How do we survive mentally and psychologically and spiritually with such knowledge? How do we continue to allow the possibility for the unthinkable, and yet find hope, or something that gives us the will to survive? I think we do this in many ways. Let me suggest three. The first, as I have said, is this ability to decouple emotion and intellect. We trust intellectual honesty even if it crashes our emotional attachment to our most cherished beliefs. I can think of several people in the election integrity movement who are almost autistic or exibit signs of Asperger's Syndrome, in being separated from their emotions. You get a sense of this in the analyses of the planes hitting the towers, or in the numerical analyses of exit polls and ballot choices from 04, or of possible software code and how it could be made fraudulent. It's also called good science--totally devoid of emotion and personal bias, supposedly. Not that emotions, usually expressed as a love for democracy and the "common person," and almost worshipful mention of justice and truth and the Constitution, don't motivate the analyzing scientists. But these sentimental values are not allowed to cloud the science. And they never hide the findings of their science in order to protect their emotional attachments. Or they shouldn't, anyway.
Secondly, I wonder if we "conspiracy holders" are not disproportionately the overly-abused. The ones who already don't trust the status quo to protect us and tell us the truth. How many of us are minority people, who, to varying degrees, are despised by the majority of Americans? I mean we may feel fairly successful in life, but we have from time to time felt the sting of being the "other," not quite accepted as one of the crowd? Is it not understandable that Jews, African Americans, gays, Geeks, women who have been put down, the unemployed or underemployed due to not fitting in, the mentally ill, the outcasts of society, are also the ones who "get it" when told that the American dream is a myth or that elections are rigged or the government doesn't really care if we get sick and die? We're not surprised. It's like being told our alcoholic father is also a drug addict.
Lastly, we who can stomach what the people in power call "conspiracy" and we call the Truth, have, I find, a way to tap into a higher hope than just hope in the Democrats. Or in Capitalism, or Communism, or in any "ism." We do not all want to be called "people of faith," because, indeed, some of us are atheists, or secular humanists, or just believe in scientific truth, but I still say we all believe in something greater than politics, something greater than countries, and greater than individual efforts to survive, or individual efforts to amass wealth. We seem to believe in a power of Truth and in Justice. Something beyond political systems and borders. That there is some standard of What is Right, that stirs in the hearts of all people, if they would just listen to it. There is a faith that there are enough of us who believe in this "What is Right," that share some very basic values in common with the rest of us, such things as "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" for ALL people, taking care of the world, sharing resources, a voice for every person, taking care of those who are not able, the intrinsic worth of ALL life, and so on. And we believe that there are enough of us to bind together and someday, somehow, make "What is Right" a reality. It is this hope and faith that keep us from despair in the face of very real evil and corruption.
Just in case the falling people start to haunt me in the future and I am thrown into despair by the horror of it all, my intellect teamed up with my emotions to provide this image: one of the videos shows very clearly what appears to be two men holding hands as they fall. This is what I believe happened. They could have been lovers, or father and son, or co-workers, it doesn't matter. I can imagine one man standing at the window and he is especially terrified of choosing to jump or dying by burning, and who can blame him? And the another beside him says, "Take my hand and don't let go; we'll do this together; I will not let go." He is dying too, but his final act is to comfort another.
I hope I go like that, finding something bigger even than my own death. And I pray that someday the truth is revealed to all of us, and justice is done here on earth as it is most assuredly done in heaven.
1 | 2
