Tag Archives: arguing

Am I doing enough about Donald Trump?

The Mission, , , , ,

My title is the question we all need to ask, whether we want to or not. I’m sure you have better things to do with July than fuss about the public servant who serves himself (as in,  you might be trying to survive what he’s already done). But we need to work together to get out of this mess before even worse things happen. Just the implementation of the huge bill the Congress just passed is going to do a lot of damage.

I’ve been trying to make “doing something about Trump” part of my life. For the most part, I like to leave government to God. But I keep getting the impression that the love of Jesus would lead him right into the middle of this mess.

Maybe I’ll post this again next week, too.
  • So I went to the John Lewis event on July 17 — I did not stay for the whole thing, but I added my presence and took a good picture (above).
  • I stopped being neutral with people about what I think about the destruction of the U.S. government and the economic consequences – housing crisis, healthcare gut, climate ignorance, gulag creation and military insanity are all high on my list.
  • I studied sociopaths and wrote that Trump qualifies.
  • I signed up to hear about the We Are America March from Philly to Washington DC Sep 6-19.

Facebook is certainly not enough

And yes, I posted the following on Facebook the other day (even though I’m not sure how anyone sees anything on Facebook, especially if they are under 45):

We need to keep up lest we just go along with Trump’s perverse playbook (like Congress does):

This morning, President Donald J. Trump told Republican members of Congress that his popularity is rising and that talk about the Epstein files is a distraction from what he insists is the real story: that former president Barack Obama cheated in the 2016 election. Trump insisted the cameramen cut their cameras when he made that accusation, although there was no break in the recording. He told the congressmembers: “[Y]ou should mention that every time they give you a question that’s not appropriate, just say, ‘Oh, by the way, Obama cheated on the election.’” — HC Richardson et al

I don’t think posting things, even by the brilliant Heather Cox Richardson, is enough. Even though Trump’s approval ratings are at 37% (thus he says they are soaring), we need an even greater tsunami of protest to wash away this scourge before more people die — and I mean that literally. Trump’s administration gutted the HIV/AIDS program which was the best thing Bush ever did. They put a 50% tariff on Lesotho and denim factories are already shutting down in one of the poorest places on earth (where they make Trump t-shirts for his own company). They destroyed USAID and are destroying FEMA. They are complicit in starving the Gazans. The spending bill will knock millions off already-unaffordable health insurance. They are wrecking the already-paltry Medicaid. It goes on and on, and the shoes are just beginning to drop. Most of them are scheduled for after the midterm elections.

Arguing seems to go nowhere

I would like to win the argument we are all having, if we are not numbed out. But if you look at the “dialogue” my Facebook post generated, that seems unlikely.

Here’s how it went after I shared the quote from Richardson:

Church friend:  And the walls came tumblin’ down
I would love to see this scumbag brought down by his own perverse and despicable behaviors

Childhood friend: Everything comes to light.
There’s a Bible scripture to that effect. I know the gist of the Bible but I cannot quote verses!?

Cali church member: Then the main stream media needs to come clean and admit they were lying to the American people for everything they said during the first term and here’s the tape https://x.com/highway_30/status/1948374675873993074?s=46

Church friend: I believe holding Trump accountable is a crucial primary step.
Additionally, Main Stream Media needs to stop succumbing to Trump’s moronic, baseless lawsuits and focus on reporting factual truth.
Regards Trumpy’s First Term, let’s talk about the Insurrection and start with naming Trump as its Leading Orchestrator and Traitor.
Let’s also hold him accountable in factual statements about Covid and his complete and utter mishandling of the devastating and horrific pandemic. Because of his lies and ineptness, 1.2 million Americans died needlessly. As he fed the American People false information about preventative measures & vaccines.
Regards your comment about Main Stream Media needing ‘to come clean and admit they were lying to the American people for everything they said during the first term’ … personally, I believe we received more accurate information about the damage from Trump’s first term than you are alluding to in your comment. Further, let’s look at Fox News and the Republicans who very literally are complicit in enabling Trump to promote his false rhetoric to the American People.
So, rather than putting the target solely on Main Stream Media, whose constantly being falsely attacked by Trump, barred from Press Conferences (which is cowardly, at best) and whose reporting is continually attacked by frivolous, baseless lawsuits, let’s place it where it truly belongs.
Let’s place responsibility accurately on: SCOTUS, for enabling a convicted felon to run for the office of president; Republicans, especially those in office, who deny the truth & facts about Trump; Tabloid ‘news’ organizations like Fox who blatantly report lies as truth.
If you want to talk about accountability than start with truth, honesty and legitimate facts.

Cali church member: so let the media slide in their false accusations? False accusations that the peddled every day of the 1st term and during the Biden administration? Oh yeah and about COVID. He went with Fauci’s plan to “flatten the curve” and allow the state governors to make their own decisions. Before I go any further did you agree with the rollout of vaccines?

Cali church member: https://x.com/kevinnbass/status/1839635641019081160?s=46

Church friend: Clearly you have chosen to buy into the completely false rhetoric that Trump & those who choose to deny medical facts and scientific reality. While you are certainly entitled to your opinion, when leaders indulge in this dangerous & false information, innocent people get hurt. Such as recommending ingesting bleach or Ivermectin. Reality is that real people, who were foolish enough to buy into those lies were seriously hurt.
Of course I agree with Vaccines, as any rational person should. Those vaccines were in process, 12 years prior to the pandemic. They were studied, tested and reviewed, fortunately. So when Covid hit, they were able to adjust & adapt the vaccines to utilize in fighting Covid.
The proof is in the reality that Covid was reigned in, here and throughout the world.
Vaccines have been used for decades safely and with tremendous efficacy. Like the Polio, Measles, Small Pox vaccines and many, many other vaccines.
Do me a favor and don’t bore me with your BS commentary any further, as they are taken straight from moron Trumps playbook, who is a serial liar, conman and has zero clue about these matters. Anyone that is willing to listen to him, and, worse, believe him, as far as I’m concerned, only shows how unwilling they are to deal in reality, facts and truth.
So, we shall part conversational company here, as I am unwilling to participate in this idiotic nonsense any further.
Buh bye

Former neighbor: They need an independent council for Obama if he or anyone on his team or is found guilty they need to suffer capital punishment. That is clearly a crime against humanity

High school friend: everything Barack Obama claimed was true. Russia interfered in the 2016 election and the court found that to be true but it did not affect the vote in any substantial way. That was the courts finding , let’s keep it real bro

Former neighbor: Cite the court case. please. Not some link to a news article. You could easily be lying.

High school friend: they need an independent council on the Epstein files because Donald Trump’s name was mentioned several times and no one has seen it.

Former neighbor: absolutely agree. the problem I see, is don’t you think Obama/Biden would have released that information during the election?

Church friend: Get a grip. There is no foundation in reality to the accusations against Obama for God’s sake! It is pure deflection against the Epstein scenario.
If ANYONE should be looked into regards cheating to become President it is Trump. And in that context I’m all for Capital Punishment for that sexual predator!

Former neighbor: And yet you make that statement without knowledge or even seeing the documents. Like I said appoint an independent council. They did it with trump and and independent council rule there was nothing.
The larger issue is how did we end up with people like you who make statement with no basis. Public Education at it’s finest.

Church friend: When? When was the independent council appointed regards Trump cheating in either election? Musk alluded to him cheating recently. Know why, cause he’s the one who helped him.
What possible reason would Obama have had for cheating in 2016? He wasn’t even running for election brainiac! What an asinine accusation.
Further, regards Epstein, not only is there basis, there are endless individuals stating Trump’s disgusting involvement, not to mention pictures and written comments from dumbass himself.
To your point: ‘how did we end up with people like YOU who make statements with no basis’

Dignity

Thanks to you if you got through my Facebook friends talking to each other. Some of them were dismissive. I think a few comments are a bit delusional. But they all represent some concentration, and they bothered to get engaged. I appreciated the responses. And I actually care about these people. If I met them at a party, I would talk to them. I have seen most of them in the past decade and one high school friend who resurfaced would be fun to catch up with. They matter.

Why in the world would we let someone like Trump make us argue? If he were your boss, you’d look for another job. If he were your uncle, you’d probably skip Thanksgiving. If he were your friend he would not be for long, since you see what he does to his friends (like Epstein). Manipulating us with lies and causing enough trouble for others in order to protect his personal power is what he has mastered.

When you read the comments to my Facebook post, you probably don’t see the beauty in each respondent. You don’t know them. We all know social media does not represent real persons, just a snippet of verbiage or snapshot of a moment. I have the benefit of knowing how each of these people care for others or are brilliant in their own way, I know a bit about their struggles and successes, their losses and graces. Most of them have faith.

Yet the Trump effect warps their dignity. Whatever distorted politics we are sorting out, we at least need to say a tidal wave of “NO!s” to dismissing our friends and hating our enemies. That may not be enough to stop the tyrants, but it will mean we have something left when they have passed through the social digestive system — which can’t be soon enough for me.

*******

Today is J.S. Bach Day! Somewhat respected is life and strangely dishonored after his death. His genius was later rediscovered along with the deep faith it served. Get to know him better at The Transhistorical Body.  

Three ways to stop the argument in your head

Building community, Psychological growth, , , , , ,

Someone I know (call them Z) was betrayed big time by two old friends not long ago. A job was lost, a reputation sullied. One of the betrayers moved far away from their small town, so Z felt OK about cutting them off. But the other person was not going anywhere. It was almost guaranteed Z was going to see her at the supermarket.

This traumatizer kept popping up in Z’s head. She had said some terrible things. She had told some lies. Z suspected she was spreading slander to common friends, not to mention other people in town who were hungry for gossip and did not mind a bit of scandal.

Invasive thoughts were getting a bit debilitating. Z was out for a walk along a beautiful creek on a perfect fall day but the slanderous woman found some headspace and soon Z was arguing with her. She was impossible to shake. Z’s spouse asked what was wrong and suddenly they were both mad again and the leaves began to turn dull.

Most of us can be tormented by recurrent negative thoughts that tie us up: “What if? What did I do wrong? What am I going to do? How can this be happening to me?” Hurts and losses bubble up as anger. We start saying all the things to the person we didn’t say before. We imagine what they are saying and argue back. We let them colonize our minds. Soon we’re afraid to go to the store for fear of being more overwhelmed!

Here are three common ways to get out of the debilitating cycle of arguing in your head, three ways to move on, grow up, or get through rather than dreading the thought of that person, rather than feeling stuck, or fearing the possibility of open conflict .

Shutting off an internal argument

These suggestions are mainly about changing how you behave.

  • Accept the problem is not going away and be friendly anyway. This may be important when you are related to the antagonist. Just accept you’re different and let it be. “Don’t go there.” Obviously, some major differences may require planning for a calm conversation. But smaller issues can be let go.
  • Choose who you relate to. You do not need to have a good relationship with everyone, especially abusive or argumentative people. It may pain you to scroll by people you think you should care about, or maybe even love. But it is not required to soak up bile or endure uncaring behavior.
  • Remember you have value even if they don’t value you. What other people think about you or say about you is mainly about them, not you. If you are not so emotionally wrapped up in what they said or did it is easier to avoid having unfinished arguments with them in your head. If your co-worker mocks you for the mistake you made, talk yourself out of staying awake feeling stupid that night, “He’s got reasons for being mean and I’ve got plenty of reasons to think I’ll master my job.”
  • Nip the internal argument in the bud. How often have you been washing dishes and realize the free space in your brain has been invaded by “that old argument?” It is great if you can gently note what’s happening and turn to something else. It might take some practice. Maybe you could create a helpful catch phrase to use like, “These thoughts are poisonous, don’t drink them.”
  • If you can’t stop, you could distract yourself. That does not mean looking them up on Instagram and feeling superior. Go for a walk, even if it just around the house; get your body on your side. Call a supportive friend (not to get them arguing too, that could just dig the rut deeper). Do a puzzle. Breathe it out – pray it out. You might not want to vacuum, that might leave brain space unoccupied for more argument.
  • Try setting apart a limited time to fret. If certain thoughts are derailing the whole day, you might try setting apart a limited amount of time to go ahead and think them through. A half an hour in solitude after dinner to practice an upcoming conversation or play through an old one might diminish the threat of them popping up when you’d rather be having sex or preparing for an exam.

Working through the feelings

These suggestions mainly attend to emotions.

  • Trying mentalizing about the whole conversation instead of deflecting bits. Imagine what you and the other person are really trying to say; you might get to say what you wish you had said. But don’t just unleash your fury and devastate them, focus on the feelings that upset you. When the co-worker made you look incompetent, why did that hurt? Are you insecure? Do you feel you are not recognized for your abilities? Did he remind you of your dad, your brother or that demeaning coach in jr. high?
  • Name the emotions as they arise. It is hard to keep a replay going if you don’t feel it deeply. The incident may have triggered some unfinished developmental business you have or may have reignited a traumatic experience. If you name what you feel you might understand your emotions better and and not be run around by a mysterious inner “force.” You might say, “I’m afraid I will be embarrassed when I see them in the store,” or “My anger is strangling me.” It is good for us when we let our emotions be normal, not a threat or a sin, and figure out what we want to do about them.
  • Get your feelings out of your head and into your journal. Maybe your process so far has been the first part of working something out and now you can express what you’ve come to and even make a plan. Use your journal. Maybe you could write a letter to the person with whom you’ve been arguing. You don’t have to give it to them; sometimes communication is no longer possible, or advisable – especially if you’ve been abused or they represent how you have been marginalized. In that case, just getting it out of your mind and onto the paper may be enough. You could burn the letter and let the contents go. You can close your journal and leave the feelings in the past.
  • Professional counselors try to be adept at helping people work through anxiety. If you are losing sleep, t of knowing increasingly angry or depressed, you might like to talk to someone you can trust, professional or not.

Having a healing interpersonal process

These suggestions mainly work with how you relate.

  • Express yourself. If you are a Christian you probably feel obligated to be reconciled with people or, unfortunately, appear to be OK with everyone. Regardless, if you’ve been having an argument with someone in your head and you think it is remotely possible you can have a personal, undistracted moment with them, it would could be good to talk to them. You could begin with, “That comment you made the other day about my work really bothered me. So I thought I’d circle back. Were you just being funny? Or were you trying to say something I need to hear?” It helps to rehearse what you’d like to calmly say.
  • Create a safe place. When you initiate a dialogue, it would help to let the person know you are doing something you care about and invite them into it, rather than just appearing out of nowhere saying something super serious. You could begin with something like, “I feel a little awkward being this personal, but I would like to tell you about what I’ve been feeling. I hope you’ll take a turn to talk when I’m finished.”
  • Keep calm. Something that even smells like conflict often sets people into fight, flight or freeze mode. So it will help them if your tone is calm and you speak slowly. If you have them listening and you bring some fiery emotion they will probably get caught up with how you are acting, not with what you are communicating. Remember to tell an “I” story, not a “you” story. The more you say “you,” the more likely they are to stop listening and start defending themselves.
  • It is always better for healing if there are less details and more feelings. Yes, they came home an hour later than expected and they’ve done other inconsiderate things in the past. The point is to invite them to care about how worried you felt and to work on a deeper trust that will allow you both to feel safe and connected. Especially if you are married, your marriage is a “common ground” you share. You can work on building a good relationship rather than working on one another’s flaws.

 What if none of that stopped the argument in your head?

Wouldn’t it be nice if relationships were “plug and play?” Wouldn’t it be great if each of us were not so complicated? Not long ago, one of my clients said to their mate, “Can we just agree that everyone is shitty?” The mate did not naturally go with such thoughts (thus, therapy), but they went with it that time and it relieved quite a bit of tension. Nothing really “works.” We won’t do everything “right.” We can’t. And if we did do something right, it probably  would not get perfect results in an imperfect world.

If you keep rehashing after all this work, you must be very committed to this internal argument! Maybe it has come to define you. Chances are, if you can’t let go, you are working with something rather deep. I hope you can let it be unresolved for now in a tender way. It must be a mystery and Jesus will need to save you. Constantly working out the puzzle like you are in charge of your own salvation is not going to be better than giving up on complete resolution. Many people have taken these conundrums that torment them like they torment you and lifted them to God in an act of submission and trust. Maybe you need to acknowledge the “thorn” that keeps poking you and let Jesus bear the pain with you until something better develops.