It's time to end the regime of moral injury directed at US citizens
Members of Congress are deliberately waging harm against voters. It must stop.
vol. 2 issue 59
Greetings,
Last Sunday, I wrote a piece for patron subscribers that followed the money trail from Koch Industries to Republicans who refuse to accept the democratic results of our election. There were things about mental health in there, too, but the main point was that recently, Charles Koch made a big show about telling the nation that his backing of P45 was a mistake.
In my analysis, I detailed, with facts, the mental twists one would have to be willing to contort oneself around in order to accept anything at face value spoken by Republicans in Congress anymore.
I was pretty calm about it. Here’s where I started:
I’d like to think there are honest and reasonable Republicans in this country, in this Congress. But this desire is challenged by their not saying what is patently clear: Biden won the election.
And here’s where I ended:
It’s all another way of me trying to say there is an elephant in the room that no one in the Republican Party seems willing to point out… Do we really want these people to lead us? And if so, why? What are we getting out of it? And if we’re actually not getting anything constructive out of it, then why do we want to endorse what is therefore destructive?
Not hair raising rhetoric, just me musing on a Sunday afternoon. But the more I thought about it over the days that followed, the more I realized I was burning inside. Now, with yesterday’s news of the dangerously nuts and deeply, deeply cynical power grab by Texas Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton, my outrage found its voice.
Paxton, who, by the way is under FBI investigation for bribery and abuse of office, and also has been under indictment since 2015 for securities fraud – in other words, he’d like a presidential pardon dinner mint, thank you very much – has filed a lawsuit seeking to overturn the election results in at least four other states.
That’s it. No more calm here.
It’s time for us to call out those in power who knowingly are committing moral injury – a form of emotional distress -- against you and me.
This is a power grab. This is an assault on you and me. It creates unnecessary anxiety and suffering.
This moral injury is a direct link between your anxiety and depression, or the anxiety and depression of your loved ones.
These members of Congress could be focused on what to do to help people who are performing financial triage thanks to the pandemic, or worse, who are grieving lost loved ones thanks to our colossally inept response to the crisis.
But they aren’t. They are attempting to steal the election, all while telling you that it was stolen – because these liars are not as clever as you think. They always tell us exactly what they are doing by saying it is being done to them.
They don’t care about the pandemic, and they don’t care about democracy.
But you care. I know you do. You tell me so.
My essays, podcast interviews, and now even my newer, featured videos are read, downloaded, and shared thousands of times all across the nation. Thank you for that.
Either a bunch of you think I am dangerous and you want to warn others about my rabble rousing, or you know what I am saying makes sense!
I have had plenty of emails that thank me for what I am doing, that thank me for making connections that no one else seems to be making. My email open rates remain extremely high, so I sense that even if you don’t fully agree with me, you can’t dismiss what I am saying.
So, consider this a membership drive. I want to spend more time on docu-mental than I currently have the wherewithal to do. In addition to the focus on re-imagining healthcare next year, I want to bring you more news, essays, and interviews that will help you see through the lies that are making you scared, anxious, and depressed. That is why I ask you directly, please become a patron subscriber.
This bogus, shocking, and infuriating move by the Texan-led Republicans, refuted as “madness” by Senator Mitt Romney (R., UT), and by many other brave Republicans, including Georgia’s own AG, is designed for the good of one group and one group only: the Occupant, Mitch McConnell, and more importantly, whoever the dark money is that is behind them and their hangers on.
My observations of what the Congressional Republicans are doing are not partisan. I am an American citizen calling out a bunch of cynical, deceptive liars who seek to contort our system to suit their aims, not ours.
The moral injury, as we have seen with virtually every published post here at docu-mental, is the continual cognitive dissonance (the clinical term for “gaslighting”) they perpetrate upon us, spewing lies about a system even they clearly do not believe in.
Human laws do not simply exert their power like the inexorable pull of gravity. Once people decide that the rules are different, the rules are different. The rules for electoral legitimacy have been under sustained assault, and they’re changing right before our eyes. We’re being tested, and we’re failing.
~ Zeynep Tukecki, associate professor, University of North Carolina, expert in the confluence of digital technology, artificial intelligence, and society, writing in this month’s Atlantic Monthly.
So, here I am in the middle where my heart and values are, and I say “Hell, no!” to the sustained moral injury that is the result of having people who do not represent us but who are harming us directly. They have supported policies that harm us, and now they want to take away our right to choose who makes our policies.
The point of this publication is to map the connections between democracy, freedom, and our mental wellness. I trademarked the phrase Creating Herd Immunity to Anxiety and Depression, for goodness’ sake. That’s my mission.
Please make it easier for me to do by becoming a patron subscriber. Many of you are at organizations where you read docu-mental as a part of your line of work. If you’d like to contact me about creating an institutional subscription, let me know.
Just respond to this email and I will happily set one up for you.
When the people in power attack democracy as though it and not them are the problem, there is no democracy. There is no freedom. But there will be a spike in anxiety and depression.
It’s true that I have a lot of subscribers within the Beltway where life is pretty sweet, and not a lot of us here are wondering how we will make ends meet thanks to the shutdown or the lack of a stimulus package. But I also have a lot of subscribers across the country whose circumstances I don’t know firsthand, but whom I reckon are engaged in some form of financial triage, or know people who are.
And it seems like those of us here in Washington have NO CLUE about all that pain. So much goddamned pain! The anxiety and depression, the fear, that so many Americans feel and here where leadership should be is nonsense. It’s just so gross and disgusting that these people can keep slapping their own backs while you or others you know can’t sleep the night through for the sake of worrying.
Who the hell do they think they are? More deserving and better than you, apparently.
Congress is now stacked with more than 100 Republicans who, with their signing on to this scary Texas-led lawsuit are attempting, as history professor Heather Cox Richardson says,
“…an unprecedented attempt to destroy the very foundation of our democracy. Since the 1980s, Republican leaders have managed to hold onto power by suppressing votes, promoting disinformation, gerrymandering states, gaming the Electoral College, and stacking the courts…Now, [Republicans are] so unpopular that even gaming the mechanics of our system is not enough, they have abandoned democracy itself.”
docu-mental is not an anti-Republican publication, because ten years from now, it could very well be the Democrats who will need uncovering, but here’s where we are today.
docu-mental, and its emphasis on the freedom to think what we want and vote according to our own thoughts and feelings makes it a pro-democracy publication.
The more of us who stay focused and clear on our rights to be in possession of our minds, and not beleaguered with the fears, anxieties, and depression that feckless and heartless leaders perpetrate on us, the less likely we will face this kind of under-cutting of our rights in the future. Or, when those who want to try it again rise up, so will we, and they will fail.
Peace and outrage. They go together.
Whitney
In case you missed it:
More ICYMI:
Thanks POTUS and Friends for the anxiety & depression you've made us feel
And this:
Ordinary folks like you and me, suffering the moral injury of liars, give Capitalism a hard look