Democrats must support people who show examples of hope and courage in the dangerous age of maga Trumpzi-ism

Maria Shrivere writes in "Sunday Paper": The other evening as I watched the news, I listened to a national anchor interview a young, up-and-coming Democratic Texas representative James Talarico. 

An unnamed political strategist said: "Only a savior can save the Democratic Party." The strategist supposedly went on to say that the country and party need an actual, real-life savior, and that this so-called savior will not appear until after the midterms.

The young Texas representative smartly responded by saying, “I already have a savior. And furthermore, I don’t believe we have to wait until then to save ourselves.”

He went on, “We must all acknowledge what is broken in both parties and offer a vision for how to fix it. I think folks are hungry for the truth.”

Amen to that.

The next morning, looking at the trees and listening to the birds, I found myself thinking again about the privilege of being alive and how absurd the idea of waiting for some fantasy political “savior” is.

Sitting around waiting for someone to save you—be it politically, romantically, financially—is dangerous. Isn’t that what gets us into trouble in the first place? Believing that someone else is going to save us, make the hard choices, or know what’s better for us than we do?

Sadly and truthfully, I’ve been there before. Waiting for someone to come along and save me. Waiting for someone to come along and tell me what to do, how to move myself forward, and tell me that it’s all going to be okay.

Yes, I hate to admit it, but there was a time when I thought someone other than myself would know how to build my media company, would know how to grow MOSH, would know how to expand my work at the Women’s Alzheimer’s Movement, or would tell me what to do regarding certain personal decisions. 

I was waiting for someone to walk in the door, make my troubles go away, and ease my pain. I often wondered silently when I met someone new: Is this the person who will show me the way?

But guess what ❓No one did.

It was only when I realized that I was the person who knew what was best for me that I was able to get busy building what I envisioned for myself. It was only after I took responsibility for myself that I was able to see my life differently. It was only after leaning into my faith in God, my faith in myself, and my faith in my dreams that things started to become clearer and that my confidence grew.

I didn’t need to be saved by some unknown person, and neither do you. We also don’t need a political savior. First, we need to believe in our country. We need to believe in the potential of ourselves. We need to take responsibility for ourselves. We need to take responsibility for things that are broken. We need to find a way to work with others—yes, even those we think we can’t work with—to build something we can all be proud of.

Someone can always emerge who can help us amplify our dreams. That happens a lot. But when we sit around abdicating our power, waiting for some unnamed savior to come along and save us, that’s when we get in trouble. 

We surrender our thinking skills. We surrender our judgment, our clear vision, and perhaps worst of all, we lose our courage. And courage is what this moment needs.

Whenever we sit around thinking someone else is smarter, or that someone else knows us better than ourselves, that’s when we enter dangerous territory. And when you are in this territory, you can talk yourself into all kinds of things. You start seeing the world through someone else’s eyes. But trust me, now is not the time to see the world through someone else’s eyes.

Please do not allow yourself to believe crazy, outlandish things, like the “story” that former President Barack Obama is guilty of treason, as some are alluding to. I mean, please. That video❓😧😒 C'mon.

Do not allow yourself to become a victim to a distract-deflect strategy. Do not let someone come along and gaslight you or manipulate you—be it in your personal life, your professional life, your public life, or your political life.

We all need courage. You are smart. You are clear-eyed. You know the truth when you see it, hear it, witness it. You can see that children and others are starving in Gaza. You can see that it’s possible to denounce this tragedy without being labeled antisemitic. You can see that chaos reigns in Washington, and that it’s not just one party that needs saving, but that both must take accountability and offer the change the American people deserve. You know that courage isn’t reserved for so-called saviors. You have courage, too. Don’t tell yourself otherwise.

Rep. Melissa Hortman and Mark Hortman murdered in Minnesota

Which brings me back to that “savior” comment from the Democratic strategist. Don’t tell the family of Minnesota Rep. Melissa Hortman that we need a savior—what we need is someone with the courage to lead. I hope we can remind ourselves that there are already so many people in public life exhibiting courage on the front lines, every single day. You may not agree with everything they say or do, but courageous they are: Josh Shapiro, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Pete Buttigieg are just a few, but there are plenty of others—including people running for statewide and local offices now. They may not be “saviors.” That’s the wrong word. But they are public servants, risking their lives for our country.

This is not the time to abdicate your courage. It’s not the time to lie down and wait for some so-called savior to come along. 

Rather, this is the time to see yourself as smart, capable, and courageous, no matter your age, no matter what you have been through. Because it’s true.

I am 100 percent sure that you have had to be courageous to get to this moment in your life. Maybe you haven’t used that word before, but it’s the truth. Getting through life requires courage. Staying true to your principles requires courage. Falling down and getting back up requires courage. Starting again requires courage. Going, staying, persevering—it all requires courage.

This week, courage was on display everywhere I looked. The Wall Street Journal showed courage when it stood by its reporting, even though the president threatened it. They stood strong. PBS also came out swinging. “We intend to stay the course,” they said.

At least, let’s hope so.

Andrea Gibson’s wife showed courage in the face of her grief. The families in Texas who buried their little girls showed courage—wow, did they ever. Actor Gary Sinise displayed tremendous courage in talking about his grief and his son. The families of the Idaho victims showed unwavering courage as they stood to face their children’s killer in court. This coward just sat there like a motionless wax figure. Disgusting.

Courage or cowardice. It’s a choice.

Speaking of courage, every week I’m blown away by so many Sunday PLUS members who show courage in their weekly comments. I’m often left speechless by all they are juggling, dealing with, and managing without complaint. They are grateful to be here and to be alive, to be in service to family, to community, to one another. They give me so much hope. They really do. They are caregiving, 

So here we are. And here I am. In a way, I’m back to where I started. It’s early in the a.m. on yet another summer day. The sun is out. A butterfly flies by. Negative news abounds. 😒😞For some reason—maybe it’s a good one, I don’t know—Jeffrey Epstein still dominates the news, something, no doubt, Donald Trump finds beyond irritating. But thankfully, I’m focused on the hope that abounds.

Yes, I’m focused on the hope in you and in me. So that’s what today’s edition of The Sunday Paper is all about. The hope that lies in medical research. The hope that lies in our kids. The hope I have in the Pope and so many other spiritual leaders that I look to for daily inspiration. The hope that resides in the millions of us who are grandparents, who are right there alongside our kids offering a helping hand, some wisdom, some perspective—and always, some laughs. (Hope is a motivator, said Pope Francis.  Hope does not disappoint, said Pope Leo XIV)

"Hope is a thing with feathers," wrote Emily Dickinson.

“Hope” is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -

And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm -

I’ve heard it in the chillest land -

And on the strangest Sea -
Yet - never - in Extremity,
It asked a crumb - of me.

Mr. Fred Rogers used to say, “Look for the helpers.” Amen to that, but also keep your mind on hope. Do not let the news, the negativity, or the algorithm take you down.

The early morning is full of hope, as is the world around you. 

Can you hear the birds? (...a thing with feathers). Can you hear the sounds of summer❓ Can you smell the grass and the morning air❓ That’s hope you see coming ‘round the bend and down the street. It makes me smile. And I hope it has the same effect on you as well.

I’ll leave you with this message I got from my friend Jimmy. Thank goodness it was the first message I read this summer morning: “I’m on a train from Poland to Prague ~ watching life go by outside the window. Our time together is so incredibly brief. We think we are here forever. Our lives are but a blip on the great big screen of life. It all goes by SO FAST ~ a gentle reminder to savor this moment, because I promise you this: it will not last.”

New Yorkers won't stop for terrorism - even if terrorists stop for them

God Love the New York City terrorism snobbery!

Excuse me for using America's favorite poet's syntax in the title of this blog, but the rhythm of the New York state of mind seems to fit the pentameter of Emily Dickinson's poem. Although she did not stop for death, eventually, death does stop for all of us.  But, let's not stop for terrorism, even when it could put us all in harm's way!

"Whether it is that his own cowardice pushes him to impute anxiety to others or that his own cynicism leads him to exploit it, he benefits from panicked people." (referring to Donald Trump)

New York City will not stop for terrorism

From The New Yorker- by Adam Gopnik:

New York City and New Jersey:

The bombings that took place in Chelsea and New Jersey over the weekend managed to be both frightening and, in a strange way, inspiring. They were frightening, obviously, because they reminded us that, given the realities of modern technology and its dissemination of information, we can never hope to be entirely safe against the threat of terrorism. Whether or not the suspected bomber had a direct relationship with isis or other foreign groups, or, as so often now, an indirect one, or none at all, information about how to construct bombs is now so widely available that it is impossible to build complete immunity against terrorism, certainly not in anything still resembling an open society. 

For all the ingenuity and obvious efficiency of the New York Police Department and its fellows—qualities that have made terrorism in the city since 9/11 far more infrequent than anyone might have imagined in those panicky days and months after it—there is no such thing as no risk. There will be more bombings, and there will be other bombers.

The more inspiring news is that, despite that truth, the response of the people of New York was not merely “bold” or “courageous,” or all those other words we use, sometimes obnoxiously, to congratulate ourselves.

Instead, their responses were marked by something even better: cool, plain, dull indifference. It was as if New Yorkers were, after a difficult decade, finally internalizing the numerical realities of the threat that terrorism presents and the threat it doesn’t—of what terrorism is and isn’t. (And it was also a nice illustration of Jane Jacobs’s principle that there are many advantages in having eyes on the street.)

We can never get the risk level to zero. Still, the idea—still taboo to say, still disallowed from articulation, still too shocking to be uttered, certainly on cable television’s non-stop anxiety rounds—ought to be that terrorism remains as close to that as we can hope to find in this fatal world. The risks we take getting in a car or getting married (given how often spouses murder each other) or just walking outside—not to mention the risks that we take in owning a gun—are far higher than the risk that we run from terrorism. As The Economist pointed out in a useful rundown of the statistical truths not long ago, the risk of an American being killed by terrorism in the decade after 9/11 and up to 2013 was one in fifty-six million, adding, “The chance of being the victim in 2013 of an ordinary homicide in the United States was one in 20,000. Traffic accidents are three times as lethal.” President Obama has suggested as much at times, but it’s not what people want to hear, and the wisdom of probabilities is taken to be indifference to risk.

The question becomes why we develop such a high level of fright about such a low-level probability. Why are so many still so easily panicked? One reason is that there are political movements and politicians who think to benefit from them, Donald Trump chief among them right now. Whether it is that his own cowardice pushes him to impute anxiety to others or that his own cynicism leads him to exploit it, he benefits from panicked people. The more scared people are made, the more likely they are to turn to a strongman to reassure them. It is an ancient—and always duplicitous and disappointing—formula.

But a second reason is both more insidious and more interesting. It lies in the eternal human propensity to overstate and overimagine risks and loss and underimagine and understate gains and benefits. That’s something that the Nobel Prize-winning economist Daniel Kahneman, among others, became famous for highlighting. Losses loom larger than gains. We are so “loss averse” that we often fail to compute the odds of life very well. We pay far more attention to remote dangers than to the safety of our immediate circumstances. Risk is scarier than reassurance is reassuring. One terror incident terrifies; the absence of terrorism doesn’t seem to put our minds at rest.

Bad news is always bigger than good. It always will be. That’s why terrorism will always get more time on cable TV than ongoing normalcy that surrounds it. It is not just a fact of cable television. It is a fact of the human condition, or, if you prefer, of human psychology. But it is not an irredeemable part of the human condition, or a prison that human psychology makes for us. Some wisdom helps us break out. And the encouraging thing is that, somehow, most New Yorkers have already done that. The cool on display over the weekend was not courage, really. It was just calculation, the hard-won calculation of real risks and real damage, born from an accumulated knowledge of the cost that panic and fear exact from each of us when we succumb to them. It’s the kind of sane calculation that pushes people forward to walk where they want to no matter how scared they’re supposed to be.