They say we are living in a “post-truth” world.
This, of course,
is not true.
Rather, what has been true
is no longer honest.
Continue reading “Living in the Question”
Author: karin swann-rubenstein
What We Liberals Don’t Want to Face About a Divided America
Yet again, this past week, America faced a new slew of tragic mass shootings. Yet again, American’s heads are hanging low in despair at the senseless brink of lethal absurdity our country now hinges on. Yet again, in the chilling days after these killings, communities are beset with grief and the fingers of cable news anchors and politicians come out to point to non-existent gun laws, mental illness, Trump’s rhetoric, and the hateful violence erupting on 8 Chan. And, yes, yet again, legislation around background checks surfaces as the biggest no-brainer to cross the desks of our Nation’s lawmakers, uh, ever.
But also, yet again, one of the most critical issues contributing to our nation’s sorry state fails to broach public dialogue. Beyond the righteous battle cry against hate is a much more challenging question, both because it pushes against political correctness and because it has to be asked from our hearts: How can we try to understand all this violence and hatred?
The answer many people have is racism, or the toxic cocktail of Trump + racism. They are correct, but that doesn’t get to the root of my question. I’m talking about a deeper understanding of hatred, itself. Continue reading “What We Liberals Don’t Want to Face About a Divided America”
What if Trump’s Behavior Isn’t a Moral Issue?
What if it’s about mental illness, and the moral issue lies with us?
Michael Stelter, CNN’s media reporter, recently spoke out about the issue he acknowledges the press has been tip-toeing around since Trump’s election. It’s time, he suggests to directly address Trump’s mental stability. While Stelter’s reporting itself tip-toes around the issue, falling short of naming “narcissism”, it at least approaches this elephant in the room and the challenges the press has encountered in not knowing how to report on it.
Since his election, I have been writing about Trump’s narcissism and the problem in the media of approaching his lies from a moral position assuming he knows how not to lie. The press’s own inadequate understanding of narcissism has long been half of the problem; its fear of reporting about the President’s mental illness has handily made up the other half. Continue reading “What if Trump’s Behavior Isn’t a Moral Issue?”
The Silver Lining: Trump and the Crisis of White, Patriarchy’s Archetypes
The silver lining to Trump and America’s white-patriarchal crisis.
In his recent interview with Bill Moyers, Ben Fountain, author of Beautiful Country, Burn Again, contextualizes Trump’s ascent to power within America’s (popular) culture, clarifying the ways our current political circumstances far from rose out of a vacuum. As an immigrant to this country and a keen observer of its culture, I’ve seen this truth as self-evident since the 2016 primaries. Fountain points to the popularity of J.R. Ewing — a Trumpian, villain proto-type — a character who, in the year I emigrated from England to the US, (1977), morosely captivated what was then still a fledgling, “global” popular culture. His image was so compelling my friends joked that I would surely return one day in a ten-gallon hat. J.R. Ewing and his tough, good-guy counterpart, John Wayne, hold sway as powerful, mythic white, male archetypes — the existence of which, in today’s evolving America, have become deeply threatened to their celluloid core.
Fountain’s analysis begins to touch on the ways the Trump phenomenon is inseparable from the culture in which it was born. I remember hearing the predictions of a famous Vedic astrologer before the 2016 election that “America will get the president it deserves” — and we have. Fountain weaves connections between American popular culture, the failures of the American dream under its waking-life capitalism, and our propensity to escape, exponentially compounded today by the addictive appeal of our “devices”. Fountain is dead on here as he points to the complexity of the problems we face in this country; he makes it clear it will require much more than the time it takes for Trump to leave office to address them. (Assuming he leaves, which I still have some faith will eventually happen.)
However, there is something important missing in Fountain’s analysis — at least as it appears in this interview. American culture, its economic institutions, and this country’s values are infused at their foundation by the impact of a patriarchal worldview. As those institutions are increasingly threatened, the question is begged: What might be able to emerge on the other side? Continue reading “The Silver Lining: Trump and the Crisis of White, Patriarchy’s Archetypes”
Song of Myself
Leave the chair at your computer.
Find your way outside
and sit in the wind.
Continue reading “Song of Myself”
In Honor of Rebirth
You don’t need to be Jewish or Christian to celebrate. The pagan roots of spring time are calling. It’s time to listen.
Neither a practicing Christian, nor Jewish, I woke on this Easter/Passover Sunday with a gnawing sense that something needed to happen in my family — something that preferably did not have to do with sugar. We returned from vacation Saturday night and my twin, 9 year old boys would have happily played nerf basketball and jumped on the trampoline all day. Our bags were still packed, breakfast had been scrambled together from the slim pickings in the fridge. The nerf ball had been missed, yes, but the chorus of whines begging me to drive to the store for a chocolate egg or some gummy bears felt just around the corner.
With an embarrassing lack of imagination, I sat down at my computer to see if I could find some meaningful video on the resurrection. Five minutes in, after finding absolutely NOTHING of meaning, I remembered what a friend told me last year that I disturbingly learned for the first time. Something I had somehow forgotten. Continue reading “In Honor of Rebirth”
the feminine (r)evolution 