The futility of desperately seeking hope, by Hal M. Brown
The signs at the entrances to the Nazi death camps read "Work Shall Set You Free."
It drives me crazy. It leads me to actually shout out loud at home.
People are desperate for hope. They want to hear answers to the question “what can we actually do to stop Trump?”
They want to feel that going out to hold signs along a busy road once week like they do around the country will make a difference.
This is human nature. Feeling helpless when your life as you know it, your lifestyle, is not just jeopardized, but may be forcibly taken from you is a normal reaction. When this is the fact, pretending it isn’t inevitable when it is for certain happening or about to happen is clinical denial or delusional.
Although some people have been herded onto deportation airplanes, we haven’t been herded by armed soldiers into cattle cars to a place that has a sign over the gate that says “work shall make you free.”
Perhaps some of the Jews headed to the gas chambers saw that sign and had a glimmer of hope, a fleeting moment that defied logic. Even if though they didn’t know that some wouldn’t last more than a week before they were killed, while others were going to be worked to death, they had to know that the SS and Gestapo who brought the there weren’t going to provide work that would make them free.
I am under no illusion that my using AI to make images of Nap-oleon Trump like these > 1 does anything more than provide me amusement. I’d hoped it would amuse my readers. It doesn’t solve anything. It is just an escape, a momentary respite.
All the SNL skits, the riffs mocking Trump by late night comics, the editorial cartoons (like those by Ann Telnais), and even the No Kings protests, play into Trump’s hands. He may personally bristle when someone or something scores a hit that bruises his ego, but he also is firm in his belief that those people opposing him are, as the line used in several movies says, bringing knives to a gunfight.
I know that keeping one’s sanity and not succumbing to clinical depression or being debiliated by anxiety is crucial. It is vital for all of us to find ways to take care of our mental health. If it means just avoiding even thinking about the news, this is what you have to do.
I would rather see people seek balance. Escape for a period of time and then refocus your attention so you see what is going on.
You might say to me that is seems like I am saying I should give up hope. I am loath to state that I this is what I am saying. Don’t kid yourself. Trump holds not only the reins of power, but is whipping us with them. He may not be drawing blood yet, at least for those who haven’t been targeted by his ICE thugs, but I see it as only a matter of time before we are all feeling the sting on our metaphorical flesh.
My suggestion as someone who was a therapist for 40 years and still thinks like a shrink is that we should do what help us to feel good but not kid ourselves. If you want to head out to the road with a group of like minded people and hold signs because this makes you feel like at least youre doing something, and it feels good to be with friends and have people who drive by hink and wave, go ahead and do it enthusiastically.
Everyone must practice self-care. I broke my practice of having the news on TV in the morning and going to Music Choice and listening to oldies.
I just want people to understand that things have gone so far beyond being bad that bad can’t even be seen in the rear view mirror.
Perhaps I shouldn’t have posted my Trump as Nap-oleon of yesterday’s Substack which I took down.
AI images made with Perchance AI:
Hal,
Right on the money. There is an element of foreshadowing about your post. What if all the histrionics and strength playing indicates an absolute intent of establishing concentration camps in the good old USA? Far fetched, right? Naysayers will deny that this administration would institute universal detention. Up to and including when the cell door closes. Granted this scenario has a fictive quality about it. But if the fiction is real. The cyber spooks will target anyone for pickup. THIS IS A SURVEILLANCE SOCIETY. Everyone knows this. Escaping the masked representatives of government means beating feet to off grid digs.
Six million Jews were slaughtered simply because they were JEWS. Millions of others were also slaughtered. There is no excuse justifying mass murder. And by extension, no justification buildingan infrastructure that implements
I feel your pain. It is the same as mine. Your words describe it perfectly. I hope you continue to speak the truth courageously since it’s all we have. I am glad to be old and childless in these crazy times. My heart breaks for what we are losing and the horrible treatment of the innocent, wherever they are in the world.