Are you kidding?

(I know–I’ve been 86 for two years now.  Still have trouble counting.)

Since there may still be some disagreement between the definition of victims and survivors, and how enduring the effects of poor parenting are–including incest–I thought I’d speak on the topic from my vantage point.  After years of excellent therapy–and becoming a therapist myself–I can testify that all the fertilizer in the world can never make a tree that’s bent in youth absolutely straight again.  (I’m speaking metaphorically here).

All children seek validation for their value as an individual–that their humanity is respected, and that their thoughts and feelings matter.  Lacking this, they too often accept the valuation of their earliest caregivers, known as parents.  When this is followed by manipulation of the child’s body for a parent’s  own gratification, the child too often accepts his or her value as only a commodity in life, to placate others.  Strangely, only the child feels guilt, since her body  responds without understanding,  not the adult abusers.

Feelings of having basic worth and value–and likeability–are  shaped early in life.  All attempts in later life to feel essentially valuable in oneself  are doomed.  But  there are many possibilities to lessen the effects and to make the best of a harmful childhood including psychotherapy, support groups, readings, excelling at something, etc.  One of humanity’s psychological defenses is “Undoing,”  defined in the  DSM IV-TR  by the American  Psychiatric Association as “dealing with emotional conflict or internal or external stressors by words or behavior designed to negate or make amends symbolically for unacceptable thoughts, feelings or actions.”

I won’t list all my other defense mechanisms, except my more functional one:  Humor–The individual deals with emotional conflict or external  stressors by emphasizing the amusing or ironic aspects of the conflict or stressor.

Our vice president’s words via Daily Kos:

January 6th reflects the dual nature of democracy—its fragility and its strength. You see, the strength of democracy is the rule of law. The strength of democracy is the principle that everyone should be treated equally, that elections should be free and fair, that corruption should be given no quarter. The strength of democracy is that it empowers the people. And the fragility of democracy is this: that if we are not vigilant, if we do not defend it, democracy simply will not stand; it will falter and fail.

The American spirit is being tested. The answer to whether we will meet that test resides where it always has resided in our country—with you, the people.

Here, in this very building, a decision will be made about whether we uphold the right to vote and ensure free and fair elections. Let’s be clear: We must pass the voting rights bills that are now before the Senate, and the American people must also do something more.

We cannot sit on the sidelines. We must unite in defense of our democracy in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and to our prosperity and posterity.

1. TODAY ….

   

   1.  dianeravitch posted on Diane Ravitch’s blog: Trump Advisor: How Steve Bannon and I Planned to Overturn the 2020 Election

   Peter Navarro was Trump’s Trade Advisor. He recently published a book about his time in…

   2.  NEW VIDEOS OF THE CAPITOL INVASION

   dianeravitch posted on Diane Ravitch’s blog: This Is What Happened on January 6, 2021

   Since there is now a deep partisan divide over what happened on January 6, it’s…

   (I’m going to look out for the video I saw that day of Trump and staff watching the invasion on tv–unfortunately without the sound).

“A little dab will do ya” —  refrain from some song…or commercial?   Commercial, I think.  If you know, share.   A search on Google reveals that Fact Checker reports the former president made 30,573 “false or misleading claims” during his presidency, averaging about twenty a day.                     LYING – Lying can become a habit and is contagious, with the believers repeating the lies, as a result of a number of cognitive biases, as discussed by Philip Fernbach and Steven Sloman explained  in the  2017 New York Times  article,  “Why We Believe Obvious Untruths.”

Commenting on this neurological quirk, Aia Raden observed that almost everything we know someone else told us.  We don’t need to understand or confirm every fact or idea  because we have an honesty bias to  believe what we are told as being true. This enables humans to have a collective intelligence, necessary for civilization. (The Truth About Lies, St. Martin’s Press, 2021)

Another factor contributing to the tenacity of false beliefs is called confirmation bias, involving unconscious selective perception in which once we decide something is true, we  begin to see support for our belief everywhere.

Authority bias is another factor in our tendency to believe and trust our “betters”.

“A lie that makes you feel something intensely…is simply more addictive and compelling  than any other kind of lie. The intensity of feeling it induces in the listener creates a strong need to hear more–and to tell someone else.” (ibid)

And of course, lies that feed into our beliefs are especially  welcome.

All of which causes me to reflect on my earlier openness to the 9-11 conspiracy theories as well as the JFK  murder theories, and I have to admit I’m not one hundred percent sure there’s no “truth” in some of the rumors, as well as who was behind JFK’s murder.  (The latest I heard was that it was Fidel Castro.)  And the source of flying saucers?  When I read that Trump believed in their extraterrestrial source I almost quit believing in them.

Happy New Year’s Eve….When I worked at the state prison 22 years ago I learned something about the men in prison that I find applies to me now.  They were “protected” from depressing events back home, and were frustrated about knowing really what was going on with their family and friends.

They couldn’t be sure whether family members had died, whether family had sprung divorces,  gone bankrupt, etc.   While in my case that’s a little extreme,  I’m still “protected” from  potentially troubling news.  As a result, I feel a little disempowered as a person.

Horror of horrors, I find myself with a tendency to “protect”  elderly friends– who have moved away– from the obituaries and other news of the passing of  mutual friends.  I have to remember that although everyone ages, at least some of us would still like to be trusted with facts.  To be treated otherwise is to feel discounted and truly disempowered. Remember how they used to keep the news– that oneself was terminal or in fact dying– from patients?

The truth conveys respect.  And no, I haven’t been shafted.  I just recalled a memory of 22 years ago. Read the rest of this entry →

A Black principal near Dallas has already been forced to resign in the anti-CRT panic, for writing a public letter after George Floyd’s death that declared, “Education is the key to stomping out ignorance, hate, and systemic racism.”

In another part of the state, a district-level executive director of curriculum has recommended teaching “other perspectives” on the Holocaust to meet the bill’s mandates. Teachers and administrators are not the only ones targeted by the bill and its supporters. “One minute they’re talking critical race theory,” says middle school librarian Carrie Damon. “Suddenly I’m hearing librarians are indoctrinating students. One library in Llano County, about 80 miles northwest of Austin, shut down for three days for a “thorough review” of every children’s book. At the statewide level, Texas Republican State Representative Matt Krause launched an anti-CRT witch-hunt, in advance of a run for State Attorney General, by emailing a list 850 books to state superintendents, asking if any of them appeared in their libraries.

These times are so painful…

The Week magazine for Dec. 3 contains the following from Stockholm:

Democracy in  retreat:  The U.S. has been added for the first time to a list of “backsliding democracies” by the Stockholm-based International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance.  America has fallen vicim to “authoritaian tendencies,” the respected think tank said in its Global  State of Democracy 2021 report, and so was “knocked down a significant number steps on the democatic scale.”  The report, issued this week, cited former President Donald Trump’s  baseless allegations of fraud in the 2020 election and his efforts to pressure state election officials into changing vote totals, as well as the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.  Trump’s tactics had “spillover effects,” the report added, providing an anti-democtatic model that was followed by political actors in Brazil, Mexico, Myanmar, Peru, and elsewhere.