Recovering and Returning to Write

A year has passed since the last time I posted in this blog. I apologize for that. I’ve been considering my ability to continue writing, and I don’t just mean for this blog. That internal debate started after the Capitol Riots, because I lost hope. I may have put down my pen forever if I hadn’t learned about Russia’s President Putin holding rallies to spread misinformation about the war in the Ukraine. This is a link to one article about those rallies: https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-kyiv-united-nations-europe-antony-blinken-c3310a12490a0cf2e06f5f389e22e3a6. Having knowledge of them prompted me to write again, because it was so familiar. I’ve witnessed similar rallies in the United States by politicians who seem to enjoy similar grandiose displays. The propaganda spread during rallies in both countries was eerily familiar to me – the targets might be different, but the intent feels very similar. Therefore, I decided to pick up my pen again. In addition, I continue to hear people in my country talk about Civil War and Revolution. The negative implications of the Capitol Riots seem to be ignored. Even worse, some of them express support for the people of the Ukraine, while voicing a willingness to bring the same type of upheaval to their own country. This solidified my decision to pick up my pen again. Most of my writing has a goal of helping people see the social impact of spreading propaganda, especially when done from the perspective of religious organizations. After all, propaganda is usually untrue. Spreading lies in the name of religion bastardizes a social construct that should respect ethical values such as honesty. The divide in our country, whose religious underpinnings were revealed by the Jesus 2020 signs that were hanging during the Capitol Riots, emphasizes the dangers of spreading propaganda. In my last blog post, I shared a video from Frank Schaeffer, whose family was once considered evangelical royalty. In that video, he shared how his father’s book, “Christian Manifesto,” was a call for Christians to take over the government if abortion wasn’t stopped. Based on my experiences in religious environments that worshipped that book, I believe this was a starting point, if not the starting point, of the religious political divide that now bears the name Christian Nationalism. That belief is based on my experiences of members being told how to vote, so the movement’s ultimate political goal could be met. That movement seems to have branched out into splinter groups who believe the propaganda. Some of those groups are not religious in nature, which emphasizes the power of misinformation. I’ve witnessed non-religious people spread the propaganda that condemns their own lifestyles – lifestyles they will lose the right to live, and may even be punished for, if the religious movements succeed in creating a theocracy. I believe the reason propaganda has so much power is that it brings people together through confirmation bias. As one of many possible examples, if a person hates minorities, they may listen to anything that validates that hatred, and reject anything that doesn’t, even though it will ultimately bring harm to them as well. Journalism classes I attended in college emphasized avoiding confirmation bias as the first rule in reporting, fact-checking, or even reading the news. The information or misinformation people are attracted to often reveals the character of a person, so pay attention. I believe political and religious, especially when they're aligned, propaganda can have a goal of creating scapegoats. Wikipedia defines scapegoating as “the practice of singling out a person or group for unmerited blame and consequent negative treatment.” Here is a link to the Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scapegoating#:~:text=Scapegoating%20is%20the%20practice%20of,blame%20and%20consequent%20negative%20treatment. Although the propaganda might continue from people who are unaware of the desired result, I believe the people who initiate the gossip are often projecting their sins, or their group’s sins, onto the scapegoat(s) – get people to look in another direction, and they won’t see what the guilty person is doing. An example of this is when former Vice President Mike Pence was targeted for hanging during the Capitol Riots, because he chose to do the right thing instead of the expected thing. Receiving unmerited blame that leads to negative treatment can happen in varying degrees to anyone who becomes the scapegoat. If this/these movements have the power to divide a country, imagine what they’re doing to personal relationships. The religious organizations that are involved in propaganda spreading are made up of people. The ones who accept the commission of spreading misinformation live in ordinary society and effect everyone around them, especially those they’re closest to such as family, friends, co-workers, etc. Those who are radical in their beliefs may feel threatened by, or even feel hatred toward, people who don’t agree with their confirmation bias – those people can become the scapegoat to the sins of the radicalized. Sometimes being physically unable to support the political and/or religious agenda can cause a person to become the scapegoat. Having physical limitations forced me to admit that I couldn’t receive needed support in the environments I’d been groomed for, so I found my way to supportive environments. That experience greatly increased my compassion, which led me to single-handedly carry the weight of a 24/7/365 family caregiver for several declining elders who needed support. During the year I’ve been absent from writing this blog, I’ve also helped two families who are family scapegoats with chronically ill children, because I realized it was unlikely anyone else was going to give them as much support as they needed. However, the love and support they continually return has given me the confidence that I can start writing again even if I’m sitting next to a hospital bed with my laptop. I wrote my first book, “The Blood Moon Sealed My Fate,” while sitting next to my father’s sick bed, and I can do it again.

I carefully chose the word groomed in the last paragraph, because many people who grow up in radical environments are groomed from birth. Others are groomed by convincing them they’re being trained to avoid eternal damnation. Some are groomed by abusive relationships they’re initially charmed into. And, I’m sure there are other ways people are groomed. The behavior a person was groomed to accept may seem so normal that they repeat that behavior with similar personalities in different environments. People often repeat the familiar, and learning to stop doing that is a big part of healing from a radicalized background.

I’m guilty of ignoring warning signs and bending over backwards to attempt resolutions with people whose agenda was more important than constructive communication. I developed that habit, because I’d been groomed to survive in environments where logic and facts were seen as a threat. As one example, the church elders of my youth accused me of sexual immorality, because a gossip prone congregant saw my fiancé walking my dog when I was in the hospital. Since that walk occurred early in the morning, they believed he spent the night with me. When my roommate and I shared my hospital discharge papers with the elders, they ignored them. I’d been unable to complete my many responsibilities to the church in the weeks prior to my hospitalization, and they were angry. Instead of communicating to resolve that anger, they used our talks as a platform for justifying it. No logic could dissuade them at that point. In future blog posts, I'll share information about logical fallacies and how understanding them can help people avoid communication traps.

That incident was the first step in my roommate and I understanding that religious organization’s pitfalls, which we started to disentangle ourselves from. In one of my first blog posts, I shared about a boss who had warned me that healing happens in layers, like peeling away the layers of an onion. We had to peel away several layers before we healed enough to leave that environment. Once we left, we had to peel away several more layers to stop repeating the pattern in other places with similar personalities. With consistent effort, I’ve now peeled away enough layers that I’m mostly in healthy environments with people who appreciate logic and truth.

The healthy environments I’ve found my way to includes attending church in a denomination that appreciates logic and truth. I didn’t have to surrender my faith when I moved away from the pitfalls of a dangerous denomination; I only had to move away from the wolves in sheep’s clothing the Bible warns us to avoid.

I wish I could retrieve every one of my verbal and written attempts to bring peace to chaos. However, I’m able to forgive myself for those mistakes, because I finally learned that not everyone wants to resolves disagreements. Some people want to protect an agenda; some people thrive on chaos; some people believe they’re never wrong, etc. Now, I mentally thank those people for revealing their character, so I can make an informed decision about the people who will share my future. I don’t regret any decisions I made to clean up my personal space, and I don’t miss anyone I walked away from – instead, I feel relief. The only thing I regret is the time before I learned to stop bending over backwards for people who weren’t ready for constructive communication.

I wouldn’t have needed to break any ties if I hadn’t been involved with the types of religious organizations that spread propaganda, misinformation, and lies (which are synonyms for the same type of actions). The impact of that involvement is deep in my cells, which makes it painful to write this blog post. I feel like I’m drawing the words I’m writing out of my body like a poultice draws out toxins, which isn’t surprising since the words are drawing out toxic experiences. In spite of this, I plan to spend the next few blog posts writing about the propaganda from my religious past that caused innocent people and groups to become the scapegoat. My hope is that sharing what I learned will bring healing as it brought and continues to bring healing to me.