Bear with me on this if you think I’m just repeating what I wrote on 6/29/2019 in an essay called “The Presence of the Present vs. the Presence of the Past.” * In that essay centered on examples drawn from weather events, I noted that for those lost in nostalgic revery, wrathful grudges, and pining regret, their personal past is, if not more important, equally important as the present. In the essay I ask, “Which is worse? A present discomfort that is temporary or a past discomfort that is permanent?” The context for the statement lies in how we think of discomfort caused by weather. But the question is also relevant in the context of political history and media-driven sensationalism, seemingly an unrelated phenomenon, but bear with me, as I pleaded above.
Remembering without Feeling vs. with Feeling
Surely, you have experienced the discomfort of some kind of foul weather: Heat waves, cold spells, driving winds carrying dust or rain, high humidity, or heavy snow. And surely, you can’t feel what you felt during those weather events. Their past actuality has, I would guess, no effect on your present emotions or comfort. Weather phenomena come and go daily, but you do hold some events in memory, that is, in memory dissociated from what you felt “back then.” Of course, there could be exceptions in which memory and feeling intertwine, such as a snowstorm during which you suffered a wreck or lost someone in an accident on slippery roads or a tornado that wreaked havoc on your community. But generally, old weather is unfelt weather. You remember it, but you don’t “feel” in the memory.
The Persistence of What Didn’t Happen: False Memories or Feeling without Remembering
Like many, I have a few personal pet peeves. One is the saying, “We were almost in that accident.” It’s bothersome to me because the speaker wasn’t in the accident. Nothing happened. But some make much of what wasn’t. Keep that in mind.
I ended that 2019 essay on memory, weather, grudges, nostalgia, and regret with this sentence: “For many, the presence of the past can be worse than the presence of the present.” And here I would like to add a corollary in the context of the recent No Kings Day protests and in particular a video of a 74-year-old woman crying because of her fears, undefined fears, unsupported fears, that something bad will happen to her, again something undefined… ** In light of the protests and her trembling, which you can see on YouTube, I thought to repost a blog I wrote in 2019 on weather, not because of my comments on weather, but rather because of my concluding sentence.
The Past When Trump Personally Exiled Old Women
How’s that heading grab you?
Of course, if you have any sense or historical knowledge, you’d say, “That’s not true. Trump never exiled old American women, never threw innocent Americans in jail. In fact, it was the Left that drummed up false claims of Russian Collusion, arrested Trump, crashed Mar a Lago with armed agents with permission to shoot to kill in a raid on the house guarded by Secret Service, and prosecuted Trump in a show trial for non-crimes all based on sheer hatred of Trump. And in his four-year first term, he did nothing that could be logically shown to have subverted the Constitution.
But the Press just can’t let their TDS go. And they have politicians on their side to pervert the truth about “peaceful protestors” only reacting to violent government agents.
I’m reminded of Miami in 1980. While doing research during a sabbatical, I had moved my family to Miami, where I woke each morning to the Miami Herald. After reading issues over a period of months, I told my family, the editors seem to want to sow discord in the community. And then in late spring, that discord manifested itself in riots. It seems that reporters love discord, and that love is especially endemic in today’s liberal media, as reporters report live with fires raging in the background as they say “peaceful protest, peaceful protestors.” Or they echo “No one would be violent if the Feds weren’t here.”
Back to that tearful woman. I’m not sure how one goes 74 years without running into the truth that refutes the liberal narratives. But this woman appears to have escaped reality and has allowed the hysteric TDSers to plague her hippocampus with false memories. She cries in the interview that she is just so scared and that she doesn’t know how people could have voted for “that man.” Ah! The bubble of liberal California envelopes many, and the paid protestors have easily convinced others to join in destruction, looting, and attacking police and just as easily convinced that woman that she’s in imminent danger. Such is the power of the Press and false memories.
Actually, I don’t feel sorry for the woman whose crying went viral, and I have—sorry for the inhumanity here—no empathy for those who cry, “I was almost in that accident.” Nor do I have any empathy for a liberal relative of mine who said twenty years ago she was very worried about global warming. Twenty years on, what has changed in the atmosphere that cannot be attributed to natural phenomena, cycles, manipulated data, and urbanization tied to deforestation? Twenty years on, she still lives as she lived before she became concerned about climate. No changes in affluent lifestyle! I suppose she will wait for climatologist Greta Thunberg to save the planet after she is done saving Palestinians.
You know The Eagles song, “Get over it”? What didn’t happen, didn’t happen. Four previous years of a Trump term didn’t jeopardize the Constitution as four years of a Biden term did with violations of the Fourteenth Amendment, refusals to enforce laws as in the case of those who tried to intimidate and threaten Supreme Court Justices, armed arrests of Pro-lifers, the government sponsored shutdown of the free speech of conservatives, or FBI agents asked to spy on Catholics who attended Latin Masses. Where was the 74-yr-old when parents were called domestic terrorists because they questioned school boards? Where was she when teenage girls were forced to change clothes with teenage boys or to share bathrooms with them? Come on, 74-year-old lady, tell me you would feel more threatened by whatever caused your public crying than by having a man next to you in the women’s restroom.
The presence of false and selective memories is a plague on the mind. The past that didn’t happen is not a threat to the present. Get over it, lady; and while you are out there crying about Trump, turn around to see the people throwing rocks and fireworks at police, National Guardsmen, and Marines. Start living in the present, the actual present, not a false past projected into the present.
*https://thisisnotyourpracticelife.com/blog/the-presence-of-the-present-vs-the-presence-of-the-past
**See YouTube under the title “74-Year-Old Woman Breaks Down in Tears at “No Kings” Protest #NoKingsDay”
Remembering without Feeling vs. with Feeling
Surely, you have experienced the discomfort of some kind of foul weather: Heat waves, cold spells, driving winds carrying dust or rain, high humidity, or heavy snow. And surely, you can’t feel what you felt during those weather events. Their past actuality has, I would guess, no effect on your present emotions or comfort. Weather phenomena come and go daily, but you do hold some events in memory, that is, in memory dissociated from what you felt “back then.” Of course, there could be exceptions in which memory and feeling intertwine, such as a snowstorm during which you suffered a wreck or lost someone in an accident on slippery roads or a tornado that wreaked havoc on your community. But generally, old weather is unfelt weather. You remember it, but you don’t “feel” in the memory.
The Persistence of What Didn’t Happen: False Memories or Feeling without Remembering
Like many, I have a few personal pet peeves. One is the saying, “We were almost in that accident.” It’s bothersome to me because the speaker wasn’t in the accident. Nothing happened. But some make much of what wasn’t. Keep that in mind.
I ended that 2019 essay on memory, weather, grudges, nostalgia, and regret with this sentence: “For many, the presence of the past can be worse than the presence of the present.” And here I would like to add a corollary in the context of the recent No Kings Day protests and in particular a video of a 74-year-old woman crying because of her fears, undefined fears, unsupported fears, that something bad will happen to her, again something undefined… ** In light of the protests and her trembling, which you can see on YouTube, I thought to repost a blog I wrote in 2019 on weather, not because of my comments on weather, but rather because of my concluding sentence.
The Past When Trump Personally Exiled Old Women
How’s that heading grab you?
Of course, if you have any sense or historical knowledge, you’d say, “That’s not true. Trump never exiled old American women, never threw innocent Americans in jail. In fact, it was the Left that drummed up false claims of Russian Collusion, arrested Trump, crashed Mar a Lago with armed agents with permission to shoot to kill in a raid on the house guarded by Secret Service, and prosecuted Trump in a show trial for non-crimes all based on sheer hatred of Trump. And in his four-year first term, he did nothing that could be logically shown to have subverted the Constitution.
But the Press just can’t let their TDS go. And they have politicians on their side to pervert the truth about “peaceful protestors” only reacting to violent government agents.
I’m reminded of Miami in 1980. While doing research during a sabbatical, I had moved my family to Miami, where I woke each morning to the Miami Herald. After reading issues over a period of months, I told my family, the editors seem to want to sow discord in the community. And then in late spring, that discord manifested itself in riots. It seems that reporters love discord, and that love is especially endemic in today’s liberal media, as reporters report live with fires raging in the background as they say “peaceful protest, peaceful protestors.” Or they echo “No one would be violent if the Feds weren’t here.”
Back to that tearful woman. I’m not sure how one goes 74 years without running into the truth that refutes the liberal narratives. But this woman appears to have escaped reality and has allowed the hysteric TDSers to plague her hippocampus with false memories. She cries in the interview that she is just so scared and that she doesn’t know how people could have voted for “that man.” Ah! The bubble of liberal California envelopes many, and the paid protestors have easily convinced others to join in destruction, looting, and attacking police and just as easily convinced that woman that she’s in imminent danger. Such is the power of the Press and false memories.
Actually, I don’t feel sorry for the woman whose crying went viral, and I have—sorry for the inhumanity here—no empathy for those who cry, “I was almost in that accident.” Nor do I have any empathy for a liberal relative of mine who said twenty years ago she was very worried about global warming. Twenty years on, what has changed in the atmosphere that cannot be attributed to natural phenomena, cycles, manipulated data, and urbanization tied to deforestation? Twenty years on, she still lives as she lived before she became concerned about climate. No changes in affluent lifestyle! I suppose she will wait for climatologist Greta Thunberg to save the planet after she is done saving Palestinians.
You know The Eagles song, “Get over it”? What didn’t happen, didn’t happen. Four previous years of a Trump term didn’t jeopardize the Constitution as four years of a Biden term did with violations of the Fourteenth Amendment, refusals to enforce laws as in the case of those who tried to intimidate and threaten Supreme Court Justices, armed arrests of Pro-lifers, the government sponsored shutdown of the free speech of conservatives, or FBI agents asked to spy on Catholics who attended Latin Masses. Where was the 74-yr-old when parents were called domestic terrorists because they questioned school boards? Where was she when teenage girls were forced to change clothes with teenage boys or to share bathrooms with them? Come on, 74-year-old lady, tell me you would feel more threatened by whatever caused your public crying than by having a man next to you in the women’s restroom.
The presence of false and selective memories is a plague on the mind. The past that didn’t happen is not a threat to the present. Get over it, lady; and while you are out there crying about Trump, turn around to see the people throwing rocks and fireworks at police, National Guardsmen, and Marines. Start living in the present, the actual present, not a false past projected into the present.
*https://thisisnotyourpracticelife.com/blog/the-presence-of-the-present-vs-the-presence-of-the-past
**See YouTube under the title “74-Year-Old Woman Breaks Down in Tears at “No Kings” Protest #NoKingsDay”
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