Night Terrors
Like lots of women I know, I have anxiety. And, like lots of women I know, my anxiety manifests itself in ways that are unique to me. Namely, my strongest attacks occur in my sleep.
In the pages of Scary Mommy, a publication all about “empowerment,” Michaela Brown shares a tale of adversity and heroism:
The other night was particularly rough. I shot up in bed, heart pounding, feeling terrified and not knowing where I was… It took me several minutes to calm my mind and slow my heart rate before I could comfortably lie back down again.
It’s all rather dramatic. One wonders what the cause of such nocturnal torments might be. The coronavirus pandemic is mentioned in passing, along with an allergy-prone son. But these things, it turns out, are manageable and routine, and merely a prelude to the real sleep-shattering trauma.
What’s causing the latest round of panic in my sound-asleep mind?
You may want to clutch the arms of your chair.
My paperwork for my absentee ballot had arrived in the mail that day.
Which is to say,
It’s the election. That’s my primary source of anxiety right now, and I don’t know how to turn it off. Because I’m fucking terrified of Trump winning again.
Not merely terrified, you understand, but fucking terrified. A fear capable of inducing rhetorical incontinence and a chronic loss of sleep.
And not like the anxiety I felt in 2016—that was nothing compared to these fears. That anxiety barely scratched the surface of what 2020 feels like.
Once again, it occurs to me that politics really shouldn’t occupy that much space in a person’s life. It isn’t the kind of stuff a life should be filled with, such that it dominates one’s outlook and everyday activity, even one’s dreams. The result is very often a kind of bad mental opera.
Today, it looks more like OMG HE IS DESTROYING US HOW CAN THIS NATION WITHSTAND FOUR MORE YEARS.
Ah. Now the meter’s peaking in the red. And so, we get several paragraphs of Mr Trump’s shortcomings, real and imagined, some wildly delusional, presented in a form approaching stream-of-consciousness. We’re told of Mr Trump’s “rich, white, racist agenda,” and his alleged “hatred” of “Americans with black or brown skin.” Needless to say, evidence to support such claims is not forthcoming – doubtless the inclusion would only impede the rhetorical rush.
So yeah, 2020 election anxiety is a whole different beast and it’s consuming my mind.
Lest there be doubt.
I can’t let this man—a man who certainly doesn’t give a shit about me—have that control. I can’t let him win—at least not in that way. So I woke up the next day after that panic attack with a new resolve. I’ll keep fighting.
See, heroism. In the face of self-induced panic attacks.
And most of all, I’ll raise my kids to be kind. I’ll raise them to see people like Donald Trump for what they truly are. I’ll raise them to realise that a life isn’t worth living if you only think of yourself the entire time you’re on this planet—because that must be the loneliest, saddest existence of all.
Well, allowing the possible outcome of an election to consume one’s mind seems a tad suboptimal too.
I’ll teach them about their white privilege and socioeconomic privilege and that they have the responsibility to do something with it.
And boasting of how you’ll teach your children about their “white privilege,” a recipe for affectation and neurosis, endless pretentious guilt, doesn’t seem likely to help matters enormously.
And in those ways, Donald Trump will not win, no matter what. And when I can’t sleep or feel my heart racing or feel the “what if he wins again” fears creep up, I’ll look at my kids and remind myself that he can’t take away the goodness in them.
If Ms Brown’s children should have the goodness in them taken away, this seems unlikely to be a result of a Trump second term, and more likely to be due to a figure much closer to home and more prominent in their lives. Say, a mother whose mind has been consumed.
He can’t stop my daughter from donating all of her allowance money to saving endangered cheetahs.
Though it sounds like exactly the kind of thing a Demon King would do, right?
Above, Sleeping Leftist is Visited by Donald Trump, Henry Fuseli, 1781.
“Michaela Brown writes about her crazy life.” And yes, a “former educator.”
Via Pogonip.
Above, Sleeping Leftist is Visited by Donald Trump, Henry Fuseli, 1781.
LOL
Seemed apposite.
Thank God there’ll be someone to save the Cheetahs when I’m dead and gone. I know I’ll sleep better tonight.
– And as always, no comments on her site, no way to reach her. If there were, I’d pass her some words of comfort – “everything that terrifies you about “Orange Man” is nonsense, fed you by unscrupulous liars who want your money and your vote and will stop at nothing to get it – and he’s actually doing a rather good job as President”. But no. I’ve come to realise that ‘comments not allowed’ tells more about the writer, than it does about any commenters.
“And I don’t want to debate. I want to talk about my pain.” (-_-)
She’s lying.
Night terrors are real. But they’re not caused by this kind of stuff.
This is just showing off to friends, competing to show who is the most scared of Trump – who cares the most.
And the friends won’t believe her, either.
This is just showing off to friends, competing to show who is the most scared of Trump – who cares the most.
Heh. Quite. As with so many of these things, and there are many of them, there is an air of the self-dramatising. For some, it’s practically an art form. Narcissism in neon, twenty feet high. And hey, that’s not selfish at all.
I don’t know. TBF I’m mighty close to being terrified by this upcoming election. Like no other similar event ever before. And while my feelings are quite close, though for the opposite reasons, I don’t think either outcome will be acceptable nor accepted by whichever side loses. I’ve had (at least) two friends and now possibly my own sister tell me that I’m some sort of “white supremacist”. Again, years ago I tried to warn people that this is where we were headed. Not trying to be overdramatic, just saying that if you’ve ever tried to warn people about such things, had your concerns be so easily dismissed, then seen such things come true (or as today, even worse than I would have predicted), it’s rather hard to dismiss my worst new fears now.
If this man is what you say, why did he give up his luxurious billionaire life to take shit from idiots like you all day long, year after year … If you look at the good he does and stop listening to CNN and your leftist friends … THINK FOR YOURSELF. GROW A PAIR.
It’s the election. That’s my primary source of anxiety right now
Oh fucking dear! Madam, you have a serious idiocy problem.
Her name is Brown. Why is she claiming to be white?
I’ll teach them about their white privilege
Feel sorry for the kids.
…I’m mighty close to being terrified by this upcoming election…though for the opposite reasons…
I’ve noticed that the left talks a lot about how Trump is perpetrating Kristallnachts and will perpetrate a Reichstag fire, and yet it’s leftist mobs that are burning America’s cities. And liberals tend to be strangely silent about that–except when they are blaming the riots and arson on “white supremacist right wing provocateurs”.
Sounds like another comfortably rich white woman who doesn’t have to worry about pedestrian matters like finances, mortgage payments, job security, college costs, retirement savings, etc.
She can devote all her energy to “look how I suffer so.” It must be nice to be so insulated from reality.
I’ve noticed that the left talks a lot about how Trump is perpetrating Kristallnachts and will perpetrate a Reichstag fire, and yet it’s leftist mobs that are burning America’s cities.
Remember “We had to destroy the village to save it”.
Everyone here needs to take a moment to applaud PiperPaul.
I’ve noticed that the left talks a lot about how Trump is perpetrating Kristallnachts and will perpetrate a Reichstag fire, and yet it’s leftist mobs that are burning America’s cities.
Lefties project, as our host likes to point out.
No applause, just send cash.
As an aside, it’s curious how a certain kind of commentary, generally of the woke variety, has embraced an ostentatious, rather performative, use of profanity. A detail, yes, but a telling one, I think.
My husband isn’t fazed by these middle-of-the-night anxiety attacks, as he’s dealt with them for 20 years.
This isn’t about Trump. This woman’s a neurotic and the anxiety attacks are a symptom of some deeper-rooted issue she’s in denial about. Trump is just the current excuse her conscious mind is using to keep her from having to look at it.
Gentlemen, what do we not put our d*cks in?
The internet seems to bring all of society’s paranoia and neuroses to the surface. Space aliens who were monitoring us solely though the internet would think “Let’s give these sacks of bones a thousand years at least before inviting them into the Federation of Sentient Species. Maybe two.”
Since she’s identified on the site as “author,” I looked and found she has one self-published book of poetry on Amazon. “The Year I lost and Found Myself,” (sic), sounds like a collection of poems about her childhood, which consisted of rape and abuse (at least from one of the reviews).
It would be kind to say the bubble on her plumb bob isn’t level to begin with.
Michaela Brown seems to be intensely focused on herself. It’s a wonder she bothered to have kids.
Is it bad of me that I’m giggling out loud at her self-imposed misery??
Good. I WANT to be bad!
This is just showing off to friends, competing to show who is the most scared of Trump – who cares the most.
Exactly, just like the recent self published video screaming car freak-out, it is intended to showcase just how truly committed you are.
Committed, yes, as in “needs to be.”
Definitely a lights-out-don’t-see-me-nekkid-kind-of-gal.
Grifter? Cultist? YES! (thread of note)
The actual reason she can’t sleep is that pea — excuse me, that f*cking pea — under all those mattresses.
Instalanche!
Do I have to put on a mask now?
Good grief women are a sorry lot these days. Seems all that “empowerment” and billions of dollars in psychotropic medications hasn’t turned out all that well for them. Surprise, surprise, hysterical, emotional reactions driven by feelings aren’t good for you.
Used to be people figured this out relatively early in life and went on to be productive members of society. Men still seem to be able puzzle this out but a huge group of women look to be a lost cause. Either that or there’s a plethora of undiagnosed ergot poisoning.
She wears her mental illness like a badge of honor.
She hates Donald Trump, and yet she wants to save the Cheetos. I’m confused.
He can’t stop my daughter from donating all of her allowance money to saving endangered cheetahs
I bet Trump right now is shaking his fist while going “curse you, Michaela Brown and your pro-cheetah parenting methods!”
He’s definitely not completely unconcerned either way
You poor, poor dear. And all the females on here agreeing with you. You shame yourselves with this silliness. What is it, the attention? The drama of the whole thing? Because I don’t believe for one moment you’re that afraid.
Rousseauists have come into their own, with every random emotion & irrational thought proof of their sanctity & the similarly afflicted acting as their choir.
Just after Trump took office, he made his first trip in AF1, a fundraiser in Phoenix. All air traffic into PHX was made to circle in place for an hour or so I’ve the hit desert with very bumpy air. A lot of very queasy passengers eventually landed and caught our late connections. As I settled in, two college-aged girls settled in to the seats behind me. One says to the other, “I can’t wait to tell the girls at the sorority that Trump made me puke.”
I chuckled. I suspect Trump would have chuckled…
The Middle Ages were known for episodes of “mass collective hysteria” that have never been well explained. For some reason they affected women disproportionately.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_mania
I suspect we are living through another era facilitated by social media. Unlike the Middle Ages though, this episode is brought on by a lack of real worries rather than an abundance.
Good grief women are a sorry lot these days. Seems all that “empowerment” and billions of dollars in psychotropic medications hasn’t turned out all that well for them. Surprise, surprise, hysterical, emotional reactions driven by feelings aren’t good for you.
And letting them vote is not so good for the country.
And letting them vote is not so good for the country.
Yikes, a little over the top there perhaps. Plenty of awful characteristics among men, we just manifest them differently.
I was referring to the mentally unbalanced types who shriek and wail and have night terrors, all as a result of politics.
Darleen,
Grifter? Cultist?…
The fisking lays out a program of recovery from whiteness which is blatantly modeled (i.e. ripped off) from AA 12-Step. But… I thought the consensus in the enlightened left was that AA 12-step was unscientific middle-class religious nonsense that does not work. I’m so confused…
Maybe it actually is the unscientific-ness of the thing that’s the appeal. Hm.
Really, though – I suspect that the AA insistence that there’s no such thing as a recovered alcoholic, just recovering alcoholics, may be the key here. Whiteness is not curable, see? It requires endless work. That, and also I’m sure that the confessional steps are appealing. Though the lady seems to have missed the point of AA “amends”, which are to be 1) specifically identified harms, and 2) specifically apologized for directly to the harmed individual.
What she describes is much more like a never-ending Chinese Cultural Revolution “struggle session”. Knowing, as I do, many persons who suffered through that, and were seriously messed up by it, I have to take a pass. Thanks anyway.
And most of all, I’ll raise my kids to be kind. I’ll raise them to see people like Donald Trump for what they truly are… I’ll teach them about their white privilege and socioeconomic privilege and that they have the responsibility to do something with it.
So she’ll teach them that the way to “do something with it” is to hate white males because signaling their own ‘white guilt’ gets them higher status and is all they need do to for it? That is what ‘kindness’ in those circles often turns out to be. Well, that and make sure the cheetahs are taken care of (as non-sequiturs go, that may be the most non-sequiturish I’ve seen in a long time).
Ha – no comments allowed on the original article. Color me surprised
And yes, a “former educator.”
Small blessings.
Thank God there’ll be someone to save the Cheetahs when I’m dead and gone. I know I’ll sleep better tonight.
I’m not sure Mike, I have it on good authority that Cheetahs never prosper.
The feeling she and other leftists are feeling, the gnawing certainty that the idiot in the White House hates people like us, hates the country, and is destroying the United States, we on the right have felt that for decades. We felt it under Carter, and survived. We felt it during the 8 years of Bill Clinton, then during the 8 years of Obama, and we survived. Hell, we even felt it to a certain degree under Bush the Elder and Younger. Every year since Reagan left office it felt more and more like our country was slipping into the abyss.
And yet we didn’t freak out or give in to histrionics. We grumbled, we bought ammo and survival food packs, we called into radio talk shows or left comments on the net grousing about it. Hell, a couple of times we even showed up with signs to protest when Obama-care was being passed. But what we didn’t do was scream at the sky, riot, burn and loot. We didn’t attack random people in the street or banish loved ones from our lives if they voted differently from us. We didn’t wake up in the middle of the night with a panic attack. We acted like worried adults who deal with a problem in a mostly stoic manner We didn’t act like a paranoid conspiracy nut on a 3 day meth bender.
a man who certainly doesn’t give a shit about me
I have some bad news for her, regarding every other politician…
I have some bad news for her, regarding every other politician…
And also regarding virtually every other person on earth, outside of a few friends and family members.
“Every year since Reagan left office it felt more and more like our country was slipping into the abyss.”
Same with us British conservatives, vis-a-vis Thatcher. For a short while, before the ERM débacle, we thought Major might be okay. But he wasn’t.
There’s a stock phrase among Scottish nationalists, “We never get the government we want”. I keep trying to tell them that nobody does, but they won’t listen.
I’m not sure Mike, I have it on good authority that Cheetahs never prosper.
The correction booth is over there.
As an aside, it’s curious how a certain kind of commentary, generally of the woke variety, has embraced an ostentatious, rather performative, use of profanity. A detail, yes, but a telling one, I think.
Now, I’m not telling you that I don’t have a bad mouth, because I do (got it from my mother, believe it or not), but sometimes it seems like these people can’t talk at all without cursing. I read some article the other day where they quoted some head fundraiser or manager for the Democrats in a conference call with MAJOR donors, and she drops the F-bomb!
Regarding the thread Darleen links to, one of the things that really cheeses us normal white folks off is how the protestations of “systemic racism” and “whiteness” and so forth by elite white people is really an attempt to preserve their own status, while expecting the rest of us slobs to suffer the negative consequences of their behavior. (Many other leftist shibboleths are like this, climate change being not the least.) All these magazines and non-profits and universities that constantly bleat about “white supremacy”—take a look at their boards of directors, or editorial staffs, or other upper management. Lily-pale, the vast majority of them. This is why so many of us are greatly amused by Princeton being investigated by the Department of Education—serves them right for their hypocritical posturing.
…one of the things that really cheeses us normal white folks off is how the protestations of “systemic racism” and “whiteness” and so forth by elite white people is really an attempt to preserve their own status…
As has often been pointed out, one of things that must really piss off the anti-Trump politicians in both parties is that the man is a complete outsider. He did not pay his dues, jump through the accepted hoops, serve an approved patron, etcetera, before laying his hands on an office of great power – an act which threatens the power and egos of all those who did dance as they were bid.
The infestation of woke signaling in businesses and institutions serves as a means of creating a similar system in thousand different fiefdoms. They get in, and soon John Sixpack, who’s worked for the organization longer than little Mary Mistress of Marxist-Racialism has been alive, is given cause to fear for his livelihood. Toe the new line, or be hounded out onto the street. The woke become the new judges of who is acceptable as an employee, or for promotion. They become the gatekeepers.
The terms regime change and colonization, strangely, come to mind.
but sometimes it seems like these people can’t talk at all without cursing.
I was browsing io9, a science-fiction and pop-culture site, which used to be half-interesting – but is now mentally uniform and practically unreadable due to its shoehorning of leftist politics into every possible crevice – and noticed several writers, often with blue hair, peppering their articles with the word fuck and variations thereof, even in headlines, presumably to ensure that no-one would mistake the writers for stuffy grown-ups. Or worse, conservatives.
“Only whiteness can deracinate and subsume the world of culinary influences into itself and yet remain unnamed.”
Ah, the existential angst of the cheese sandwich.
Whiteness is not curable, see? It requires endless work.
Really? If your “whiteness” bothers you just strip naked, rub a stick of butter all over, and pop into a 350 F oven for a couple of hours. You’ll brown up quite nicely.
I’m not sure Mike, I have it on good authority that Cheetahs never prosper
*thunderous golf claps*
There is a Menu at the Scary Mommy website with a fascinating entry named “CONFESS”. It contains all sorts of confessions by troubled women about every guilty thing they think or do in their lives. But there does not seem to be any opportunity to say a few Hail Marys/Our Fathers and get absolution for their sins, which seem to linger forever.
Thd web site seems to be dedicated to driving women even more crazy than they normally are.
I was browsing io9…
I’ve given up on Jalopnik, it’s car-related sister site.
I’ve given up on Jalopnik, its car-related sister site.
It’s quite remarkable how far, and quickly, the quality of the content at io9 has taken a nose-dive. Substantial, well-researched articles have all but disappeared. Instead, we get endless, needy signalling of the same facile, leftist politics, regardless of incongruity, and always with the assumption that readers will automatically agree.
It’s so parochial.
My niece, Kristen Lee, used to write for Jalopnik. Got laid off, I believe, and now writes much less interesting “listicle” type stuff for another car site. Knowing her, I have to believe that she’s just hanging in there for the money.
Topic for conversation at our next family Zoom call…
fnord,
I suppose I could try the butter-and-oven thing. Sunlight mostly makes me turn red and suffer.
(Uhm. You didn’t, perhaps, think I was indicating my own opinion in that sentence, did you? Cuz that would be wrong.)
Our culture is dominated by young to middle-aged female neurotica. Perhaps male stoicism was equally as unsuitable as a cultural foundation but at least it was quieter.