Narcissism – Page 2 – …All my darkest hours talking like this…

Fight the relentlessness of evil. Teach history.

Outside of the United States, the period from Nov 1 to 11 honors “Remembrance Day,” and along with it comes the moral injunction “Lest we forget.”

In that spirit, I implore future history teachers to contextualize the racist fascist who got elected president in 2016, not as some sort of isolated foolish aberration but as a synergist metastasis of the worst evils that have lurked within the American ethos for centuries.

I’ve noticed the term “Trumpism” appearing more and more. It hits some internal notch with me, where I can hear a future version of my late, great, 11th-grade U.S. History teacher talking about “The Know-Nothings, Eugenics, and Trumpism.”

I remember, back in 1990, when my 11th grade US history teacher required all the students to come into school at 8pm to watch “Birth of a Nation” and then discuss it. Like typical teens, we were all grumpy about having to go to school at night (I guess there was an important episode of “Wings” or something). The movie was a shock: to the contemporary eye, it was absurdly overacted and transparently racist. But it was clearly a blockbuster movie-styled piece of propaganda, a reminder of the racist infection with the hearts of American ancestors and the entertainment that stirred them.

Below is a supercut of Trump appropriating and perverting a song written by 60’s era civil rights activist Oscar Brown, Jr. Trump has turned it into a nativist battle cry. Hear and see how the invective in Trump’s voice brings the house down in venue after venue. Every time, for years, there has been wild and unbridled enthusiasm. This terrifying approbation was the lesson my history teacher tried to teach his class.

Although there are calls for national healing: convalescence is a part of healing that can vary significantly from individual to individual. Lest we forget the symptom of our national sickness that has obnoxiously presented itself: Observe the cheering crowd delighting in this sneering monster at the podium with his brazenly racist aggression, and try to be realistic in your expectations for such ardor to fade.

In the long days, months, and years ahead, you will face defenders and apologists who try to push transparent and infuriating lies like “People looked past Trump’s rhetoric because they liked his economic policies.” Understand that your appeals to logic and reason are simply not going to sway that person. Neither will this person be moved by your appeals to some universal sense of humanity. Expect this person to shrug and just refuse to acknowledge a substantial portion of the 69 Million people who voted for Trump did not do so despite his racism; rather, these people voted for Trump because of the racism.

I hope that such apologists will eventually confront the truth and then deal with the shame alone. Then there can be remorse, amends, and reconciliation. Yet, I am resigned to the expectation that many will never make that journey and that the healing of this nation’s soul is a process not of several weeks, but of many more generations.

In the meantime, there is the teaching of history.

“Death and life are in the power of the tongue: and they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof.” Pr. 18:21

Because evil is relentless, so too must be the struggle against it.

Feeding the Hungry

My daughter has now graduated High School and will be going to college in the fall. Over the summer, she will be working with AmeriCorp and the United Way to connect children who are food-insecure to Free Summer Meals at hundreds of sites all over the county. This morning, she exclaimed with delight “It’s real food! Like fresh vegetables, produce, pita pockets with real cheese. Its healthy food! Delicious food!” She is so proud to be part of a first-class effort. Although in many typical ways a cynical, know-it-all teenager, her love for children and compassion for people in need comes through. I am so happy that she found this path.

Shortly after I started this particular blog in 2010, I wrote the following Devotion for a well-known charity newsletter:

“And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.” — Phil 1:9-11

It seems a paradox to be both abounding with love and highly discerning. Knowledge and discernment can make it easier for us to identify all that is flawed and not excellent about the world. So Paul challenges us to sharply hone our senses, both our moral and physical senses, and not simply to condemn what is wanting, but to do the more difficult work of approving what is excellent.

Maybe its not accurate to say that Paul challenges us. He prays that we do not become cynical and distrustful of loving, believing it to be naive. And for certain, it would be naive not to know that we live in a world where humanity is fallen, broken, and sinful. But it also takes more knowledge and discernment to understand that the Good News that Jesus Christ is the light that shines in the darkness and that we should seek him in the world, in others, and in ourselves. Paul’s prayer in Philippians 1 is for all of Christ’s disciples: those who teach, those who care, those who share and spread Jesus’ love. Paul’s prayer is also for those who are in need of abounding love: the children and family who need our help, but who also need to know that God’s love is within them, that it is excellent, and that through Jesus Christ it will grow more and more until the love is abounding.

Prayer:

Dear God,

Your excellence and the fruits of righteousness are the greatest knowledge. I love them, want to share them, and want to help others to discover them. Grant me the strength to do your work, the wisdom to do it well, the Joy to do it with love, and the faith to know that your Will shall be done. Amen.

For years, I would do some sort of variant on this prayer before we broke bread as a family. At some point, however, I stopped encouraging the kids to say grace at dinner. I became cynical, exhausted, and despairing. My children are skeptical — like true scientists. They are also full of hope and joy — like true Christians.

Here is the experience of Grace: Listening to my daughter discern with a scientific eye and scholarly mind that there are structural inequities and injustices which create a prosperous community that nevertheless has thousands of hungry children, and in the next breath express abounding love for the bringing good food to children who need it. It does not matter that I got discouraged and wandered away from a church home and stopped praying. It does not matter that I am tired. Somehow, the message got through to my kids and today my daughter is in the world doing good works. God’s Will be done. Amen.

Mickey time once more

When I was 19, I got my first real corporate I.T. job; I did it the old fashioned way – responding to want ads in the newspaper, pounding the pavement, and knocking on doors. The main thing I learned from the search is that a lot of temp agencies are scams that try to charge applicants for “training” and “access to exclusive networking opportunities”. But through a combination of being broke and stubborn, I didn’t take the bait. Instead, I learned the Ins and Outs of the scam, which seemed to include the same trivia about Microsoft Word & Wordperfect key commands and the same typing test (“in the final analysis, precise typing is a sign of organized thinking…”) such that when I arrived at national temp agency chain and took the same test, then another one for basic Window 3.1 skills… I looked like an all star and they placed me in the office of the VP of IT operations for a major finance company. I followed her around all summer as her executive assistant. She swore a lot and smoked a lot but also really knew mainframes and telecommunications and when I describe my career as the summer job that never ended, this is one of the starting points.

This was the first time in my life where I got up every morning before 6am, put on a suit and hiked to the train to get to work by 8. This was the first time I really made my own money and acted like a grown up and got treated like one. But before I did that in earnest… I used part of my first paycheck to get a watch from a street vendor. It was a knock off of this…

Bradley Swiss Movement U.S. Dial 033S circa 1970

I just found this watch at an antique store, a place reserved forsaken and forgotten relics. About a year after I got my original Mickey Mouse watch, the quartz died and the jeweler said “junk! Forget it.” But it wasn’t and I couldn’t. I made it to work on time every day with the watch and then I took the watch with me on my next adventure.

For years I had it in the back of my mind to get another one, but I wanted it to be serendipitous and a deal. Today it was.

When I used to wear the watch, if some asked me what time it was I’d say “Mickey says its____” and laugh to myself. I called this “Mickey Times” which is objectively not as funny as I thought, but what the hell… it was me tweaking the nose of the pressure to lose my sense of humor. I still resist this pressure – sometimes better than other times; and other times are Mickey time.