Why Joy is Resistance

And why I don't swear (much)

Psychologists have long understood that curtailing freedom is only the first step in creating prisoners. Jail cells, incarceration, separation from society begin the process.

But step two is far more important. Curtailing their humanity comes next. Breaking their sense of self, their feeling of belonging, their psyche’s inner life is a far more pervasive and effective process. This is imprisonment’s deep dark underbelly: the destruction of the human spirit.

It is also the difference between a civilized corrections system, which aims to restore the prisoners’ potential for humanity, and an uncivilized POW camp, where punishment and debasement seek to destroy it.

The first seeks to return to society a BETTER human being, the second a BROKEN one.

Elie Weisel (Night), and Victor Frankel (Man’s Seach for Meaning) are two of many authors who explore how people persist, build resilience and survive in the worst possible imprisonment environments. In their work, and in every book about survival I know, tiny moments of joy, kindness, music, and art play a critical role.

Refusal to surrender our humanity is always a choice, sometimes a lifesaving one.

Refusal to surrender it in this moment may also be brilliant.

Our would-be-king degrades himself more each day, with AI -created videos dumping excrement on protesting Americans, hideous labeling of Democrats coming from the mouth of his own Press Secretary, and dehumanizing actions used against people who came to this country only to work and to find a better life. He bathes us in horrific descriptions of our country, its people and its past.

I do not worry that he will convince us with words. Most can dismiss his “facts’ easily. What is harder to dismiss is the pervasive sense of embarrassment, disappointment, even humiliation that the man elected to lead us has created. We live in an atmosphere of shame every single day. Shamed by the way he executes his office, shamed in the way he treats our allies, shamed by the way he describes our own history.

We need our Joy. We need our Art. We need our moments of kindness and lightheartedness to affirm how profoundly wrong DJT is about this country.

Watching the clever costumes, the creative signage, the smiling crowds welcoming one another to the No Kings Rally on Saturday was a huge reminder for me: We must not absorb his hate and let it become despair. Hate eats you alive, burns out your psyche, and destroys your belief in a better world. I see the signs of exhaustion all around me. I feel them and fight them every day.

I grew up in a generation where parents washed out the mouths of children who used bad words. Even as an adult, I use them sparingly. I admire those who can write without resorting to obscenities to make a point. I admit, the more f-bomb variations I see in a piece, the less time I spend reading it. The less likely I will comment or forward it no matter how much I agree with the sentiment.

Two reasons: I will not contribute to spewing obscenities into the atmosphere, even ones I agree with. We need to breathe in one another’s ideas, hope, and encouragement. The rage that goes along with obscenities exhausts us; it does not give us strength.

The second is more personal. I have never been able to throw out an f-bomb without feeling the dirt in my own mouth. It gives me no pleasure to use a word that has its origin in the violent assault of women as a weapon against others. It is a threat, a challenge, a demeaning power play whenever it is used in anger. Its ubiquitous presence now has it substituting for any emphasis, positive or negative, but that does not change my reaction.

Joy is the most powerful antidote to hate. Beauty the antidote to despair.

Kindness binds strangers in an instant and speaks volumes about what we believe.

Build all of these in yourself, not as distraction from politics but as a response to it.

This is how we sustain ourselves and one another. This is how we will survive.