is human decency and respect for our human race. We must fight in whatever way we can – maybe it is to donate money to your local immigration law firm or to support the LGBTQ+ organizations fighting on your behalf. Maybe it is to attend a rally or maybe it is to have that hard conversation with a family member or maybe… it is to start a blog.
We have to train ourselves to overcome the fear and overcome the freeze. We have to soothe our wounds and put on some mental health band-aids and then put on our mental helmet and go in head first. Like first responders, we have to train ourselves to go into the fire instead of run away from it. Like social workers, we have to train ourselves to stand up and say “enough”.
We have to fight for Change.
Change It Anyway 