[FRIAM] self-care

[Steve Smith]

Eric wrote:
> Yeah, the theme of performative cruelty as a social movement has now 
> fully found and asserted its identity.
>
> I wonder when the rest of us decide this is enough of a threat to need 
> an organized response, and how we do that.

Having just recently toured the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam and 
walking the streets of Weesp, seeing brass plaques memorializing the 
jewish families taken (and almost consistently exterminated) by the 
Nazis, I am freshly sensitized to how fast and how bad things can get... 
especially recognizing that this all happened in my parent's 
lifetimes.   Mary's mother was born the same day/year as Anne Frank and 
identified with her from the time her diaries were released in English 
(early 50s).   Another friend's parents were at Nuremberg for the trials 
(Belgian mother worked service for the Allies and father was an MP 
guarding those on trial). All of this generation are dead now but we 
heard (some of) their stories growing up.

We also met (on our European travels) our own generation (moslty 
professional class) who still remember growing up in the aftermath of 
WWII, bombed out buildings, machine gun holes in walls, etc. Their 
perspective on the Russian invasion of Ukraine is a bit sharper than 
mine has been.   The few "strangers" we spoke with about US politics 
were very circumspect... this would be service people we met along the 
way, usually somewhat displaced by EU opportunities (e.g Czech in his 
30s driving a bus in Iceland) and pretty careful about making 
assumptions about our politics when discussing (at first)... I didn't 
run into anyone casually (or otherwise) who was openly populist or right 
wing.  On individual issues, we did meet our share of anti-globalists 
and anti-progress (i.e. Brexit, Windmills, etc), however...

The forces of anger/intolerance always seem to have a certain kind of 
transitory upper-hand...   if you don't stand up to them you lose, but 
if you stand up to them too strongly you risk becoming them and lose 
doubly. And yet, those periods of extreme always seem to burn themselves 
out? /
/

/Performative cruelty/ *is* a very apt term.

- Steve
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20220702/6947d3dd/attachment.html>