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.
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.