Taking a Knee during the National Anthem

Taking a Knee during the National Anthem

There has been a great deal of controversy surrounding the decision of Colin Kaepernick to sit during the National Anthem and subsequent football and baseball players taking a knee in solidarity with Colin and in protest of police brutality. I agree that police brutality has become a major problem throughout the United States. Persons of color should not ever be afraid of law enforcement just because of the color of their skin and law enforcement should not feel justified in targeting and abusing persons of color. Additionally, they should be further trained in proper de-escalation techniques and sensitivity training so as to best serve their communities.

Donald Trump has turned this into a political issue, which is fine, but he has missed the point of the protest in the first place in so doing. He has also failed to handle this matter in a professional and constitutional manner. The Constitution provides us with the right to peaceful protest. These athletes choosing to take a knee during the National Anthem are peacefully protesting. In no way are they causing physical harm to anyone or property damage. They are mirroring the acts of peaceful protesters and civil servants who came before them and they are seeking to bring attention to a major problem in the United States. Trump calling them “sons of bitches” and calling for their removal disrespects their Constitutional rights, their dignity, their value and invalidates the point they are trying to make with their demonstration. They are merely asking to be treated fairly by law enforcement and their resistance is met with additional derision and the supposed leader of the free world calling them “sons of bitches”.

This controversy and Donald Trump’s remarks come on the heel of several hurricanes devastating Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico. Many Americans seem to not even be aware that Puerto Rico is a U.S. Territory and for a while, it was dubious as to whether or not Trump was aware that Puerto Rico was a U.S. Territory as he delayed in his assistance to this hurricane ravaged island. He is quick to tweet numerous tweets about football and basketball players, but slow to act in sending aid to hurricane ravaged areas. Instead of endless tweets about sports, he should be sending endless tweets about the devastation in these regions and the need for resources and assistance in those areas. He should be tweeting what he is doing to help these areas. People are quick to dismiss celebrities’ views on these matters and tell them to stay in their own lane, but the same people making these comments are also failing to stay in their own lane. Their commander in chief is failing to stay in his own lane. Sports are not his lane. He is a game-show host and real estate mogul turned politician. His lane now is to run the country and make sure his constituents receive the resources they need.

I am fine with athletes taking a knee during the National Anthem. Donald Trump himself fails to put his hand over his heart during the National Anthem. The people who have a problem with athletes taking a knee seem to not have any problem with Donald Trump not placing his hand over his heart or singing along with the National Anthem. Why the double standard? This double standard is precisely the point of this peaceful protest. What I am not fine with is the decision of some teams to stay inside the locker room during the National Anthem. At this point, your visible display of solidarity with Colin, of resistance against police violence, becomes invisible and you are disrespecting the flag, your country and your fans.

With that said, I am sick and tired of hearing about this particular controversy. Take a knee, don’t take a knee… it makes no difference to me. Donald Trump needs to move on and start taking care of business. While I personally refuse to call him the “P” word, that is his position in the United States right now and he needs to start acting like one. I am glad to see that he has finally taken action on Puerto Rico. I would like to see him take action on police brutality. Bullying others, enacting policy and threatening other countries on social media is not constructive or presidential. He needs to actually get to work doing what he promised. America was always great, but until there is freedom and fair treatment for all, its freedom is in danger.

Fear is a Perception

Fear is a Perception.

I still have not had an opportunity to see It. Given the circumstances at the moment, I am not sure when I will see it. I was hoping to have seen both It and Birth of a Dragon by now, but these past few weeks have been very trying times and the weeks ahead will be equally trying. That said, I have seen Pennywise and Babadook all over Twitter and Facebook lately and have already begun to be desensitized to their images. Watching It may still be difficult, but I don’t think it will be as difficult as I thought.

One thing that has come to mind about It and The Fun House, where my actual fear of clowns began, is that both It and The Fun House were written by people who used the postmodernist technique of defamiliarization to create something frightening and abnormal about something quite commonplace. Additionally, they took a previously innocuous character, a clown, and made it scary. The fear of clowns is not real. Clowns are not inherently bad. People who dress up as clowns and do bad things are bad. They could dress up as anything and still be bad. Larry Block and Stephen King are responsible for at least my fear of clowns, and probably most other people’s fear of clowns. The other side of this fear relates to the same thing that causes us to be afraid of Santa Claus when we’re babies. Santa Claus, like clowns, do not look like anything we are familiar with as babies, so we are afraid of the unfamiliar.

Fear is a very valid emotion. It has its place in our lives. It can keep us safe from harm. Fear can also keep us from living our best life, especially if our fear is tied to something that is erroneous and ridiculous to be afraid of. The fear of clowns is based on a perception that they are bad or scary, but the only thing that makes them bad or scary is authors like Stephen King writing them as scary, or inherently bad people dressed up as clowns. Clowns themselves are not scary. If we can reduce each of our fears down to the perception that is tied to that fear, we can take away the power of that object or that fear.

An Experiment in Phobia Immersion, Flooding and Transference

An Experiment in Phobia Immersion, Flooding and Transference

Sometimes I still feel like I am back in high school trying to figure out what I want to do with the rest of my life. I was convinced by my father that pursuing a career in performance art was not going to happen for me and at the time, I thought being an English teacher or attorney would be a good back up plan. However, as I began to pursue a Master’s degree in English, I began to feel like Psychology is the direction I should have gone.

While most people spend their evenings watching television, I spend my evenings doing a variety of activities; including looking up psychology articles and books that discuss phobia immersion therapy and trying to find out if anyone has ever used the idea of transference in immersion therapy when more than one phobia is present. Other potential activities, in case you are wondering, might include reading, social media, music, or writing.

Prior to a few years ago, I never talked about anxiety or phobias. I never would have admitted that I even suffered from anxiety or that I was afraid of certain things. I just avoided those things that made me fearful. Then one day, I went to an outdoor summer party which included a bonfire. I brought marshmallows, chocolate and graham crackers. My friend burned numerous marshmallows for me. Another guest at this party apparently was paying attention to the fact that I never burned my own marshmallows and asked if I was afraid of fire. Before I could say anything, as my brain was trying to figure out exactly what to say, he assured me that he was not trying to make me feel bad and proceeded to tell me about how he was a shut-in for two years due to anxiety. Two things happened as a result of this situation. First, over the course of the evening, I had enough to drink that I decided to try burning my own marshmallow and oddly noticed a few scientific properties about marshmallows (science is another area of interest to me). Specifically, I noticed how they burn and how easy they are to blow out. I also, in the course of having something on fire in my hand and near my face, became desensitized to fire. I repeated the same activity the following night, this time without liquid courage. I am no longer afraid of fire. The second thing that happened as the result of this encounter is that I began to admit that I suffered from anxiety, that I had certain things I was fearful of, and began to seek counseling (again) to help me with my anxiety and depression.

At times, I will immerse myself in the very thing I am afraid of. I will go where there are crowds, even though I do not like crowds. I will drive on the freeway even though I hate the freeway. Lately, I have been trying to revive my artistic endeavors by doing theatre and teaching music. Due to earlier hang-ups I had about singing in front of people, and a terrible bout of chronic bronchitis in my early twenties, I get very nervous when I have to sing in front of people. I would like to get over this. At one time, I was trying to tackle my fears one by one, but after a while, I just stopped and there were certain fears that I felt were unnecessary to conquer. Now I wonder if maybe I should return to attempting to conquer my fears, even the unnecessary ones. Is it possible to use immersion therapy to desensitize the fight or flight response to one stimuli in order to eliminate that same response to other “threatening” stimuli? In other words, can I learn to get rid of other fears by getting rid of a fear that is not at all related?

I did not end up studying Psychology or becoming a psychologist, but these are the types of discussions I sometimes have with my therapist. I still construct the hypothesis. I still do the research. Sometimes I even conduct an experiment, as I will this time. The last time I saw her, we briefly talked about a series of articles that I read about a gene that is linked to promiscuous behavior and/or the tendency to be unfaithful to your spouse or significant other. The next time I see her, I might tell her about my experiment in phobia immersion, flooding and transference. I believe that immersion therapy is a viable method of anxiety treatment. I also believe in the concept of transference. Typically transference relates to people and feelings, but I think it can relate also to phobias and response. If a person can learn to not fear something by being exposed to it, perhaps they can learn to transfer the feeling of being desensitized to other stimuli. My first experiment will involve attempting to desensitize myself to clowns by seeing Stephen King’s It. I hope to gain two things from this experiment. First, I want to become desensitized to the presence of clowns or even the mere sight of the word clown. Second, I hope that my hypothesis that the learned behavior of desensitization can be transferred to other anxiety-inducing stimuli like freeways or singing in front of people can be verified.