Safe fights

I’ve decided with the current state of the world and high gas prices to slightly delude myself and fill up my gas car tank so that I’m not letting the tank drop below anything less than half empty before filling up. I spent almost as much for a full tank of gas earlier this year before the war as I did for a half a tank of gas. This may lead me to refill when I get to ¾ of a tank now, just simply because it’s probably cheaper. Prices are only going up.

This made me think about the president’s desire to go after anything regarding diversity. This week the Department of Justice opened an investigation into Smith College for accepting transgender woman into the historic institution. It also made me think about the gerrymandering going in Southern states to decrease democratic, especially Black, representation The connection?

When the fight you are in is a losing one, create a fight you know you can win. Senator Marsha Blackburn rushed to create new districts in Tennessee citing, “I urge our state legislature to reconvene to redistrict another Republican seat in Memphis. It’s essential to cement ‘@realDonaldTrump’s’ agenda and the Golden Age of America.”

Gas prices in Tennessee are over 4 dollars a gallon. It’s hard not to believe the real Golden Age of America is making more money for the super wealthy politicians. And companies. Shell has made 7 billion dollars since the war started. Thank you, Marsha, for making Shell great again.

Thank you, Department of Justice, for knowing more about education and gender than Smith College did.

But sadly, we’ve gotten used to the distractions. It’s a tactic. A strategy. Even at times a windfall.

Create some place for the energy and the anger to go that’s away from what the real problem is. We’ve been witnessing a master distractor.

We see it all the time. It’s everywhere.

We see it in our congregations all the time.

I knew a congregation where the fight was over whether the congregation should try and stay in their building which they knew they couldn’t afford or find a new place that would be less expensive. It was a hard and excruciating problem. Undoubtedly there were lots of opinions. But the minister said they chose instead to fight over where the minister should say the benediction.

Some wanted the minister to be in the front and were offended that the minister was in the back of the sanctuary. Others saw it a metaphor of the minister moving to now be of the people. Others said the minister just wanted to be in control of everything.

The minister said the intensity got so strong she would not have been surprised if blood hadn’t been drawn at some point.

But it was something people felt they themselves could control and didn’t feel powerless. It meant avoiding a conversation(s) where many people weren’t sure what was the right outcome, where it didn’t mean facing a new future, where one didn’t feel out control.

Rev. Nancy McDonald-Ladd has labeled them “fake fights.”

I think of these as “safe fights”. Even if they don’t appear to be safe to an outsider. Often the fights can be directed at the minister of a congregation because they are seen as the outsider. They feel safe, but are they?

Well, they are misdirected. I had a friend telling me about her work situation. She was expected to be creative, innovative, and detail-oriented, which she was. In some ways she was more creative than her supervisor. When she tried address the real issues going on, she was shut down. Her supervisor got anxious and defensive.

Her supervisor docked her and eventually fired her for timeliness.

Her supervisor expected her to work from 9 to 5. She had to be at her desk working at 9 and couldn’t leave before five p.m. Yet her supervisor would come in late once a week, leave early another day of the week, and was often seen strolling outside during the day. My friend she often covered for her during work.

But the presenting issue was her timeliness, which made no sense, but as I said to my friend, “She didn’t like you and/or she felt threatened by you.”

“Clearly,” my friend said.

“Don’t expect it all to make sense. The fight is rarely about the fight.”

Interestingly, three years later, when that supervisor was fired, the company reached out to her to apply and replace the supervisor. It had taken the company a couple of years to figure out the real issue. And for the supervisor’s supervisor to retire so that the real issues could be discussed.

Sometimes the safe fight is a distraction, so the real conflict doesn’t come to light. Sometimes it’s about coalitions, power, and alignments of people. My friend thanked them and liked her current job, which was less political and where she trusted the real problems were being addressed.

The clarity of being able to address the real issues now was well worth the three thousand dollars more she might get if she took the new job.

The safe fight often isn’t so safe. It has ripple effects. Yet it feels safer to those with power than dealing with the real conflict and issues. And one to keep power is to create another fight and disguise the real issues.

I think we’re seeing that now. So much anxiety. So much defensiveness in the form of lashing out. And so much trying to create a distraction fight.

Let’s get mad at trans people who simply want to be athletic and live as the gender they understand them to be. (And we’re talking about a total pool of people likely under 100 worldwide at the moment). Let’s redistrict since we can’t solve the problem of gas prices.

We’d probably be better at conflict if we were able to deal with the real conflict, even if it’s to say, I don’t know what the real conflict is and start there.

Until then, we’re likely to see more fights about benedictions, trans people, and whatever else we perceive to be threatening. These fights are hardly safe.