(Roman lictor with fasces by Cesare Vecellio)
I was reading this terrifically sad and horrifyingly hilarious blog post about the body scanners and pat downs yesterday (don’t read it if you don’t like harsh and borderline obscene language…but you really should read it though), when I came across a quote from a fellow named Roger Cohen in the New York Times who said in his brilliant op-ed piece entitled The Real Threat to America:
I give thanks for Benjamin Franklin’s words after the 1787 Constitutional Convention describing the results of its deliberations: “A Republic, if you can keep it.”
To keep it, push back against enhanced patting, Chertoff’s naked-screening and the sinister drumbeat of fear.
(Chertoff is the former secretary of Homeland Security who is poised to make a fat wad of cash off the expensive “Rapiscan” devices that provide a 3D view of whatever happens to be inside it, via a wash of radiation, the health effects of which are yet unclear. In this article, Annie Lowery of the Washington Post tells about her experience of looking at the 3D scan of an executive vice president at Rapiscan, in which his “appendages are clearly visible.” Ew.)
I’m not going to get into the whole body scan issue because it’s already been done beautifully well. My only job in that category is to congenially refuse to let my appendages (or lack thereof I suppose) be viewed with radioactive light come traveling time this holiday.
What I am interested in is the sinister drumbeat of fear. While the cadence of the phrase confirms the feeling, consistent and ever present, ever threatening, it also belies the manic hysteria that propels this fear forward, top heavy and seemingly out of control. How do we stop it? My first instinct has always been to throw myself on top of it and wrestle it until one of us dies. As I grow older (and, alas, a tiny bit flabbier) my instinct is slowly changing.
This is what I read in A Course in Miracles this morning:
You are indeed essential to God’s plan. Without your joy, His joy is incomplete. Without your smile, the world cannot be saved. While you are sad, the light that God Himself appointed as the means to save the world is dim and lusterless, and no one laughs because all laughter can but echo yours.
You are indeed essential to God’s plan. Just as your light increases every light that shines in Heaven, so your joy on earth calls to all minds to let their sorrows go, and take their place beside you in God’s plan. God’s messengers are joyous, and their joy heals sorrow and despair.
We will prepare ourselves for this today, in our five-minute practice periods, by feeling happiness arise in us according to our Father’s Will and ours. Begin the exercises with the thought today’s idea contains. Then realize your part is to be happy.
Now, when I first read this, I was like…ummmm…just go ahead and be happy? Even if I’m not? I think that Jung would call the repression police and bring me in for delusional therapy. But then I started to remember what my (also fully accredited) counselor told me about letting go of things that make me angry…she said I should do it, not because I am so like Jesus and able to be so giving and fair, but because when I don’t, it doesn’t feel good. No altruism necessary. It’s not fun to be bent out of shape and unhappy.
Last bit, and here’s the real rub, my counselor told me that the best cure for when you are being selfish is to be generous instead. So when I’m feeling down in the dumps because nobody wants to to their own dishes, what I really need to do is to give away shoulder rubs or something. But wait a minute! Then they will think that I’m always going to give away shoulder rubs AND they won’t do the dishes!! Grumble, grumble…If they think that I’m going to…they’ve got another thing coming…
The sinister drum beat in my head. Fascism starts at home.
One Foot Walking 