The takers

You'd think George W. Bush was never born or had never been president, since you never hear from him or about him and are often accused of some kind of dementia if you mention his legacy.  To be sure, I'm grateful that he's keeping quiet and hasn't spent years making dire predictions of doom and accusations of treason like other parts of the still twitching corpse of his administration -- none of which have come to pass, by the way. Perhaps his quiet reclusiveness has to do with the GOP plan to redact him from the record so that they can't be accused of wrecking the country and a good part of the world with their drool-down economics, but I'll be kind since I'm grateful not to hear from him for any reason.

Mitt Romney however, is a sore loser; bleating about how Obama only won because of all the 'massive' handouts to the "takers" which is his way of derogating minorities without having to call them wogs and worse.  You'll notice that he prefers to name corporate takers who pay little or no taxes but get huge subsidies "job creators" and forgets that the demand for goods and services from the lesser elements create more jobs than Bain Capital ever did, but typically, he gives no examples of handouts that can be attributed to Obama and leaves it to the  prejudices of his piteous and self-pitying audience to fill in the blanks with the usual subjects. Those people aren't real, 100% Americans as the Klan has long told us.

What he does mention is the 'dream act' which would give an advantage toward legal residency to unwitting and accidental immigrants that have something to offer; an education, a valuable skill, military service: something more than or at least as good as Romney's own immigrant ancestors from Mexico brought here. It's similar to plans proposed by the invisible ex-president himself, but that was then, when Romneycare was a good thing to Republicans and we had a "commander guy" in the oval office bleeding the economy dry.

But as for the "takers" as the malphemism dubs most of us of lesser means than the Oligarchs, surely Romney isn't talking about whole states: states like Texas, Florida, Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee and North Carolina which gobbled up nearly a quarter of all federal revenues allotted to the other 47 states.  Six of those seven states, incidentally, have gathered more than 25,000 signatures in petitions to secede from "the greatest country that ever existed since the Jurassic."  But don't call those states, those places where literacy and having front teeth are considered "elitist," takers. 

They're just sore losers and they want their Confederacy back; their culture of God, Guns, grinding poverty and degradation.  Don't call them takers, it's far too kind.  Don't call those companies who employ only foreign workers and don't pay taxes here takers.  Let's just keep sniping and snarking and snarling like sore losers for four more years.  Let's look forward to obfuscation and obstruction and the end of Obama in 2016 when we can put some rich, white Republican back in the manse where rich, white Republicans belong -- and laissez les mal temps rouler!

Abused Nation Syndrome: The Abuse of Politics and the Politics of Abuse

Alice Miller (1923–2010), the preeminent and influential Swiss psychologist, devoted her life to spreading this message: The roots of violence are known. No child, she says, is ever born violent. Violence is driven by nurture, not nature. Violence exists because most children on this planet are raised in violence … often beaten, humiliated, and broken in the first years of their lives.

Consider the options available to a battered child. If a child runs away, who will provide food and shelter? Self-defense is no option because fending off an overpowering adult is more likely to result in further mistreatment. How can a child resolve the contradictory experiences of adult as caregiver versus adult as tormenter? A child may try to be perfect, but perfection never works.

In most corners of the world, child abuse is sanctioned - even held in high regard as long as it is defined as child rearing. Thus, abusive practices are allowed to originate, flourish, and pass from generation to generation often under the cover of righteous piety and administered with this injunction: This is for your own good.

The normal emotional release for anxiety, pain, and resentment is forbidden to battered children, who will suppress their feelings, repress all memory of trauma, even put their abusers on pedestals and idealize them. The life of an abused child turned adult may take many paths. Some may turn their repressed rage against themselves in the form of addictions, anxiety disorders, and depression, even suicide. Others may turn their suppressed rage against their own children ... or against society as criminal offenders.

The issues raised by Alice Miller have social and historical implications. Sometimes abused and traumatized children reenact their childhoods on the political stage and turn themselves into tyrants or become the adherents, adulators, and henchman of tyrants and lunatic ideologues. Systemic child abuse is the wellspring of injustice, ignorance, and evil in the world.

If we write a history of tyrants through the ages - along with their adherents, adulators, and henchman - what should we write about them? Shall we focus on recorded events, on the mass murder of their victims, and their legacy as villains of history? Or might we gain more insight in studying the abuse and violence that shaped their lives?

Joseph Stalin. From historical accounts, Stalin’s father, Vissarion, was a cobbler whose alcoholism led to business failures, domestic violence, and frequent relocations that left his family in poverty and deprivation. A family acquaintance recalls: “Those undeserved and fearful beatings made the boy as hard and heartless as the father.” Thus, the brutal and ruthless dictator remained faithful to his father’s example.

Adolph Hitler. Numerous biographies recall the Führer’s obsession with doubts over his family lineage - the illegitimate birth of his father, Alois Schicklgruber, and the true identity of his paternal grandfather. The presumptive fathers of Alois were two brothers, Johann Hüttler or Johann Georg Hielder. A third possibility was a Jewish family from Graz who employed the maternal grandmother during her pregnancy and paid her support money for 14 years. For Alois, the stigma of being born illegitimate, and part Jewish in a time of rising anti-Semitism, was a source of intolerable shame. Alois projected his self-loathing upon his sons, especially Adolph, in the form of daily beatings that once left the boy unconscious and near death at 11 years old.  Later, Adolph Hitler would write:

I want the young to be violent, domineering, undismayed, cruel (…) They must be able to bear pain. There must be nothing weak or gentle about them.

More to the point, Hitler avenged his father’s shame upon the political stage … culminating in the Final Solution.

In the biographies of dictators, there is a consistent thread of early abuse in the lives of Ceausescu, Franco, Mao Zedong, Idi Amin, and Saddam Hussein, as examples.  Furthermore, brutal tyrants have an uncanny ability to mobilize the suppressed rage of followers, presumably abused as children, who become their adherents, adulators, and henchman.

It should come as no surprise that brutal tyrants and serial killers share common traits. Neurologist Jonathan Pincus interviewed violent criminals on Death Row to study the long-term consequences of severe childhood mistreatment. His findings:

• Every perpetrator had been exposed to extreme physical and emotional abuse by at least one parent or caregiver;
• Each homicide reflected the same kind of brutality that the murderer had endured in childhood;
• Those who experienced extreme cruelty as children directed their anger at others as a form of retaliation;
• None of the convicts incriminated their abusers, even when consciously aware of the abuse;
• The pathologies of convicted murders were similar to the pathologies of their abusers;
• The biography of each and every convict represents a feedback loop of terror directed back at society.

The research of Jonathan Pincus shows that aggressive impulses accumulated in childhood play a role in causing developmental brain damage, usually as a consequence of long-term brutal mistreatment.

Is it possible for a nation, a society, and a culture to follow a similar path?  When demagogues and hacks strut their hypocrisy, hysteria and lies upon a national stage, why shouldn’t we regard these as analogous to abuse?  When citizens brandish guns, or imply Second Amendment remedies as an alternative to civil discourse, why shouldn’t we assume their purpose to bully, stifle debate, and suppress the rights of others? Does the impulse to win by any means and win at all cost remind you of the tactics of tyrants? Are these the signs and symptoms of Abused Nation Syndrome?

Assassinations, Arson, and Bomb Attacks,

Slaughter in a Unitarian Church,

Three Police Officers Killed in Precinct Attack,

Holocaust Museum Guard Shot and Killed,

Hispanic Family Murdered by White Supremacists,

If Ballots Don't Work, Bullets Will,

Don't Retreat, Reload.
(chilling - have a listen.)

Tucson Shooting Rampage - An Act of Political Terrorism

Lethal Bomb at MLK Parade in Spokane

An Interactive Map of Terrorism Since 2008

Is this the kind of society in which we want to raise our children - and the legacy we want to leave for future generations?

Open for comments …