Thread by @jeffblack945

#RevThread #116
Anxiety in Trumplandia

1/ Let’s think about a family of words that either start or contain “ang” or “ank” or “anx” depending on how the Greek gets transliterated: anxiety, anguish, anger, angst, angina, crank, cantankerous, strangle, etc.

2/ In ancient Greek, “ang” is a root word meaning “constriction.” Angina is all about constriction. I remember the night, 19 years ago, of my heart attack. Lots of constriction, causing lots of angst.

3/ So what is anxiety? There are, roughly, two kinds. The first is a birth condition involving nerves that jangle constantly and over which the person’s will has little control. Some folks in my family have this condition. That’s not what this thread is about.

4/ In what follows I’m thinking about developed anxiety, the series of conscious and unconscious choices as well as cultural forces that exaggerate anxiety to a toxic level.

5/ We are fearfully and wonderfully made, as scripture teaches us, and most of the time anxiety is not a threat to our life but instead a handy warning of a threat.

6/ A touch of a squeeze by the sheath of nerves around an artery. Uh Oh. We sense that something we can’t trust is near us. Anxiety is a gift from creation to help us live. It triggers what we used to call the fight or flight response. It sounds great, and it is great...

7/ ..but like so many gifts, we misuse this gift of anxiety when we never give it a break.

8/ Jesus, in fact, identifies constant anxiety as a big spiritual negative. He says to Martha who is running the vacuum during the superbowl: “Martha, Martha, you are anxious about many things . . .”

9/ Jesus asks us, “Why are you anxious about what you will eat and what you will wear? Your Father in heaven knows you need these things...Seek first the Kingdom of God and all these things will be added to you.”

10/ What causes us to misuse this gift? Again, I’m not speaking here of people who suffer from crippling anxiety all their lives. Instead, I’m talking about people like me-- folks whose normal anxiety gets weaponized.

11/ What can happen to many of us is that anxiety becomes the only thing we unconsciously trust. We imagine we are going to make it if we’re hyper-alert to the emotional field in the home or to threats from abroad or to the shifts of the market, etc...

12/.. I start to feel secretly superior to the oblivious who don’t realize that terrible things are sure to happen soon. I learn that others will try to soothe me & begin worrying about my worrying. I discover that still others want to manipulate me by provoking my anxiety...

13/.. I’m never disappointed because I always knew nothing was ever going to work. “See? Told you. I knew it all along.”

14/ It was, I think, W.H. Auden who coined the term “The Age of Anxiety” for our time. Think of how ads we are subjected to every day toy with our anxiety. There’s money to be made--big money--in commercially induced anxiety.

15/ There’s power to be had--huge power--in politically induced anxiety. Producing anxiety is always the goal of Russian Active Measures. They pretty much destroyed Britain by touting Brexit and paying its leaders to fret that immigrants would ruin them.

16/ The President, in one of his few memorable statements, confided, “Fear is Power.”

17/ I do feel better since I figured out that the White House and their Republican lackeys are just running their anxiety machine. Don’t let them get your insides all constricted.

18/ Anxiety is meant to motivate us to deal with threats. In order to do that, we have to stop trusting anxiety itself, and choose to trust whatever has the power we actually need: Trust the Constitution, which bestows on us the right to resist...

19/..Trust the Lord’s teachings that have guided folks now for thousands of years.
Trust the disciplines of non-violent resistance, modelled by Jesus in Passion Week, by Gandhi in history’s largest, longest revolution, and by King and other heroes of civil rights...

20/..Trust the women who are taking on their own power. Trust the heavenly vision of diversity. Trust one another.

21/ It’s time to move past the anxiety of the last two years and now to use the other “ang” word: anger.

22/ This lout and his lackeys have assaulted our dignity, disgraced us before the world, ruined one of our political parties, abused our military -- all while hugging the flag and claiming to be lovers of God. F_ _k them!

23/ Control and use the anger rising inside you to become implacable -- walking with measured, unconquerable steps out into the public square to witness against Trump’s regime and its enablers.

24/ When Jesus entered the temple to confront the system of animal sacrifice that was the foundation for the vast wealth of the religion of his day, He intended to perform a yet more costly sacrifice.

25/ By overturning the tables of the money changers, acting alone and with great physical force while shouting: “You shall not make My Father’s House a place of trade!”, Jesus was guaranteeing his own suffering at the hands of all those in authority.

26/ Jesus was also prompted by and giving voice to the wrath of God. He did not assault any person with the violence that was to be visited on himself days later.

27/ Instead Jesus trusted in God, and put his own life at risk to reveal the corruption that the combination of piety and greed had brought to the land.

28/ Trump and his corrupted evangelical acolytes would do well to ponder that scene of the overturned tables as the clergy scurried away.

29/ The Trumpists’ legacy will be the same shame that eternally clings to Pilate, Herod, and Caiaphas. No one, you notice, to this day, bears those names.