Family: But There Are Ways to Regain Our Well-Being
An abusive, out-of-control, rageaholic GOP broke our country by
shattering our trust in democracy and in ourselves.
March 20, 2012 |
A marriage counselor friend once told me that he almost always
knows by the end of the very first session whether he's being hired to
guide a damaged couple back to health, or to help them work toward a
divorce -- even when the couple doesn't know the answer to this
question themselves.
It's easy to see, he explained. The relationship's future success or
failure all hinges on one simple thing: How much goodwill and trust
they have left. Even if they've hurt each other badly, the couples who
make it are the ones that still retain a few shreds of faith in each
other's basic good intentions. She didn't mean to hurt me. He's not
always a bastard. Deep down, she still loves me. Deep down, he really
wants things to be better.
These couples are still seeing same future together, and still cling
to the tattered memories of why they first fell in love. Just a few
frayed threads of trust are all that's needed -- if they've got that,
the odds are high that with time and work, they can re-weave the
fabric of the marriage into something that's once again strong and
good.
On the other hand, the tell-tale sign of a zombie marriage -- one
that's already dead, even if the parties involved haven't yet
confronted that fact -- is that one or both partners have already
given up and checked out. The trust is broken, the dream shattered,
the damage just too much to ever repair. Things have been said and
done that can't ever be unsaid or undone. There's so much bad history
that there's no way a mere human heart can ever forgive it all. It's
so far gone that pain and rage are all that remain -- and the longer
they stay together, the more brutal it's likely to get.
If, as George Lakoff says, we tend to think of the nation as a family,
then my friend's approach for identifying salvageable marriages may
apply just as well to salvaging our democracy. Because, like all
marriages, all democratic governments are founded -- first and
foremost, above all else -- on an essential bedrock of trust and
shared vision. We need to trust that our fellow citizens are decent
people with good intentions. If we don't have even that much basic
confidence in each other, there's no way that we can work together to
build a society that works. In fact, there's not really even a reason
to try.
Seen this way, "America" is the family name for the 310 million of us
bonded together in a covenant that's very much like the commitment
that forms a family. We have come together to build our common wealth,
create opportunities for each other that will secure our shared
future, raise our children, care for our elderly, protect our assets,
look after each other in sickness and in health, and wisely tend our
national house and manage our gathered resources so we can hand the
increase proudly off to the next generation.
And, like a family, this is a commitment that is entirely grounded in
mutual trust -- a bone-deep knowledge that we will keep faith and be
there for each other; that we will look out for each others' rights,
property, and kids; that we will generously give the family our best
whenever possible; and that we also rely on it to be there for us when
we need help. For better or worse, richer or poorer, sickness or
health, we promise to be there for each other. The true strength and
wealth of the country begins with the strength of that commitment.
We cannot do this kind of mutual self-governance well -- indeed, we
cannot do it at all -- unless we fundamentally trust each other's good
intentions and devotion to our shared enterprise. We may disagree on
the means, but we share the same vision about what the ends should be.
And just like in a marriage, when that trust is damaged, our future
viability as a nation becomes a wide-open question.
This is a scary thought, because right now, America is riven by two
very different visions of the future, held by two partners who
obviously have radically different visions about where we should be
going.
On one hand, you've got most of the country -- center-right, center,
center-left, and progressive -- which sees us as a family in trouble,
but which also believes that if we return to our bedrock agreements,
focus on solving our shared problems and fall back on our basic
goodwill and common sense, we should be able to sort things out. This
is the two-thirds of America that poll after poll shows is ready to
move forward on issues like economic transformation, inequality,
corruption and corporate overreach, climate change and energy policy,
and remaking our infrastructure. There's a sense that, even though the
challenges are big, we can solve them if we can come together, treat
each other decently, reaffirm our commitment to the future, and force
the democratic process to work again.
On the other hand, there's another group that has entirely checked out
on us, and turned ugly and abusive. The conservative minority is
acting like Lakoff's canonical Strict Father scorned: When the family
rejects his leadership and his attempts at authoritarian contol, he
sinks into a punitive, bullying rage, lashing out at the rest of us
for what he's come to believe is irredeemable broken faith because we
won't let him be the boss. By his behavior, he is telling us in no
uncertain terms that he wants a scorched-earth divorce -- the kind
that leaves the rest of us broke, ruined, miserable, and utterly at
his mercy. He has gone so far as to hire batteries of lawyers and
lobbyists to accomplish this, and is taking a bully's evident glee in
his success.
What Democracy Abuse Looks Like
Here are a few broad-brush examples of how this screw-you attitude
toward the idea of a balanced, strong, cooperative American family is
playing out right now:
Most conservatives now openly reject the very idea of democracy.
Whether it's corporatists seeking to own every branch of government
and privatize every public institution, security and intelligence
types cracking down on our civil liberties, or Christian nationalists
out to turn the country into a theocracy, conservatives are
increasingly united by the conviction that Americans cannot be trusted
to govern ourselves.
According to Dave Johnson, if you really want to understand just how
hostile conservatives are to the very idea of democracy, and how
debased their discourse has become on the subject, just take some of
their favorite sayings and substitute the word "government" with
either "democracy" or "we, the people."
So: "government is the problem, not the solution" becomes "democracy
is the problem" -- or, perhaps worse: "we, the people are the
problem." Likewise: "smaller government" becomes "smaller democracy"
and a smaller role for we, the people. The idea that "government
destroys liberty" is clearly code for "democracy destroys liberty."
And so on. (It's a great game you can play at home -- fun for the
whole family!)
Along these same lines -- and despite the conspicuous way the Tea
Party fetishizes the Constitution -- it's increasingly evident that
the future they have in mind very explicitly does not include the Bill
of Rights, a people's Congress, the ability to petition our
government, or the right to appeal to the courts for redress. I don't
have to enumerate the violations on this front, but I do encourage
progressives to start seeing these assaults on our rights as clear
evidence that our opponents fundamentally do not trust democracy, and
are very deliberately out to destroy the constitutional rules that
ours runs on.
They also don't trust diversity in any form. They're actively hostile
to the idea of E pluribus unum -- out of the many, one. Anybody who's
not white, straight, Christian, conservative, and male is inherently
not-American. And the only acceptable function of government is to
keep those Others -- both here, and abroad -- firmly in their place.
The nightly news is full of fresh assaults on the rights of those who
don't fit their narrow definition of Real Americans.
They have embraced bullying as a political strategy and an acceptable
cultural norm, which has in turn coarsened our civil discourse to the
point of democratic breakdown. Rush Limbaugh and his throng of
hate-talking imitators have given their listeners wide-open social
permission to say ugly things in public that would most assuredly get
them fired if they said them at work (check your company handbook,
which no doubt has firm guidance on this point), and would probably
precipitate an immediate divorce if they said them at home. The tone
alone says it all: this is not the way you talk to people you intend
to have any kind of future with.
Conservative lawyers and courts are actively carving out a First
Amendment right to bully racial and religious minorities, immigrants,
gays, and women who won't stay in their place. Almost every family
(including mine, unfortunately) and every workplace has a FOX-trained
bully who makes it almost impossible to have simply collegial
conversations. Democracy is literally not possible where such bullies
exist, because the give-and-take and nuanced discussions that lead to
good decision-making simply can't happen. Instead, all the power goes
to the person who's willing and able to throw the biggest tantrum.
That's not democracy, in any sense of the word.
Our founders understood this all too well, which is why so many of our
basic rules of government were explicitly designed to keep bullies in
check.
They are systematically destroying Americans' ability to trust almost
every civil institution on the American landscape. The list goes on
and on, but here's a starter collection:
They are strategically undermining our schools by deliberately
destroying community trust in them. Like a controlling father, they
want the kids at home where they can keep a constant eye on them.
They are attempting to privatize Social Security, prisons, the
military, and our infrastructure -- all to prove their argument that
we are no longer competent to do anything for ourselves through our
government. Like an abusive spouse, they want us to feel too
demoralized about ourselves to do anything effective to improve our
lives, let alone find the courage and resolve to free ourselves from
the abuse.
They are bastardizing science and bowdlerizing history -- the two
fields of academia most essential to developing foresight and
understanding the implications of our future choices. And, in the
process, they are keeping us from solving problems that threaten the
continued existence of the entire human family.
They have demonized and harassed the mainstream media to the point
where they can no longer be truly neutral about anything, for fear of
exhibiting "liberal bias."
They repealed the Fairness Doctrine, and took over local radio.
They are infringing on our religious freedoms in the name of extending
their own.
They are defunding government ("democracy") at all levels because they
don't believe that We, the People, can spend the money right. (Again:
this is the logic of an abusively controlling spouse.)
They have destroyed our economy to benefit the top .10 percent, which
effectively robs the rest of us of much of our cultural, economic and
political power as well. And they have done this by telling us that
"there is no such thing as society" -- a claim that justifies bleeding
off the vast and very real mountain of public wealth that this
fictitious American society has carefully amassed over the course of
its entire history.
All of these efforts, and many more, are rooted in one core fact:
America's conservatives ultimately do not trust other Americans to run
their own lives as individuals -- let alone govern ourselves as a
group. And I'd argue that this mistrust runs so deep that no healing
is possible for them. They have reached the point where they very
clearly no longer want to be in this family together with us.
The seething, simmering rage and pain are running so deep now that the
only thing that will satisfy them is total destruction of everything
that puts the "us" in US. In their minds, breaking America as we've
known it for the past 80 years is the only way they'll ever be able to
adequately punish us, and the only hope they have of someday seizing
enough control of the shambles to finally salve their fury and fear.
To Stop A Bully: How to Restore Trust
This kind of dogged will to destroy is inherently pathological,
whether it's happening within a marriage or a nation. There's no way
it can ever be construed as healthy. My friend the marriage counselor
would have looked at this situation -- one spouse overwhelmed by
irrational, abusive, controlling rage and constantly imputing
unspeakable motives to the other -- and written the marriage off.
But we can't do that. We are still, for better or for worse, the
biggest, richest family on the planet. On one hand, there's no way for
them to leave, because there's nowhere for them to go, and no legal
divorce is possible. On the other, letting them destroy the great
house of America, built through generations and centuries to its
present stature, is simply not an option.
So what do we do? If these people really don't want to be in the
marriage -- if they are, in fact, trying to destroy it by any means
possible -- how on earth can we continue to function as a family?
We may have to do what families have always done with members who have
lost their way, but cannot be abandoned. We need to close ranks around
them, building alliances and strategies that will enable us to protect
ourselves and each other from their depredations. We cannot change
them, but it helps to realize that the faithful and decent members of
this family still vastly outnumber those who wish us harm. If we work
together closely, we can leverage our numbers and our sanity to
arrange things in ways that will minimize the damage our rageaholic
members can do.
The most important and critical thing we need to do is to restore
trust; trust in each other, and in the idea of ourselves as a good and
worthy family. We deserve so much better; and we are capable of so
much more than our abusers tell us is possible.
We can refuse to buy into divide-and-conquer strategies, realizing
that in this situation, the only distinction that matters at all is
the one between those who are rooting for this country to succeed, and
those who are out to destroy it. You are either on the side of
democracy and the great American family, or you are not.
We can resolve to trust and respect each others' perceptions and
interpretations of events, even when they don't entirely agree with
our own. We can decide that we're going to stay sane in the face of
the craziness -- and stand with anybody, regardless of their politics,
who is also acting in good faith to stand against the bullies.
We can work to create a consensus vision of the next America we want
to become, and form trusting relationships with others to make that
happen.
We can refuse to reward bullying behavior with success. (Or, for that
matter, with any more attention than it takes to get the bullies out
of the room.)
We can stand up before each other and the world and say: "Those people
do not speak for us, and their squalid, angry vision is not our
vision. We are a better nation than that."
And we can, simply, continue to come together and govern. Because the
specter of citizens civilly and peacefully exercising power is, above
everything else, the one thing they fear the most, the biggest threat
to the radical anti-democracy agenda.
More:
http://www.alternet.org/story/154622/conservative_bullying_has_made_america_into_a_broken%2C_dysfunctional_family%3A_but_there_are_ways_to_regain_our_well-being_/?page=entire
--
Together, we can change the world, one mind at a time.
Have a great day,
Tommy
--
Together, we can change the world, one mind at a time.
Have a great day,
Tommy
--
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