divisiveness | Sarah Reichert Author

Good Thursday to you, writers and readers. Apologies for missing last week’s blog. I could leave it at that. I could lie and say I was too busy. I could pad the truth and say I was feeling a ‘bit down’. But part of the problem with mental health awareness in this country is that we too often lie or lie by omission about it.

Last week I didn’t post a blog because I was recovering from an anxiety attack and suffering a depressive episode.

Wednesday, I couldn’t hold a solid thought in my head. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t predict when or how the next overwhelming wave of worry and tears would hit me. By Thursday, I felt like I had the emotional hangover of the century. The kind that leaves you with a raging headache. The kind that leaves you feeling empty and raw. Like you couldn’t bear to be touched, or spoken to, or even think of stringing together two sentences.

My anxiety was at a peak when I tried to voice my concerns and fears about the current state of our world. Some friends stepped all over themselves to shout out unsolicited advice, barrage me with guilt for not having hope and a sunny disposition. Tsk-ing their tongues at me for not being happy.

“Just smile” and “We’re all in this together” and all that bullshit.

If I had said I had cancer no one would tell me to take an Advil to cure it. No one would say I needed to re-examine my perspective to stop it’s growth. Yet, there it was, my virtual conclave shouting back all the answers I never asked for, simply because it helped assuage their own consciences. So that they’d feel as if they’d done their part to ‘help’ a friend in need.

And it got me thinking. About social media. About our current world. About what we do in our lives these days, as people, but also as artists, to find validation. See, I wasn’t looking for validation or rainbows or sunshine. I was looking for someone who was really listening, who was overthinking as deeply as I was. Who wanted more than a sound byte or click bait. Someone looking for a real conversation about our current addiction to opinions like ours. To admit that we’ve become so divisive that people are threatening others with guns, and running others over with cars, and all manner of horrible things because our individual perceptions of the ‘truth’ have been spoon fed to us by opposing sides in a virtual (read: NOT REAL) buffet of horseshit.

I’m not saying the truth doesn’t exist. I’m saying if you really want it, you have to make a concerted effort to seek it out. Know the perils of conspiracy theories and understand how to spot them, understand why they work on the delicate human psyche. Know that if something reads as degrading or judgmental of one side or the other, that it’s probably more opinion than fact and you need to get to the basic source of that pile of horseshit, not just take it at face value.

Where was I?

Validation.

Yep. So we get on the FaceBook and the Twitters and we read the sites and clips that these super-smart algorithms have determined make us salivate the most, and they keep feeding us the sugary Captain Crunch of news until we’re so assured of our ‘rightness’ that anyone not complying with our view is a contagious carrier of the ‘wrongness’. Then its only a matter of time before someone is whipped up into a frenzy and runs their car through a crowd of peaceful protesters or shoots someone with a MAGA hat, or shuts themselves into an oval-shaped office, a la totalitarian coup style, crying like a toddler about voter fraud.

Sounds like we’re ALL just a bunch of sheep. But why?

Well, darlin’, these systems are smart as fuck. These systems are designed to be addictive. They’re designed to validate our existence, our beliefs, our lives and choices. My God that like button is a sweet hit of virtual cocaine. The ‘heart’ and ‘care’ emojis? Ecstasy, baby. Someone out there LOVES you.

What in God’s name does it have to do with the writers and artists among us?

Well, as you know I’d left all that bullshit for awhile and was actually more calm and centered for it. I only recently returned because I wanted to have a space for my author platform. Because, and this is the professional side of this post, you HAVE TO have an online presence to write. Or at least that’s what we’re told. You HAVE TO build up an audience. You HAVE TO market yourself. Sell yourself. Get a following, if you ever hope to ‘make it’ as a writer. This is a new world. If you can’t roll with the changes, you’re destined to be left behind. You’ll never sell any books the old way, idiot!

What do you want to do? Just write?

Just write.

Just write?

Because you love it. Because you…never…started writing for the profit…you just liked to write….

Wait…you liked to write?

See it’s all a big system. We spend so much of our energy, our time, our lives, our hearts, trying to forge these connections in a world that–by all intents and purposes, DOESN’T REALLY EXIST. We base our worth on likes. On followers. On the number of hits our website gets. And then wonder why we feel so empty and disconnected and never quite enough.

I’m off social media; for reals. You may still see a profile pic pop up across the Internet-o-sphere, but you won’t find my content behind it. My website contract ends in February. I’m not sure I’ll renew it. I started my platform because I was told I had to, in order to reach more readers.

Do I want people to read my work? Sure, if they enjoy it…if it feeds their soul and serves their happiness, absolutely.

Do I want to expose too-big-for-its-own-good heart and threaten my well being to do that? No. Not anymore. I want to write. My time is finite. I will not be around forever. When I’m gone, my books, my poetry, my writing, will all remain. My Facebook account will be deactivated. I will stop being worthwhile to their algorithm when I’m dead. But what I write, what I put on paper will carry on (if anyone still reads books by then).

I urge you to examine your life. Examine your addictions. Do you control the content of your life, or is it being controlled for you? Is that content controlling how you live your life? What you believe?

Blog posts here will continue until February. I’ll be re-running old favorites as well as interjecting some poetry here and there. I already paid for the year, I might as well use it to share the things I love.

Take care. Really…I mean that. Take care of yourself. Your real-life, human self. You are one of one. You’re more than just 1’s and 0’s in a giant marketing scheme. Go be a real-life human. Do real-life human things. Walk outside, go for a run, read a book, write something, nap, work, make love, eat amazing food–and don’t post a goddamn thing about it to anyone else. I assure you, it still happens even if your social media sites don’t hear about it.

Happy living.

We live in a world fueled by instantaneous information and misinformation. The overtaking of the Internet as our ‘news source’, social media, online anonymity, and the dangers of segregation through groupthink mentality have created a strange, and quick moving divisiveness that’s drawing hard lines through and around our community.

I live in Fort Collins, home of Colorado State University (not a CSU alumni myself), and the newest controversy involving a group of white students involved in a racially charged incident. Four of CSU’s students donned charcoal face masks and referenced Black Panther in a photo now widely dispersed on the internet.

What’s the big deal, right? Kids are young and dumb. They do stupid shit all the time.

Yeah…that may be true, we all do stupid shit. ESPECIALLY in college. But this isn’t throwing a chicken into a bar or lighting fireworks out of a car window.

This is racism. And no racism is done ‘in good fun’.

Living in today’s world with access to limitless information means that we have a responsibility to understand where we’ve gone wrong as a country and why we are always responsible for our actions, specifically how we treat our fellow human beings.

Being young is no longer a viable excuse for this kind of behavior. Theirs is the generation that has seen the thick disease of racism, white nationalism, and ethnocentrism bubble up to the surface. They should understand it better than any of us…maybe they do, and perhaps that’s what’s most disturbing about this incident.

The only person to come forward said it all happened so fast, that she didn’t even have time to question if making the gesture from Black Panther was right or wrong.

I call bullshit.

If you’re ‘clever’ enough to think of the reference while your white face is covered in black clay you’re clever enough to understand what it means to American culture and the disturbing history we share.

And if those students haven’t ever learned this history then here’s a quick recap for any of you out there who aren’t sure what the big deal is.

In the 1850’s black face (a white person painting their face in shoe polish, coal dust, etc) began as a way to portray African American people on stage for the entertainment of Antebellum era Southerners still miffed that much of their free labor had been emancipated. Actors played black characters in ways that perpetuated inaccurate stereotypes of them as being lazy, ignorant, superstitious, hypersexual, criminal and cowardly.

It wasn’t right then. It certainly isn’t now.

Now listen…I am human. You are too. We screw up.

Once, I was driving a friend home from a race and belted out the lyrics to a DMX song (because I love post-race DMX) and she stared at me in horror before I realized the word I’d sang along with. I still feel bad about it to this day…so I’m not sitting here on any sort of high horse.

But what I can say is this, when we make a mistake we admit it, we understand it and we OWN it. Meaning that we don’t try to turn the situation around to how our wrong behavior has “victimized us”.

I read through the young woman’s apology (side note and something we should all be aware of when looking at the whole picture: the female from the photo, Leana Kaplan had her apology printed in The Coloradoan even though they don’t accept outside articles or personal letters. Turns out, her father, Les Kaplan, owns the building that the newspaper resides in. Can you say “conflict of interest”, kiddies?) Her apology turned from seemingly genuine regret to her own hardships resulting from the incident. She even went on counter attack saying it was all a political ploy by a prominent educator, Tay Anderson, who is running for the Denver School Board.

I have to call bullshit again. You are responsible for how you behaved, you can’t be mad that people are raising awareness of the racial inequality which brought about such behavior. It’s not all about you, princess.

Public shaming is completely acceptable when you’ve been a total douche about something.

CSU is facing its own backlash and I say it’s about time. The predominantly white upper-class college isn’t a stranger to this kind of behavior from it’s students. In the past two years there have been a string of racist and anti-semitic crimes, including a noose hung in a resident hall targeting a Black resident assistant, graffiti proclaiming “Fu%& Jews”, and even CSU security calling the police on two Native American students who were on a tour of the college. Despite all of these hate crimes, CSU and its board of directors have done little to combat the behaviors that make its minority students feel threatened, anxious and segregated.

Speaking of threats, and to return to a more balanced overview, Miss Kaplan has had death threats (over 50 she claims) due to this incident, and has lost her job, causing ‘financial hardship’.

While there’s a lot to be said for the shady nature of white privilege in this story here is where I want to end this discussion with:

Firstly, if your dad owns buildings that house newspapers, I’m inclined to think that you don’t have nearly the ‘financial hardships’ that other disadvantaged students are facing.

Secondly, no matter how stupid or blindly privileged you are, you are still a human being and no one should be threatening your life.

This is a strange and hard time to live. Especially for those of us with hearts in the right places and genuine care and concern for all the people we share this world with. I feel like a momma to the expanse of the world sometimes, holding my hands out to each child, trying to keep them from hurting one another.

Stop.

Stop thinking its funny and no big deal to make fun of a history that destroys lives, ruined families and entire cultures, and ripped our country in half. Be a better person, goddamnit, and understand that your actions have the power to either perpetuate hate and divisiveness or love and compassion.

Stop.

Stop threatening to take someone’s life for making a mistake. I understand that you worry that by offering forgiveness and a second chance you think they won’t learn…that they will just keep on doing hurtful things. But taking someone’s life makes you no better a person. Causing them fear and anxiety, while seemingly just punishment, is the low road to take.

This post’s exhausted me. I hope you all can take one thing away from it: That you are responsible for your behavior and the consequences that it brings. You are responsible for the world you create through your actions and words…so Be Better.