Like the lot of you, since that tragic, tragic day in November, I have awakened every morning with a lingering gut-punched ache in the pit of my stomach, knowing it will be yet another day which brings chaos onto our Republic. These daily jabs to our collective reasoning have been relentless. Each revelation into this "administration’s” incompetent and dangerous conduct, each unveiling of autocratic executive orders and self-serving policy proposals, a one-two punch to our body politic.
I know for millions of people the results of even one political punch will be a knock-out. We witness this in the round-up and deportation of non-violent human beings for their undocumented entry into the United States. For some, the knock-out will come when their health insurance is gutted, for others it will be the brutal kneecapping to Medicaid benefits that will do them in. Unless you are in the top 10% of the income bracket, it’s highly likely your own personal body politic is vulnerable to assault.
I admit that the results of the election, and the ensuing consequences we’ve borne witness to, had left me paralyzed; there was a slow atrophying of my political muscle as my political will weakened from nonuse, my feelings of powerlessness steadily increasing against a world that had gone mad. I dislike admitting that. I’d like to think I’m made of infallible moxie, a woman of action upholding her beliefs. Harder still is acknowledging I had nearly forgotten the very base tenet of our Republic: exercising our Constitutional rights and flexing the arc of change toward true democracy has always required the engagement and action from each of our citizens.
From my other diaries one would surmise rightly that my current personal situation is rather difficult; true that. But it is from this hardship that a proverbial a-ah! moment of a deeper truth has emerged in which I can no longer be singly consumed with personal issues without acknowledging that the personal is political, that each political hit an individual takes is a direct full-fisted punch to our collective political bodies. To weaken the individual is to weaken our collective citizenry. For every Vira, living in poverty is a skill she mastered; dying in poverty is killing her, there are millions more struggling under the weight of callous policy decisions that are designed to break the individual body politic. When one is consumed with the day-to-day grind of survival there is no time to tend to one’s own body politic.
One particular catalyst for my “awoke-ness” was Dr. Ben Carson, ever a source of out of touch statements and incredulous beliefs, he said this:
Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson said in an interview Wednesday that having "the wrong mindset" contributes to poverty.
The former2016 presidential candidate, who was appointed by President Donald Trump and confirmed to his Cabinet post in March, argued parents can help prevent their kids from developing the "wrong mindset."
"I think poverty to a large extent is also a state of mind," the retired neurosurgeon said during an interview with SiriusXM Radio released on Wednesday evening. "You take somebody that has the right mindset, you can take everything from them and put them on the street, and I guarantee in a little while they'll be right back up there. And you take somebody with the wrong mindset, you could give them everything in the world, they'll work their way right back down to the bottom."
"A lot of it has to do with what we teach children," he said. "You have to instill into that child the mindset of a winner."
Ah, yes. If only Vira had been instilled with a winning mindset she would not be dying in poverty today; apparently her lifetime of poverty due to her state of mind. Never mind the misogynistic policies that guarantee unequal pay or recognition for women, this especially true for those women, like Vira, born into the Silent generation (1926 – 1945). If only they had had the right mindset; If. Only. They. Had. Worked. Harder.
The effect of this political body punch is meant to be a knock-out one, and for many, it will be. For me it was the last one I’ll take without fighting back. Words certainly have their own consequences, but the political implications of Carson’s statement are dangerous in that it lays out quite clear that the Trump administration and the GOP will scapegoat the most frail and vulnerable among us to justify their dismantling of the ACA and to promote their overtly inhumane budget and policies.
I, for one, cannot let Carson’s own mindset, so divorced from reality, to go unchallenged. My political will to engage in action may have been bruised and weakened, and it may still be a little wobbly from lack of use, but Carson’s remarks have become my motivator to fight back, my own “Rocky” soundtrack, if you will. I am flexing my political muscles: a daily regimen of resisting, insisting, persisting and enlisting is slowly strengthening my political moxie to participate in our democratic process once again. And I am growing stronger every day.