A really good question...
(and a News Notebook preview-peek)
Sunday morning greetings, and welcome to March!
From the title, here first are images of that News Notebook pictorial preview-peek.
The center theme of lobsters boiling in a pot is suddenly showing up as metaphor in all kinds of contexts from news to psychological — and even some of the mundane-personal.
Also appearing in various ways is the idea that democracy works “on a trial basis” (depicted by the balanced scales at left)… Or, not (the unbalanced scales at right.)
These are organizing themes for newShrink work that’s under way.
News-wise there have been two crucial, Trump-desired case delays: The immunity-question case now being considered by the U.S. Supreme Court and the classified-documents case before Trump-appointed Judge Cannon in Florida And the week brought more hearings regarding Fulton County D.A. Fani Willis in Atlanta.
In dramatic finale the gavel-to-gavel televised case summations consumed a long, rainy Friday afternoon. Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee concluded saying he intends to issue a ruling within two weeks.
For reasons described in newShrink “Reverie, reflection… & reptile brains in charge” I am reserving what I see as a needed multi-dimensional, deeper look at this case for after McAfee has issued that ruling. The show-horse circus of a case has tremendous political and legal impacts that merit far more context and inquiry than are reflected in the journalistic coverage it’s getting. (Otherwise, none would at this point be preferable.) Beyond that, in newShrink terms the case has intense psychological and archetypal dimensions, power dynamics and patterns around race and gender.
On the personal front the week has been very busy but in satisfying, productively “hectic good ways” of things like long-delayed appointments. Plus, there is some hopeful, fingers-crossed progress at the Charlotte end of that grand quest for home bases that straddle CLT and AVL!
So, today’s turned out to be an abbreviated edition with a lot still, um, cooking…
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I’ll leave you with the really good question of the title, thanks to a timely post shared by chance from friend Melissa Alford. It arrived just as I had read and was trying to coherently sort my complicated reactions to this story in The Charlotte Observer.
Davidson College stands by decision to show athletes ‘divisive’ film on racism
Davidson College is facing criticism that it required the school’s student-athletes to view a documentary on racism found by some to be divisive and offensive.
Davidsonians for Freedom of Thought and Discourse, a locally based free speech organization, identified the film “I’m not Racist…Am I?” as a concern regarding on-campus student rights. Criticism related to the film generated hundreds of thousands of impressions on X, formerly known as Twitter, including a response from Elon Musk, the company’s owner.
In a lengthy account on the Davidson organization’s website, the group said it contacted college President Doug Hicks and faculty members on Tuesday after receiving complaints from several athletes and their parents who found portions of the film that discussed race to be “offensive, divisive, and personally insulting.”
Though Davidson officials declined to explain to The Charlotte Observer why that particular documentary was selected or when it was shown, the college stood by its decision to present it…
My own earliest, simplest mental response to this — probably not surprising given my “talking cure” training and practice — was, “Noooo! Talking about it together is the very first, indeed the only, path from, through and beyond divisive conflict to create common ground and solutions.” This applies to working out divisive conflict in our feelings, values, goals, ideas whether within ourselves, or between people, groups, political parties, adversarial advocates in court, or thinkers/scholars/proponents of ideas.
I can’t yet fully articulate all of the ways this story activates me. But Melissa’s quote distills a lot of it it rather elegantly, with the really good question:
“What is it like, to be someone else?”
What, indeed?
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And, that is all I have! Talk to you next week.
🦋💙 tish
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… it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give — yes or no, or maybe —
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.
— William Stafford, “A Ritual to Read to Each Other”
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