Empire, Fear, and Feelings
Grounding ourselves for rebellion in the ongoing war on terror
How can we ground ourselves in the parts of us that think, feel, and do when everything seems like it warrants an immediate reaction?
It is dangerous to act without feeling; it’s dangerous, as we can see, to act on feelings alone. Neither version of action, in my view, is grounded in reality. To lack feeling, thinking, or action could lead to impulsivity in an increasingly dire time.
Those of us who are parts of movements for justices, or active in our immediate community, understand that feelings can pull in opposite directions. Feelings alone are easily manipulated, and can lead us to inaccurate conclusions. They can also imbue our logical beliefs with greater nuance and sensitivity.
Feeling and thinking at once can guide our actions, and together with some intangibles I don’t have time to discuss here, can form a foundation for our intuitive life.
Yet it’s hard to tell the difference between thinking and feeling, impulse and intuition when we don’t call on the wisdom of what grounds us.
When we don’t call on the wisdom of the land itself.
Whiteness is always willing to go to war over feelings alone.
This week, the US and Israel bombed Iran, adding yet another chapter to their so-called "war on terror."
I was twelve years old when this war began, six months or so into my practice of tarot. Yet at no time that year did this war on terror succeed in lessening fear. In fact, we were all fed a steady diet of fear to justify waging several unwinnable wars at once.
Before the war, television went off sometime after eleven at night. After it, twenty-four hours of biased corporate news became the norm. All the better to stoke fear.
It was not the first time. Fear undergirds the American empire.
Colonizers' fears that indigenous people would fight back, instead of allowing settlers to criminalize their ways of life, steal their children, and kill them were used to justify genocide.
Colonizers' fear that Black freedom meant vengeance and even equity was used to justify hundreds of years of enslavement and apartheid.
Colonizers are fearful people. The freedom to do what they want and be who they want is not enough freedom for them. They want to feel free--an intangible internal state.
They want to suppress all potential threats, no matter how manufactured, until no one is left alive but them.
Yet part of the problem is that they can’t make peace with their feelings of fear, dread, and shame. They deal with their fear by displacing the feeling onto everyone else.
Through war, they displace that fear not on humans alone, but on the animals and plants that share community with those humans, and on the land itself.
They will never treat Black people or communities of color any better than they treat the land. That’s because they value land only as a type of wealth, which is the god of white supremacy.
It's soothing to believe this sentiment extends only to those in power, and indeed, it is concentrated with them. Yet even those who may be marginalized by the government's power are still reflected there through whiteness or proximity to whiteness.
If fear is the feeling to run from, then the feeling of safety is what we're told to chase.
Nowhere is that more present in my own sphere than in the language of "unsafe"-ness. It's a common way that white women who think themselves feminists and queer people express their fear of the other.
Rather than focussing on why they feel afraid when no threat pursues them, rather than working with their nervous system, they traffic in the language of imminent threat.
In this way, the language of the left once again mimics the language of the right.
By naming everyone outside of itself as a threat, it also denies the terror that white supremacy is at its core. The Klan is categorized as a religious group, and is thus a tax exempt, longstanding terrorist group. Militias and groups armed to the gills proliferate with white supremacist beliefs.
And yet, the relationship of the oppressed to fear is still made secondary to the fear of those who oppress around the globe.
Last year, I was on a panel for trans poets with two other Black trans poets and one white trans poet. It was well before the election. The moderator asked if we were afraid of what was to come. I wasn’t at the time, so I said no.
After all, I test as an INTJ when I take Briggs-Myers—perhaps the most accurate assessment out of all the typing channels. I’m a big feeler, but a very slow feeler. It sometimes takes me months, even years, to process an experience enough to talk about it.
I still don’t know if I’m afraid.
I do know that the two other Black trans poets said they were. And for a moment, I was afraid as well, in the way that when you see another Black person running in a crowd, you have to run, too.
I may have been slow to start running, but once it was clear the US planned to drop 30k lb missiles on what they believed to be a nuclear site, the fear caught up with me. It was fear for a world under continuous white supremacist domination with no respect for the earth, plant and animal life, or human life.
And in that fear, I recognized that in order to stay informed and active, I have to reconnect myself with others who have a lot to lose. My solidarities lie with all who live under the thumb of white supremacy, of which imperialism is a part.
My response for right now is preparation, it’s not conceding to despair. My response is to call upon the land, for humans, animals, and plants all rely upon the land, to ask how it stays steadfast even in the face of suffering, violence, and war.
I am calling on the humans in my community, and with them I will work to support our neighbors. Many of them, too, have known what white supremacy looks like globally and domestically. War may bring scarcity that can only be weathered together.
I’m calling on my plant allies to teach me how grounding begins in the body, how safety is something I can give myself. How safety doesn’t mean the absence of fear, but rather, in my case, connection to purpose through solidarity.
Monday, July 21
Grounded Herbalism: Fighting Burnout + Despair with Bioregional Herbs
If everything feels like a little too much right now, or if you're losing sleep, or if you're losing hope, plant medicine and magic may be able to offer you a respite, or the boost you need to continue to resist.
We'll learn some of the plants that are common in our bioregion that are nervines, which is a kind of herb indicated for stress and burnout. We'll talk about how to know which one is right for you, and work together to identify common needs and desires around them.
Each participant will leave with 1 oz of herbs (either as a tincture or as a tea) to try at home, and hopefully meet the moment with greater clarity and calm.
