DEFEND REALITY - Even If It Feels Impolite

The 24/7 news cycle of pain is encouraging you to forget reality, and stay in a continual state of trauma and silence. There are cures, and they are called gratitude and truth.

I begin every day by cherishing all the things I am grateful for, and in December, I create a daily public gratitude list. I invite each of you to do the same. Gratitude cures soul sickness. 

Before my feet touch the ground and my hand touches the phone, I think of everything I am grateful for, and I start each day with a centered soul and a light heart.

It takes practice, and if you are reading my Bette Dangerous posts, you more than likely are aware that we are in a fight against global fascism. A daunting task, but not impossible. As Gandhi reminds us, all dictators fall. And all dictators linked to Paul Manafort, each of them met terrible endings. 

As I will often remind you, truth is the daughter of time, a quote from Peter Jukes that he repurposed from Frances Bacon.

So along with gratitude, I invite you to cherish truth. Maybe I have a fighting advantage because my home does not include a television. There are no ads, no cable news. As a veteran news producer, I have been recovering from Post Traumatic News Syndrome, and not having a television for 16 years has reduced my anxiety to tolerable levels.

I have a home filled with music and overdue French films from my local video store. Thanks to my children, I can binge the occasional Netflix series, but more often than not, I am reporting, investigating, reading indictments, listening to podcasts, producing RADICALIZED with Jim and HiFi, and writing articles for Byline Times and the new Byline Supplement. I find the solitude helpful when writing. 

‘In Defense of Truth’

In RadPod’s brilliant interview with Ruth Ben-Ghiat, she noted that CNN was treating the GOP as if it was a “normal political party.”

She said that “when you have autocracy coming up, there is a huge work of memory repression or self-censorship… you are going to be encouraged to forget. The warning is not only a warning of what can happen, but what has happened.”

As she noted, we can’t just memory hole a violent coup.

It is our job as warriors on behalf of truth, to speak it. It may appear impolite to talk of the growing hate in America, which we learned from RadPod’s interview with Peter Tatchell is mostly a sinister plot to obtain power from the ignorant. It may appear impolite to point out America’s very real authoritarian threats and the extremist ties to the Kremlin. But what did Timothy Snyder teach us? Do not obey in advance.

From a centered soul rooted in reality, I speak my truth. I try to do so calmly and have learned to pause to grace, allowing space to come in and help me formulate the right words. I do not always succeed. I also do a lot of listening to what people are saying, to obtain clues as to what is influencing them.

I am a bit corny, and will be playing deep cuts from my Christmas music collection all month. 

I will find my joy, and I will fight the fascists. 

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Join Heidi at her Bette Dangerous ‘Speakeasy’ this Sunday Dec. 4, 4 pm. Invites to register will be sent to all paid subscribers on Sunday. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber to unlock additional content and receive guest invites.