Day 1279 – America’s Stockholm Syndrome

Monday July 20, 2020

104 Days until the election on November 3^rd

184 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

I’ve read the Preface and Chapter 1 of Mary Trump’s book. It make me sad and I find it chilling. She describes the family in dispassionate psychological terms. It verifies everything I’ve said and thought about Donald Trump. She does it without emotion. Just laying out the facts and analysis. She also mentions family gatherings and behaviors. Things other people would not know about the family. She mentions these items to illustrate her psychological analysis.

Donald’s mother was sickly and mostly absent from the raising of her children. When she was able to function she was calling out for her own needs to be taken care of. Donald’s father was uninterested in his children. He found their pleas for affection as nuisances. The children learned to not ask. Essentially Donald grew up without the love and nurturing that children need. He learned to cope. He mimicked his father. He became a sociopath.

John Lewis died this week. There were clips of his civil rights work. Picture of him standing next to Martin Luther King Jr. Of his leading the march across the bridge in Selma. The one named after the head of the Alabama KKK that it is suggested now be named after Lewis. There were clips showing and explaining what Jim Crow was. It was a strategy and attempt to suppress black people. It is the same sort of behavior and tactics that the Republican Party is using today to suppress the vote and the same sort of behavior against immigrants.

I thought about Bill Clinton and the clips they are showing of him when he was President talking about putting more cops on the street. The argument being “See. They do it too.” What is being conveniently forgotten is that there were arguments to do far more both in terms of police and in terms of marriage. At the time there was the term “Wilding.” The act of randomly beating up someone for no reason. There was a amendment being proposed to have the Constitution say that marriage was between a man and a woman. Clinton blunted both efforts. He put more cops on the streets in an attempt to stop the wilding and other behaviors. After a few years crime went down and everyone from Rudy Giuliani to the Police Chief of Los Angeles was taking credit. Malcolm Gladwell pointed out that studies showed that Roe v Wade had passed 18 years before which allowed pregnant women the right to abortion. This allowed for less unwanted and uncared for children into the world. (This claim has since been disputed, but no one else has come up with a better explanation that I am aware of.) 

Bill Clinton also passed “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” Now hailed as a terrible idea. Maybe so, but it blunted the Constitutional marriage between a man and a woman amendment. Which was worse?

Then let me add in one more little tidbit before we get to the main premise of this screed. I have heard multiple reports of people being in parts of the country where all they can get on their radios is right wing talk shows. Otherwise normal people become raging right wingers. I have to wonder if this is some sort of Stockholm Syndrom? And if so are many of us in the country suffering from it?

Certainly, the people who get their information from Fox News would be effected by that sort of – what should we call it? – Abuse?

So have we as a nation all been abused by Trump? It seems that we have and if so the road to recovery is long and not necessarily guaranteed. 

PS Little Angkor Wat – The Temple of Boeng Mealea – side corridor