Cause, Effect and Harvest Time
Whatever the outcome, the 2016 Presidential Election reveals many root ideological issues. History handed down through books, records and reminiscence is always a sort of telephone game where winners’ stories dominate and losers sound like whiners. 
Everyone loves a winner. Donald Trump prefers war heroes who weren’t captured, mocks NFL players injured by supposed little dings to the head, mimics a reporter’s physical disability, offers to pay legal fees of any of his supporters criminally charged with assaulting protesters, and brags about his wealth and celebrity contingent power to roam through women’s dressing rooms grabbing bodies at will.
He talks like a warlord. Warlords scare me.
Our nation’s map developed amid distinct cultural pathways through the wilderness where news of war sometimes reached the ear of the hearer after the war ended. Today, people who pay for the antennae or bandwidth can avail themselves of new updated information every hour. Changes to the land and changes to our thought process often start with someone thinking they know better. Life and history follow continuums. Mistakes are made. New theories and new thinking lead to new mistakes. Imperfection is. Angrily trying to smash things back into some unchangeable fondly remembered yesterday creates a wreckage of today. We all have our histories. Historical information is illuminating.
“American Nations,” by Colin Woodard, follows the continuous development of the North American map starting with the first Spanish exploration in 1492. The Pilgrims responsible for the town squares and Thanksgiving celebrations that spread west from Plymouth Rock didn’t arrive for over a century after Columbus and the Spaniards. “American Nations” describes fierce competition for hearts, minds and land rooted in dogma and differences transferred directly from Western Europe. European-Americans first directed bias against indigenous people, then against mixed blood families and then against each other. Slavery developed. Women remained disenfranchised until twentieth century prohibitionists saw fit to get the temperance movement ladies to the polls. The first boundary issues involving the southwest as we know it today, started with efforts to keep the Anglos north and east.
National boundaries and maps are created by minds which themselves reflect clusters of culture that generally grew in very different climates and times. Relevant current information doesn’t always displace the old stuff immediately. Neuroscience suggests that very early on, we store experiential information in images and feelings. When we learn language, we are then able to name our experiences and communicate our thoughts to ourselves and others. Conflicting information creates cognitive dissonance. When communication of new ideas sets people at odds with others, many people go along to get along. During this election season, I’ve seen many people seeking rationally to discuss issues, shouted down. Unfortunately, peacemakers often shut each other down to pacify the unreasonable folks. This is likely why our founders sought to protect national stability from the crowds through a bicameral House of Representatives.
Now here is some personal stuff that I hope won’t make anybody angry.
In the telephone game of my history, I am sometimes confused by other peoples’ perceptions of me. I’ve recently discovered that my physical brain is missing some natural bridges and pathways I needed to effectively process my own experience and map my way from back there to here. I have often laughed at hearing that I needed my head examined. This Thanksgiving, I’ll be grateful for a telephone conversation years ago during which my father, now deceased, insisted I get to the ER to be looked at because despite my thinking I was OK, I was not OK. I had been waiting for a doctor to call me back about a “ding to the head” that knocked me unconscious the day before. My father said he’d drive me to the ER himself I didn’t make a more immediate plan. I complied.
I did what the doctors told me. Slowly, over time, disconnected memories entered my consciousness in flashes and floods. One day I said to myself, I’ve got the MRI of my brain; let’s have a look see! I looked. I saw.
Pop-psyche and spiritual books have ceded space on my coffee table to information about coping with brain injury symptoms. Nature and nurture work together. We can’t learn from our past experiences if we aren’t aware of them. I worry about those bodies, minds and spirits damaged by herd behavior triggered by bullying talk. I worry about our soldiers. I worry about people trapped in proverbial Plato’s caves. There are reasons behind tyrants burning books.
Bad history isn’t something we should be doomed to repeat.
Knowledge is power. Think, then breathe.
