I was reminded this week about the power of the media and how susceptible I am to it.
I don’t watch the news, have no social media presence, and don’t discuss politics if I can help it. This stems from my experience of surviving an attack by a political extremist, and although I have, with quite a bit of help from my therapist, for the most part relegated that experience to its proper place in my life, it’s not going to stay there unless I put some effort into it. I see no reason to be reminded of the capacity of my fellow humans to inflict harm on each other, which is a prominent theme in the news media and, thanks to the fact that it’s algorithm-driven, a recurring theme in social media.
Politics is adversarial by definition, and the fact that there is necessarily a winner (and everyone else is a loser) makes the us vs. them dynamic a constant. Bucky Fuller said once that the final act of politics is to pull out a gun, and there’s some truth in that. That we almost always manage to avoid that level of confrontation is testament to the fact that people are basically good. I’ve made it a practice to attend to and surround myself with those who are aware of our commonality and work and live from that perspective.
So, I vote as an act of civic responsibility but don’t participate in the often nasty give and take of the time leading up to election day. This week I slipped; I was walking through the family room, the TV was on, and the announcer at the Democratic National Convention was saying, “Next we have a performance by Stevie Wonder.”
I watched his performance, and then Pete Buttigieg was slated to speak. As was Michelle Obama and her husband, Barack Obama. Amanda Gorman was on the list. John Legend was on the list.
The parts of the DNC that I watched had some bashing of the opposition, unfortunate but expected, and a lot of positive, uplifting, optimistic messages, which pulled me right in.
Now I’m scrambling back to where I was a week or so ago, because I know from experience that the negativity and mudslinging will be back in force very soon. It’s hard for me not to read an article or look at a video right now even though most of them range from disrespectful to outright attacks. That’s how susceptible I am, and what works for me, and keeps me out of some pretty dark corners of my mind, is to stay away from it. Best I can say right now is I’m working on it.