Well, that took a while...

I ascribe a lot of my lack of follow through and consistent attention to things to my ADD. It's not like nothing has happened in the year since I posted something here, but for whatever reason I tend to drop in and out of activities.

Yes, I am still often blind with rage at the administration running our government, but I had to walk away from some things in order to maintain my sanity. Things like Reddit and Bluesky, for instance. And in that walking away process I have been overwhelmed, in a positive way, by a book. Gal Beckerman has recently published "How To Be a Dissident" and it has changed my outlook in so many ways.

Timeline thus: mid-March we had a windstorm like nothing we'd ever experienced. It took my 10x20 tent/garage and blew it around the yard like a dust mote. At 7500' the UV here is pretty brutal, and when you add in typical humidity around 15% it wears things out fast. So I went looking for a replacement that would stand up to that and the occasional winter of 11-13' of snow. Cover-Tech, in Canada, had what I needed. It arrived two weeks ago, all 750 pounds of it and the truck driver and I managed to off-load it onto my pickup, but not before I had jumped off the liftgate to move my truck a few feet. I've had issues with one of my hips for about 18 months, and for whatever reason that 4' jump was the proverbial straw. When I landed my hip felt like a burning sword had been thrust into it and it gave out completely. Off I tumbled into a ditch. We managed to get it finished, me limping around in agony. I went to the ER the next morning and found that, while still in inordinate pain, I had not broken anything, so we stuck with our plan for the next week: a conference in San Diego that my wife was scheduled to attend, and I went as the tagalong.

I figured if I was just going to convalesce for a week I might as well do it sitting next to the harbor. Three ball games, awesome seafood and a book to read. I've wanted to experience the San Diego climate all of my life and it was as wonderful as I had hoped. So, I read this book, sitting by the water, and it has helped me reevaluate my approach to our existential crisis.

"How To Be a Dissident" is less a manual than a guidebook. The ten chapters form a checklist, each one focused on a way to rethink, or reframe, how one approaches the fight against authoritarianism:

1) Be Alone - Face the discomfort and fear.

2) Be Pessimistic - Do not assume success is certain.

3) Be Funny - Laugh at power.

4) Be Rational - Keep asking questions.

5) Be Watchful - Record what you see.

6) Be Reckless - Sacrifice for the right reasons.

7) Be Loyal - Grow beyond yourself.

8) Be Presumptuous - Behave as if you have power.

9) Be Human - See others fully.

10) Be Immortal - Focus on a future after you.

Each one is seen through the lens of both historical figures, and people living now, being dissidents. n.b. The word itself derives from Latin, meaning to sit apart, as opposed to our common impression of such folks being agitators. They all have some method of questioning the status quo, and even that simple process often lands them in hot water.

I'm not going to go through the entire book here, mostly because it's a great read and should be experienced by everyone, but there were a couple of sentences that really leapt out at me. The most salient came from Charlotte Berardt, a journalist in Nazi Berlin who began asking people to tell her about their dreams. Not their aspirations, but their literal dreams. These were average citizens, going about their lives as Hitler and his propaganda began to take over the country. There is a very clear parallel to our current state in that many of us see with our own eyes egregious acts that are counter to our notion of a civilized society.

The common thread in these dreams was a slow capitulation. These were people who saw their freedoms being stripped and responded in their daily life with the thought that no, I do not accept that as right. And yet in their dreams they began to give in, even saying explicitly I don't always have to say no. And this is what moved me so (first chapter!): "Freedom is a burden. Unfreedom comes as a relief."

Those two sentences, for me, sum up this moment. The multi-generational assault on education has left so many bereft of the ability to think critically. And that means they can be easily swayed by basic arguments and pronouncements. Repetition and emotional appeals work here, too. In a nutshell, this is MAGA. While fully believing that they are free, that they have freedom(s), it requires no effort to think otherwise because the people and media they spend time with are like-minded. It is easy to be this way, so don't mar my bliss. And, perhaps most importantly, when someone lacks critical thinking skills they are exceptionally difficult to argue with (in the classical sense of argument).

Another tangential comment Beckerman makes is this: "Presumptuousness...is more than simply arrogance. It saves us all from stasis, from inheriting ways of being that feel wrong or not optimal but that have nevertheless become reflexes, to which we conform without thinking." (Emphasis my own.) Unfreedom comes as a relief.

And perhaps one way to combat this is our own versions of Tisza Islands. More on that later. In the meantime, don't stop saying "no".