NOTICINGS: Subdue by superior force
Starving them into submission
And snap! A threesome appears! Trump/Epstein. Measles. Starvation in Gaza and starvation in America. Adult men overpowering the unalienable Rights of children by superior force and confusion. —Image detail from Cosme Viardel rotated 90 degrees. 1676.I’m a member of Wendy MacNaughton’s Draw Together GUT (Grown-Ups Table). Every week, she offers a drawing assignment. This week, as we witness the impact of a political war for absolute control over our country, either directly or from a distance, Wendy writes:
Feel all the things. Feel the hard things. The inexplicable things, the things that make you disavow humanity’s capacity for redemption. Feel all the maddening paradoxes. Feel overwhelmed, crazy. Feel uncertain. Feel angry. Feel afraid. Feel powerless. Feel frozen.
And then …
FOCUS.
Pick up your pen. Pick up your paintbrush. Pick up your damn chin. Put your two calloused hands on the turntables, in the clay, on the strings. Get behind the camera. Look for that pinprick of light. Look for the truth (yes, it is a thing—it still exists.)
At sea about what subject I wanted to focus on, I looked at what the other grown-ups at the table drew.
Credit: Stacey Tigner-Loy, one of three thousand educators who lost their jobs. SNAP-Ed (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Education) is being eliminated along with the education, dignity, and support it provided to families, seniors, students, and entire communities already struggling with food access.Bingo. My subject appears. I care about the hungry, famished, wasting, starving children being used as political weapons. I went to bed.
Around four o’clock in the morning, I was awakened by an image. An open spigot gushing hate. A torrent of furious words describing them. The Perpetrators. Grown-ups, for their political ends, are denying children food.
Them, the Perpetrators, people like you and me. They were kids. They went to school. They have families. Some are parents. Some are grandparents. But here’s the difference. They are starving children in Gaza. They are forcing children in America, dependent on SNAP, to go hungry. And, speaking of children, measles is spreading as a result of their anti-vaccine leadership.
Credit: Lisa CitronIn half-sleep, as I noticed my blame words, I struggled to reset. When I blame, I make myself a victim. Blame. Beyond ineffective. Can I understand their POV? If I understand that, maybe I can do something to address the problem.
My angry words instantly boomeranged back to the Perpetrators. In half-sleep, I likened them to the criminally insane. Harvard psychiatrist James Gilligan is best known for his series of books titled Violence, based on 25 years of work in the American prison system studying the motivation and causes behind violent behavior. Gilligan’s study reveals one constant in all his subjects, no matter age, race, or crime. The throughline is shame. All his subjects in early childhood had suffered traumatic shame, searing humiliation. Early on, they learned that their shame must be concealed. From themselves. From others. In response to shame, the most painful of emotions, they erected guardrails. But, Gilligan notes, the living armored body became desperate—starving!—for feeling. Violence expresses feeling. Their extreme violence resulted in life imprisonment. Their extreme violence broke and dismantled the lives of others who were their victims.
Gilligan taught a seminar at NYU about Shakespeare’s take on violence and shame. For instance, a King Lear moment: “a sovereign shame so elbows him…His mind so venomously that burning shame” he is stopped from going to his cherished Cordelia to make amends.
Torrents of feeling!
And snap! An understanding arrived in my semi-awake state like an unexpected gift. A threesome appeared!
Trump/Epstein.
Measles.
Starvation in Gaza. Starvation in America.
Big guys of privilege and wealth overpowering children! They hide behind the mask of a bill or policy. There’s not a principle reflecting right from wrong in sight or action. The Declaration of Independence is dead to them.
Are they ashamed to overwhelm children's unalienable Rights? Maybe. They do their best to conceal what they do. A mask on every face.
Blame faded. My reset took hold. I can now do something. Doing something is a series of steps.
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Step 1
Name what starving does. Name the specifics of famishment. Feel the hunger. Imagine the impact of wasting. We do not need to armour ourselves against feeling, as do the criminally insane.
Metabolism slows
Kidney function is impaired
The heart, lungs, ovaries, and testes shrink
Immunity diminishes
It is a struggle to make decisions and solve problems
Brains, bones, and bodies fail to fully develop
Stunted growth in children under the age of 5 years is largely irreversible.
Naming the details pulls back the curtain of generalized descriptions of these atrocities one hears and reads. Generous José Andrés’ World Central Kitchen cannot reverse the harm inflicted.
While driving to the market today, I was thinking about what I’m writing here. Then I saw this truck. I followed it. I spoke to the driver. She told me she picks up 300 pounds of food from one food store alone daily. Her route includes dozens of businesses. All the food is eaten where hungry people go to be fed. Food rescued. Food denied.
Citizens in some cities stand by their principles. Food recovery. My god, is that how much food there is?
Step 2
Expand this choir of ours. I am speaking to the choir, no? Why expand? Because Republican congresspeople are not representing us, their constituents. Millions of citizens oppose depriving children of food. Millions of us see that starving children are a political policy designed to control this entire nation. To control us. Millions of us (and growing!) understand that MAGA is waging war using children to change the constitutional foundations of our country. The number of our choir counts.
History speaks: The word starvation was introduced into English by one Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville, during debate in England’s House of Commons in 1775 on American affairs. In 1781 Horace Walpole wrote, “...the victories, conquests, extension of our empire within these last five years [as a result of Dundas’ vote to prolong abolition], will annihilate his fame of course, and he may be replaced by Starvation Dundas, whose pious policy suggested that the devil of rebellion could be expelled only by fasting.”
Step 3
Hold space for the presence of being that this image of life becoming alive imparts.
This tenderness. Where we all began to be.
Every baby is born with unalienable rights.
Fact: The Declaration of Independence states, “all Men are … endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.”
Going forward from toddlerhood, we know right from wrong. Instead of politics, we can stand up for principles. We protect everyone’s unalienable Rights. We don’t wear masks. We show our values. We are what we do.
Hold space for new ideas. Hold space for new solutions. Or, as Heather Cox Richardson and Joanne Freeman describe it, “a new best thing” that will inevitably result—as American history shows—from daily practices of care, generosity, and kindness that make happen what is foundational to our government: justice for all.
Notes:
Image detail Cosme Viardel from Stephen Ellcock, London-based curator, writer, researcher and online collector of images
https://civiced.org/9-11-and-the-constitution-terms-to-know#unalienablerights
“Inalienable rights are rights that we are unable to give up, even if we want to. According to the concept of inalienable rights found in the Declaration of Independence, liberty is such a right. That means that if we signed a contract to be a slave, we would not have an obligation to keep it; and despite the contract, no one would have a right to our services. Having rights that are inalienable does not mean they cannot be attacked by our being arbitrarily killed, imprisoned, or otherwise oppressed. It means that such acts are not morally justified and that we have a ground for moral complaint.”
https://www.law.nyu.edu/news/ideas/David-richards-shakespeare-violence-shame-holding-mirror-nature
https://www.etymonline.com/word/starvation
https://obgyn.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/uog.6298