If you want life outside of hatred, get away from political cesspool

By David McElroy · January 30, 2018

I keep hearing that certain Democratic members of Congress are boycotting Donald Trump’s State of the Union speech tonight, but they’re way behind me. I’ve been boycotting all presidential speeches for a couple of decades now — no matter who’s president.

I strongly recommend you turn your television off tonight and do something that matters. Find something productive to do. Call someone you love and connect with him or her. Go right on with your life as though the spectacle of hatred in Washington, D.C., doesn’t exist.

Nothing that’s said there will matter. None of the praise or vitriol in the social media commentary will help you. There is absolutely nothing you can do about the insane partisan fighting there.

So I urge you to get on with your life and remind yourself what it’s like to live outside of that bubble of political hatred.

When I was younger, I never missed any presidential speech. As a child, I thought there was nobody more important than a U.S. president. I thought every informed person should watch and have opinions about what was said. I carried that notion with me into my early adult life.

And then I realized how much time and mental energy I was wasting. Slowly — over a long period of time — I broke myself of this insane habit of paying attention to these monsters. I’m a lot more peaceful and happy since I ignore them today. If you could ever understand how little effect you can have on them, I suspect you would find the same to be true for yourself.

We are brainwashed by our education system to believe responsible people express their views and change their world through electoral politics. This is a lie. The partisan political system is about nothing more than determining which violent mob will seize enough power to force its will on everybody.

You have a natural right to live your life as you please. You have a natural right to keep the money you earn and to spend it as you please. The more you get sucked in to the partisan political system, the more you believe the lie that one side or the other has a moral right to impose its will on you — to make up rules for you to follow and to spend your money as they see fit.

Partisan politics is based on hatred. You might not realize it, but most people hate their political enemies far more than they admire the people they claim to love and support. Most people vote and pursue political activity to avoid the people they hate having power over them.

Isn’t it time to accept that this is a morally bankrupt idea?

Until enough people reject the politicians, they’re going to keep forcing their will on us. It is immoral to be part of that system — in any way — in the meantime.

You can’t stop them from doing what they’re going to do. You can’t make a difference in whether they steal from you or not. Any time you invest in their political cesspool is time you are taking away from the people you love and from the life you claim to care about.

Ignore Donald Trump’s speech tonight. Ignore what pundits say about it. Spend your time focusing on things that matter to you. And if you honestly think the political system matters to you, I strongly suggest you rethink your priorities.

Ignore Trump — and ignore the next president and the one after him. And the one after him.

Invest your time and energy in people and places where you can have a positive impact. Choose to love those who need and deserve your love instead of wasting your emotional energy on political hatred. You will be a happier and healthier person.

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Six years ago this evening, a scared young dog came to live with me. She was so terrified on the ride to my house that she pooped in the back seat of the car. She had originally lived her life on a chain as a puppy. Then she lived among far too many other animals in a cramped apartment, where she was pushed around by bigger dogs. I was told she would always be a “special needs dog” and would probably never be much more than the scared girl she was then. But with a lot of love and patience, a very different dog emerged in the coming months. Now that she’s been with me for six years, it’s hard to imagine her any way other than she is today — as the World’s Happiest Dog®. One day, she’s going to tell her own story on her own podcast. You’ll subscribe when she gets started, won’t you? This loving girl deserves it.

It was obvious to me in the late 1990s that western society is heading toward social and economic collapse. When I told other people back then, most thought I was crazy, because they saw their society as stable and booming. But more and more people have slowly been coming to the same conclusion. And now, even the wealthy and powerful seem concerned. A new report from the World Economic Forum says the erosion of “social cohesion” is what we should fear right now. (Full report here.) Although I disagree with a lot of political spin that these elites put on the dangers ahead, I feel certain that we are headed toward social collapse. And most people will not prepare for it. The book that started me down the road of thinking about this came out in 1993. I thought its reasoning was impeccable, but that the time frame would be longer than the book expected. I still find that book a useful foundation for thinking about the issue — “The Great Reckoning,” by James Dale Davidson and Lord William Rees-Mogg — even though its predictions are out of date. Dark days are coming. Smart people are going to have a plan to get out of the way of what’s coming. Will you?

Since I posted my audio discussion a couple of nights ago about some recent realizations I’ve had about myself, several people have asked for more about what I quoted from Jordan Peterson. The Canadian psychologist is controversial to some — and I don’t always agree with him — but I’ve found his lectures about art and its relation to psychological archetypes very useful. You can find him here talking about art being more about process than just result, which contains the material I quoted. Here’s another video from a lecture in which he discusses how artists mediate for the rest of society between the known and the unknown. And here’s another portion of a lecture at an art exhibition in which he talks about the necessity of artists for society. And if you missed my audio from two nights ago, here’s a link to my discussion about some things I’ve learned about myself and some things I need to change about myself as a result.

I just realized it was four years ago today when I came uncomfortably close to dying. I don’t remember how blunt I was publicly about this at the time, but the surgeon who operated on me made it clear afterward that I had been much worse than he had thought. My gallbladder was inflamed and I had been in tremendous pain, but what the doctors didn’t know until they started is that the organ was close to rupturing. Surgery that was supposed to take half an hour took two or three hours, because my gallbladder was so diseased — the surgeon’s word — was falling apart as he tried to remove it. I had gone to the emergency room at St. Vincent’s Hospital (the same one where I was born) and was kept for emergency surgery the next morning. I should have been home that night, but I had to stay in the hospital three days instead. The weird thing is that I never really believed I could have died. Maybe it was just denial, but I didn’t feel as though it was my time. I thought I still had a lot of life left to live. Four years later, I’m grateful to be alive, but I feel as though my life is still on pause. It’s been a blur. I still feel as though I’m waiting for “the rest of my life” to start.

Is “The Nightmare Before Christmas” really a Christmas movie or a Halloween movie? It’s both, making it a delightful mashup of themes and images from two very different holidays. Although Danny Elfman’s score was nominated for several different awards, Elfman wasn’t a typical composer for film scores. Up until he started working on films with Tim Burton, Elfman had been a rock-and-roll artist best known as the leader of the new wave band Oingo Boingo in the 1980s. Just this week, I heard an interview on the podcast Song Exploder on which Elfman explains how he came to write the music for the movie, including why he approached the music for the film very differently than he had approached writing rock music. I enjoyed the 20-minute interview and if you happen to love the film, this Christmas would be the perfect time to learn more about how the score came to be. Tap or click below to listen. Listen here.

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