Feel the Shittiness

It's counterproductive to deny that things look bad for America right now. But you can turn the shit into fertilizer.

For any non-conservative who follows the news, this has been an exceedingly shitty week.  It’s been a one-two punch: Joe Biden’s terrible performance in the debate, confirming what right-wing trolls have been saying about his mental decline for years, followed by the Supreme Court handing Donald Trump a gun to do what he’s promised to do: use the government to take revenge on his enemies and act with near total impunity. 

The news was so bad, that equally bad news—the Court’s demolition of the Chevron doctrine, and with it, the government’s ability to enact health, safety, and environmental regulations—got lost in the shuffle.  As someone who’s reported on the Court for over a decade, I think this past week has been its most egregiously ideological, nakedly political period in half a century.  Even including Dobbs.  (My analysis of the presidential immunity case is here, in Rolling Stone.)

I have a lot I’d like to say about this hebdomas horribilis (who knew Latin had such a long word for “week”) but others have already said it, including here on Substack.  “A five alarm fire for democracy,” wrote

Judd Legum

. Of the debate,

Robert Reich

wrote “Donald Trump is a vile human being, and he got away with a tsunami of lies Thursday night. Joe Biden didn’t come across with the vitality he needed to show.” Of the Court decision,

Heather Cox Richardson

said “Today the United States Supreme Court overthrew the central premise of American democracy: that no one is above the law.” And, predicted

Daniel W. Drezner

,

If Trump wins in November, if Republicans win both houses of Congress, I have zero faith in any countervailing institution protecting civil liberties, the rule of law, or any of a hundred ontological givens that I had taken for granted all my life. In that outcome, the U.S. would shift to being a competitive authoritarian state.

It’s not just pundits.  I know from my social circle and social media feeds that a lot of people are feeling deeply anxious.  I am too.  I have (literally) lost sleep over the Biden debacle, and am furious that his family and close advisers are putting misguided loyalty to him above the interests of the country.  I am enraged at continued $100 million donations to the Trump campaign—all of which would be illegal, were it not for the Supreme Court’s insane decision that money is the same as speech—by billionaires like Miriam Adelson and Timothy Mellon.  (Mellon also supports RFK Jr., in case you’re still confused about what that candidacy is about.)  I am also, as I wrote recently, worried about a Trump presidency in a very personal way.

So, what can I offer at this moment , based on twenty-plus years of (a) meditation teaching and (b) political journalism?  Here’s what I’ve got.

1.        Feel the Shittiness

There is a single, often misunderstood secret of mindfulness meditation, which is, in my teacher Sharon Salzberg’s words, “It’s not what’s going on; it’s how you relate to it.”

In other words, the popular image of meditation—a blissed-out person (in media depictions, usually a beautiful woman) in a state of lovely relaxation—is wrong.  Yes, meditation can help you relax, that’s been proven.  But the real benefit of meditation isn’t changing how you feel, but being basically okay with feeling how you’re feeling.

Speaking for myself here, in the last five days I’ve felt despair, powerlessness, rage, anxiety, hopelessness, and dread—and also many moments of joy, relief, hope, ecstasy (it was Pride Weekend, after all) and what Ken Wilber once called “the simple feeling of being.”  With a little mindfulness and reflection, I can see the multiplicity of these feelings, all of which are radically impermanent, and puncture the false sense that my depression and anxiety are constant. 

And, with a little more mindfulness, I can accept these feelings as they are. Alright, I’m feeling a lot of anxiety right now. Okay, here’s a sense of personal impotence, as I am pretty powerless to stop the wave of nationalism sweeping the globe right now.  Oh, look, here’s a little exhale, that feels nice. 

A large part of the pain of difficult emotions comes from fighting difficult emotions.  If we can just let them be, neither wallowing in them nor trying to make them go away, the pain is less.  Not zero, but less.

So go ahead and feel the shittiness you’re feeling. 

2.        The Shittiness is Fertilizer

Of course, it’s not a good idea to only feel all that pain, anxiety, or fear.  So there are ways to work with such feelings and make them the fertilizer for some wisdom and relief. 

First, know that you are not alone.  Connect with your friends.  Read or watch some journalists whose perspective you like.  Know that there are tens of millions of people who feel a lot like you do right now.  None of us really have any answers.  Now is thus a great time to reach out to people you care about.  Maybe a friend who you haven’t talked with in a while.  Or your partner or parent or child.  Or maybe someone who’s going through a hard time: a loss, an illness, a job transition, whatever.  If there’s one thing I’ve learned being a rabbi and “spiritual teacher,” it’s that you can use your own pain to empathically connect with other people.  You’ll likely be more vulnerable, more open, and more helpful as well.  At least that’s my experience. Here’s the meme for that, which I reposted earlier today on Instagram:

Then, of course, there’s action. One of the features of anxiety, in particular, is a feeling of powerlessness. Certainly that’s true right now. So, psychologists advise finding something you can do. Obviously that includes donating and volunteering for political causes. But it might be totally unrelated. Help someone, work in the garden, get something done. Be like the woman in one of the most formative articles I’ve ever read, published by The Onion two weeks after 9/11: “Not Knowing What Else To Do, Woman Bakes American-Flag Cake.” Experience some efficacy.

More broadly, whatever feelings you’ve having, there’s a difference between accepting the emotion on the one hand, and letting it dictate your actions on the other. The first is good, the second often isn’t. Yes, accept the grief, or fear, or anger—but don’t let it drive the bus. If you can, pick yourself up and do the work in front of you.

Finally (on this section anyway), try the emotional judo move pioneered by the Ba’al Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidism, and further popularized by a wave of activists and psychologists who work with climate anxiety.  Namely, investigate what’s alongside or beneath that fear, anger, or whatever.  If you look, you’ll remember that you’re feeling these things because you care.  After all, if you didn’t give a crap about the Earth, or vulnerable people, or the kind of country we want to live in, you wouldn’t care about the election, right?

So the presence of these emotions is an indicator that there is love, compassion, and concern inside of you as well.  See if you can inhabit those feelings – just reading about them won’t work, you actually have to tune into them yourself.  Chances are, paying attention to those emotions can reconnect you to parts of yourself that feel authentic and nourishing. 

3.        The Shittiness is Not Omniscient

Lastly, let’s remember that, objectively and intellectually speaking, the Shittiness you may be feeling is not the best predictor of how things actually will turn out.

I know the poll numbers are bad, and I know that the Supreme Court decisions are bad.  And they are bad in ways that relate to one another. But what do we really know?  Biden and Trump are still nearly tied. A lot of people – maybe most people – don’t care about debates and aren’t tuned into the news.  If Biden stays in, it won’t be just him out there on the campaign trail – it’ll be a lot of famous people too, people with a lot of social capital and influence.  And Trump, too, is experiencing cognitive decline; it’s very easy to imagine him having a bad night, just like Biden did.  (Let’s also remember that Trump lied more than 30 times in the 90-minute debate, and rambled incoherently, and would have lost that debate had Biden had an average night.) 

So, we don’t know how the election is going to turn out. Dukakis was ahead of Bush at this point. Kerry was ahead of another Bush. Clinton was ahead of Trump.

Nor do we really know how bad a second Trump administration would be.  After the 2016 election—another time in which the Democrats ran someone who they thought was entitled to the nomination—I made a list of fifty things I feared about Trump, everything from social breakdown to environmental catastrophe, economic disaster to the vulgarization of America.  Around half of those fears came to pass, but another half didn’t.  We mostly survived (except for the million of us who died during Covid, largely due to Trump’s ineptitude and stupidity). 

Obviously, I’m not sugarcoating here. There are real threats of climate disaster, American isolationism strengthening Putin and Xi, more conservative judges on federal courts, concentration camps for migrants, mass deportations, vendettas against political enemies, and most of all, the Project 2025 plan to dismantle the government as we know it.

But we don’t even know what will come of that.  Trump #1 led directly to Black Lives Matter and the so called “Great Awakening” of America, much to conservatives’ horror, of course.  Maybe Trump #2 will lead to new, sustainable progressive movements.  We just don’t know. 

So, in a sense, I come back to a variation of the old, reliable serenity prayer, with which I’ll conclude now:

Source of wisdom, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change: global trends among billions of people, political machinations beyond my control, the very real impacts that will be felt by people more vulnerable than I am, and also those that will be felt by me and my family. 

Grant me the courage to change the things I can, and the resilience, and the strength: I can have some efficacy, I can use the platforms I have, and I can encourage folks to help people vote (especially in swing states), to give money, to not let despair or wishful thinking win the day. 

And please grant me the wisdom to know the difference: to let go of what is beyond my ability to repair, but to seize the opportunity to do the work that needs to be done.  So that even if I lose, I will know that I did my part. 

This is my blessing to you as well.

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Thanks for reading and thanks in advance for your comments! Community helps right now.

As I mentioned above, I wrote a detailed analysis of the Supreme Court’s decision on presidential immunity here. On that other subject, I did my best to demolish the weird left-wing myth that there’s no difference between Biden and Trump when it comes to Israel/Palestine — please send it to anyone who thinks that is the case.

Remember to do some self-care this week. Go outside, grill something, and when the fireworks go off, envision the America we want, the one of its unfulfilled dreams and hopes, the one that is still attainable.