regarding power: nationalism is terrifying

To­day I asked a coworker,
“How is it that one per­son has so much power?”

Women have been in the news a lot late­ly. I’ve been pay­ing spe­cial at­ten­tion to Eliz­a­beth War­ren, who is my choice for De­mo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­date, and Megan Rapi­noe, who helped lead the USWNT to win the World Cup and de­fend their title.

I wish I could re­mem­ber where I ei­ther read it or who said it, but not too long ago I‘d heard some­thing about how peo­ple who as­so­ciate vi­o­lence, phys­i­cal strength, guns, bul­ly­ing, etc. with pow­er, in turn view the peo­ple who em­ploy those tac­tics as be­ing pow­er­ful. But that real pow­er comes from be­ing in­formed, from know­ing things, hav­ing plans. Be­ing ready. In­clud­ing everyone. 

This is a huge part of why Eliz­a­beth War­ren ap­peals to me. Real pow­er comes nat­u­ral­ly to peo­ple who use these meth­ods. And they threat­en those who de­mand pow­er through fear and intimidation.

I agree with that. I think that’s true. But I also think it can be much sim­pler than that.

I used to be ex­treme­ly non-con­fronta­tion­al. I avoid­ed con­flict. I was not what you would call a good com­mu­ni­ca­tor. I don’t know that I’d say I’m an ex­cel­lent com­mu­ni­ca­tor now, and I don’t think any­body should go around say­ing that about them­selves. But, I’m much bet­ter at it than I used to be.

I’m also far more out­spo­ken. I’ve al­ways been opin­ion­at­ed, and I’m sure a lot of peo­ple who know me per­son­al­ly would say I’ve nev­er re­al­ly held back. But I’ve al­ways felt like I tend to hold back in a lot of ways that go unseen. 

My out­spo­ken­ness has large­ly de­pend­ed on my com­fort lev­el and cir­cum­stance. Am I in the safe­ty of close friends in a pri­vate set­ting? I’ll say what­ev­er. Am I get­ting gas at a truck stop in Chehalis? Yeah, I’m prob­a­bly not go­ing to go shoot­ing my mouth off un­less I have a re­al­ly good rea­son. But that’s not what be­ing out­spo­ken and opin­ion­at­ed is about, anyway.

There are many more peo­ple with far more to lose who are so much braver than I am. In the case of Megan Rapi­noe, she is ar­guably the most fa­mous women’s soc­cer play­er in the world and one of the most fa­mous, pe­ri­od. She has en­dorse­ments, fans, she rep­re­sents the coun­try when she plays on the USWNT and Seat­tle when she plays for the Reign. 

She doesn’t hold back with her opin­ions and she stands up for what she be­lieves in – equal pay and equal treat­ment – and all the things that go along with them. Just as im­por­tant, she also speaks out against all the in­jus­tices that stand in the way of achiev­ing those goals.

Megan is from Red­ding, Cal­i­for­nia. When I found that out, I made this sound: “Ooofffff.”

She’s proud of where she’s from and noth­ing can or should di­min­ish that. Noth­ing can take that from her. But my re­ac­tion stemmed from know­ing what Red­ding is like and hav­ing grown up in a place very sim­i­lar to it, also in Cal­i­for­nia. I end­ed up in the same area of the coun­try as she did, but I’m not a fa­mous, out­spo­ken, pur­ple-haired les­bian soc­cer player.

As a throw­back to some­thing I post­ed not too long ago, no­body wants to hear anyone’s pol­i­tics or ‘bring pol­i­tics into it’ un­less they share the same politics. 

Sad­ly, we live in a time where ‘pol­i­tics’ is not de­fined as,
“Upon clos­er ex­am­i­na­tion of the bi­en­ni­al bud­get, I think more mon­ey should be spent on line item a vs. line item b,”
but rather,
“hey I don’t think kids should be ripped away from their par­ents and thrown in cages!”
or
“Yeah not cool that Trump thinks he can grab women by the pussy!”

In 2019, tak­ing a stance against those types of things is ‘po­lit­i­cal.’ It’s dis­gust­ing and ab­surd, but here we are.

She is, ob­vi­ous­ly, no ex­cep­tion. Check the com­ment sec­tion on any ar­ti­cle that so much as men­tions her name, whether it’s about her or not. Check en­tire ar­ti­cles about her home­town and her par­ents. Just Google her name and look at the first head­line that comes up right now. Lots and lots of peo­ple want her to
“shut up and quit bring­ing pol­i­tics into things.”

Just mull around the fact that we un­for­tu­nate­ly have lots of peo­ple in this coun­try who think the cur­rent pres­i­dent de­serves any amount of re­spect what­so­ev­er, and as such, tac­it­ly en­dorse his words and be­hav­iors (if not out­right ap­prov­ing and sup­port­ing them) by sug­gest­ing she should keep her mouth shut.

Any­way, this is about pow­er, the per­cep­tion of pow­er, and how we chal­lenge pow­er. I don’t want to go on too much about Megan Rapi­noe. I can do that else­where. (Just ask my good friend Diane.)

I use her as an ex­am­ple, though, be­cause she is speak­ing out. And peo­ple don’t like that for all kinds of rea­sons. There are even peo­ple who AGREE with her who don’t like what she’s doing.

How many times have you heard, or said, in your life,
“Just don’t say anything”?
or thought,
“Be nice,”
not when some­one wasn’t be­ing nice, but just be­cause they were sim­ply be­ing hon­est and forthright? 

How many times have you sug­ar coat­ed words be­cause you didn’t want to hurt someone’s feel­ings, even though it only com­pli­cat­ed mat­ters fur­ther and end­ed up hurt­ing their feel­ings worse in the end?

One line from the Cher­nobyl minis­eries that has stuck with me above all oth­ers is,
“Our pow­er comes from the per­cep­tion of our pow­er.”

We are watch­ing some­thing very in­ter­est­ing and ter­ri­fy­ing take place here in the Unit­ed States right now. A lot of the checks and bal­ances we as­sumed would just be there, ac­tu­al­ly weren’t. We haven’t com­plete­ly fall­en apart yet, a lot of it is still work­ing – but it all de­pends more on where you live and the char­ac­ter of your judges and elect­ed of­fi­cials, as op­posed to any sort of work­ing system.

How many times have you, with­out ques­tion, as­sumed that some­one must know what they’re talk­ing about sim­ply be­cause they are per­ceived to have power?

The ques­tion I asked my coworker,
“How is it that one per­son has so much pow­er?”

I al­ready knew the an­swer. I asked it any­way be­cause I felt so de­ject­ed. Not sur­prised, just dejected.

It hap­pens be­cause no­body speaks up. And then, when some­one does speak up, it puts pres­sure on the peo­ple who can do some­thing, to ac­tu­al­ly DO SOMETHING. 

And sad­ly, in­stead of ac­tu­al­ly do­ing some­thing about unchecked im­bal­ances of pow­er, all too of­ten the peo­ple who speak up are told to be silent. 

When they refuse to be silent, peo­ple get un­com­fort­able. They get un­com­fort­able be­cause then they’re forced to think about what is be­ing said. They’re forced to think about what it says about them as a per­son in re­la­tion to this thing that’s be­ing spo­ken out against. They’re forced to step away from their priv­i­leges and com­forts and lux­u­ries and think about how they are a part of some­thing that im­pacts lives and places and oth­er liv­ing things. How they im­pact lives and places and oth­er liv­ing things. 

And this hap­pens on every scale, from the dumb shit that goes on in of­fices that maybe doesn’t even re­al­ly mat­ter in the end, all the way up to the most pow­er­ful lead­er­ship po­si­tion and gov­ern­ment on earth.
 
 

—emi­ly duchaine

Flom­mist Emi­ly Duchaine lives in the Pa­cif­ic North­west. She likes to drink mead, learn about sharks, and lis­ten to the Talk­ing Heads. She pre­tends to be a pro­fes­sion­al busi­ness­woman most days. Copy­right © 2019 Emi­ly Duchaine. Pic­tured: An­i­mat­ed ver­sion of Orwell’s Napoleon (cropped) from the CIA fund­ed An­i­mal Farm (1954).

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