Control yourself

I guess I have sort of a trilogy here.

Wednesday I wrote about people being horrible (and dumb) to each other - especially in stressful times - and yesterday I wrote about looking out for each other now.

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2020/03/dont-be-like-that.html

https://preparedspork.blogspot.com/2020/03/love-in-time-of-covid19.html

I believe there is a common thread, and that is what I want to get at today.

Let me start by saying that one of the absolute most fun things about this election cycle is how everybody feels free to tell Democrats how to vote and what to do.

It doesn't matter if they have never been Democrats, and scorn the values that might make someone stick with that party. It doesn't matter whether their justification for being able to tell us what to do is Trump, and they were specifically helpful in getting him elected. It doesn't matter if they have made very specific and clear predictions that turned out to be wrong, legitimately calling their acumen into question. It certainly doesn't matter if you have years of experience with activism and fighting for rights, as opposed to being an actress who likes the guy who briefly took part. There is no reason that my own decision-making process can be valid if it results in a different conclusion than yours.

To which my first, instinctual response is "Screw you!", but that would go to some people I really like, along with several I don't.

The good part of that is that I was worried that by not spending a lot of time listening to outright  Trump supporters I might be creating my own bubble and echo chamber, which is a concern. Instead, I find that there are a lot of people whom I disagree with that I still listen to, with diverse levels of intelligence and education and opinions. That's probably healthy, even when it's frustrating.

I also find that I have not written as much about politics this election cycle as I did during the last one. I often think about different things, but it feels like currently things are so much more about the problems with the voters than with the candidates. I mean, the candidates have real issues and I could spend a lot of time on that, but it doesn't feel like it would matter unless we got to the root of what is happening with the voters and the talking heads and the people who feel perfectly comfortable calling experienced committed voters low information because they see through your brand of progressivism.

I don't have a post for that yet. It would probably take a series of twenty or thirty sequential posts building the history of civilization and especially United States history and how we became such a bunch of nasty, twisted creatures. 

I do have a concept, though: Dominator Culture

I found the phrase recently while reading bell hooks. It seemed to describe something that I had been sensing. That is a great thing to happen in reading: you find out it is not just you. Other people have noticed, they have worked on it, and maybe there is hope.

For people who have worked on it more, the opposite of the dominator model is the partnership model.

If we are constantly in a fight to prove our superiority hierarchically, it's not just that it creates a full bigot tree of abuse flowing down; it's also that we are always in a fight. What if we just decided we were all equal?

So for someone who hoards supplies and hopes to price gouge, or who behaves recklessly to prove they aren't scared (increasing the risks for the medically fragile people in the vicinity), or the people who keep focusing on "bending the knee" (whether they anticipate the knees being bent toward them, or them being forced to bend), what model do you think that is?