My Grandmother's Hands

 

My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies by Resmaa Menakem (MSW, LICSW) was published in 2017.  Psychology Today describes Menakem as “a healer, therapist, trainer, and speaker.” (https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/contributors/resmaa-menakem-msw-licsw)   

 

Unlike most writings on racism, his work focuses on the embodiment of trauma experienced both historically and in the present by both blacks and whites in a white supremacist world.  Instead of seeking understanding of systemic racism as a social phenomenon (though he does that) he addresses the way our bodies have retained racial trauma from the past and continue to suffer from such bodily trauma.  Instead of leaving us in a dark place, however, he offers practical therapeutic aids for healing ourselves as a way of contributing to healthier bodies, hearts, and minds, and, ultimately, to a healthier society. Even more unusual, he includes traumatized police bodies as part of the psychological and social mix that we often see manifested in racialized violence.

 

It was not surprising to see attention paid to the traumatic effects of racism on black bodies.  What was new to me was the idea that white bodies, like mine, also have been and are traumatized by white supremacy.  How can this be? Part of it has to do with our encultured and socialized fear of black bodies.  Are they going to rob us, attack us, rape us?  Are they going to take their own racialized trauma out on us?  Another dimension is our own history. Menakem points out that in the U.S. whites learned how to oppress those of other races from white people. In Europe, before the mass migration to the Americas, whites were victims of each other.  Whites brutalized whites through class and gender oppression.

 

“The 1500s and 1600s in England were anything but gentle times. People were routinely burned at the stake for heresy, a practice that began in the twelfth century and continued through 1612. Torture was an official instrument of the English government until 1640. The famous Tower of London was, in part, a huge torture chamber…the rack was used stretch human bodies and pull them apart.”

 

Menakem cites Barbara Tuchman’s A Distant Mirror: “The tortures and punishments of civil justice customarily cut off hands and ears, racked, burned, flayed, and pulled apart people’s bodies. In everyday life, passers-by saw some criminal flogged with a knotted rope or chained upright in an iron collar. They passed corpses hanging on the gibbet and decapitated heads and quartered bodies impaled on stakes on the city’s walls.” Even if one were not a direct victim, the experience of being exposed to these horrors on a daily basis had to be traumatizing.

No wonder so many sought escape to the colonies.

 

When I read these descriptions of white brutalization of other whites, I wondered, “How did we manage to survive?” But Manaken reminds us of our resilience, our ability, not only to survive, but to overcome the effects of our inherited and continuing experience of trauma. 

 

Unfortunately, however, white colonists brought their trauma with them, turning around and using similar brutality against each other, as well as against indigenous populations, slaves, and non-white immigrants.  Such methods of dealing with trauma simply inflict that trauma onto others and can hardly be justified.  Just as European whites managed to survive, at the expense of others, those oppressed “others” have also managed to survive, but at what a price.

 

As we know, whiteness was invented and used to establish dominance over non-whites. White supremacy became the ruling ideology and practice from our earliest history. To what extent was such oppression a manifestation of traumatized white bodies venting their own pain onto others?

 

It is obvious that racialized oppression would traumatize the oppressed, but less obvious how the oppressors (including police) might be suffering from their own trauma.  It is also obvious that, insofar as this is true, it is no excuse for mistreating, harming, and dominating others.  It is no excuse for creating a system of white supremacy by which one group can perpetuate such injustice.

 

How do we break out of this continuing cycle of injustice toward a world of diversity, equity, and inclusion?  Social action is necessary and important, but Menakem says the healing starts with our bodies.  We are so often unconscious of our bodily sensations.  We may recognize when we are scared, angry, or otherwise upset, but in order to prevent those feelings from leading to harmful words or actions, we need to learn to back up and settle our bodies before we react.  He offers embodied practices to help with this, not in lieu of social action but in conjunction with it. We have resilience, yes, but we need to learn how to direct that resilience toward ourselves, learning to address our own trauma in a healthy way. White people have a responsibility to heal themselves so they can contribute to dismantling white supremacy.

 

As a white person I have addressed the parts of Menakem’s book that focuses on my history and my body.  Black, indigenous, brown people and police will identify with the parts that address their bodily trauma and healing.  In any case, such embodied experience is a dimension of white supremacy culture that was revelatory to me, and I highly recommend both Menakem’s diagnosis of racialized trauma and his healing practices.

 

 

 

 

Ebola, Salem Witchcraft, COVID, "Young Goodman Brown," and "Spectral Evidence"

Some six years ago I compared the Ebola scare of the time to the Salem witchcraft trials, as chronicled by Marian Starkey in The Devil in Massachusetts (See blog post Nov. 24, 2014). I highlighted the scapegoat theme and the racism underlying much of the “mass hysteria” in both Salem in 1692 and the U.S. in 2014. I barely mentioned the way misguided fears overshadowed scientific, medical, and public health expertise in the Ebola episode.  I was struck that as a nation, maybe we hadn’t evolved as much as we might like to expect between 1692 and 2014.

 

Lately, looking back on 2020, I see similar parallels.  COVID-19 was referred to as the “Chinese virus” and people of Asian descent were targeted for threats and harassment. This virus, along with what might be considered election “mass hysteria,” put me in mind of Hawthorne’s story reflecting on Salem witchcraft, “Young Goodman Brown,” published in 1835.

 

Young “good man” Brown presumably thinks he is one of the Puritan “elect,” who by God’s special “election” can do no evil.  Yet his curiosity leads him into the forest one night to observe a witches’ meeting.  He is shocked to see some of his well-respected neighbors at the scene, including the deacon, the minister, and his own supposedly innocent wife, Faith. In the end, as the devil calls on his followers to pledge their allegiance to him, Young Goodman Brown calls out to “resist the Wicked One!” and suddenly finds himself alone in the forest with a drop of dew on his face.

 

“Had Goodman Brown fallen asleep in the forest and only dreamed a wild dream of a witch-meeting?  Be it so, if you will.  But, alas, it was a dream of evil omen…”

 

Here Hawthorne alludes to what was referred to as “spectral evidence” in the historical Salem witchcraft trials, the court accepted the testimony of “witnesses” that they had been “visited” in the night by the accused and caused harm. Had the witnesses only dreamed of this “visitation” by a witch? “Be it so, if you will,” but the accused “witches” were hung on the basis of such “evidence.”

 

In our own age of conspiracy theories, it seems spectral evidence has reappeared and overtaken a significant segment of our population. On the basis of no empirical, documented evidence whatsoever, but only of wild fantasies and over-active imaginations, we have the pandemic being dismissed as a hoax, while masks and social distancing are accused of being a government plot. QAnon believers and other conspiracy theorists commit violence in the mistaken conviction that Hillary Clinton and the deep state are engaging in sex trafficking or the 5G cellular network is spying on us or spreading the virus or who knows what? We now have lawyers and elected officials, who should know better, introducing “spectral evidence” into election fraud cases on the basis of nothing more than wishful thinking, outlandish fears, or imaginary beliefs.

 

As a result, unnecessary deaths, violence, threats (including death threats), and the undermining of democracy, as well as of public confidence in elections, have occurred.

 

Young Goodman Brown becomes “a stern, a sad, a darkly meditative, a distrustful if not desperate man…from the night of that fearful dream.”  He believes that everyone he imagined seeing at the witch meeting, including his wife, Faith, are hopelessly evil hypocrites, everyone, that is, except himself.

 

Fortunately, he commits no violence and makes no threats (though he may well have applauded at the witch hangings), but his community relationships, even his marriage, are destroyed.  He has lost his faith in others, and “his dying hour was gloom.”

 

Conspiracy theorists of today have lost their faith in science, medicine, evidence, reason, and in democratic institutions. They end up either dying of COVID or spreading it to others who die, harassing those who wear masks, committing crimes in the name of their wild fantasies, and supporting the corruption of our courts, our democracy, and our very Constitution.

 

Some years after the Salem witchcraft trials, church leaders and trial jurors apologized, convictions were reversed, and compensation rendered to the families of those wrongfully accused and convicted. Let’s hope that, similarly, starting in 2021, we come to our senses. Meanwhile, Happy New Year!

Can Fiction Be True?

 

We all know that “Fiction” is a factually-false, made-up, imaginary story and “Non-fiction” is a fact-based narrative or exposition, personal/social/political expression, or opinion/persuasion.  Sometimes the boundaries get blurred, especially in the age of social media, as fictional “conspiracy theories” or other false reports get passed off as non-fiction fact, and, as in the case of autobiography, all parts may not be verifiable.  And, of course opinion/persuasion can be based on false belief or wishful thinking as much as, even more than, fact. And, of course, fiction can be based on actual history, geography, or lived experience.

 

Regardless, we generally associate fiction with that which is factually false and non-fiction with that which is factually true. 

 

Yet, we take fiction seriously, as art in the form of novels, short stories, screenplays, etc.  Why is this?  Is it just that we admire the imaginative play that goes into them, the ingenuity, the creativity, the compelling language?  That’s part of it, but my experience as a teacher of literature at all levels from high school to graduate studies and as a participant in various “book discussions” is that the primary focus of most people is on the content: the plot, characters, setting, and the overall message that different readers find.  And the value they typically find in these elements is that they are “true-to-life” and expressive of a meaningful message that strike readers as “true.”

 

Well, “true” in what sense?  Not factually true, but true in, what I would call, a symbolic sense.  Even what we call a fantasy fiction, that is, a story that is unrealistic, maybe even impossible in real life, can strike us as “true” if understood as allegorical, metaphorical, or symbolic of a general truth.  The film Star Wars (and all its sequels and prequels) is powerful because it depicts political/military conflict, good vs. evil, heroes and villains, family relationships, friendship, romance, and human experience in general in ways that strike us, not only as entertaining, but as “true” to human experience, if not factual, or even realistic. 

 

All this might seem obvious, and non-controversial, but, again in my experience, if the term “fiction” merges into “myth” and then into “religious myth,” it can suddenly raise hackles. It raises hackles among those who believe certain religious stories, even those that contradict the known laws of nature, are factually true.  And it raises hackles among religious non-believers who prefer to dismiss religious stories as false belief. 

 

A fundamentalist Christian who takes the Bible literally might object to having its contents referred to as “myth” because that implies “false belief.”  On the other hand, an atheist who also tends to take things literally might object to Biblical, or any religious, myth referred to as symbolically “true.”

 

At the risk of offending both extremes, I will suggest how the Christ story can be considered symbolically true, even if factually false. 

 

Most Christians probably consider it to be a unique story, but actually it follows the familiar pattern of a hero/quest myth found in almost all, if not all, cultures: (1) mysterious or miraculous origin, (2) hiding, (3) initiation and divine signs or special powers, (4) preparation, meditation, withdrawal, refusal, (5) trial and quest, (6) death and the scapegoat, (7) descent to underworld, (8) resurrection and rebirth, (9) ascension, apotheosis, atonement.  Not all hero myths contain every element, but all roughly follow the same outline. (See David Leeming's Mythology: The Voyage of the Hero, 2nd ed.)*

 

In the case of Jesus Christ, (1) he is born of a virgin, (2) he is born in a kind of “hidden” place, a manger, (3) he shows a maturity beyond his years during his conversation with religious teachers, (4) he spends  forty days and forty nights in the wilderness resisting the temptations of Satan and preparing for his “quest,” (5) he calls his disciples and undertakes his ministry performing miracles and spreading his message, (6) he is crucified and dies as a scapegoat for human sin, (7) he is buried in a tomb, (8) he rises from the dead, and (9) he ascends into heaven and is deified.

 

So, if we dismiss the story as factually and literally false, on what basis can we affirm its truth value?  For one thing, we can affirm that, regardless of time and place, some individuals seem to acquire special status.  These individuals perform outstanding acts or make noteworthy contributions to their communities.  In turn, their communities elevate them and attribute unusual qualities to them in recognition of their accomplishments.  Hero myths thus represent the enduring human truth that some individuals rise above the rest of us and that the rest of us confer upon them a distinctive standing.  Likewise, these myths embody the truth that, as humans, we seek role models, mentors, and heroes, who inspire and lead us toward our own higher life.

 

From a psychological perspective, we can also view these myths as representing the universal story of each individual’s life journey.  As we grow, we become conscious of ourselves as having a distinct identity.  We often think of ourselves as having a special calling or mission in life.  We may face threats to our survival; we look for signs of our “destiny” or our unique goals in life; we seek success in one form or another and we prepare ourselves to achieve it; we encounter obstacles and trials that must be overcome in our life’s “quest.”  Not all “heroes” are successful, and we may experience a failed quest, perhaps more than one.  Regardless of success or failure, we must face death, but we take comfort that we will live on after death, even if it is only in the form of the memories of the living or the legacy we leave behind.   Psychologically, our apotheosis is the mark we leave on the world.

 

Thus, the literally false myth embodies the symbolic truth of our sense of unique identity, our individual life journey, and our shared human experience of trial and quest, success or failure, suffering, death, and the hope, if not the conviction, that our life was significant.

 

Stripped of its religious meaning, the story of Jesus Christ is the same story that we each live, and that is perhaps one reason the story can resonate powerfully even for an atheist, assuming the atheist has not rejected imagination along with religion.

 

Thus, while myths and legends, religious and otherwise, may be factually false, they persist in popular imagination and in literary tradition because they embody enduring “truth” about human experience. 

 

Does this mean that conspiracy theories, rumors, superstition, and “fake news” can embody symbolic truth?  Well, they may well tell us something about the psychology of those who embrace them as factually true, whether it be our human desire to believe what we want to be true rather than what can be verified as true, our need to reinforce a particular world view that we have become emotionally invested in, our fear of being wrong, our anger at being challenged, wishful-thinking, or just our human tendency to follow the path of least resistance.  It takes effort to verify, to research, to evaluate the credibility of sources, to seek facts and evidence, to rely on logic and reason. 

 

Why would anyone believe that our government is secretly controlled by Satanists who deal in sex-trafficking?  Is it a form of socio/political paranoia?  Does it satisfy some need to explain the mysterious inner workings of a seemingly all-powerful government beyond our control? 

 

Just as there are atheists and other literal-minded materialists who reject imaginative truth, there are those with over-active imaginations who are easy prey for scams, superstition, hoaxes, fake news, and conspiracy theories.

 

There can be a dark side to the excess of imagination, as well as to the lack of imagination.  In each case the seeker of “truth” is missing something. The literal-minded materialist, by focusing on facts alone, is missing a much larger dimension of truth.  Those with over-active imaginations who can’t distinguish between fact and fiction are missing a sense of reality, both factual reality and that which symbolically represents reality. 

 

In any case, assuming one has one’s wits about them, yes, fiction can be true. 

 

*Based on Joseph Campbell's The Hero of a Thousand Faces

"Reluctance"

Reluctance

By Robert Frost

Out through the fields and the woods

   And over the walls I have wended;

I have climbed the hills of view

   And looked at the world, and descended;

I have come by the highway home,

   And lo, it is ended.

The leaves are all dead on the ground,

   Save those that the oak is keeping

To ravel them one by one

   And let them go scraping and creeping

Out over the crusted snow,

   When others are sleeping.

And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,

   No longer blown hither and thither;

The last lone aster is gone;

   The flowers of the witch hazel wither;

The heart is still aching to seek,

   But the feet question ‘Whither?’

Ah, when to the heart of man

   Was it ever less than a treason

To go with the drift of things,

   To yield with a grace to reason,

And bow and accept the end

   Of a love or a season?

Here in Central Minnesota we have already had a taste of winter; some of our leaves were frozen to the ground when they were picked up.  We know how this ends: fall gives way to winter just as summer gave way to fall.  “And lo, it is ended.”  But we are reluctant to accept it.  “The heart is still aching to seek, /But the feet question ‘Whither?’”

            …when to the heart of man

                        Was it ever less than a treason

            To go with the drift of things…

                        And bow and accept the end…”

Frost explicitly references the end “Of a love or a season,” but we know he also means we are reluctant to accept death, the ultimate end, as well as the loss of a love or the coming of winter.

What is striking is the way that reluctance, in this case, goes against, not only nature (at the end of a season), but also reason:

            Ah, when to the heart of man

                        Was it ever a treason

            To go with the drift of things,

                        To yield a grace to reason,

            And bow and accept the end…

Endings are, not only natural, but also inevitable, and resistance goes against reason.  However, it would be treasonous to expect “the heart of man” to “accept the end.”  Human “nature,” it seems goes against the external nature of the seasons, as well as its own power of reason. Head and heart are in conflict as we struggle to accept the inevitable.

Who among us has not experienced that struggle? Who among us cannot identify with that reluctance to accept the inevitable end?

At this time of Thanksgiving, as we celebrate all that we have to be grateful for, let us forgive ourselves our reluctance to accept the inevitable endings.  And may our gratitude for new beginnings never cease!

Nineteen Eighty-Four

This dystopian novel by George Orwell was first published in 1949. I read it in the 1960s and taught it to first-year college students in 1984. Last night I saw a dramatic performance adapted for the stage by Michael Gene Sullivan.

In the 60s, those of us who were active in the Vietnam War protests battled the barrage of government propaganda, disinformation, and misinformation regarding the origin of the war, the need for the war, and the progress of the war.  Orwell’s concepts of Newspeak, Doublethink, and even Thoughtcrime (Vietnam protesters were labeled unpatriotic and subversive for opposing the War) seemed to apply. FBI surveillance of Vietnam protesters seemed to mirror the watchful eye of Big Brother through the widespread use of government cameras to keep citizens in line with the Party.

When I taught the book in 1984, it seemed far-fetched.  And since then, we’ve grown accustomed to the prolific use of surveillance cameras by law enforcement and private citizens alike to deter crime. 

With the Trump presidency, Nineteen Eighty-Four has become relevant again. And the stage play was frankly terrifying, as the comparisons were unmistakable.  Instead of Newspeak and Doublethink, we have “fake news” and conspiracy theories, bolstered by doctored photos/videos and the deliberate spread of propaganda, not only by elected leaders and their staffs, but also by private citizens on social media, not to mention other countries. 

As in the original novel we now have blatant disregard for facts, science, rational thought, and the direct experience of our eyes and ears.  Trump and others publicly deny they said something that is right there on unedited video or audio transcript for all to see and read. 

In Nineteen Eighty-Four the Thought Police enforce conformity to the Party line with the use of torture.  In the stage version Winston Smith is subjected to increasing levels of electric shock until he finally agrees that two-plus-two is five and that he loves Big Brother.  That is scary enough.  What is particularly scary today is how many of our fellow citizens are willing participants in the campaigns of propaganda, misinformation, and disinformation to which we are all subjected.  Too many of us are uncritically willing to believe what we want to hear or think we know rather than to take the time and exercise the discipline it takes to at least come close to the truth.

Today the government and the Party do not need Thought Police and electric shock because they have partisan loyalists and sycophants whose eyes and ears are closed as they open their mouths to readily ingest toxic, false messages and then turn around and spew those messages out to their own followers on social media.

George Orwell envisioned a citizenry of helpless victims subjected to Big Brother’s totalitarian power; he did not envision a citizenry of willing participants fully cooperating in their own manipulation and delusion.

What I am grateful for in the scary times we live in is (1) an educational system that is hopefully teaching critical thinking and evaluation of sources for reliability, (2) freedom of the press that allows for competing points of view, even as some media outlets toe the Party line and help spread false information, and (3) freedom of speech that allows those who value facts, evidence, and reason to counter the propaganda, misinformation, and disinformation, even as it also enables the false narratives.  Unlike the fictional world of Nineteen Eighty-Four, we have the right and the power of dissent. 

So let us use that right and that power to educate others, as best we can, in reliable methods of research and responsible methods of determining truth; to analyze our own sources of information for reliability and discipline our own thinking to rely on facts, evidence, and reason; and to raise our voices to counter those who would misinform, mislead, and manipulate. 

 

 The stage for the play was a hall of mirrors.  You can see the reflection of the audience. Look in the mirror, America!

Mueller Report

The much-touted Mueller Report (Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election) was publicly released on April 18.  One of my friends read it and blogged on it right away (https://linnposts.com/2019/04/25/the-mueller-report-and-the-fate-of-the-nation/).  He probably read it a lot more carefully than I did.  It took me longer to get to the report and it took me longer to get through it; I skipped the footnotes and skimmed some sections.  However, I read enough to have formed some conclusions.

First, note the title refers to the “Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election,” and that is the main focus.  However, Mueller was charged with pursuing other criminal activity that arose in the course of the investigation.  Thus, the entire second volume is devoted to possible obstruction of justice by President Trump.   

Volume One amounts to 199 pages; Volume II, 182 pages.  There are lots of redactions, so the actual number of pages to read is somewhat less.  The redactions often leave one guessing as to what we don’t know yet, but there is enough information to substantiate the main claims in the Report.

 As has been widely reported Mueller found multiple attempts by Russian officials to interfere in the election (1) by a social media campaign designed to sow division in the electorate and favor the Trump candidacy, and (2) by contacting Trump campaign workers to offer negative information, or “dirt,” on Hillary Clinton.  Some of those Russian officials were indicted.  As we know, Mueller did not find (enough) evidence of criminal conspiracy by the Trump campaign and Russia to issue an indictment on those grounds. 

The Office of Special counsel “determined that the contacts between Campaign officials and Russia-linked individuals either did not involve the commission of a federal crime or, in the case of campaign-finance offenses, that our evidence was not sufficient to obtain and sustain a criminal conviction. At the same time, the Office concluded that the Principles of Federal Prosecution supported charging certain individuals connected to the Campaign with making false statements or otherwise obstructing this investigation or parallel congressional investigations.” (V.I, p. 174) 

The Report makes clear that they could not conclude that no conspiracy occurred but rather that, while evidence of conspiracy existed, it did not rise to a strict enough legal level or it was not sufficient to charge anyone in court. 

At one point the report states that because certain campaign officials made false statements (lied), or took the Fifth Amendment, or deleted records, the Office was unable to paint a complete picture of campaign contacts with Russian officials:

“Accordingly, while this report embodies factual and legal determinations that the Office believes to be accurate and complete to the greatest extent possible, given these identified gaps, the Office cannot rule out the possibility that the unavailable information would shed additional light on (or cast in a new light) the events described in the report.” (V.I, p. 10)

My biggest take-away from Volume I is, if there was no criminal conspiracy, coordination, or “collusion,” why did so many Trump campaign officials lie, take the Fifth, or delete records?  What were they covering up? Even Trump has suggested that when someone takes the Fifth, they must be guilty: https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-immunity-pleading-fifth-amendment-michael-flynn-2017-5   

Though the Office was unable to charge anyone with conspiracy or violations of federal campaign laws, it did charge certain Trump campaign officials with lying and obstructing justice:

“The Office determined that certain individuals associated with the Campaign lied to investigators about Campaign contacts with Russia and have taken other actions to interfere with the investigation…the Office therefore charged some U.S. persons connected to the Campaign with false statements and obstruction offenses. “ (V. I, p. 191)

Also, given the wealth of documented evidence of Russian interference, why is our government not doing more to prevent it from happening in future elections?  It is astounding that we seem to be accepting this practice as the status quo.

Volume II of the Report, as has been widely reported, did not conclude that Trump was guilty of obstruction of justice, but it also did not exonerate him: 

“Because we determined not to make a traditional prosecutorial judgment, we did not draw ultimate conclusions about the President's conduct. The evidence we obtained about the President's actions and intent presents difficult issues that would need to be resolved if we were making a traditional prosecutorial judgment. At the same time, if we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state. Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, we are unable to reach that judgment. Accordingly, while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.” (V. II, p. 8) 

Furthermore, “The President' s efforts to influence the investigation were mostly unsuccessful, but that is largely because the persons who surrounded the President declined to carry out orders or accede to his requests. Comey did not end the investigation of Flynn, which ultimately resulted in Flynn's prosecution and conviction for lying to the FBI. McGahn did not tell the Acting Attorney General that the Special Counsel must be removed but was instead prepared to resign over the President's order. Lewandowski and Dearborn did not deliver the President's message to Sessions that he should confine the Russia investigation to future election meddling only. And McGahn refused to recede from his recollections about events surrounding the President's direction to have the Special Counsel removed, despite the President's multiple demands that he do so.” (V. II, p. 158) 

My main take-away from Volume II is that there are grounds for impeachment.  Whether that is a politically expedient course for the Democrats to pursue is questionable, but there is little doubt in my mind, based on the multiple, documented cases in the Report of Presidential attempts to impede or obstruct the investigation of his campaign that impeachment would be the Constitutionally appropriate action to take. 

Those who know me know that I identify as a progressive and vote Democratic (in most cases).  If you question my reading of the Mueller report as politically biased, I refer you to, perhaps, a more neutral summary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_Report

Or, read the full report here:  https://www.justice.gov/storage/report.pdf?fbclid=IwAR2C51tCRpU0u7Bq3AJ6reyjl7tSO8JLhtRSST9EcW_olAc-9ArlZ5Adb7I
 
Finally, I was surprised when I told people that I was reading the Mueller Report, how often I was met with silence.  Was it that people did not want to get into a political conversation?  Did my conservative friends (I have a few) fear we would get into an argument? Or were they aware of how damaging the report is to their conservative hero, Donald Trump?  Did my liberal friends feel like they’d heard enough about it, and were possibly sick of the whole thing?  Are they just exhausted and disgusted by the lack of outrage and action in response to the findings?  I don’t know, but I found it striking how little interest folks took in discussing it.  Perhaps they felt they had already heard enough about it.  

Regardless, it is troubling how dismissive, even “ho, hum,” some folks seem to be about what, to my mind, are shocking revelations about our current administration that are well documented and well established in the Report.  In addition to my deep concern about the corruption, incompetence, deception, dysfunction, and outright ignorance of our current administration, I am deeply worried that, as an electorate, we may have become inured to the lowest standards of ethics, intelligence, and general quality of performance. 

Perhaps a lot of folks are just holding their fire until the next election.  We can only hope.

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