The Elephant in the Living Room (that no one can shut up about)

The Elephant in the Room (that no one can shut up about).

I’ve been finding it extremely difficult to write recently. This is likely due to a myriad of factors, but I’ve been fixated on one in particular. And that factor is best addressed as a question:

How does an amateur writer (me) engage with lofty concepts like meaning and wisdom in 2017, without each post being a half baked political opinion piece?

You know what I’m talking about, correct? Every single post you read online is political right now. Every single post divisive, mocking, angry, fearful, or lamenting.

And those are some genuinely legitimate emotions and responses. It’s been less than two weeks since the US presidential inauguration, and the actions of one administration dominate the news cycle on both the established media and social media. It is unprecedented. Usually if someone says or posts something that is viewed as ridiculous, or inflammatory or inaccurate it could be easily ignored. But the posts we see daily now (hourly even) are not coming from some dark dank corner of a reddit page (less so now, maybe), but from the highest office of the US.  And nobody seems to be capable of ignoring any of it.

Usually when we mention “the elephant in the living room” we’re talking about something that everyone knows or suspects, but is never addressed. Not here. I’m talking about an actual elephant in a living room. A creature so immense, so loud, and heavy that it obscures everything else. Everyone keeps pointing at it and talking about it.  It’s shitting everywhere, and it moves about the room trumpeting endlessly. It’s getting pretty damn difficult to do any actual living in our living room.

So while the elephant makes a great stand in for Mr. Trump, the elephant is more than just the President. Its the whole train wreck we can’t seem take our eyes off of.

I personally don’t follow Mr. Trump on Twitter. That seems like intentional crazy making. But that doesn’t do much to shelter me from his words and actions (and let’s be honest, our words are our actions, especially when we have great power). And truthfully, I don’t want to shelter myself from the fallout of these actions.

The rollback of the affordable care act, the restriction of money for global aid agencies if they offer abortions as part of family planning, the expedited moving forward on both the Dakota Access and Keystone oil pipelines, the expanding of a greater number of immigrations officers charged with increasing deportations, the building of a 12 to 25 billion dollar wall complete with concentration camps detention facilities, the gagging of government scientists, the quickening of environmental reviews for priority infrastructure and of course, the Muslim ban restriction of individuals from Muslim-majority countries (unless they are not Muslim).

I’ll stop there. I’ll stop partially because I am well out of my depth in looking at US politics. This website was not designed to be a place for political analysis, and frankly there is so much misinformation, it’s best if I don’t add my half baked analysis to the milieu.

Discussion of these orders belongs squarely in the realm of the political, but you’d have to be an absolute granite hearted imbecile to not see the already unfolding implications for women, for Muslims, for those of Mexican descent and for future generations.

In other words, our fellow man, woman and child.

So how do you go about finding the balance? How do you go about the work you feel is important, without being dominated by the current politics, the latest tweet, the newest outrageous soundbite about ‘alternate facts’ or invented massacres?

Well, it turns out this isn’t my problem alone. Turns out a lot of more established writers and corporations are wrestling with this very issue.

Twitter has been the platform of choice for Mr. Trump leading up to his election and inauguration, and shows no sign of stopping now that he has the official POTUS mantle. But Twitter is also a sea of increasingly divisive and polarizing views surrounding Trump and his tweets, and some analysts have seen the trouble that is causing for the company.

Recently an opinion piece at Mashable (an admittedly very left leaning news source) offered this analogy for Twitter in the age of Trump:

I never really thought Twitter had a personality before, but now, I do. Before President Trump, it was like the too-loud, motor-mouthed friend full of news, funny thoughts, and sometimes, unsolicited opinions. You liked the mix and the guy, so you kept him around. Lately, however, he’s been talking faster. Frenetically even. And he seems stuck, like a broken record on one topic. He repeats the name “Trump” over and over again—and seems very, very angry.

He’s so exhausting, you consider dropping him as a friend.

More intentionally centrist news agencies are also dealing with how to approach their job when the commander in chief and his staff offer up such low lying fruit for the 24 hour news cycle and is simultaneously adversarial to the entire industry of journalism.

In an open letter to the staff of the news agency, Reuters, their editor in chief outlined some guidelines for journalists who are suddenly unsure how to cover this new tumultuous administration.

If you haven’t read it already, please click the above link, it’s absolutely worth you time. The TL:DR? Do your job. Do the job you already know how to do.

Steve Adler reminds his staff writers and journalists: “We already know what to do because we do it every day, and we do it all over the world….we must follow the same rules that govern our work anywhere”.

Now the letter has already caught some flack online for comparing the US administration with other administrations/regimes from China, Egypt, Iraq, Thailand, Turkey, the Philippines, Russia, Yemen and Zimbabwe. But I think it’s brilliant. If a technique is true elsewhere in the world (rely on multiple credible sources, not official channels), it’s true everywhere, even at home.

In addition to being a fan of the content of Reuters letter from the Editor in Chief, I also really appreciated the title: Covering Trump the Reuters Way. The letter calls out the company’s true north, it’s the Reuters way, their way, their philosophy in journalism and media. It reminds their staff of who they already are, the ideals they are already living up to.

The open letter also suggests that Trump need not always be the story. Sometimes Trump is the context/ environment, and the story is down a few layers.

Now, I’m no journalist, and this website and blog is no international news agency, but I think this concept is powerful for all of us. Try to separate Trump as the story from Trump as the context. Trump as the story is getting old, and best left to political pundits and psychologists. Trump as context is a bit more versatile and applicable.

For many of us the context or environment has drastically changed. You read the news and what seemed predictable and safe now feels shaky and forboding. You sign onto Facebook or Twitter and the environment is charged and in turmoil. The context has changed, but your values, whatever you are about at your core, has not. Whatever it is you did with intention and thought and action before, you continue to do now.

Just after the immigration ban was announced on January 27th, there were a lot of posts and photos praising groups of lawyers setting up emergency command centers sitting all around airports across the US. There are photos of lawyers in groups sitting on the ground in suits, in airport meeting rooms and fast food restaurants working frantically. Those photos are inspiring, and these lawyers were doing amazing and desperately needed work. But I’m guessing it wasn’t their first time practicing law. I’m also guessing they knew a little about immigration law on January the 26th. The executive order changed the context and environment of their work, but those lawyers were about that work, and committed to the ideals of justice and representation long before then.

I know firsthand how oppressive this news cycle can feel over the last two weeks (and the months leading up to that). I’ve found it hard to not fixate on the relentless nature of the current political upheaval. I’ve found myself thinking about, dwelling on it while at the hospital working, when I’m at home playing with my kids, talking with my wife. I’ve repeatedly found what I want to write about frustratingly obscured by the latest headline. It can make you feel helpless.

But you’re not helpless. You’ve been adjusting to new contexts and environments your entire life. Figure out how to adjust, figure out how to live your values in a new and strange environment. Help show others how to do the same.

So there’s an elephant in our living room. In your living room too. That totally sucks, and I wish it wasn’t true, but it is. We’ll watch the elephant, because it’s dangerous to take our eyes off such a large beast. We might have to clean up after it, move around it, and if ever remotely possible, support those who might be able to get it out of the house. But in the meantime it’s still my living room.

And I still plan to live in it.