Good 🐣 morning

A Lenten vow of 40-day newShrink silence, or wilderness wandering, was never a plan or by conscious intent.

It came unbidden with a life of its own, nuanced but not unfruitful.

First-up in reconnecting today, warm seasonal greetings in all ways you might celebrate.

Pictured are some perennial images: (top left) Lenten-rose garden vignettes; (center) my favorite wacky Easter Bunny (sort-of) cartoon riddle; then springtime, Easter and Passover at left and right. Candles at bottom left mark Grand Miz E’s 4/20 birthday, her 9th, arriving today with the Easter bunny. Family celebration of her will be later, after she and her parents return from a special-fun trip to Chicago.

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As I imagine is true for the many who aren’t tuned-out (and can’t bear to be), there’s a rather inherent twofold challenge in these early months of 2025 and the chaotic whirlwind of the Trump 2.0 administration. (Mind you, this is in addition to everything we do, in everyday responsible-adult life, that isn’t about participating in, creating or preserving democracy.)

• First, news: There’s getting and continuing to be reliably informed, given the blitz-actions’ sheer volume, speed, magnitude, drama, and lack of transparency or institutional/constitutional guardrails. So much is happening, so quickly — in my view that’s by design — that it can’t be readily processed. (And many with the expertise to do so are being DOGE-d.) In this, about every news cycle now is increasing my gratitude and esteem for the journalists, historians, some fearless lawyers and judges, even an elected official or two, and a growing surge of awakening Americans. Evolving editions of newShrink may need to feature regular democracy-heroes.

• Second are defining elements of newShrink psychological perspectives and mission. What do we (individually and collectively) do with what we are learning, increasingly know and seek to accomplish? What overarching, and/or grounding, themes and values inform that? How do we show up — or aspire to — in making a difference? (And “as-what?”)

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On the day-to-day/week-to-week news front, as always I highly recommend selecting and regularly reading, listening, watching and/or following a cross-section of fact- and scholar/expertise-based sources. Additionally, some excellent and prolific daily sources, Heather Cox Richardson and Robert Hubbell for example, scan and specifically cite a vast array of other well-reported sources in addition to their own areas of expertise.

Below is a short sequence of the current, dramatic week’s developments along just one of many crisis issues. Leading here is a Friday piece by David Brooks. The long quotation is cited, because Brooks is a career-long, self described moderate conservative, whose Republican party has disappeared amid MAGA extremism. Here he has provided an important, clear and concise recap of the current historic moment’s events, issues, consequences and call for action. (Thanks to superb career-journalist and author Frye Gaillard, a reader-friend who spotted and shared this before I had yet gotten to it.) I highly recommend the full read.

What’s Happening Is Not Normal. America Needs an Uprising That Is Not Normal.

(The New York Times)

…Trumpism is threatening all of that. It is primarily about the acquisition of power — power for its own sake. It is a multifront assault to make the earth a playground for ruthless men, so of course any institutions that might restrain power must be weakened or destroyed. Trumpism is about ego, appetite and acquisitiveness and is driven by a primal aversion to the higher elements of the human spirit — learning, compassion, scientific wonder, the pursuit of justice.

So far, we have treated the various assaults of President Trump and the acolytes in his administration as a series of different attacks. In one lane they are going after law firms. In another they savaged U.S.A.I.D. In another they’re attacking our universities. On yet another front they’re undermining NATO and on another they’re upending global trade.

But that’s the wrong way to think about it. These are not separate battles. This is a single effort to undo the parts of the civilizational order that might restrain Trump’s acquisition of power. And it will take a concerted response to beat it back…

…What is happening now is not normal politics. We’re seeing an assault on the fundamental institutions of our civic life, things we should all swear loyalty to — Democrat, independent or Republican.

It’s time for a comprehensive national civic uprising. It’s time for Americans in universities, law, business, nonprofits and the scientific community, and civil servants and beyond to form one coordinated mass movement. Trump is about power. The only way he’s going to be stopped is if he’s confronted by some movement that possesses rival power…

The piece goes on to identify and describe how successful democracies — including our own at certain points in our history — have endured and overcome the kinds of perilously autocratic power-dynamics underway in our nation today.

The appellate judge’s full 7-page ruling is for me some of the most moving-to-tears writing I’ve experienced in recent weeks. Moving high on my heroes list is Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen, also a slew of incredibly fast and thorough ACLU lawyers. The latter, on very short hours’ alert, have identified and done as-needed preparation for Supreme Court-required due process hearings to be possible at each of the venues planning to send deportees to El Salvador prison.

‘This Should Be Shocking:’ Read a Federal Appeals Panel’s Sharp Rebuke of the Trump Administration (the NYT reporting, link to the full ruling embedded in the story)

A federal appeals court in Virginia issued a striking opinion on Thursday, reaffirming that the Trump administration had to take a more active approach in seeking the release of a Maryland man, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, who was deported to El Salvador last month despite a court order expressly forbidding him from being sent there.

But the opinion, authored by Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III, a conservative jurist appointed by President Ronald Reagan, contained far more than simple legal instructions to the White House. The brief order also rebuked Trump officials for their apparent disregard of the bedrock principles of due process and for allowing a man whom they have acknowledged they wrongfully deported to continue to languish in a foreign prison.

(from Judge Wilkinson’s 7-page ruling itself:)

It is difficult in some cases to get to the very heart of the matter. But in this case, it is not hard at all. The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order. Further, it claims in essence that because it has rid itself of custody that there is nothing that can be done.

This should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear…

Here is more of an overview analysis of the many moving parts of just this current immigration story. That’s aside from tariffs, plunging stock market and 401(k)s, latest draconian cuts that eliminated our entire food safety inspection and regulation, etc etc.

Dual Orders From Judges Edge Courts Closer to Confrontation With White House (NYT)

The threat of investigations into whether the administration violated the judges’ orders comes as President Trump and his advisers are increasingly butting heads with the courts.

And meanwhile, from overnight Saturday of the holiest weekend of the worldwide Christian liturgical calendar, here are two stories in stunning contrast…

Supreme Court, for Now, Blocks Deportations of Venezuelan Migrants (NYT)

Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. dissented. A group of migrants had been scheduled to be flown out of the country, according to people familiar with the matter.

…The A.C.L.U. spent Friday scrambling to get courts to weigh in on the potential deportation of more Venezuelans before the Supreme Court issued its order overnight. “These men were close to spending their lives in a horrific foreign prison without ever having had any due process,” Lee Gelernt, an A.C.L.U. lawyer, said this morning. “The case has a long way to go, but for now we are relieved that the Court has not allowed the Trump administration to hurry them away in secret.”

Vance, whose views have clashed with the pope’s, spends Holy Week in Rome. (NYT, scroll down in multiple-story link)

With what have become routine headlines like these in crescendo during Holy Week, it is impossible not to recall the words of German Lutheran theologian Martin Niemoller.

First they came for socialists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out — because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak for me.”

His passionate, repeated expression of these themes in many forms was grounded in the most personal of experience. Niemoller during the 1920s in Germany had vocally espoused the far-right political conservatism surging in his country. After Hitler’s 1933 election that had radically changed, and Niemoller himself spent eight years in a Nazi concentration camp.

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Shifting now to part two, those questions of overarching themes, values and how we meet, show up and respond to these pivotal events and issues. What roles, living models or archetypal figures help inform that?

“As what?”

This header is from a scene that makes me smile, from a favorite now-classic 1981 movie, Reds. It’s a biopic based on Ten Days That Shook the World and Romantic Revolutionary, about John (Jack) Reed, American activist supporter of the 1917 Russian Revolution played by Warren Beatty, and fellow activist Louise Bryant played by Diane Keaton.

The header quote here is a line from feminist Bryant, when her full-of-himself beloved Reed invites her to join him in moving activist efforts to New York. First, she demands to know, “move to New York…as what?”

A side note with some relevance to our current political tides: In newly conservative 80’s Reagan-era America, this movie about a bunch of educated-idealist socialists (if not commies) was incongruously a wildly popular blockbuster hit at the box office. It set records with 1982 Oscar nominations, had Best Director and Supporting Actress wins for Beatty and Keaton along with several others. Casting hugely popular heart-throb Beatty in the starring role, as well as his first stint directing, probably helped.

These historic activist figures, in a biopic from a different era, along with others in the movie, might serve as inspiration for growing voices and expressions of civil protest.

Another example, described in several previous newShrink editions, is captured in the counsel from the late Fred Rogers: That in times of crisis, we need to “look for the helpers.” (I find this generally akin to looking for, and therefore finding, heroes.)

These days I’m noticing a lot of the Servant-Volunteer, am reminded of the League of Women Voters slogan, “Democracy is not a spectator sport.”

Longtime readers may recall how powerful and precious the archetypal example of Learners is to me. (The wonderful quote from Merlin about this is one I often re-post.) A recent treat on re-connecting with Charlotte-Mecklenburg was getting to do a 7-week, 2 1/2-hour Wednesday night Civics 101 class, on sequentially every aspect of my hometown from the court system to city, county, state and school system, at the city-county government center. The superbly presented class, unfolding each week, against the national backdrop of massive cuts — and despicable public demeaning — of career public servants at the federal level, was interesting contrast of perspective in real time. Week after week, senior officials — the district attorney, senior superior court and district court judges, city and county management, several elected officials from city, county, schools etc., showed up, engaged with enthusiasm and expertise. There was no dialing-it in. The overwhelming impression was that this, of course, is the way public service, and public servants, in a democracy work, and are supposed to.

Meanwhile, here’s something I didn’t know was a real thing for me, until this review in The Atlantic of the breakout hit TV streaming medical series “The Pitt” absolutely nailed it. I’m not sure what to call it. See what you think:

The smash-hit hospital show has brought the beloved genre back into the real world. (The Atlantic)

The 15-episode first season encompasses a single shift in the emergency room of the fictional Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Hospital, hour by hour…
The tighter focus allows the story to explore, with even more realism than its predecessors, how trauma cases progress. Meanwhile, the slower pace helps viewers settle into the comforting routine of watching people be good at their job…

That repetition is the secret sauce to any great procedural series: Audiences love watching people be good at their job…

yes, sometimes things will go wrong, but only rarely—so that the program can emphasize how often things go right instead.

OK, for full disclosure, these days everyday encounters with people just doing their jobs can render me weepy. That’s been an effect of these recent weeks’ draconian DOGE-chainsaw cuts of non-political workers literally keeping (most of) our planes in the sky, tackling disease via research expertise not dogma, protecting our children and ourselves from contaminated food, and ensuring hurricanes and tornadoes don’t arrive untracked like thieves in the night. Last week I chatted-up and wanted to hug my DMV officer completing my combo license-renewal and REAL ID. This was after one unsuccessful attempt on a prior day and a two-hour wait in line to get into the waiting room.

Still on this “soft spot for excellence” theme, it turned comical at the end of a joyously compelling recent church service at the Charlotte Methodist church now led by The Rev. Dr. James Howell, our former long-time senior pastor in Davidson. (Occasionally visiting, volunteering and supporting many things at Caldwell Presbyterian, as described in previous editions, is continuing. But in multiple ways, some of them surprising to me, this one is evolving to feel more of a fit.)

That Sunday, while exiting up the aisle, I happened to glance up toward the balcony where technical streaming equipment and producers work. There, the large digital hour/minute/seconds timer-clock — like the one above swimming lap-lanes — read precisely 11:55:37, ending even the postlude music by noon. It made me laugh aloud — my internal longtime corporate speechwriter & herder of event-cats was applauding!

That reminded me of the visceral joy described in The Pitt review. So does revisiting this sermon, from soon after the second Trump inauguration. The central archetypal metaphor of the verger used here also suggests the similar figure Virgil in Dante’s Divine Comedy.

“Be a Verger” (sermon begins about 5:10 minutes in)

And finally, of special relevance for journalists, psychologists… and core to newShrink mission…

The Rev. Dr. Ben Boswell delivered an ovation-evoking, virally shared post-election sermon last November. It was underscored in the service by use of the Easter Scripture, which at the time was both thematically spot-on, and jarringly incongruent with the liturgical season.

A quote has lingered with me ever since, along with Boswell’s description here of the essential roles played both by eyewitnesses and by the journalists devoted to reporting truth as they best and most thoroughly know it. The quote:

“Every crucifixion needs a witness.”

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All of which brings us, in closing, to themes and core purpose of newShrink since its inception nearly four years ago — and well before the current so-called “anti-woke” movement blew way past viral, to virulent. (Previous newShrink editions have explored these themes. From about this time three years ago, Imprints and Blindspots: A Bifocal Take on American "Wokeness" 4.24.22 newShrink ,and last June 9, 2024… Golden Thread.

Awake!

By now I am fairly, near-obsessively “PRO-woke” (and never have, probably won’t use that language for it).

Stated most simply here for time and space reasons, “woke” is ever-increasing consciousness, mindful awake-ness, acknowledgment and receptivity to the unknown, the as-yet-unlearned, the ineffable, the mystery, the endless possibility of all we have yet to discover. Without awake-ness, there is no depth (or depth pscyhology); the world is flat, in our psychological, intellectual, emotional, spiritual, relational (you get the idea) lives. There’s also no Yoga, and forget about mindfulness-based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy tools for helping your spouse or teen overcome a debilitating phobia.

Thinking again about this in this week leading to Easter, I realize there is a Biblical dimension. Six times in the Gospel of Matthew alone, Jesus in some fashion admonishes his followers to “stay awake.” Now, how all of these far-right evangelical Christian nationalists can also be “anti-woke” is a mystery, indeed.

I don’t know how to put any of this on a tee shirt; may just begin greeting everyone with “good morning,” whether it’s 8 a.m., 10 p.m. or the wee-dawn hours. Like a secret “awake” handshake?!

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Along these themes, in uncanny ways — like a wonderful spontaneous conversation with my Easter weekend massage therapist — attention of late has kept returning, and been directed back to, the excerpted line of poetry from William Stafford at the close of each newShrink post. The poem expresses themes so foundational to depth psychology, and so relevant amid today’s rampant anti-woke ideology, closing again with the full poem feels right.

Tending the elephants

Spacing and punctuation have been tweaked for this format.

“A Ritual to Read to Each Other,” by William Stafford

If you don't know the kind of person I am, and I don’t know the kind of person you are, a pattern that others made may prevail in the world.

And following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind, a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break…

…and as with elephants that parade holding trunk-to-tail, if one elephant wanders the circus won’t find the park.

So I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy, a remote important region in all who talk:

Though we could fool each other, we should consider — lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For 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.

And, that is all I have! Talk to you soon.

🦋💙 tish

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