Ramping Up From Stupid! Barreling Into Dangerous! Duck & Cover!

It’s easy to get the mob riled up, much harder to control what happens then as inchoate fear and anger runs amok like a blunderbuss scatting shot everywhere. Still, the right wing talkers, Palinistas, Fox newsies, looney Beckians are still babbling about reloading and targets and destroy the bastards and baby killers, while death threats are being called in to various congressfolk’s home phones as bricks are being thrown through their office windows.

Nuts. A whole lot of people are going nuts without knowing or understanding why they’re going nuts. Which is what happens when you scare people then lie about things, deliberately confuse and manipulate people who often don’t have a good grasp on much of anything anyway, then get shocked, shocked when violence erupts.

Or silliness ensues, like a Republican senator now, suddenly, after the barn door is closed, shows up on the floor of the senate to “add an amendment” to the health care bill that would block rapists and child molesters from getting Viagra from a health insurance company supported by public funds. Since this clearly is a critical, essential, extremely important, HUGE, really, part of national health care that affects millions and millions of people -- so awash is the country with Viagra-using rapists and molesters, right up there with pre-existing conditions and tossing people off their care when they get sick -- the puzzlement was why he didn’t show up with that all-important amendment when the health care bill was being crafted. Unless, of course, this amendment is nothing more than a cynical stalling tactic to slow down or prevent the health care bill from going through? Ya think?

It’s all ugly stuff, dangerous stuff. Folks really need to get a grip and chill out and to that end, I have a few suggestions. First, instead of allowing yourself to be run by others, maybe what’s needed is to get everyone (who can read) a copy of “The Four Agreements” by Don Miguel Ruiz. The easy to read book is Mr. Ruiz’s formulated Toltec Warrior Way. Simple to understand, hard to follow, like all simple ideas. But in a critical way, a truly important book for Americans in general because Americans have always confused a “Warrior” with “Anybody With a Gun.” HUGE mistake.

Or, instead of gittin’ yer gun, far better would be to understand the biological damage being done to your system by unresolved fear/trauma, which has been our American mode for years now – fear, fear, fear, Orange Alerts! Red Alerts! Eeek,” Them” are coming! Kill! Kill! Kill! Instead of all that insanity, I think we all need to get a copy of Peter Levine’s book, “Waking the Tiger,” and learn something about SE (Somatic Experiencing) or hop on over to Los Osos SE practitioner, Bev Moylan’s website at www.tobeawellbeing.com and read all about it. Again, an easy-to-understand process with great results, but harder to do than just staying stuck in fear/rage mode.

Or, start working on reforming your brain itself. Check out “Buddha’s Brain,” a fascinating book on the “practical neuroscience of happiness, love and wisdom” by Rick Hanson, PhD with Richard Mendius, MD. Turns out that perception actually IS reality.

Yes, I know. It’s unlikely anyone will actually get the tools needed to get a grip since we’re a traumatized nation with a historical “paranoid style” in which too many people are self-trapped into freeze/fight/flight mode, which is always very bad because it makes them sitting ducks for manipulation and destruction by cold-blooded, self-interested political/corporate predators.