Healing

I spent perhaps 8 years arguing several hours a day on the internet.   I was attacked constantly as a child on all levels, and I guess I sought it out, and learned to dominate debates.  I have been often ugly, often aggressive.  I have, in my defense, also been consistently attacked as a PERSON, since personal demonization and character assassination have always been important tricks in the Leftist arsenal.  Alinsky discusses this process at length and very openly.

In recent days I have been releasing some negative energies–the equivalent, I suppose, of pus from emotionally insulated sores.  And of course I find myself arguing again on the internet.

But I’m trying to look beyond this, beyond this palliative activity, this thing which gives me something to DO.

(And to be clear, all this arguing made my mind much sharper, allowed me to develop and test my ideas, and forced me to learn a whole lot of things I would not have otherwise.  It has been immensely useful, but compulsive, and compulsive is never good in the long term.)

And I realize that trauma is all I have known.  I can’t imagine a life without it.  I don’t know the way forward.  I truly don’t.  It is fog.  It is a road turning around a bend, or going over a hill.

And I realize this is OK, that this is how it works, that uncertainty does not make me a bad person, and that confusion is often a requirement for clarity.

I don’t know.  I don’t know.  I don’t know.  This would likely be a good mantra for me, at least for the time being.

Edit: Grant, these are not pointless abstractions.  Good thinking MUST underlie all good policy.  Our nation is dominated by crappy, sloppy, unprincipled thinking, papered over with Orwellian slogans and bright colors for the children.  You give me a topic, and I can in most cases point you to a 5-10 page, carefully considered essay.  Obamacare, immigration, Iraq, Afghanistan, 9/11, Social Security, Minimum Wage, the nature of morality, Global Warming, the NSA: it’s a very long list, one which would not exist without me having had my particular manias.

Once I’m done with the initial phase of my inner work, I don’t expect ANY of my political ideas to change.  They are anchored in reason, and reason does not change as emotions change.  What I expect to change is my capacity to present them in a persuasive rather than bombastic way.  My outer veneer needs a LOT of work, but the ideas don’t, in my considered view.