[1103] Good Dog

Something I have a very strong reactionary sensibility towards is "injustice." Before I might ever say it like that, I've written plenty of times about how much I hated, and still do, to be condescended towards. I was made to be very aware and very sensitive to power imbalances with my unstable and abusive mother growing up. She would make a game out of demonstrating what she could do to me if she thought I was deviating from what she expected. To speak of her "reasoning" behind that behavior is to totally misunderstand how people work. My job feels like it then becomes resolving my understanding with people with my overwhelming desire for justice or retribution.

To be sure, we're all getting fucked in big and small ways constantly. We're at the mercy of policy decisions a fleetingly small group of often greedy or ignorant actors make on our behalf. We're at the mercy of people's general negligence and motivated blindness. We're expected to work our lives away. We're expected to conform to norms around what's "appropriate," or "usual" in spite and mockery of what makes sense. Whether you're talking daylight savings time or the rules of the parent who will beat you because you forgot something, there's a set of things, and a way to frame things, that make the best course of action "obvious." Yet, so little feels that way, and you're often punished for even speaking to what's fucked up.

One of the more recent indefinite blood-feuds I've developed is with DCS. There is a right and wrong way to treat people involved with the system or when you need to investigate them. I don't care where the order comes from, if you're directed to lie, threaten, or harrass, you're not "just doing your job" or "doing as you're told," you're threatening the fabric of trust as it pertains to civil society. Somewhere, you're acting like a crazy cop who feels like they can speed everywhere with their lights on and point their gun at anything that looks at them sideways. You need to be watched, called out, and corrected or fired, every single time.

I don't know if I see enough or can reflexively think about a series of demonstrated responsible decisions and accountability. Now, any decent suburb might refute that sensibility on its face. Everyone there is paying the bills, keeping the lawn mowed, raising their family, or stacking and maintaining middle-to-upper income toys over time. If you zero in on the household in the neighborhood I grew up in, I'm getting terrorized. My smart "professional" mother deeply influenced my desire for an equally robust vocabulary as she did to flinch any time someone's arm moved around me; a habit I wouldn't break until college. Certainly, she had a story of her responsible decision making and accountability.

There's something deeper one must tap into or aspire towards. It's mostly discussed as a form of religious or spiritual sensibility. If everything about your environment is training, informing, or molding you to essentially "be a good Nazi," what is it, in your heart of hearts or conscience, that recoils when it's time to tell your superior there are Jews hiding in the attic? We've made this way more complicated than it needs to be, utilizing culture-specific or religious-indoctrination excuses. We eagerly defend our "reasoning." The justifications have famous names and extremely convoluted technical philosophical concepts. I would argue, simply asking yourself, "Would I want to be sent to my death over how and where I was born?" cleans up decades of motivated denial and pageantry.

I ask myself questions like that as it pertains to my behavior. Would I want to be forgiven, understood, or talked to? Almost always. Can I see how that thing or that behavior is something I might do? Often, but honestly less so the more I wrote and attempted to bring my blind spots into the light. I still have certain catastrophic impulses and sensibilities, but persisting in them for "too long" or to the point where I've lost all sense as to why I'm bothering I'm lucky to not really suffer. There are a fuck ton of things I don't do, haven't done, or can't see myself sincerely doing over a long period of time to anyone I regard as a friend or family member. So when one of them does that shit, or does a series of those shits, it's like, okay, I need to redefine my boundaries and not get lost in some abusive story that justifies and excuses the bad behavior.

I've been watching Ms. Pat Settles It. So many extremely dumb people and "characters" enter her fake courtroom to lay their family issues on the table. An idea that comes up in several episodes is that people will only treat you as you let them. In what feels like direct contrast to that idea, Ms. Pat and her panel will also say things like, "That's your mother," or "You only get one sibling, family, etc." Occasionally, she'll award money to the entitled mother who's not-precisely stealing, but certainly misappropriating given funds. The reasoning she offers is rarely consistent with why she'll deny someone else's claim who shows up with the same attitude and reasoning as the momma about what a friend or family member owes them. It's a fake reality show cheaply put together for some laughs. It's also a snapshot of how we go about pretending to reason and hold ourselves accountable, made more compelling by turning it into a fun and laugh-worthy game. Like, I laughed, and I love Ms. Pat.

I hope the side-step tendency is starting to come about. My mom could "play the game" like anyone who shows up to a televised "reality" show. Anyone who puts on a uniform and adopts a certain attitude and expectation to do the heavy lifting of their reasoning dances past the real questions and real work. You might pass the test, but you're not accountable. It's doctors that prescribed our modern drug-addicted environment. It's major, perfectly informed, companies that have steered us towards environmental catastrophe. It's corrupted political figures who stick to party lines and financial allegiances as you develop a coping complex that internalizes and teaches the values of maintaining an oppressed state.

This is why free speech is so important. That's, most often, all you have. So, if what you're saying is just an iteration of what "they" want you to be saying, you know you're not free. You're not free to even begin the project and work of responsibility and accountability. If you can't even access the words or the feelings that speak to what you're actually mad or sad about, you are playing someone else's game. If you're unable or unwilling to speak, there's your first clue about the true nature of your problem. If upon speaking you find yourself just repeating the same mantras, hatreds, or prejudices, there's your next clue. If you're incapable of pairing those hate and ignorance-based words with counter-narratives, fixes, or creative and comprehensive contextualizing, the third clue pops into view.

To be sure, someone stuck in this place can't really hear or see what I just said. That's more for those who wish to do better or wish to save themselves time when they recognize what someone they're engaging with is doing. I take it a step further and claim 9 out of 10 people, in every realm, at every income level, is doing more by way of staying stuck and game playing than otherwise. I look at my own family and see the anchors that were my grandparents and became my dad and stepmom holding the remote family coherence idea together. I look at elected officials who, perhaps moreso at the local level, cut through the noise and speak to the practical for-all-to-see details that get things done or not. Sure, we're all implicated and all to blame, but someone's holding the keys, money, or the bill hostage.

Ms. Pat's show made me think about what my case would look like or what I think she'd tell me. "You been friends for 25 years? Why now throw away a relationship? There's something deeper here isn't there?" Like, yeah. I'm not going to entangle myself with one more person who will consistently demonstrate to me just how far I'll let someone take advantage of me. I don't need to feel rage or an obsessive-compulsive itch for retribution like I might for the players at DCS or like I did as a kid when I got fucked. I do need to protect what it means to be accountable and responsible so I don't let the story and performance do the work he's proven unwilling or unable to do for years. I'm not going to bless that and play along.

My good faith effort to get the house flipped and trust in the payday worked out against me. My tempered advice and caution regarding enabling and rewarding the kid resulted in my life getting put in danger. My naive assumption that I would have any real amount of help or time spent in service to the things I've tried to create or do was refuted time and time again. Even now, he sends me a link to a grant to fill out, pretending that's the same thing as doing something for me or getting money donated. He's got a powerful delusion and story about his rich friends and political circles. Where's the actual money? I don't need Ms. Pat to order him to pay it, I need people in my life who understand what they've gotten and I'm always prepared to give to my real friends and family is invaluable. If you forget how to figure that out, start with $20K, and I'll reopen the discussion after I direct you to my 3 clues stated above.

I hate, very deeply, when people who don't have the power or the tools, or when it's an animal, and it's getting taken advantage of, beaten, starved, or bankrupted. I've met hundreds of incredibly hard-working, sincere, and worthwhile people at the mercy of this terrible-stories playground. I get particularly incensed when those who can more consistently do better, give up. I get particularly pissed when you arrive, or we do so together, at the "obvious" place your decision should land, and you side-step.

I think "the world" looks the way it does because 1 in 10 people aren't reflexively side-stepping. I think we fluidly find some familiar story of our value, self-worth, or obligation and want to pick-and-choose moments of "realness" that validate the version of ourselves we prefer. That's how people like my mom can throw their decision to have children in those children's faces and Ms. Pat can feel no contradiction in justifying a mother's entitlement while repudiating someone else's. "You're fed and the bills are paid!" Okay, but you're fat, sad, angry, causing us and everyone you profess to care about emotional and financial pain, indefinitely, and even speaking about that violates your perverted sense of power and justice and makes you feel entitled to retribution.

I don't want to punish. I want to help enable people to better self-correct. It's taken me years to get to whatever level you wish to call this in "refined" of my ideas and process. I don't have to spend any more of my life yelling to know I don't want to and can choose not to. I don't have secret guilt or unaired doubts that keep be quietly milking a relationship or excusing my behavior. My friend just donated $10,000 to my nonprofit. You know what I'm going to do if I, for some fantastical series of reasons, can't build the case loads, find other sources of funding, or explain how the money can be responsibly used? Give it back.

I think she understands the work I've done and am trying to do. I think she's one of the most personally accountable and responsible people I know. I think she knows everything I've done or offered to do for her was based on our friendship over 20 years and not me hand-wringing and plotting and waiting for a chance to play on her sympathies. My other 20+-year friend? That's pretty much the basis of our dynamic, remarking on our capacity to psychopathically manipulate or him manage his stable of white boys. Or we're looking for opportunities to gain power or capitalize on the political and bureaucratic environments he prefers. The story of either his desire to maintain or capacity to achieve along either metric trumped what I thought was understood and shared between us. Like I don't have enough things on my plate, I'm not re-explaining the game to him like he doesn't know.

A big reason this blog felt necessary was how I felt after seeing a reddit post of puppies abandoned and tossed in the back of someone's truck. I initially felt my stomach drop a bit, seeing two of them with either eye infections or what my imagination jumped to as their abusive overseer being right handed. As I read the predictable comments, a few remarked how lucky the puppies were to not have been tossed in the trash or river. I've been a social worker long enough that I can have both the catastrophized reflexive thought and almost immediately imagine a more or less positive series of things you could say about the person who didn't drown or trash the puppies.

The person acted as an analogy for the side-step in search of the 1 in 10. Even the reddit posts acts as a point of side-stepping validation bolstering the story that helps the poster pretend they're not one of the 9 or like whomever left the puppies. "I DIDN'T KILL PUPPIES! LOOK AT ME DOING THE BETTER THING! GIVE ME INTERNET POINTS! DON'T THEY LOOK SAD AND STARVING?" I'm not even trying necessarily to shit on the poster, but this habit is subtle and fluid and everywhere. There's something existentially important staring you in the face right now akin to "take the starving puppies to the shelter" that you are not doing, and not even speaking to first. I'm not going to celebrate you or upvote you or validate you for wiping-your-ass level of obvious shit to do. That's not interesting, or what I mean by accountability or responsibility. Do it for children, and then expect more from yourself and the adults.