Black History Month

Feeling Overwhelmed by Abusive Politicians? Here's What You Must Do

There's no "less bad" genocidal and racist imperialism just as there's no "less bad" abuse: the idea that there is is a gaslight.

You need to recognize your power.

Don’t listen to people who tell you that you have no power: those people are brainwashed by our culture which does everything to make us feel we have no power—from censoring us, to attempting to medicate away our pain, to gaslighting us, to not teaching us true history, to using violence on us, to instilling insecurity in us and making us hate ourselves and compete with each other. Divide and conquer.

Don’t listen to those who tell you to ignore it or that it’s not that bad: they support it and are sick people.

Republicans with narcissism love to do things like cry about “cancel culture," as if killing people or racism or imprisonment or censorship or shadowbanning isn’t a cancel culture. THEY are the real snowflakes. They can’t even handle REALITY.

And Democrats with narcissism will point the finger of blame at progressives, the youth, or POC voters (DARVO) to avoid all accountability or self reflection.

They're really a one party system using divide and conquer on us: the oldest trick in the colonial playbook. No matter how you slice it, covert narcissism isn't better than overt--a genocide that's ignored and pretended to be "less bad" isn't better than the genocide we acknowledge only to point finger at the opposite party.

There's no "less bad" genocidal and racist imperialism just as there's no "less bad" abuse: the idea that there is is a gaslight.

That’s why you have to stop waiting for others to save you or grow a conscience.

You’re the hero you’ve always waited for.

Get a library card and start reading the things they ban in our schools. Nuclear war is only one threat of many that we face, and none of it is new. Sociopathic and clinically insane world leaders aren’t new either.

Read about native resistance, slave revolts, colonialism, imperialism, and past and current genocides.

This is me at 19 years old.

After 9/11 and the War in Iraq, I suffered intense depression. I was raised by parents with ASPD—sociopathy—and I was the scapegoat child, so I’m very, very sensitive to sociopathic leaders and cultural scapegoating. Racism, genocide, rape, sexism, and war triggered me and still do because it’s what my parents terrorized me and others with.

I was SUICIDAL over it. I developed Borderline Personality Disorder in early childhood. I first attempted suicide at 8. I’d become depressed and catatonic just to read about the Holocaust. I’m autistic and I struggled for decades to understand MALICE. I didn’t understand why others didn’t feel the pain of empathy as I do or why they chose to act in evil ways while thinking they were perfect and good. It made me feel different and lonely, and I’d hate my existence even more.

But as I got older, I also realized: I wasn’t informed enough. They taught us nothing about the Middle East in school. They said it was “complicated.” (It’s not actually. At all).

But I was a straight A student and I knew I could read well, so I just began to read.

AND BOY OH BOY DID IT GET WORSE.

I was so angry. I still get very angry when I learn all the ways I’ve been indoctrinated and lied to. I get angry about ignorant and narcissistic people. I get frustrated by their lack of reflection, accountability, or empathy.

But, the more I read, the more I realized the patterns:

All empires collapse.
All fascist regimes are toppled.
The power is always in the people.
If a country takes up arms against its people, it means their power is VERY flimsy.
Violence is always a sign of fear and narcissistic people losing control. If they’re violent against you, you’re going to win.
Death is an illusion and no suffering lasts forever. If they can’t take your soul, you’re always free.
You’ll always be happier than those with no soul or empathy because you have access to love.
They wouldn’t gaslight and brainwash you and traumatize you unless you had SERIOUS power, truth, and potential that they sought to keep you from.
The greatest power is love: that’s why those without it always have to PRETEND they have it when they don’t. If you have that ability, don’t you dare let anyone break it. It’s your greatest weapon. That, and truth.
You’re not wrong to be hurt over what you see in the world: this world is crazy, not you. You are GRIEVING.
You have nothing to fear when you walk the moral high ground. “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil.”

The more I learned, the more I realized, there were a lot of things I could do.

Why do you think fascists burn books and target intelligent people? They know this ends badly! They know the histories and realities they suppress. They hope if they just make sure no one else knows then…POOF…this isn’t going to blow up in their faces.

It’s delusion, narcissistic fantasy thinking.

They think they can legislate away LGBTQ and, POOF, it’ll just stop existing. You can’t legislate away REALITY. LGBTQ is documented in our literature for MILLENIA, and they already TRIED to legislate it away in multiple places and they even put it in religions (it was added to the Christian Bible in the 1940s) and killed and imprisoned people for it…and guess what? It still didn’t go away.

The real irony too is all the homophobes and transphobes are actually homosexual and trans themselves. It’s themselves they hate: they’re trying to deny it within and that’s why they get so angry about something that shouldn’t affect them AT ALL. They’re just projecting self hate and trying to get others to never remind them of the truth they’re denying within by forcing people to never talk about it or face abuse and death.

They want to shame people who live authentically and bravely due to envy.

The more I read, the more I realized how much I could do. I could write, I could make art, I could raise awareness, I could go visit places where people were struggling, I could teach the truth (I’m a professor), I could decolonize my syllabus, I could be love to people who were unfairly oppressed, I could donate money, I could volunteer, I could badger my politicians, I could protest, I could organize, I could listen and learn.

I could flip my privilege and use it as power. I could commit to freeing others.

Here I am in a refugee camp in Palestine.

I have power.

And if I didn’t, why would people who oppress get so ANGRY AND HATEFUL at me when I do those things??? Their rage and abuse only proved my power to me more. And their abuse and hate proved to me I wasn’t free, which proved to me I needed to keep fighting.

I got the most amazing life experiences as a consequence. I promise that no matter how I die, I die with a rich and full life that I’m proud of. I wasn’t perfect and I’m always working to learn, take accountability, grow, and be better.

But I can say honestly I’ve done that with courage, love, and humility.

Here I am at the Peace Wall in Northern Ireland. I went there to learn about restorative justice as a means to heal terrorism.

But none of this has been easy: there are snakes galore. I’ve been tear gassed, I’ve been raped, I’ve been beaten, I’ve been unjustly fired (and yes, I sued and won), I’ve been shadowbanned, I’ve been physically abused and mentally traumatized by my own government I pay taxes to.

I’ve also found the hate, brainwash, denial, and fear in those who I loved dearly and I lost them the more I learned and became active.

It’s hard: freedom isn’t free. It takes a real fight. And it’s EXHAUSTING. People always say protestors are lazy: they’re projecting. I’d work 12 hour days at multiple jobs and spend all night marching and have blisters on my feet and bruises from police batons.

Lower left hand corner is me in a die in on the highway.

But despite it all, I’ll be DAMNED not to have survived this long to fight for it. I’ll be DAMNED not to fight for love and not hate. I’ll be DAMNED not to walk in line with my morals. I’ll be DAMNED not to be able to look at my students in the eye and say I did everything to fight for a future they deserved.

No one will bully me to walk in line or tell me my morals aren't on the menu.

Here I am with a student protesting the first time we went through this disaster. Notice the Mountain Dew. I was TIRED AF.

I’d rather die than not be free and not have freedom for all. None of us are free until we all are and we are ONE human race. I REFUSE hatefulness. I’ve been fighting to survive since I was born and I’ve been fighting for love. Life isn’t worth it to me without love so I’m not going down without a fight.

I’m no coward: I was born of monsters. And I don’t care who hates me because of my convictions anymore. I used to, but I healed that codependent, people pleasing ish.

They can stay mad. They always were mad. They’re sick. They always were sick. I pity them.

But I’m not letting them railroad me or others.

How could I ever face my maker at the end of my life if I didn’t do EVERYTHING to embody and fight for the love and human rights of all people?

That being said, don’t let anyone gaslight you that this isn’t pure insanity. People deny a lot to cope and many people are selfish and privileged and ignorant or stuck in a freeze or denial trauma response.

Also, what’s happening right now is true to fascist pattern: they blitz you with bad things at the beginning solely to overwhelm people and disempower them. History repeats.

So, at the same time that you invest in doing all you can to resist, you need to invest wholeheartedly in your own mental health care and self love. You need to learn how to balance that.

In a world that profits off of hatred, loving yourself is a RADICAL act of resistance. So invest in you as hard as you fight. Fight for YOU. Rescue yourself from this. Don’t let anyone deny you joy either. Your joy and pain can co-exist.

Here I am on a teeter totter with people facing a genocide and a military occupation.

Let me tell ya, nothing pisses a sociopath off than people finding happiness despite their awful abuses. It makes them feel powerless and worthless.

Like they really are.

When I witnessed genocide ten years ago, they had a slogan they used: “Sumud.” It means “Steadfast.” They’d been in genocide for 75 years. They often said, “our existence is resistance.”

America has lived in genocide for hundreds of years and was founded on it. If you want to be a freedom fighter, you must exist to resist too.

And you MUST realize how powerful you are. The key to true freedom is realizing your power.

Why do you think they are so fearful about people being WOKE?! They can abuse you more easily if you’re ASLEEP and in fear, denial, or depression.

They’re terrified that people are waking up to truth and the power of love, because they have neither—only lies and hatred.

Here I am in front of Nelson Mandela’s prison cell. He was imprisoned 27 years. His resistance ended 46 years of colonial genocide through apartheid. He was powerful and organized resistance EVEN WHILE IMPRISONED. Put his autobiography on your “to read” list.

One person can make a difference.

Maybe you won’t make the impact of Mandela, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t walk a path that reaches for love, equality, freedom, peace, healing and progress. In doing so, I promise you’ll make a difference in important ways to people.

Sumud.

The world needs compassionate and courageous hearts. Take good care of yours.

My memoir, This is a Story About Ghosts: A Memoir of Borderline Personality Disorder, is now available on Amazon.

I’m blogging about mental health & true crime, popular culture, and personal essays on my new blog, Blooming on the Borderline: check it out at the links below.

For individual coaching to recover from narcissistic abuse, BPD, or sexual assault, visit https://am-champion.com

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Anne M. Champion is the author of This is a Story About Ghosts: A Memoir of Borderline Personality Disorder (KDP, 2024), Hunted Carrion: Sonnets to a Stalker (KDP, 2024), She Saints & Holy Profanities (Quarterly West, 2019), The Good Girl is Always a Ghost (Black Lawrence Press, 2018), Book of Levitations (Trembling Pillow Press, 2019), Reluctant Mistress (Gold Wake Press, 2013), and The Dark Length Home (Noctuary Press, 2017). Her work appears in Verse Daily, diode, Tupelo Quarterly, Prairie Schooner, Crab Orchard Review, Salamander, New South, Redivider, PANK Magazine, and elsewhere. She was a 2009 Academy of American Poets Prize recipient, a 2016 Best of the Net winner, and a Barbara Deming Memorial Grant recipient. She has degrees in Behavioral Psychology and Creative Writing.