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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